Importing photos

This article applies to an old version of CodeTwo Active Directory Photos.
We strongly recommend that you visit the product page and download the latest version.
Note that the navigation menu on the left side refers to the latest version of the program.

CodeTwo Active Directory Photos enables bulk management of users' pictures, which is particularly useful when the Active Directory database contains a few thousand users. 

To import pictures for multiple users, you need to prepare a folder containing the users' photos. The images in the folder need to be named using field values from AD so they become unique for a given user– e.g. [name](dot)[surname].png or [emailaddress].jpg etc. It is best to educate your users which filename pattern you need the images to follow and have them all send you ready-made files ready to crop and upload. Once the picture folder is prepared, you need to select one user in the Users and Contacts window and click the Import option on the upper toolbar. The first Import window will appear (Fig. 1.).

Fig.1. First Import window.

The Import window contains two options: you can either import photos for all users from your database or import photos only for selected users (in the brackets the number of currently selected users is provided). The Photo folder section is used to specify the location of your picture folder. In the File name pattern field you need to define the filename pattern using AD field(s) according to which the image files are prepared. When finished, click Next.

CodeTwo Active Directory Photos will now display a window showing all the images that have been successfully matched to users based on the filename and the data pulled from the AD in the Matching files section. The Files without match section, on the other hand, displays pictures that have not been matched due to mistakes in their name pattern or invalid settings (Fig. 2.).

Fig.2. Window finalizing the import operation. Visible files that have been matched and those that did not meet the necessary criteria.

To approve the matching process, click Next. The Photo resize window will display showing the photo of the first matched user. To edit the photos for other matched users, use the left, right icons located above the photo. Once you finish editing all photos, click Finish to open the summary window. 

When the first step of the Import operation is complete and there are still some pictures in the Files without match section that should have been added to specific users, you can easily go back and review the naming pattern and the names of the photos and change them if necessary. 

You need to remember that when CodeTwo Active Directory Photos is running, the photos are in use and it is not possible to change the names of files (they are locked by the program).