bulk creation of forwarding addresses and contacts via powershell - powershell

Question

I am trying to move mailboxes to a new Exchange server on a different O365 tenant. This script is a portion of this move which attempts to list all Exchange Online users who have licenses, create a contact for each user pointing to their new email address, and forwards their email to their new address as well as their mailbox
#requires -Version 3 -Modules MSOnline
$mailboxlist = Get-Mailbox | Select-Object -Property userprincipalname |
Get-MsolUser | Where-Object -Property islicensed -EQ -Value $true |
Select-Object -Property firstname, lastname, userprincipalname |
Where-Object -Property firstname -NE -Value $null |
Format-list -AutoSize
#Begin foreach loop
foreach ($item in $mailboxlist)
{
#Create the forwarding address
$forwardingaddress = $item.firstname + '.' + $item.lastname + '#newdomain.com'
#Check for a contact, add if not present
If (!(Get-MailContact $forwardingaddress -ErrorAction silentlycontinue)){
New-MailContact $forwardingaddress -ExternalEmailAddress $forwardingaddress
}
#assign forwarding address
set-mailbox -ForwardingAddress $forwardingaddress -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $true
}
The result of the above is a $mailboxlist which is populated with first and last names and the users UPN which is also an email address. The result of $forwardingaddress is .#newdomain.com.
I don't think I am creating the initial data correctly for the foreach loop. I know that if I replace the $item.firstname with $_.firstname I get the same empty result. I would much appreciate if someone knowledgeable on the topic could assist.
Thanks!
Edit: Final config with Kiran's suggestion
#requires -Version 3 -Modules MSOnline
$mailboxlist = Get-Mailbox | Get-MsolUser | Where-Object { ($_.islicensed -eq $true) -and ($_.firstname -ne $null) }
#Begin foreach loop
foreach ($item in $mailboxlist)
{
#Create the forwarding address
$forwardingaddress = $item.firstname + '.' + $item.lastname + '#newdomain.com'
#Remove any spaces from the email address
$forwardingaddress = ($forwardingaddress -replace " ","").trim()
#Check for a contact, add if not present
If (!(Get-MailContact $forwardingaddress -ErrorAction silentlycontinue))
{
New-MailContact $forwardingaddress -ExternalEmailAddress $forwardingaddress
}
#assign forwarding address
Set-Mailbox -ForwardingAddress $forwardingaddress -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $true
}

Answer 1

try this:
$mailboxlist = Get-Mailbox | Get-MsolUser |
Where-Object { ($_.islicensed -eq $true) -and ($_.firstname -ne $null) }
the UserPrincipalName of get-Msoluser accepts pipeline input by propertyname so you should just pipe the output of get-mailbox to get-msoluser
select-object should be preferred over format-* commands because of the type of objects that are created.
Use format* when you want to show data on the console.
The where-object clause allows you to create complex conditions so try to combine them where you can. This should be the flow of commands:
cmdlet | where-object { some condition(s)} | select properties