Lync 2013: Setting a user picture for an Application or Response Group Contact Object

I tested this on a while homed on a 2013 pool and with the 2013 client. It doesn’t seem to work with the 2010 client in my testing. It is in no way supported, I just thought it might work, use at your own risk. It also seems to be fairly intermittent as to whether the pictures will appear or not in the client – if anyone has an ideas on this/tries this I’m interested to hear how you get on.

You will need the Lync and Active Directory PowerShell modules available (or a remote session with them available)

Normally in a Lync install Each “Application Endpoint”, or “bot” as we often call them (but also applies to response groups, audio test service etc.) has a contact object with no photo, for example take our (Modality Systems) TimePrompt application. This is how it would normally look

Each Bot or Response Group Creates an AD contact object in the Configuration Partition. We can confirm the AD contact object details with Get-CSApplicationEndPoint. You don’t actually need to do this but it helps you understand how it works.

These contact objects are not in the AD Default naming context, they are actually held in the configuration partition (similar to the core Lync apps e.g. http://lyncdup.com/2011/07/lync-troubleshooting-audio-test-service-csaudiotestserviceapplication-will-not-start/ ), You can see this in the Identity string where is says “CN=Configuration”

By default Get/Set-ADObject will not find them. To get to them with Set-ADObject we need to change the Search Base

$sb=”CN=Configuration,DC=domain,dc=com”

(substitute domain for your domain and com for your domain suffix, as per Identity in Get-CSApplicationEndPoint)

Now we can Get that AD Object

Get-ADObject -searchbase $sb -Filter ‘displayname -like “TimePrompt*”‘

You should get one result (if not check your display name is matched correctly/is unique enough)

Format it into a list to see it better

Get-ADObject -searchbase $sb -Filter ‘displayname -like “TimePrompt*”‘ | FL

Now we can upload a photo into a temporary variable and add it to that contact object (ensure your photo is 96×96 and less than 10k).

$photo = [byte[]](Get-Content C:\temp\robot96x96.jpg -Encoding byte)

Then we can Pipe out Get-ADObject to Set-ADObject and add the photo to the thumbnailPhoto attribute

Get-ADObject -searchbase $sb -Filter ‘displayname -like “Timeprompt*”‘ | Set-ADObject -Add @{thumbnailPhoto=$photo}

We can verify the thumnailPhoto attribute is now set in ADSI edit by connecting to the Configuration context

Once the Lync address book is updated (Update-CSAddressBook) and the Lync client has sync’d the new address book, you should see the picture on the application or response group (it can take some time to sync out, the wind must be blowing in the right direction).

It doesn’t appear in 2010 client

But does in 2013

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Tom Arbuthnot

Senior Consultant at Modality Systems

Tom Arbuthnot is a Microsoft MVP and Senior Consultant at Modality Systems. Tom is actively involved in the global Unified Communications community. He is a founding member of the Microsoft UC User Group London, a contributing writer to Lync Server 2013 Unleashed and is a technical reviewer for Trainsignal. Modality Systems is a UC Centre of Excellence – specializing in strategy, infrastructure, user adoption, managed services and software development.

@tomarbuthnot

Microsoft Lync MVP. Senior Consultant @modalitysystems. @MUCUGLondon. Blog at http://lyncdup.com, #Lync #PowerShell

Great work on @TheUCArchitects 's windows phone app from @jveldh http://t.co/34IlbFoIio - 3 hours ago

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