Am I doing something wrong with my PowerShell array? - powershell

Question

I'm trying to prepend any groups the user is a member of with "MW-" (that is working). But when I try to do a loop to add another user to those group names with the "MW-" that I stored in $var I get an error
Cannot bind parameter 'Identity'. Cannot convert value "#{MW-" + $_.name=MW-DFS-share1}" to value of type "Selected.Microsoft.ActiveDirectory.Management.ADGroup"
$var = Get-ADUser -Identity TestUser -Properties memberof |
Select-Object -ExpandProperty memberof |
Where {$_ -match "CN=DFS*"} |
Get-ADGroup -Properties name |
Select-Object {"MW-"+ $_.name}
foreach ($group in $var) {
Add-ADGroupMember -Identity $group -Member TestUser
}
Note; When I run the Get-ADUser command it produces the output below:
"MW-"+ $_.name
--------------
MW-DFS-share1
MW-DFS-files
MW-DFS-archive

Answer 1

A calculated property is the easiest way to fix your issue. Then you need to either expand that property or access the property directly in your loop.
$var = Get-ADUser -Identity TestUser -Properties memberof |
Select-Object -ExpandProperty memberof |
Where {$_ -match "CN=DFS*"} |
Get-ADGroup -Properties name |
Select-Object #{Label='Name';Expression={"MW-"+ $_.name}}
foreach ($group in $var.Name) {
Add-ADGroupMember -Identity $group -Member TestUser
}
The issues with your attempt was that you never provided a property name but rather just did the calculation. In the loop, you needed to access just the calculated values rather than the object that contained a property with the values.
If the goal is to read a user list from a file and then update each user's membership, you may do the following:
foreach ($user in (Get-Content c:\userlist.txt)) {
$var = Get-ADUser -Identity $user -Properties memberof |
Select-Object -ExpandProperty memberof |
Where {$_ -match "CN=DFS*"} |
Get-ADGroup -Properties name |
Select-Object #{Label='Name';Expression={"MW-"+ $_.name}}
Add-ADPrincipalGroupMembership -Identity $user -MemberOf $var.Name
}
Using a foreach loop allows for assigning each user to a variable as you iterate through the list. That variable can then be referenced at any point within the loop.