Creating New Contacts In Bulk AND adding to distros - powershell

Question

I have a script that creates bulk external contacts using PS and a CSV. I would like to tweak this to not only create the contact but also add the contact to any specified distros.
foreach($contact in (import-csv c:\users\ME\desktop\contactstest.csv)){
$properties = #{
type = 'Contact'
name = $contact.firstname + ", " + $contact.lastname
OtherAttributes = #{'mail' = "$($contact.email)"}
Path = "OU=External Contacts,DC=Company,DC=org"
}
New-ADObject #properties
}
If I have the CSV with the following columns. Is this do-able?
Firstname/lastname/email/Group
The CSV is located on the desktop of the DC.
CSV EXAMPLE
first,last,email,group
billy,bob,bb#aol.com,emailist1

Answer 1

I see now what went wrong the first time.
What I meant was for you to replace the line New-ADObject #properties with my code block. Since you left that in aswell, the code tried to create the contact twice, leading to the error message and skipping the part where it add the contact to the group(s).
If your CSV looks like this:
first,last,email,group
billy,bob,bb#aol.com,emailist1
jane,doe,jd#somewhereintheworld.com,emaillist1;emaillist5
Note the second contact is to be added to two groups, separated by a semi-colon ;
Here the code in full:
foreach ($contact in (import-csv c:\users\ME\desktop\contactstest.csv)) {
# create a hash table for splatting the parameters to New-ADObject
$properties = #{
type = 'Contact'
name = $contact.firstname + ", " + $contact.lastname
OtherAttributes = #{'mail' = "$($contact.email)"}
Path = "OU=External Contacts,DC=Company,DC=org"
}
# create the contact and capture the resulting object
$newContact = New-ADObject #properties -PassThru -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
if ($newContact) {
# if success, add this contact to the group(s)
$contact.Group -split ';' | ForEach-Object {
Add-ADGroupMember -Identity $_ -Members $newContact
}
}
else {
Write-Warning "Could not create contact $($contact.lastname)"
}
}
P.S. You can also include the PassThru and ErrorAction parameters to the splatting hash:
$properties = #{
type = 'Contact'
name = $contact.firstname + ", " + $contact.lastname
OtherAttributes = #{'mail' = "$($contact.email)"}
Path = "OU=External Contacts,DC=Company,DC=org"
PassThru = $true
ErrorAction = 'SilentlyContinue'
}