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SharePoint 2019 does not honor title changes for people.

We have looked at our AD sync for people (says it runs and is successful) and changed our indexing schemes (may not even be related) without success. The AD synch job in SP is set to 5 minutes (the default). Unsure if it matters we've switched between scheduled crawls and continuous without any change.

What we expect is that when "Regional Director" is promoted to "Director" that the title shows the updated "Director" only title. What actually happens is that the page loads and the people web part is displaying the contact information and shows "Director" but within about 1 second is updated onscreen to the old "Regional Director" title.

It is clear that SharePoint KNOWS what the new title is and even uses it but some other call-back retrieves an old title and replaces the onscreen version with it.

Additionally if we add a new people web part and include a person with an updated title the person is added with the correct title. Publishing the page shows the correct title but if we revisit the page (closed-open/refresh) the title exhibits the above "replace" behavior on screen.

This behavior occurs on any page, new or existing.

Not being a true SP admin (I'm learning it all on the fly) I don't even know where to look (or if there even is a place) to see what's happening in the AD space with SP except for the not-very-informative internal SP logs.

EDIT: I've noticed that when I look at this persons "people page" in SharePoint I see that it gives them their old title both in their actual title field but also in the hierarchy showing managers and direct reports.

Adam Wood
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1 Answers1

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I have found the solution. Of course, 20 minutes after you've given up the solution pops right out. I've broken my own rule. "Nothing in SharePoint is automatic even if it looks like it works already."

The answer is that even though SharePoint seems to pull everyones data from AD including phone, titles, names, managers, etc... it's not really syncing with AD. Once I discovered that I needed to explicitly define a sync target for AD then the titles updated.

If you're finding this is your problem...

The behavior is that it appears that SharePoint is getting all it's information from AD but I believe it's actually just getting it from the profile of the logged user but doesn't actually sync with AD.

To configure a sync:

In Central Admin use the Application Management link and click Manage Service Applications.

There you'll want to click Manage Profile Service and under the Synchronization section you want to click "Configure Synchronization Settings"

On the settings page in the Synchronization Options section make sure you have checked "Use SharePoint Active Directory Import" option selected and click OK.

THEN...

back on Central Admin...

Click Manage Service Applications...

On that page click on Manage Profile Service and under Synchronization click on Configure Synchronization Connections.

[Even thought it appeared that ally my info was from AD, I didn't have an AD connection set here so it wasn't working]

Click "Create New Connection"

The page that follows allows you to create a connection.

Give it a name Choose "Active Directory Import" from the "Type" list. Fill out the connection setting information making sure to use the fully qualified domain name Enter your authentication information... make sure the account you use has proper access to get the info from AD of whatever method you choose has it.

There are other options... I didn't need them but configure them as you need them.

My profile synchronization was already syncing by default (and reporting success even though it was doing nothing... but yours may not.

To run profile sync:

On Central admin again:

Click manage service applications Click the link for User Profile service application. On the next page in the Synchronization section click Start Profile Synchronization On the next page choose Start Full Synchronization for a first time run or choose Start Incremental Synchronization if you have previously synced and need only to update changed information.

Click OK.

The next page should be back to the Manage Profile Service page and you should see your sync status on the right.

Hope this helped you!

Adam Wood
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