A company called Quest provides an extra snap-In for PowerShell. The idea
is for these Active Directory cmdlets to work alongside the native PowerShell
commands. As a result we can examine groups in general, and add members in
particular. Incidentally, all the PowerShell and QAD nouns are singular,
hence QADGroup (and not QADGroups)
Topics for PowerShell's QADGroup and QADGroupMember
Here is the classic PowerShell method to discover the parameters of cmdlet.
The format is: Get-Help verb-Noun -full
Get-Help add-QADGroupMember
Note 1: The two parameters of most interest are -identity and
-member. If we reflect that the main verb is 'add', then we can see that
-identity defines the group object itself, while -member takes care of the user(s) we are
adding to this group.
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Let us assume that you
have fulfilled the above pre-requisites, now there are just three things to
do before my next script will work:
a) Connect to Active Directory, best would be to logon at a domain controller
in a test network. Remote connection works well, and you could try
Virtual PC for your test network.
b) Find the variable $OUGang in my script(s); then amend its value to reflect
your domain and your Organizational Unit. You many need a little
extra work with Active Directory Users and Computers in creating an OU and a handful of users.
c) This script represents a learning progression, and it's also useful in
troubleshooting. However, you need to manually a few users to the
'Bakers' group, other wise the script won't return any values.
# PowerShell script to list users in a group # Author: Guy Thomas
# Version 2.4 August 2008 tested on PowerShell v 1.0
Note 1: This script relies on the group called 'Bakers' having
members. On this occasion, it would be best to add the users manually in
Active Directory Users and Computer. The other benefit is that you can use
the GUI to check the tabs and double check that the script is working properly.
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While there is a QAD cmdlet to create a group, however, I am going to concentrate on
adding users to an existing group called 'Bakers'. Therefore, action point -
create a group called 'Bakers', else modify my script.
# PowerShell script add users to a group # Author: Guy Thomas
# Version 2.4 August 2008 tested on PowerShell v 1.0
Note 1: You did change the value of $OuGang -
didn't you? Also Remember that these QAD cmdlets don't exist in the initial PowerShell
install, they are only available after you successfully run: add-PSSnapin
quest.activeroles.admanagement. If your script does not work refer
back to the pre-requisites.
Note 2: This is how the script works. $Target
obtains a stream of users from the named Organizational Unit.
Foreach introduces a loop. Focus on the parameters -identity and
-member. $Person.dn is responsible for adding each user in the
stream to the 'Bakers' group.
Our mission on this page is to add users to an existing group.
However, to give you complete understanding I have explained how you can
research the family of QAD Group cmdlets. In particular how to list
group members with Get-QADGroupMember, finally I have
shown how to create a script which employs add-QADGroupMember
to introduce more members to a named group.
If you like this page then please share it with your friends
Please email me if you have a better example script. Also please report any factual mistakes, grammatical errors or broken links, I will be happy to correct the fault.
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is
most useful for PowerShell scripting.
SolarWinds
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WMI counters to use for applications like Microsoft Active Directory,
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