Great example of Using PowerShell to modify AD properties

Today in class I took a question from the Active Directory Forums on PowerShell.com where I am a moderator.  The user had an Excel spreadsheet containing the first and last names of his users, and a field for their pager numbers.  He needed a way to test to see if the pager value in the spreadsheet matched the one in active directory.  If not, he needed the number changed.  Here is what I sent him:

Import-Module ActiveDirectory

 

ForEach ($User in (Import-CSV -Path C:\PS\Users.CSV))

{

    $Last = $User.Last

    $First = $User.first

    Get-ADUser -Filter '(Surname -eq $Last) -and (GivenName -eq $First)' |

    ForEach {If ($User.OtherPager -ne $_.Pager)

    {

        $_ |Set-ADObject -Replace @{OtherPager="$($User.OtherPager)"}

    }

    }

}

 

Assuming that he was using PowerShell V2, I had him import the PowerShell module for Active Directory.

 

I then had him load the excel spreadsheet (which was saved as a CSV file) and then cycle through each record one at a time.

 

Using the Get-ADUser cmdlet, I utilized its filtering capability to find a user in AD that match the first and last name of the record being searched.

 

If a match is found, I then compared the OtherPager property in AD to the one in the CSV.  If the matched, then nothing was done.  If they did not, the value from the CSV was applied to the object in AD.

 

The user said that he was supporting 1000 users.  My class estimated that without breaks, interruptions or mistakes, this short script would save this administrator 3.3 hours every time it was used. Not back for a little script.