Google Classroom - How to get a list of all classes/classrooms

You can use the GAM utility to easily export the details of all Google Classrooms in your domain by following the commands below. In this example we'll be exporting the details to a CSV file

(Be sure to update the path to gam.exe and the output CSV file location)

$allclasses = C:\admin\gam\gam.exe print courses > "C:\Admin\Google Classroom\allclasses.csv"

This works well, but if you look at your CSV file you'll notice that firstly, it isn't formatted into columns properly, and secondly, there are a heap of fields called "coursematerial" that aren't required. We can filter out those fields by using the command below

$allclassesfiltered = import-csv "C:\Admin\GoogleClassroom\allclasses.csv" | select-object * -ExcludeProperty "courseMaterial*"

We can then re-export the CSV file with the command below which will actually export it correctly as a CSV file with data separated into columns correctly

$allclassesfiltered | export-csv "C:\Admin\Google Classroom\allclasses-filtered.csv" -NoTypeInformation

Microsoft Teams - Get Team ID/Group ID using Powershell

Many Microsoft Teams commands for powershell require you to specify the group id for a team so the script knows which one of your teams you wish to work on. The Group ID/Team ID is a unique string of letters and numbers which is why it's commonly used to ensure only one team would ever be targeted by a command.

Use the command(s) below to get the group id for one, or all of your teams.

Connect-MicrosoftTeams

get-team -displayname "Test Class"

You should get a response with the GroupID shown like in the example below;

Simple, right? What if I wanted to get the properties for all of my teams? Try the command below

get-team

You can even store the groupid in a variable so it's easier to reference in subsequent commands. In this example, we'll store the properties in the $teamprops variable;

$teamprops = get-team -displayname "Test Class"

You can then use the $teamprops.groupid property in another command - for example;

add-teamuser -groupid $teamprops.groupid -user "user@domain.com"

Searching for String within Multiple Files using Powershell

 I recently had a situation where I had to search for a particular string within a large number of files. More specifically, I was looking for what file contained a set of  text used for a menu on a website - the problem is I didn't know which file contained the text, but I knew what I was looking for. The web server had a large number of xml, html and css files, so I quickly put together a powershell script to search these files quickly and was able to find what I was looking for within a matter of minutes! Certainly faster than manually opening files and performing a CTRL + F find within them.

$files = get-childitem -path "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\*.css" -recurse
foreach ($file in $files)
    {
    $filecontent = get-content $($file.fullname)
    $lookup = $filecontent | select-string "What I'm Looking For"
    if ($lookup)
    {write-host "$($file.fullname)"}
    }

The first line searches the folder C:\inetpub\wwwroot for any file ending in .css.  The -recurse switch means it searches all subfolders within C:\inetpub\wwwroot as well. You can of course change the search directory and file type being searched for

$files = get-childitem -path "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\*.css" -recurse

The next section is a ForEach loop that goes through every file that is found within $files (as outlined above). The content of the file is read into the $filecontent variable

$filecontent = get-content $($file.fullname)

Next we perform a search of all the text within the $filecontent variable for a particular string of text. In this example the text we're looking for is "What I'm Looking For" - change this to whatever string of text you are trying to find tin these files. The result of the search is stored in the $lookup variable. If no match is found then $lookup will be null.

$lookup = $filecontent | select-string "What I'm Looking For"

Finally, if a result is found and the $lookup variable is not null, the full name of the file is written to the screen

if ($lookup)
    {write-host "$($file.fullname)"}

This little script saved me a heap of time - as built in windows search functions are pretty unreliable and don't search for content within files. Hope it is able to help you as well.