Script Creating SharePoint User MySites using PowerShell

While working on a large migration project (SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013), I had a requirement to script the creation of user MySites for hundreds of users. I knocked this little PowerShell function together to do just that!

Function Create-MySite            
{            
 [CmdletBinding()]            
 Param            
 (            
  [Parameter(Mandatory = $True,Position=2,valueFromPipeline=$true)][String]$Username,            
     [Parameter(Mandatory = $True,Position=1)][String]$MySiteRootURL              
 )            
 [void][reflection.assembly]::Loadwithpartialname("Microsoft.Office.Server");               
 $site=new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($MySiteRootURL);            
 try            
 {            
  $serviceContext = Get-SPServiceContext $site;            
  $upm = new-object Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager($serviceContext);             
  if($upm.UserExists($Username) -eq $false)            
  {            
   Write-Host "User $Username was not found in the profile store." -f yellow;            
   return;            
  }            
  $userProfile = $upm.GetUserProfile($Username);            
  if($userProfile.PersonalSite -eq $Null)            
  {            
   Write-Host "Creating MySite for user $Username" -f darkyellow;            
   $userProfile.CreatePersonalSite();                  
   Write-host "Successfully created MySite for user $Username" -f green;            
  }            
  else            
  {            
   Write-Host "User $Username already has a MySite." -f darkgreen;            
  }            
 }            
 catch            
 {            
  Write-Host "Encountered an error creating a MySite for user $Username. Error:"$_.Exception -f Red;            
 }            
 finally            
 {            
  $site.Dispose();            
 }            
}

You can call the function like this (for a single user):

#Example - Create a MySite for user  "tonyj"            
Create-MySite -MySiteRootURL "http://mysite.bigintranet.com.au" -Username "tonyj"

Or call it like this, for a batch of users:

#To Create for an array of users            
$users = @('tonyj','bobh','markf','billd')            
$users | Foreach {Create-MySite -MySiteRootURL "http://mysite.bigintranet.com.au" -username $_}

Recursively Disabling a SharePoint Feature throughout a Farm

I'm working on a large SharePoint migration project at the moment. It's required quite a bit of PowerShell to automate tasks that ensure the project is a success.

One of those tasks was to find everywhere a feature was activated through the farm, and optionally disable the feature. Whenever we disable a feature throughout the farm, we need to keep a report of all the places the feature was previously enabled (there's about ten thousand webs in this farm).

So I wrote a script, that does exactly that! The script takes a feature-id, an SPWeb and two switches as parameters, and returns an object collection that records details about the feature instances disabled (feature id and display name, the web url, the feature status and the time it was last activated).

The two parameters, -Recurse, and -Report, control the scripts function. The -Recurse parameter tells the script to check all of the input webs sub-webs. The -ReportOnly parameter tells the script to... well, create a report of everywhere the feature is currently active, without actually disabling it!

Here's the function:

function Outst-SPFeature            
{            
 [CmdletBinding()]                        
    Param(                          
            [parameter(Mandatory=$true,Position = 0,valueFromPipeline=$true)][Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb]$Web,            
            [parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$FeatureId,            
            [parameter(Mandatory=$false)][switch]$Recurse,            
   [parameter(Mandatory=$false)][switch]$ReportOnly            
        )            
 #Define an object that can store the features properties             
 $FeatureInfo = New-Object psobject            
 $FeatureInfo | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Id" -value ""
 $FeatureInfo | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "DisplayName" -value ""
 $FeatureInfo | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "WebUrl" -value ""
 $FeatureInfo | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Status" -value ""
 $FeatureInfo | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "TimeActivated" -value ""             
 #create an empty array variable            
 $matches = @();            
             
