Getting all Licensed Office 365 users with PowerShell

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2777380

 

To get started, open a SharePoint Online Management Shell, and connect to Office 365 via the cmdlet Connect-MsolService. When prompted, enter the corresponding administrator credentials.

To get a list of all users within your tenant (both those with licenses assigned to them and those without), you can now use the cmdlet Get-MsolUser. Execute Get-MsolUser | Get-Member | Out-GridView to get a nicely formatted list of all available properties for the user objects returned by Get-MsolUser.

Of particular interest is the property isLicensed, which indicates whether a user has a license assigned (TRUE) or not (FALSE). It is now possible to filter the users returned by Get-MsolUser and only see those that are licensed by running the command Get-MsolUser | Where-Object { $_.isLicensed -eq "TRUE" }
Note: By using "FALSE" instead of "TRUE", you can get a list of all users that do currently not have any license assigned to them.

The list of licsensed user can now be processed further, for example by exporting it to a CSV file that can be opened in Excel for reporting purposes or further analysis: Get-MsolUser | Where-Object { $_.isLicensed -eq "TRUE" } | Export-Csv c:\LicensedUsers.csv

Note that this exports all available properties for the licensed users. To export only specific properties, you can use the Select-Object cmdlet to specify which properties to use. As an example, only UserPrincipalName, DisplayName, Country, and Department will be exported:
Get-MsolUser | Where-Object { $_.isLicensed -eq "TRUE" } | Select-Object UserPrincipalName, DisplayName, Country, Department | Export-Csv c:\LicensedUsers.csv

 

http://workingwith365.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/administering-office-365-with-powershell/

 

Administering Office 365 with PowerShell

Leave a Comment Posted by Brendan Erofeev on October 29, 2011

I like to think of PowerShell as the Windows tool that finally convinced Unix guys that Microsoft admins can do more than just drive a GUI.

PowerShell is Microsoft’s task automation framework, consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language built on top of, and integrated with the .NET Framework. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell)

So, what can you do with it?  Almost anything!  More and more, PowerShell is becoming the tool of choice for administration on Microsoft platforms, and Office 365 is no exception.  In fact, like most PowerShell administer-enabled applications, there are things you can do in PowerShell that you can’t do in the GUI.

Most of the posts on this site will reference administering Office 365 using PowerShell in some way (whether it be the main focal point of the post, or an alternative to achieving the goal), so this article will serve as a reference on how to connect to difference Office 365 services using PowerShell.

General Administration using the Microsoft Online Services PowerShell Module:

The Microsoft Online Services PowerShell Module can downloaded from here:

Microsoft Online Services PowerShell Module 32 Bit

Microsoft Online Services PowerShell Module 64 Bit

Once you have downloaded and installed the bits, launch the module by finding it in your start menu (should be under All Programs > Microsoft Online Services).

Once you have it fired up, type:

connect-msolservice

You should now be prompted for your Office 365 credentials:

Once you enter your credentials, and press OK, your PowerShell window will take few seconds to connect, and then give you back your prompt:

A little anti-climactic isn’t it?

But…now you are connected.  Try typing:

get-msoluser

Bam!  A list of Office 365 users.

So, where from here?  What else can you do?  Type:

get-command -noun msol*

This will give you a list of cmdlets that you can use for Office 365 administration (at the time of writing, there are 49 cmdlets).  OK OK, so how do I USE these cmdlets?

The beautiful thing about PowerShell, is it was designed to be easy to learn.  Firstly, all PowerShell cmdlets come in the form of Verb-Noun.  What this means is that figuring out what cmdlet will do the job you are trying to do is as easy as thinking of what you would call it yourself.

If I want to add a new user, I use “New-MsolUser”  If I want to remove a user, I use “Remove-MsolUser”.  If I want to do anything to do with a user, I can enter:

Get-Command *MsolUser

And a list of cmdlets will be returned that are used to manage users.

If I want to know how to use “New-MsolUser”, I can enter:

Get-Help New-MsolUser

And if I want a practical example of the use so that I can learn by example, I can enter:

Get-Help New-MsolUser -examples

Exchange Online Administration using a Remote PowerShell Session

To administer Exchange Online, instead of using the Microsoft Online Services module, you connect to a remote PowerShell session.

