Upload user profile images from desktop to sharepoint using a windows service

Question

All,

I was so glad to find this community. I am sharepoint newbie and just started working on Sharepoint 2013. My task is to upload and set user profile images which are saved in a local disk (share folder). All the images are named as .jpg. I have written a windows service to check the directory and move all user images to associated account on the Microsoft exchange server. My next challenge is to move it to users on sharepoint. Is it possible to pull it from the exchange server? Or is there a powershell script that can help me move the same image to sharepoint too ? Any help is highly appreciated. Since I have no experience I am not sure where to start.

PS: I am aware of the User Profile Service. I am looking at using that. A powershell seems to be a more easy option for me now since I already have an instance of it which I can use.

Thank you

Answer 1

After you have associated the photos to your AD profiles (thumbnailPhoto property) you need to wait for the synchronization have run, and then run the Update-SPProfilePhotoStore cmdlet on the SharePoint server:

Update-SPProfilePhotoStore -MySiteHostLocation http://my.intranet -CreateThumbnailsForImportedPhotos $true

I suggest you create a scheduled task that does this. Schedule it to run a good amount of time after the profile synchronization schedule to leave time for the sync to finish.