User Profile Sync not updating Manager field if vacant

Question

User Profile Sync not updating Manager field if vacant

Dominique Graves 256

We are running SharePoint Server 2019. We synchronize with Active Directory for user profiles. We use the "Manager" field in AD. This allows us to assign workflow tasks to the "Manager" of employees. I have had several workflows error and after investigation I found that it happens when a manager has recently left. The manager's AD account is deleted. This nulls out the Manager attribute on their employees AD accounts. User Profile sync and my PowerShell script to remove accounts marked for deletion are successfully removing the manager's User Profile. HOWEVER, even though the AD account has an empty Manager attribute, the SharePoint user profile for the employees still has the managers account listed. So the workflows are erroring because it's trying to query a user profile that doesn't exist. See screenshot of the employee's user profile. The manager field has the managers name but with red squiggly underline stating "No exact match was found. Click the item(s) that did not resolve for more options".

Has anyone else had this issue where the AD account "manager" field is blanked out but the SharePoint profile retains the old manager?

user-profile-manager-error

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Answer 1

RaytheonXie_MSFT 40,471 Microsoft External Staff

Hi @Dominique Graves

Deleting the user account from Active Directory or User Profile from the UPSA in SharePoint will have no adverse impact on metadata.

You could delete them from the User Information List which you can get to by navigating to https://siteUrl/_layouts/people.aspx?MembershipGroupId=0, finding their username, and removing it from the site collection. This will have no impact on metadata for items in the site but will remove them from the User Information List.

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RaytheonXie_MSFT 40,471 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2024-11-29T00:58:24.7566667+00:00

Hi @Dominique Graves

Would you tell me whether your issue has been resolved or have any update? If you have any questions or progress, you can contact me in time.
RaytheonXie_MSFT 40,471 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2024-12-02T02:15:50.51+00:00

Hi @Dominique Graves

Would you please provide us with an update on the status of your issue?

I am looking forward to your reply.

Have a nice day!

Thanks,

Raytheon Xie
Dominique Graves 256 Reputation points

2024-12-02T18:32:46.5833333+00:00

Thank you for your reply! You are correct in that I see the deleted AD account still shows up in the User Information List. I could delete it, but I don't think this will solve my issue. My issue is that the User Profile is "holding" on to the previous Manager. I can see it in Central Administration so I'm not sure how delete the person from the site collection will help.

I'll give an example of how the workflow is set up. A request is put in for employee name Jane Smith. Jane's manager used to be Roger Mickelberg. Roger's account was deleted from AD since he left the company. When I look in Central Administration at Jane's user profile, it shows Roger listed as manager. A full sync was completed but it does not remove the manager. However, if I update the AD account with Jane's new manager, then the user profile sync replaces the manager field with the new manager. The reason why the manager field is important is because the workflow performs two user profile lookups. First it looks up who Jane's manager is. Then it looks up her managers manager, so we can send a task to the second level manager.

There are many instances when an employee doesn't have a manager assigned because of a vacant position. Unfortunately workflows run against the "manager" attribute even when the employee doesn't have a manager. I could delete the manager manually in the user profile and that resolves the problem because I have a failsafe in the workflow that assigns to a specific person if the manager field is BLANK. But if it's not blank, and has a non-existent user profile then the workflow errors. I don't want to have to manually update many user profiles when a manager no longer works here and we are waiting to fill that position.

I guess what I want to know, is this expected behavior for the user profile to HOLD ON to the old manager attribute even though it doesn't exist in AD? I would expect it to set the value to null.

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User Profile Sync not updating Manager field if vacant

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