Checks before New User Creation

Question

Hi,
Was wondering if there's a nice way to manually or automatically check if a username or an extension is in use before creating a user?

What do other people do? If there wasn't a nice way, I was thinking it might just be OK to follow the process of seeing an error in the results, deleting the user and starting again - but would rather the checks first.

Answer 1

Hello Adam,

You can check whether the username is unique using a PowerShell script. If it is not unique, you can, for example, automatically add a digit to the end of the username. To learn how to do that, refer to the following tutorial: http://www.adaxes.com/tutorials_Simplif ... Script.htm. On Step 5, see Example 2.

If you prefer cancelling creation of a new user instead of adding a digit, that can also be done. For this purpose, use the following version of the script:

Import-Module Adaxes

$username = $Context.GetModifiedPropertyValue("samAccountName")

function IsUserNameUnique($username)
{
   $user = Get-AdmUser $username -erroraction silentlycontinue
   return $user -eq $Null
}
if (-not(IsUserNameUnique($username)))
{
    $Context.Cancel("The username is not unique.")
}

As for the extension, do you specify it using a certain property of the user account? If you do, you can use the same approach to check extensions specified for new users.

Comments

That's great thanks - I'm not sure what to replace $username with for the phone, as the options shown when pressing '$' don't relate to telephone. Can I call that field somehow to check?

---

Hello Adam,

Sure, here you are:

Import-Module Adaxes

function IsTelephoneNumberUnique($telephoneNumber)
{
   $user = Get-AdmUser -Filter 'telephoneNumber -eq $telephoneNumber' -erroraction silentlycontinue
   return $user -eq $Null
}

# Get the telephone number
$telephoneNumber = $Context.GetModifiedPropertyValue("telephoneNumber")

# Check if the telephone number is unique
if (-not(IsTelephoneNumberUnique($telephoneNumber)))
{
    $Context.Cancel("The telephone number is already in use")
}

---

Thanks, looks like the telephone is working but for the username one I get this error:

Cannot validate argument on parameter 'Identity'. The argument is null. Supply a non-null argument and try the command again.

This is the script, just copied/pasted:

Import-Module Adaxes
function IsUserNameUnique($username)
{
   $user = Get-AdmUser $username -erroraction silentlycontinue
   return $user -eq $Null
}
if (-not(IsUserNameUnique($username)))
{
    $Context.Cancel("The username is not unique.")
}

---

Hello Adam,

Sorry, there was a line missing. Here's the correct version of the script:

Import-Module Adaxes

$username = $Context.GetModifiedPropertyValue("samAccountName")

function IsUserNameUnique($username)
{
   $user = Get-AdmUser $username -erroraction silentlycontinue
   return $user -eq $Null
}
if (-not(IsUserNameUnique($username)))
{
    $Context.Cancel("The username is not unique.")
}

---

Thanks - tested and works perfectly now :)

---

Thanks! I was about to report this as well, but it now works perfectly!