Copy AD group memberships from a source user to other users

Note: This blogpost is also posted on my personal blog – https://itmicah.wordpress.com

One of those mondaine tasks you get to do as an IT administrator is assigning users to security groups for access to resources in the domain. Usually, when you ask the person making this request which security groups the user account needs membership for, they’ll tell you to use some other user account as a reference. Sometime you’ll even get a list of users that need to have the same memberships.

Rather than manually adding these users to the security groups you can use our buddy PowerShell to automate this process. I’ve spotted a few scripts out there that got some nice results, but I decided to take the best one and give it some extra sparkle. I can’t find the original script anymore so I can’t reference to it (sorry).

The main difference between my function and the ones already out there is that my version let’s you copy the memberships without removing the ones already present. If you do want an exact replica you can add the parameter -RemoveExisting to the command line. Also, my version allows you to copy memberships to multiple users. The function supports common parameters, such as Verbose, WhatIf and Confirm.

And now, without further ado: the function!

Downloadable version: here

<#
.Synopsis
   Function to copy group memberships from a source user to target users.
.DESCRIPTION
   Function to copy group memberships from a source user to multiple target users. It's
   also possible to make an exact duplicate by removing the existing memberships
   from the target accounts.
   Requires ActiveDirectory module.
.EXAMPLE
   Copy-GroupMembership -Source s.user -Targets t.user1,t.user2
   Adds the group memberships of user s.user to target users t.user1 and t.user2.
.EXAMPLE
   Copy-GroupMembership -Source s.user -Targets t.user1,t.user2 -RemoveExisting
   Adds the group memberships of user s.user to target users t.user1 and t.user2 and
   removes the existing group memberships from those target accounts, resulting in an
   exact duplicate.
.NOTES
   Author: Michaja van der Zouwen
.LINK
   https://itmicah.wordpress.com/2014/11/27/copy-ad-group-memberships-from-a-source-user-to-other-users</pre>

#>
function Copy-GroupMembership
{
    [CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess=$true)]
    Param
    (
        # Source user account name
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
                    Position=0)]
        [string]
        $Source,

        # Comma seperated list of target user accounts
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
                    Position=1)]
        [string[]]
        $Targets,

        # Remove existing group memberships from target accounts
        [switch]
        $RemoveExisting
    )

    Write-Verbose "Retrieving source group memberships."
    $SourceUser = Get-ADUser $Source -Properties memberOf -ea 1

    foreach ($Target in $Targets) {

        Write-Verbose "Get group memberships for '$Target'."
        $TargetUser = Get-ADUser $Target -Properties memberOf

        If (!$TargetUser) {
            Write-Warning "Unable to find useraccount '$Target'. Skipping!"
        }
        else {
            # Hash table of source user groups.
            $List = @{}

            #Enumerate direct group memberships of source user.
            ForEach ($SourceDN In $SourceUser.memberOf)
            {
                # Add this group to hash table.
                $List.Add($SourceDN, $True)
                # Bind to group object.
                $SourceGroup = [ADSI]"LDAP://$SourceDN"

                Write-Verbose "Checking if '$target' is already a member of '$sourceDN'."
                If ($SourceGroup.IsMember("LDAP://" + $TargetUser.distinguishedName) -eq $False)
                {
                    if ($pscmdlet.ShouldProcess($Target, "Add to group '$SourceDN'"))
                    {
                        Write-Verbose "Adding '$target' to this group."
                        Add-ADGroupMember -Identity $SourceDN -Members $Target
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    Write-Verbose "'$Target' is already a member of this group."
                }
            }

            #If required remove existing memberships
            If ($RemoveExisting)
            {
                Write-Verbose "Entering removal phase."

                # Enumerate direct group memberships of target user.
                ForEach ($TargetDN In $TargetUser.memberOf)
                {
                    Write-Verbose "Checking if '$Target' is a member of '$TargetDN'."
                    If ($List.ContainsKey($TargetDN) -eq $False)
                    {
                        if ($pscmdlet.ShouldProcess($Target, "Remove from group '$TargetDN'"))
                        {
                            # Source user not a member of this group.
                            Write-Verbose "Removing '$Target' from this group."
                            Remove-ADGroupMember $TargetDN $Target
                        }
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Write-Verbose "'$Target' is not a member of this group."
                    }
                } # end foreach
            } # end If
        } # end If-else
    }  # end foreach Target
} # end function

Hope it helps!

Michaja van der Zouwen