User Profile full sync overwrites AD and SharePoint with old values for Title property

Question

I have configured a User Profile Service Application to export the Job Title attribute to the Active Directory "title" property. The SharePoint Title property is not configured to import or export it's value.

This works fine with incremental synchronisations. However, any time we do a full sync, the SharePoint "Title" property is set to a that I suspect was used months (or even years) ago. This is happening for about 10% of all accounts.

Using MIISClient.exe I can pull up one of the user accounts and see the old value in the AD "title" property, even though AD and SharePoint have the updated property.

It feels as if FIM has cached some old values for certain accounts. Has anyone else seen behaviour like this? Any suggestions for correcting (apart from recreating the UPA).

Answer 1

Have you checked if you have any orphan User Profiles in you SharePoint environment. I expereienced the same problem the opposite way half a year ago. I had over 100 users of 7000 which didn't get imported correct.

You can run the script without marking objects for deletion at first, to see what you got. If you have orphans, mark them for deletion and do a full sync again.

I had to do this operation several times, since signed in users won't be deleted.

# Clean up accounts that is not imported correctly

$upsa = Get-SPServiceApplication | Where-Object {$_.TypeName -like
    "User Profile Service Application"}

# List all user accounts that is not imported correctly
Set-SPProfileServiceApplication $upsa -GetNonImportedObjects $true

# Remove user accounts not imported correctly 
# Uncomment line below to run
Set-SPProfileServiceApplication $upsa -PurgeNonImportedObjects $true

# Run a full User Profile Service Syncronisation, and make sure users
# end up in Profile database.
# If not, users who log in will create new NonImportedObject accounts

Preferaably you schedule to run the script at night, followed by a full user profile sync.

Answer 2

Have you tried restarting the User Profile Sync service? I would restart the User Profile Sync Service via the Central Administration and then run a full sync again.

Furthermore, it would be worth checking what build number your farm is at? You may need to apply a Cumulative Update depending on the build number of your farm.