Importing Profile Pictures from AD to SharePoint 2013

Below are sequential steps to import profile pictures from AD to SharePoint My Sites.

1.       Create My Site Web Application and respective site collection with mysitehost as template

2.       Then provide the create permissions for everyone under user policy under the web application settings

3.       Then create managed path for the my site web application with wildcard inclusion.

4.       Then make sure you are running UPA service under the system services.

5.       Then create user profile service application

6.       Then start the user profile sync service under the services, this account should have been part of local admin group and allow logon policy under security policies.

7.       Then create connection to AD , here you need to provide forest name and service account which should have replication directory permissions on AD.

8.       Test connection and choose the respective OU users you would like to import

9.       Then navigate to the user properties and look for “picture” property ,under the mapping section choose above connection created and choose attribute as “thumbnail photo” and click on Add.

10.   Then start full sync

11.   Execute the below command

Update-SPProfilePhotoStore -MySiteHostLocation  <<mysitewebapp URL>> -CreateThumbnailsForImportedPhotos $true

 With the above steps , we should be ready with picture in my site profiles.

and pictures will be saved in three different sizes in the location

http://<<mysiteurl>>/_layouts/15/start.aspx#/User%20Photos