Creating scripts for custom column generation
This article describes how to generate values of report custom columns using PowerShell scripts.
To assign a column value, you need to use a variable called $Context. It is a predefined PowerShell variable of the ReportCustomColumnScriptContextClass type. Use the Value property of the variable to set the column value.
$Context.Value = "My value"
Getting information about report items
To get information about the object for which a column value is generated, use the $Context.GetDirectoryObject method. The object returned by the method supports the IADs interface.
The following code sample sets the custom column value to the UPN suffix of a user.
# Get object
$user = $Context.GetDirectoryObject()
# Get property value
$upn = $user.Get("userPrincipalName")
# Set column value
$upnSuffix = $upn.Substring($upn.LastIndexOf("@") + 1)
$Context.Value = $upnSuffix
Alternatively, you can access information on the report item using the $Context.ReportItem property. It supports the IAdmListItem interface. If the object represented by the item is a log record or a custom object, the property also supports the IAdmListItemLogRecord or IAdmListItemCustom interface respectively.
$Context.Value = $Context.ReportItem.LogRecord.StartTime
Getting information about report recipient
To get information about the user for which the report is generated, use the $Context.Initiator property.
if (-not($Context.Initiator.Username.Contains("admin")))
{
$Context.Value = "Not allowed to view"
}
Alternatively, you can use value references (e.g. %department% or %title%).
$recipientInfo = "%fullname%, %title% at %department%"
Improving performance
The script is executed for batches of objects rather than one at a time. For better performance, you can share information among iterations of the script within a batch. In the following example, a value requested from a web service is shared.
if ($myvalue -eq $null) # check whether value has already been requested
{
# Get value from web service
$service = New-WebServiceProxy `
-uri "http://www.company.com/Service.asmx?WSDL"
$fileServer = $service.RequestSomething("My Argument")
}
# Get user
$user = $Context.GetDirectoryObject()
# Get username
$username = $user.Get("userPrincipalName")
$username, $null = $username.Split("@")
# Set column value
$Context.Value = "Personal Share: \\$fileServer\Shares\$username"
Also, you can optimize performance by setting column values in the script used for report generation. For details, see Setting values for custom columns.