How to get via Powershell AD computer owner attributes like email and account name?

Question

I have a computers that have assigned to users as managedby, I want to get list in JSON format where hostname is a key, and user attributes are values.

But I stuck to get that in one command :/ and put that in json, so use csv for a while.

I run these 2 commands succesfuly:

1. Get-ADComputer -Filter * -property managedby | select name, managedby > C:\\Windows\\Temp\\computerowners.csv

2. Get-ADUser -Filter * -SearchBase 'CN=My User,DC=example,DC=com' -Properties SamAccountName | Format-Table -Property Name, samaccountname, userprincipalname -AutoSize

where search base is managedby value from first one.

I expect to have output like that: hostname, name, samaccountname, userprincipalname

I try to combine above 2 commands like that:

Get-ADComputer -Filter * -property managedby | foreach {get-aduser -Filter * -SearchBase $managedby -Properties name, samaccountname, userprincipalname} | select name, samaccountname, userprincipalname > C:\Windows\Temp\computerowners.csv

but it want work - as not pickup managedby properly as I understand... any help with saving that in json will be more than welcome.

Answer 1

You didn't define the variable $managedby that you use in the ForEach-Object loop, hence the variable is $null . You need to use the property ManagedBy of the current object in the pipeline ( $_.ManagedBy ).

With that said, you're making the whole thing way more complicated than it needs to be. PowerShell can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you if you allow it to. Get-ADUser can read from the pipeline, so all you need to do is pass the owner's distinguished name. You also don't need to explicitly specify the properties Name , SamAccountName and UserPrincipalName , because Get-ADUser returns them by default. Plus, since you want CSV output anyway, use Export-Csv instead of the redirection operator.

Get-ADComputer -Filter * -Property managedby |
  Select-Object -Expand ManagedBy |
  Get-ADUser |
  Select-Object Name, SamAccountName, UserPrincipalName |
  Export-Csv C:\Windows\Temp\computerowners.csv -NoType

To include the computername in the output adjust the above code as follows:

Get-ADComputer -Filter * -Property managedby |
  ForEach-Object {
    $computer = $_.Name
    if ($_.ManagedBy) { Get-ADUser $_.ManagedBy } else { '' }
  } |
  Select-Object @{n='ComputerName';e={$computer}}, Name, SamAccountName,
                UserPrincipalName |
  Export-Csv C:\Windows\Temp\computerowners.csv -NoType

---

To get a datastructure that can be exported to JSON using the computername as the key for the nested user attributes a different approach would be more elegant, though. Collect all relevant user attributes in a hashtable with the computername as the key:

$computers = @{}
Get-ADComputer -Filter * -Property managedby | ForEach-Object {
  $computers[$_.Name] = if ($_.ManagedBy) {
    Get-ADUser $_.ManagedBy | Select-Object Name, SamAccountName, UserPrincipalName
  } else {
    New-Object -Type PSObject -Property @{
      Name              = ''
      SamAccountName    = ''
      UserPrincipalName = ''
    }
  }
}

Then create an object from that hashtable and convert it to JSON:

New-Object -Type PSObject -Property $computers | ConvertTo-Json

Answer 2

This should get you pretty far:

Get-ADComputer -Filter * -Property ManagedBy,CN | ForEach-Object {

    # only query AD if there actually is a manager
    if ($_.ManagedBy) {
        $manager = $_.ManagedBy | Get-ADUser
    } else {
        $manager = $null
    }

    # return a custom object with 4 properties    
    [pscustomobject]@{
        hostname = $_.CN
        name = $manager.Name
        samaccountname = $manager.SamAccountName
        userprincipalname = $manager.UserPrincipalName
    } 
}

Note: Any value created in a script block and not explicitly captured in a variable or explicitly discarded via Out-Null automatically becomes a return value of that block. In this case, the ForEach-Object body will emit a series of PSCustomObject instances.

Use the result in any way you like, for example format it as JSON or CSV.

Related reading

• How do I return a custom object in Powershell that's formatted as a table?
• Jonathan Medd's Blog: PowerShell v3 – Creating Objects With [pscustomobject]