 Write-Host "Checking web"$Web.Url -f Green -b Yellow;#pipe the list of features ($web.Features) to the Where-Object cmdlet (aliased as '?'), and look for a feature with the same FeatureId that was passed to the script as a parameter            
 $f = $Web.Features | ?{$_.DefinitionId -like $FeatureId}            
    #If the feature was found, $f won't be null            
 if($f -ne $null)            
 {            
        #If the feature was found, check the SPFeature.Definition.Status property, to see if the feature is activated (online)            
  if($f.Definition.Status -eq "Online")            
  {            
   Write-Host "Disabling feature,"$f.Definition.DisplayName -f Green            
            #If the feature is online, then record the features details in a new custom object (this will get returned at the end of the function)            
   $fm = $FeatureInfo | Select-Object *;            
   $fm.Id = $f.Definition.Id;            
   $fm.DisplayName = $f.Definition.DisplayName;            
   $fm.WebUrl = $Web.Url;            
   $fm.Status = $f.Definition.Status;            
   $fm.TimeActivated = $f.TimeActivated            
   #Add the custom object to the $matches array (a list that will contain a custom object for each instance of a feature found)            
   $matches += $fm;            
    #Check the -ReportOnly switch. If the switch wasn't passed to the function, it will be false.             
   if($ReportOnly -eq $false)            
   {            
                #Disable the feature            
    Disable-SPFeature -Identity $f.Definition.Id -Url $Web.Url -Confirm:$false
   }               
  }            
 }            
  #Check the -Recurse switch. If the switch wasn't passed to the function, it will be false. Also check if the web has any sub-webs. If both of these checks are true, then check the sub-webs            
 if($Recurse -eq $true -and $Web.Webs.Count -gt 0)            
 {            
  Write-Host "Checking sub webs" -f Blue            
  foreach($sw in $Web.Webs)            
  {   #Here we want to call the same function again, against the sub-webs. The $matches variable is incremented with the results returned from the new call to the function.             
   if($ReportOnly -eq $false)            
   {            
    $matches += Outst-SPFeature -Web $sw -FeatureId $FeatureId -Recurse            
   }            
   else            
   {            
    $matches += Outst-SPFeature -Web $sw -FeatureId $FeatureId -Recurse -ReportOnly            
   }                 
  }              
 }            
 #The $matches array (containing the list that contains custom objects for each instance of a feature found) is returned.            
 return $matches;            
}            

And this is how it can be called:

#Run this command to disable the feature on all webs in all webapplications.            
$disabledfeature = Get-SPWebApplication | Get-SPSite -Limit All | Get-SPweb -Limit All |Foreach {Outst-SPFeature $_ -FeatureId "a5557f3e-102c-401e-9eae-1e7fcf4340d0" -Recurse}

And this is how you export the results to an xml file that can reloaded at a later time:

#Run this command to disable the feature on all webs in all webapplications, and save a report of all the feature instances that were disabled to C:\Temp\DisabledFeatureReport.xml
Get-SPWebApplication | Get-SPSite -Limit All | Get-SPweb -Limit All |Foreach {Outst-SPFeature $_ -FeatureId "a5557f3e-102c-401e-9eae-1e7fcf4340d0" -Recurse} | Export-Clixml -Path C:\Temp\DisabledFeatureReport.xml

Renaming a HNSC (Host Named Site Collection) in a SharePoint Farm with Multiple Web Applications

Recently I've been involved in migrating a large SharePoint farm from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013. The farm has multiple web applications, and HSNC's have been created in different web applications. Part of the migration has required us to rename a number of HNSC's (Host Named Site Collections) for the development, testing and staging environments.

I'll start by saying, Microsoft recommends using one web application (SPWebApplication) per farm if you are planning on using HNSC (host named site collections). But that doesn't stop people using HSNC's in a farm with multiple SharePoint web applications.

So the short of this is, if you have a SharePoint farm with multiple web applications, and you want to rename a HNSC within one of those web applications, you have to add a new URL (using New-SPSiteUrl) to an "unused" zone, and then manually add the IIS bindings into SharePoint Web Applications IIS site, for each server in the farm that accepts requests for the site collection. To see some PowerShell on how to do this, skip to the bottom of the article!

