Creating multiple SharePoint groups and adding users with PowerShell

One of the great features in PowerShell is the ability to read an XML file and traverse the DOM nodes using a very simple dot notation. An example is the script below, which uses an XML file to modify and create SharePoint groups, adding their corresponding users. First the XML file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Groups>
    <Group name="Approvers" description="">
        <Users>
            <User>DOMAIN\pchilds</User>
            <User>DOMAIN\tsmith</User>
        </Users>
    </Group>
    <Group name="HR" description="Team responsible for company Human Resources">
        <Users>
            <User>DOMAIN\jdavies</User>
            <User>DOMAIN\pjackson</User>
        </Users>
    </Group>
</Groups>

In this scenario, we are not just creating new groups, but also adding users to existing groups (“Approvers” in the example above). If the users already exists in a group, the script will just continue and add the next one:

#Get Site and Web objects
$site = Get-SPSite “http://portal”
$web = $site.RootWeb

#Get XML file containing groups and associated users
$groupsXML = [xml] (Get-Content ("C:\Path\Groups.XML"))

#Walk through each group node defined in the XML file
$groupsXML.Groups.Group | ForEach-Object {
    #Check to see if SharePoint group already exists in the site collection
    if ($web.SiteGroups[$_.name] -eq $null)
    {
        #If the SharePoint group doesn't exist already - create it from the name and description values at the node
        $newGroup = $web.SiteGroups.Add($_.name, $web.CurrentUser, $null, $_.description)
    }

    #Get SharePoint group from the site collection
    $group = $web.SiteGroups[$_.name]

    #Add the users defined in the XML to the SharePoint group
    $_.Users.User | ForEach-Object {
        $group.Users.Add($_, "", "", "")
    }
}

#Dispose of Web and Site objects
$web.Dispose()
$site.Dispose()

The script connects to the <Group /> node defined in the XML file with the line $groupsXML.Groups.Group and then uses the ForEach-Object statement to walk through each one. It detects if the group already exists – if not it creates a new one using the name and description defined at the node – and then walks through each <User /> node to add the users. Note the way the dot notation is used to access various parts of the XML node tree and how the “$_” syntax is used to call the node in context and its associated values.