Microsoft Teams - Install Preview/Prerelease Powershell Module

Microsoft Teams has a preview/prerelease version of their powershell module available which has some commands that aren't contained in the general/public release.

If you wish to install the prerelease module, you can use the command below to do so

Install-Module -Name MicrosoftTeams -AllowPrerelease -force

You may need to restart your powershell session and import the module again to get the required cmdlets.

If you get an error saying the 'allowprerelease' argument isn't recognized, then run the below commands ot update the PackageManagement and PowershellGet modules

Install-Module -Name PackageManagement -Repository PSGallery -Force
Install-Module -Name PowerShellGet -Repository PSGallery -Force

Restart your powershell session then run the install-module command again and it should complete successfully.

Powershell - a parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name 'AllowPrerelease'

Sometimes when installing powershell modules, you may wish to utilise pre-release or preview versions of packages. Depending on what version of powershell you have installed, you may get an error message like the one below when attempting to install preview/prerelease packages;

Install-Module : A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name 'AllowPrerelease'.

At line:1 char:37

To fix the problem you need to force an update of a couple of Powershell modules - namely PowershellGet and PackageManagement. 

Run the commands below from an elevated powershell command prompt;

Install-Module -Name PowerShellGet -Repository PSGallery -Force
Install-Module -Name PackageManagement -Repository PSGallery -Force

Exit/close your Powershell window/session then re-open and run the install-module command again - it should now complete successfully

Microsoft Teams - teamchanneluser cmdlet is not recognized

Microsoft Teams features some commands (cmdlets) that are not readily available in the public/general release version of the Microsoft Teams powershell module. Some of these commands are;

get-teamchanneluser

add-teamchanneluser

If you attempt to run these commands, you'll get an error message like the one below;

get-teamchanneluser : The term 'get-teamchanneluser' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

At line:1 char:1

To fix the problem you will need to install the preview release of the Microsoft Teams powershell module. You can check the release version numbers from the website below

https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/MicrosoftTeams/2.0.0

To install the preview release version, make note of the version number then run the command below

Install-Module -Name MicrosoftTeams -AllowPrerelease

To fix the problem you need to force an update of a couple of Powershell modules - namely PowershellGet and PackageManagement. 

Install-Module : A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name 'AllowPrerelease'.

At line:1 char:37

Run the commands below from an elevanted powershell command prompt;

Install-Module -Name PowerShellGet -Repository PSGallery -Force
Install-Module -Name PackageManagement -Repository PSGallery -Force

Exit/close your Powershell window/session then re-open and run the install-module command again - it should now complete successfully

You can confirm what version is installed by running the commands

import-module "MicrosoftTeams"

get-module

Look for the version number for the "MicrosoftTeams" module

Microsoft Teams - The term is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet..

If you get an error message like the one below when attempting to issue commands like "connect-microsoftteams" - it's because you haven't got the MS Teams cmdlets installed

Connect-MicrosoftTeams : The term 'Connect-MicrosoftTeams' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

At line:1 char:1

To install the Microsoft Teams Powershell cmdlets, enter the command below. Make sure you run this from an elevated/administrator powershell prompt

install-module -name MicrosoftTeams -force

If you don't run it as administrator, you'll get a message like this;

install-module : Administrator rights are required to install modules in 'C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules'. Log on to the computer with an account that has Administrator rights, and then try again, or install 

'C:\Users\username\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules' by adding "-Scope CurrentUser" to your command. You can also try running the Windows PowerShell session with elevated rights (Run as Administrator).

The installation may take a minute or two to complete, you can confirm the module has been installed by running the following command

import-module "MicrosofTeams"

Then run the command

get-module

A list of available modules will be displayed which should include MicrosoftTeams like the screenshot below

get-module command output showing MicrosoftTeams module available

Microsoft Teams - Powershell Administration Commands

 Microsoft Teams has a powershell module available that allows you to perform just about all Teams management tasks using a script. This is very convenient for bulk operations, like creating lots of teams and keeping team memberships up to date - especially since the Teams web admin interface can be quite slow and cumbersome.

Here's a quick guide on some of the most common commands and uses

Install Microsoft Teams Powershell Module

Use the command below to install the Microsoft Teams powershell cmdlets

install-module -name MicrosoftTeams -force

Create a Team

I like to create new teams by using a variable ($newteam) - this makes additional tasks easier since you can reference the unique group ID for the new team directly from the $newteam variable.

$newteam = new-team -displayname "Test Team" -mailnickname "Test-Team" -owner "user@domain.com"

Update the properties for the display name, mailnickname (can't have spaces) and the team owner

Add a User/Member to a Team

If you've created the team like I have above and used a variable like $newteam, you can then use the properties for this variable for other tasks like this

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

Add an additional Owner to a Team

add-teamuser -groupid $newteam.groupid -user "user@domain.com" -role owner

Remove User/Member from a Team

remove-teamuser -groupid $newteam.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.

Managing Google Classroom with GAM and Powershell

Part of my job requires me to actively manage our instance of Google Classroom - the adding/removal of teachers, students, changing of class owners are just a couple of the every day tasks that are required. Unfortunately, Google Classroom doesn't have an included management interface for doing this - but there is a great command line utility called "GAM" which I use to accomplish these tasks.

I looked at a few different management utilities to do this - and essentially left GAM until last as I was really after a reliable (and free) utility that had a graphical user interface (GUI) instead of command line, but unfortunately at the time I was looking there was nothing that met these requirements (and worked) for me.

GAM can be downloaded from here - they have an excellent Wiki section with detailed instructions on how to get GAM setup and running within your environment.

In subsequent blog posts I'll be covering some of the scripts/commands that I use to manage and bring some control over Google Classroom such as identifying active classes, exporting them to CSV, archiving (disabling) old classes that are no longer required, synchronising members (teachers and students) and managing/maintaining the owners of Classrooms.

I'll be executing GAM commands from within powershell to do this.

What tool do you use for managing Google Classroom? Do you wish Google would create some kind of web/graphical user interface to do this?