The current project I’m working on has a web-based application that manages user provisioning – add/edit/delete – to Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange and Lync (previously OCS).
The way to provision a user within Lync is via Powershell – lots of bingoogle’ing tells that you can use the Enable-CsUser command – this is what I need to do via Powershell :
Enable-csUser -identity AccountName -RegistrarPool lyncPoola.FQDN -SipAddressType EmailAddress
So – how do you do it via C# ??
There doesn’t seem to be many people who have been able to do this – judging by the Q&A via StackOverflow.
My choice of solution was to define a “web service” project – and can thus have this running *ON* the same server as Lync – thereby running ‘locally’ if needed.
(1) Include the DLL for Powershell
- Install the Powershell SDK – and then grab the DLL and include in your project
- System.Management.Automation.dll
(2) Add the using statements :
- using System.Management.Automation;
- using System.Management.Automation.Runspaces;
- using Microsoft.PowerShell;
- IMPORTANT – for some reason, this doesn’t work in Visual Studio 2008 – so use Visual Studio 2010 instead.
(3) Open A PowerShell RunSpace
Need to import the “module” for PowerShell Lync commands – just like an “Import-Module” command.
- InitialSessionState iss = InitialSessionState.CreateDefault();
- iss.AuthorizationManager = new AuthorizationManager("MyShellId");
- iss.ImportPSModule(new string[] { "Lync" });
- Runspace powerShellRunspace = RunspaceFactory.CreateRunspace(iss);
- powerShellRunspace.Open();
*** You might get an error like this :
"File C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Lync Server 2010\Modules\Lync\startup.ps1 cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see "get-help about_signing" for more details
The answer I found was to include the line above with the “AuthorizationManager” – this one line of “awesome (!)” was thanks to Nivot Ink.
This essentially ‘bypasses’ the ExecutionPolicy checks – proceed with caution !
(4) Do the PowerShell Command
This uses the PowerShell RunSpace which has been initiated with the “Lync” module.
The code then defines the “Command” – ie. Enable-CsUser.
The AddParameter is then like the Params for any method – like a Stored Procedure (SQL) – or something like that.
Prepare your key/value parameters – and then ‘fire’ using the “Invoke” command.
The results are returned as a “PSObject” collection – so just save these to a StringBuilder to return.
- StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
- using (PowerShell powershell = PowerShell.Create())
- {
- powershell.Runspace = powerShellRunspace;
- powershell.AddCommand("Enable-CsUser");
- powershell.AddParameter("Identity", samName);
- powershell.AddParameter("RegistrarPool", “lyncPoola.FQDN”);
- powershell.AddParameter("SipAddressType", "EmailAddress");
- Collection<PSObject> results = powershell.Invoke();
- foreach (PSObject obj in results)
- {
- stringBuilder.AppendLine(obj.ToString());
- }
- powerShellRunspace.Close();
- }
- return stringBuilder.ToString()
(5) Do a Happy Dance !!
This was fairly tricky to get working – took me a day or so to get the bits aligned.
Other considerations :
- Need to run the code as a user with Lync admin permission
- Need to run the code from a server/machine that is “on the domain”
Here’s a full set of the source code that I used :
Let know if this helped you – as it was a good challenge to crack !
