You may have noticed that some members of the university have photos in Outlook, OWA or Skype for Business and Yammer. We have now enabled a way for you to add your own photo. It’s totally optional, but many people find it very helpful. If you would like your photo to appear in Outlook, Skype for Business and Yammer, you just need to do the following:

Put a photo of any size (but cropped to be roughly square), in JPG or PNG format, in the root of your H: drive. The file must be named the same as your user name, with a jpg or png extension. So if your user name is nabc1, your image file would be H:\nabc1.jpg or H:\nabc1.png.

Each evening the system will check for your <username>.jpg or <username>.png file (this process ignores all of your other files), then it will resize it to fit the system requirements, and add it to your Active Directory user account. Whenever you want to change your picture, just save a new one in your Home Folder and it will update overnight.

When selecting your photo, bear in mind that anyone in the university can see it. It will appear in Outlook to anyone on the same recipient list for an email message (it’s not just people that you send email to), or if they’re searching for people in Skype for Business and Yammer.

It’s worth noting that even if you don’t add a photo to your Active Directory account, some people using the Outlook Social Connector may currently be seeing your profile photo from Facebook or LinkedIn in Outlook (even if you aren’t connected to them on those sites). This is an opportunity to override that external social network photo with one that you’d prefer other members of the university to see.