Creating Users – Managing Users and Groups

There are several scenarios where you may need to bulk-create users or contacts or bulk-invite users to your tenant. Frequently, when these operations are required, you will be working with source data stored in a comma-separated values (CSV) text file.

Previously in the Performing Bulk User Management section, you used a specially-formatted CSV to import objects into the Microsoft 365 admin center. You can use a similarly-formatted CSV to perform the action with PowerShell.

In this set of examples, we’ve entered a few names into a CSV file (as shown in Figure 2.40) to demonstrate bulk user processing. While some of the administrative interfaces (such as the Microsoft 365 admin center) limit you to a maximum of 249 objects, you can process thousands of objects with PowerShell—the only real limitation is the memory on your computer.

Figure 2.46 – Bulk user template

First, you’ll perform the operation with the MSOnline cmdlets. Begin by importing the CSV source file and storing it as a variable. Then, with a Foreach command, you’ll iterate through the lines in the CSV, using the values stored in the $User variable to provide the inputs for each of the parameters:

$Users = Import-Csv -Path C:\temp\ImportUsers.csv

Foreach ($User in $Users) { New-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName $User. UserPrincipalName -FirstName $User.FirstName -LastName $User.LastName -DisplayName $User.DisplayName -Title $User.JobTitle -Department $User.Department -UsageLocation $User.UsageLocation -Country US }

Figure 2.47 – Bulk creating users with New-MsolUser

Next, you’ll look at doing the same thing with the Azure AD cmdlets. As with the other examples in this section, you’ll see that the syntax follows a pattern, but there are other required parameters that must be specified. In the case of New-AzureADUser, it is a PasswordProfile object (which is used to specify a password) and MailNickName that must be supplied:

$Users = Import-Csv C:\temp\ImportUsers.csv

$PasswordProfile = New-Object -TypeName Microsoft.Open.AzureAD.Model. PasswordProfile

$PasswordProfile.Password = “P@ssw0rd123”

Foreach ($User in $Users) { New-AzureADUser -UserPrincipalName $User. UserPrincipalName -GivenName $User.FirstName -Surname $User.LastName -DisplayName $User.DisplayName -JobTitle $User.JobTitle -Department $User.Department -UsageLocation $User.UsageLocation -Country $User.UsageLocation -AccountEnabled $True -MailNickname $User. UserPrincipalName.Split(“@”)[0] -PasswordProfile $PasswordProfile }

Figure 2.48 – Creating new users with New-AzureADUser

Finally, you’ll look at bulk user creation with the Microsoft Graph-based cmdlet New-MgUser. It has very similar parameters to the New-AzureADUser cmdlet, with the main difference being how the $PasswordProfile object is created and that the AccountEnabled parameter does not require an argument:

$Users = Import-Csv C:\Temp\ImportUsers.csv

$PasswordProfile = @{ Password = “P@ssw0rd123” }

PS C:> Foreach ($User in $Users) { New-MgUser -UserPrincipalName $User.UserPrincipalName -GivenName $User.FirstName -Surname $User. LastName -DisplayName $User.DisplayName -JobTitle $User.JobTitle -Department $User.Department -UsageLocation $User.UsageLocation -Country $User.UsageLocation -AccountEnabled -MailNickname $User. UserPrincipalName.Split(“@”)[0] -PasswordProfile $PasswordProfile }

Figure 2.49 – Creating new users with the New-MgUser cmdlet

As you can see, the flexibility and capability of the PowerShell interface allow you to do far more than what’s available in the graphical administration centers—with the trade-off that the parameters and syntax for the various modules can vary greatly.