The first thing to do is start a regular PowerShell session with administrative rights.  Navigate to All Programs > Accessories > Windows PowerShell, right click on “Windows PowerShell” and select “Run as administrator”

Once PowerShell is open, we need to do a bit of tweaking before we can connect to the remote session.  The first tweak is to adjust the execution policy to allow local scripts to run.

NOTE: Adjusting your execution policy lowers the security of PowerShell.  Make sure to read and understand this article before adjusting your execution policy.

OK, now, lets adjust the execution policy to RemoteSigned.  This level will enable you to run local scripts, or scripts from other sources, but will not allow you to run scripts downloaded from the internet.

enter the following command into PowerShell:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

You will be asked to confirm the change, press enter.

The next step is to build a function to connect to Exchange Online (not necessary, but a definite time saver) and place it into your PowerShell profile.  Enter into PowerShell:

test-path $profile

If you receive back “True”, this means that you already have a PowerShell profile, so we can just add the function to it.  If you receive back “False”, type the following (Only if you received back “False”):

New-Item -Path $profile -Type File -Force

The above line just created you a new profile.  ”New-Item” is the command to create a new item, “$profile” is a pre-defined value in PowerShell, and points to your profile (or where it should be), and the -Force command forces the file, and any directories along the way, to be created.

Now that you have a profile (or if you already had one previously), you can type:

notepad $profile

This will open your profile in notepad, so that we can add our function to it.  Add the following lines to your profile:

Function Connect-ExolService
{
$cred = Get-Credential
$ExchangeOnline = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell -Credential $cred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $ExchangeOnline -Prefix Exol
}

And save it.

So, what does this function do? I’ll break it down:

Function Connect-ExolService

First, we define our function.  I am calling mine “Connect-ExolService”

$cred = Get-Credential

Next, we create a variable “$cred”, and prompt the user for credentials to store in it “Get-Credential”

$ExchangeOnline = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell -Credential $cred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection

Then, we create a new variable called “$ExchangeOnline” and store a “New-PSSession” in it.  our “-ConnectionUri” points at “https://ps.outlook.com/powershell”, but we also have the “-AllowRedirection” switch, so when we connect, our connection will be redirected to the Exchange server that hosts our tenant.

Import-PSSession $ExchangeOnline -Prefix Exol

Finally, we import the session.  Importing a session imports command such as cmdlets, functions, and aliases into the current session.  The important part to note here is the “-Prefix Exol”.  What this tells PowerShell to do is place “Exol” in front of the noun in every command imported.  The importance of this will be made apparent shortly.

Ok, so now we have our shiny new function saved into our profile.  We must reload our profile before we can use the function.  To do this, type the following:

.$profile

Ok, now we are all geared up to manage our Exchange Online via PowerShell!  Lets try our function:

Connect-ExolService

The first thing we get is a prompt for credentials.  Enter your credentials, and press OK.

Next, all of our commands are loaded from the remote session, and now we are ready to work.

Remember the “-Prefix Exol” we created earlier?  Well, this is where it comes in handy.  Enter the following command:

Get-Command -Noun Exol*

What you have now is a list of imported commands from the Exchange Online remote session.  All of these commands are used to manage Exchange Online (230 at the time of writing).  That’s a LOT of commands….well, not really when compared to on-premises Exchange, which has over 600!.  But nontheless, not easy to take in all at once.  So lets see them a-page-at-a-time:

Get-Command -Noun Exol* | Out-Host -Paging

Where to from here?  Well, if you have administered Exchange on-premises using PowerShell, you should be in your element right about now.  Remember though, Exchange Online is a Convenience vs Control trade-off, so you won’t see all of the cmdlets you are used to working with, you only get the ones that are applicable to managing the parts of Exchange Online that you are allowed to manage.

If you have never touched Exchange on-premises, or PowerShell, remember, “Get-Command” and “Get-Help” are your two best friends.  Do not underestimate them, as 99% of the time, they have the answers you are looking for.