How to run Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership as a synchronous command? - powershell

Question

I'm trying to run a script that gets a user info from the AD. After the employee ID was provided the script gets all the user's groups and prints it as a list. After that it gets more attributes such as SamAccountName, LockedOut etc. Then it checks if the user is member of an "eTips" group.
My problem is that for some reason the output of the scripts shows not in the order that the scripts is written.
This is the code:
$EmpID = Read-Host "Enter Employee ID"
$ShowMemberOf = Read-Host "Want to see all the groups he members of (takes time...)? (y/n)"
if ($ShowMemberOf -eq "y" -or $ShowMemberOf -eq "yes") {
$User = get-aduser -Filter {EmployeeID -like $EmpID} | Select-Object -ExpandProperty SamAccountName
Write-Host "Group list:"
Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership $User | select name
Write-Host "The rest of the user's info:"
get-aduser -Filter {EmployeeID -like $EmpID} -Properties * | Select-Object SamAccountName, PasswordExpired,
PasswordLastSet, OfficePhone, LockedOut, Enabled, CN
$MemberOfEtips = get-aduser -Filter {EmployeeID -like $EmpID} -Properties MemberOf | Select-Object -ExpandProperty MemberOf | Select-String -Pattern "etips"
if ($?) {
write-host "Member of an eTips group"
}
else {
write-host "NOT member of eTips group"
}
}
else {
Write-Host "The rest of the user's info:"
get-aduser -Filter {EmployeeID -like $EmpID} -Properties * | Select-Object SamAccountName, PasswordExpired,
PasswordLastSet, OfficePhone, LockedOut, Enabled, CN
$MemberOfEtips = get-aduser -Filter {EmployeeID -like $EmpID} -Properties MemberOf | Select-Object -ExpandProperty MemberOf | Select-String -Pattern "etips"
if ($?) {
"Member of an eTips group"
}
else {
"NOT member of eTips group"
}
}
This is the output:
Enter Employee ID: 4449871
Want to see all the groups he members of (takes time...)? (y/n): y
Group list:
The rest of the user's info:
name
----
Domain Users
SMS_USERS
dg_computingl
ManagerUsers
eTips
Member of an eTips group
As you can see the script continues to run even though the "Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership" cmdlet wasn't complete yet. So the result is I'm getting the group list under the rest of 'the rest of the user's info' instead of under the 'Group list:'.
The second weird this is that because of that, it even doesn't run this part:
get-aduser -Filter {EmployeeID -like $EmpID} -Properties * | Select-Object SamAccountName, PasswordExpired,
PasswordLastSet, OfficePhone, LockedOut, Enabled, CN
It just skips to the part where it checks of the user is part of eTips group.
Please explain what I'm doing wrong here.

Answer 1

Remove Write-Host everywhere you used it, the other commands you use behave like Write-Output, this is why the order looks weird. Just put the strings you want to output on a line of their own, to have the same behavior and appropriate display.
The second Get-ADUser command does run, but I guess it simply does not produce any output, you should check it separately.
I'd rather run the if against $MemberOfEtips than $?, but that may only be a pattern unknown to me.
By default, a majority of PowerShell cmdlets are synchronous (there are specific exceptions, like jobs).