If you google or bing "rename SPSIte", you'll get a number of articles and posts about renaming both "path based" and "host named" site collections. There are a few PowerShell ways for achieving this, including Rename-SPSite, and SPSite.Rename(newurl).

In our case, none of these approaches worked. Renaming "path based" site collections works fine, and renaming "host named" site collections also works fine... as long as you have configured your farm in the supported way for HNSC's (with one web application). The environment we were upgrading had many web applications, and HNSC's in more than one of those web applications.

So after a bit of investigation, we (and by we, I mean a colleague of mine, Elaine Van Bergen) pointed out that IIS has to know which IIS site it should send the request to(there is always a single IIS site behind each SharePoint web application). Each IIS site has bindings (for domain names) that tell IIS which urls the site will serve requests for.

After checking the IIS bindings on the IIS site behind one of the SharePoint web applications where we had added a new URL for a HNSC, I found there was no binding there for the new URL (domain) I'd added to the HNSC.

If that doesn't already make sense, hopefully the following example explains it clearer.

For the example, we have an IIS site listening on port 80, with a binding for blackburn.trainstation.com. This IIS site will respond to any requests sent to the address blackburn.trainstation.com/* (e.g. http://blackburn.trainstation.com/default.aspx). We also have another IIS site with a binding for hawthorn.trainstation.com. Both of these IIS Sites have SharePoint web applications behind them, and each web application has a single SharePoint site collection. The site collections are host named site collections.

In this scenario, we have a SharePoint web application for the blackburn.trainstation.com, with an IIS site behind it listening on port 80, with the binding blackburn.trainstation.com. Web requests for blackburn.trainstation.com/* will be accepted by this IIS site, which will pass it onto SharePoint to look up the site, and respond to the request.



If a new URL, "gleniris.trainstation.com", is added to the "intranet" zone of the blackburn.trainstation.com web application, what would happen? When the request is received by the web server, IIS looks for an "IIS" site that has a binding for gleniris.trainistation.com. In our example there are no sites with this binding, but there is a site with a binding for "*" (anything), so IIS will send the request to that "IIS" site (Default Website). Because the Default IIS site doesn't actually have any sort of site behind it, an HTTP 404 is returned.



Once a binding for gleniris.trainstation.com is added to the blackburn.trainstation.com IIS site, requests for gleniris.trainstation.com will now be responded to by the IIS site with the binding. If this is an IIS site with a SharePoint web application behind it, the request is then handed off to SharePoint to fulfil.



So, getting back to the original problem, how do we rename a HNSC on a SharePoint farm with multiple web applications (without doing a backup-spsite, delete-spsite, restore-spsite)? It's not ideal. The way we found was to use Add-SPSiteURL cmdlet to add the new URL to a new zone (one other than the default zone). After doing this, we needed to manually add an IIS binding for the SharePoint web application's IIS website, on all the SharePoint WFE's (web servers), to tell the IIS site to respond to requests for the new URL.

Building on our example, the commands for this looks like this:

#Add a new URL for the HNSC http://blackburn.trainstation.com            
$site = Get-SPSite http://blackburn.trainstation.com            
Add-SPSiteUrl $site -URL http://gleniris.trainstation.com -Zone Intranet            
            
#Add the IIS binding, for gleniris.trainstation.com on port 80 (remember, this will need to be performed on each WFE)            
Import-Module "WebAdministration"            
New-WebBinding -Name $site.WebApplication.Name -Protocol http -Port 80 -IPAddress "*" -HostHeader gleniris.trainstation.com

It's not pretty, but it is a workaround if you find yourself in this position.

As I said at the start, this is probably one reason why Microsoft recommends using HNSC with one web application. If you are using one web application, you can configure it with a binding of "*". Doing this ensures the IIS site responds to all requests, and hands them off to SharePoint to satisfy. SharePoint contains the list of HNSC's and takes care of responding to valid requests.