How to Export Salesforce Profile Images for External Use  

If you’ve ever tried to export Salesforce profile images for use in external applications, you know the struggle is real. Whether you’re working with community portals, customer-facing directories, or third-party integrations, there’s one frustrating roadblock that many teams run into: Salesforce locks down user profile images behind authentication walls. That might be great for security, but it’s a nightmare for usability. 

And if your platform runs on top of solutions like Fonteva, Nimble AMS, or Advanced Communities, the issue doesn’t go away, it often gets worse. 

Why Can’t We Just Use the Profile Images? 

Salesforce treats profile images of community users like sensitive assets and to some degree, they are. But in many real-world use cases, you need to make these images accessible to the outside world: 

• A member directory on a public-facing website 

• Personalized emails that pull in user avatars 

• Mobile apps displaying team profiles 

• Event platforms syncing attendee info 

The problem is, unless you’re logged into Salesforce with the proper permissions, those profile images remain hidden. External apps are left with broken image links, empty placeholders, or clunky workarounds that don’t scale. It’s especially problematic when you rely on systems like Fonteva or Nimble AMS that centralize user profiles but still operate within Salesforce’s tight access controls. 

The Hidden Cost of Trapped Profile Images 

Let’s talk impact. When external systems can’t access Salesforce profile pictures, it’s not just a technical barrier, it’s a broken user experience. People expect to see faces next to names. Whether it’s for trust, personalization, or collaboration, visuals matter. 

Organizations often resort to hacks like: 

• Manually exporting images and reuploading them elsewhere 

• Asking users to upload photos in multiple platforms 

• Creating custom APIs with image proxying (and complex permission logic) 

Each of these paths is a rabbit hole of maintenance, security risks, and unnecessary dev time. 

We recently worked with a customer who ran into this exact issue. Their Salesforce community was humming along, but every time they tried to sync profile data to their external learning portal, the images were MIA. It was affecting adoption, engagement, and the polished experience they were aiming for. 

A Smarter, Scalable Way to Export Salesforce Profile Images 

Here’s the good news: you don’t need to reinvent the wheel or build a workaround from scratch. 

Using a no-code integration platform, we helped our client set up an automated workflow that solved the issue in just a couple of days. Here’s what that solution looked like: 

• Profile images were automatically exported from Salesforce on a regular schedule. 

• The images were uploaded to Amazon S3, where they could be accessed via public URLs (secured with token-based protection when needed). 

• The generated S3 URLs were written back to Salesforce, directly onto the related Contact records. 

• Now, any external app can use those public URLs without breaking or requiring authentication. 

No more broken images. No more manual exports. No more asking users to upload the same photo in multiple systems. Just clean, consistent image delivery wherever it’s needed. 

How OneTeg Made It All Possible  

With OneTeg, we built a fully automated, secure integration between Salesforce and Amazon S3 using drag-and-drop flows, no custom code, no months-long development cycles. It just worked. 

From kickoff to deployment, the entire project took just a couple of days. And the benefits were immediate: 

• Frictionless user experience across platforms 

• Improved branding and personalization 

• Zero maintenance burden on internal IT teams 

If you’re relying on Salesforce to power community platforms, event tools, member directories, or digital experiences—stop settling for incomplete data or missing visuals. With OneTeg, you can liberate your Salesforce content, automate the flow of profile images, and deliver consistent, rich experiences wherever your users engage. 

Want to see how it works? Let’s talk.