Microsoft Teams - Assign Teams Policies to Users with Powershell

Policies can be created within Microsoft Teams to manage permissions and restrictions on sets of users. In a school environment for example, you may wish to prevent the ability of students to call other users directly, but allow it for staff.

There are four (4) different types of policies that can be configured/applied to users in Teams;

1. Calling Policies
2. Meeting Policies
3. Channels Policies
4. Messaging Policies

The policies can be created/configured within the Teams web admin interface.

Calling Policies are configured under Voice > Calling Policies

Meeting Policies are configured under Meetings > Meeting Policies

Channels Policies are configured under Teams > Teams Policies

Messaging Policies are configured under Messaging Policies

Once they're created and configured, they can be applied to users via powershell which can be quicker than doing it manually via the web admin interface - especially if you need to apply it to a large batch of users.

The cmdlet we'll be using for this is New-CsBatchPolicyAssignmentOperation

Be sure to update the PolicyName and Identity arguments to match your policy and user

Apply Teams Calling Policy to Users

New-CSBatchPolicyAssignmentOperation -PolicyType TeamsCallingPolicy -PolicyName "Name" -identity "user@domain.com"

Apply Teams Meeting Policy to Users

New-CSBatchPolicyAssignmentOperation -PolicyType TeamsMeetingPolicy -PolicyName "Name" -identity "user@domain.com"

Apply Teams Channel Policy to Users

New-CSBatchPolicyAssignmentOperation -PolicyType TeamsChannelsPolicy -PolicyName "Name" -identity "user@domain.com"

Apply teams Messaging Policy to Users

New-CSBatchPolicyAssignmentOperation -PolicyType TeamsMessagingPolicy -PolicyName "Name" -identity "user@domain.com"

Checking

You can then check what policies are applied to a user by using the cmdlet below

Get-CsUserPolicyAssignment -identity "user@domain.com" 

This command will return a table displaying all the different policies that are applied to the user specified

Shutdown/Restart Mac from Windows - Command Line

Administrators may occasionally be required to perform maintenance on Mac devices/servers from a windows based operating system. The following utility and command can be used to remotely shutdown/restart/reboot a mac/linux device from the command line on a windows based system - eg. Windows 7, 8, 10, Server 2003, 2008, 2012 etc.

First of all, create a .txt file (in this case it will be placed in C:\ but it can be placed anywhere), and put the following line inside the text file. This is the actual shutdown command that will be sent to the Mac/Linux device

sudo shutdown -r now

Next we need to download the application plink.exe. Plink.exe is a free utility that can be download absolutely free from the website below;

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Place the plink.exe file into a folder on the windows device, and then run the following command from a command line. Note that this command references the command.txt we created above, so adjust the path accordingly if you didn't place it in C:\ as per this example

plink.exe -ssh -t mac-ipaddress -l root -pw macrootpw -m c:\command.txt

mac-ipaddress = the IP address or hostname of the Mac/Linux device to be shutdown
macrootpw = the password for the "root" user account of the Mac/Linux device to be shutdown

If you do not have the "root" user account enabled, or do not know the password it can be enabled and reset by following the instructions in the following link;

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204012

Check/Monitor Website URL with Powershell

Windows Powershell has a built in web request module that you can use to test/check the availability of website URL(s).

The full script to do this is below;

[string] $url = "http://www.google.com"
[net.httpWebRequest] $req = [net.webRequest]::create($url)
$req.method = "HEAD"
[net.httpWebResponse] $res = $req.getresponse()

The first line is self explanatory - simply put in the full URL for the website you wish to check. In this example we will be checking http://www.google.com

[string] $url = "http://www.google.com"

The second line is where we create the actual web request instance in Powershell - under the $req variable

[net.httpWebRequest] $req = [net.webRequest]::create($url)

On the third line, we change the request method to be "HEAD" which means that only header information for the requested URL is retrieved. This speeds up the web request process as it does not pull all the data from the web URL - only the header information. If you leave this line out, the default method is "GET".

$req.method = "HEAD"

On the last line we actually submit the web request, and store the response in the $res variable

[net.httpWebResponse] $res = $req.getresponse()

For a successful web request, the response should look something like this:

IsMutuallyAuthenticated : False
Cookies                 : {}
Headers                 : {Cache-Control, Content-Type, Date, Expires...}
ContentLength           : -1
ContentEncoding         : 
ContentType             : text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
CharacterSet            : ISO-8859-1
Server                  : gws
LastModified            : 28/03/2014 10:24:19 AM
StatusCode              : OK
StatusDescription       : OK
ProtocolVersion         : 1.1
ResponseUri             : http://www.google.com.au/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=I7M0U5P_BenC8gfRvIHADg
Method                  : HEAD
IsFromCache             : False

Based on this, you could check the statuscode or statusdescription properties of $res to make sure the value matches "OK".

Alternatively, if you enter an invalid URL for a website that doesn't exist, you will get an error, and the value of $res will be $null. The error you get will be something along the lines of;

Exception calling "GetResponse" with "0" argument(s): "The remote server returned an error: (502) Bad Gateway."
At line:4 char:46
+ [net.httpWebResponse] $res = $req.getresponse <<<< ()
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodInvocationException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : DotNetMethodException

Creating Custom Tables in Powershell

When working with scripts, it is often necessary to collect, store and present information in a table format. An example of this could be to export a number of properties from a users mailbox in Exchange into a table format.

For my example, I will run the following command to export all the properties of a mailbox (mine) to a variable called $UserList

$UserList = get-mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Where-Object {$_.DisplayName -eq "Morrissey, Peter"}

The next thing to do is to declare/create the table. It can be called anything you like, but I tend to use $report. The following line of code creates the table;

$report = @()

Next, you need to populate each row of your table with whatever fields you require. This would usually be done with a ForEach statement where you cycle through a list of objects, with numerous properties for each object.

In my example, the object list is stored in $UserList. I can run the command $UserList | fl to display the list of all the properties available for each object in my variable.

This ForEach command will cycle through each entry in $UserList (in my example it is only a single entry for my mailbox) and add whatever properties of that object I declare into the table (I have used DisplayName and Database) but you can use as many as you like - they just need to be separated by a semi colon (;)

ForEach ($User in $UserList)
             {
             $report += New-Object psobject -Property @{DisplayName=$($User.DisplayName);Database=$($User.Database)}

             }

This is a simple example and will create a table with two values for each row; DisplayName and Database.

Once you have populated all the rows you require in your table, you can then export it to a CSV file using the following command;

$report | select DisplayName, Database | Export-CSV -path "C:\ReportOutput.csv"

Once again, you will need to replace $report with whatever variable you used to declare your table. You also need to use the Select component to select all the table fields you wish to export into the CSV file - in my case it was the DisplayName and Database fields.

Finally, once the CSV file is exported, you can then attach it to an email and send it to yourself (or someone else) as outlined in my previous blog post.