Getting 'Unknown error' while retrieving user profiles properties in SharePoint Online CSOM

Question

I am trying to fetch user properties for a bunch of profiles and at some point (after couple of thousands of users), I am getting either:

Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ServerException: Unknown Error
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientRequest.ProcessResponseStream(Stream responseStream)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientRequest.ProcessResponse()

OR

Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ServerException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientRequest.ProcessResponseStream(Stream responseStream)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientRequest.ProcessResponse()

The code I am running looks like this:

  var peopleManager = new PeopleManager(context);  
  
  foreach (string userName in GetUserNames())  
  {  
       PersonProperties props = peopleManager.GetPropertiesFor(userName);  
       context.Load(props);  
  }  
  
context.ExecuteQuery()  

Each query will have 100 user props loaded. Also I am disposing the context between batches.

Answer 1

Hi @Julien St-Pierre Fortin ,
Please refer to following code to get PersonProperties

    string serverUrl = "http://serverName/";    
    string targetUser = "domainName\\\\userName";    

    // Connect to the client context.  
    ClientContext clientContext = new ClientContext(serverUrl);  

    // Get the PeopleManager object and then get the target user's properties.  
    PeopleManager peopleManager = new PeopleManager(clientContext);  
    PersonProperties personProperties = peopleManager.GetPropertiesFor(targetUser);  

    clientContext.Load(personProperties, p => p.AccountName, p => p.UserProfileProperties);  
    clientContext.ExecuteQuery();  

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Answer 2

Ok thanks @RaytheonXie_MSFT !

I am wondering though, why is this failing in the first place and how your snippet would solve this issue?

Answer 3

Hi! I'm on @Julien St-Pierre Fortin 's team.

The same code Julien posted worked on August 9th (EDIT: it even worked on the 11th), and fails with an unknown error from the 12th on.

It was failing on one of our customer's instance, now it's failing on our own.
I believe a recent update might have broken something, and seeing that 17 people are following this question, I think we might not be alone.

Anybody else having the same issue?