Sharepoint 2019 – Manager Field NOT updated when UPSA configured for External Identity Manager Syn

This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: SharePoint Support Blog articles.

Configuring External Identity Manager is NOT new for Sharepoint.  There are multiple articles on how to configure External MIM with Sharepoint and get the User profiles Synched.  This article is NOT intended to discuss on how the configuration works, but this will help to understand how the manager information is updated to a profile. With Sharepoint 2019 , we see this functionality doesn’t work well too.

Let’s see how it works with Sharepoint 2016

When the User profile service application is set to Adimport mode

• The user data is directly imported to upa.userprofile_full and upa.userprofilevalue tables accordingly.
• However the Manager information is NOT saved directly to these tables as the manager value is again of a “person" property and not just a text or integer.
• Hence this will be saved to upa.ProfileImportStagingPersonProperties table and will be processed in the POST processing stage.
• The Timer job "UPA - User Profile ActiveDirectory Import Job " will do the import activity and once its completed the same job will process the data from the stagin table upa.ProfileImportStagingPersonProperties and saves it to Userprofile_full and UserprofileValue tables.
• The timer job uses a stored proc IMPORTEXPORT_PostImportUserProperties  to process the Manager information from upa.ProfileImportStagingPersonProperties and save to Userprofile_full and UserprofileValue

When the User profile Service Application is set to MIM (External) import

• The user data is directly imported to upa.userprofile_full and upa.userprofilevalue tables by the MIM (No Timer Job in SharePoint)
• The manager information is saved to upa.ProfileImportStagingPersonProperties table as usual
• But there is no Job to process the data from this staging table and writes to userprofile_full or userprofilevalue tables.
• Hence in SP2016 , a new Timer job has been introduced to process this data when the UPA is set to MIM import - UPA-Updates Profile Memberships and Relationships Job
• More information about this job, please refer : https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3141517/february-21-2017-update-for-sharepoint-server-2016-kb3141517

When it comes to SharePoint 2019 , the functionality looks to be similar, we do have a similar Timer job to process the imported data,  however there seems to be a slight difference , here it is. 

 SP 2016

SP2019

More information about the Job : refer https://joshroark.com/sharepoint-profile-sync-with-mim-managers-and-group-memberships-are-not-updated/

In a working scenario (that is Sharepoint Adimport mode) , you can see the following in the ULS logs (verboseEX mode)

In a non-working scenario (that's external MIM) , we do not see this call getting triggered. 

This issue is being reviewed by the concerned team at Microsoft and the work around for now is to enable the noilmused property.

Please make sure that NO Sync configuration (creating connection, property mapping etc) are setup from Sharepoint central admin when the User profile service application is set to NOILMUSED=1. 

 How to set the value?

To reset

Will update this once a permanent fix is announced