Here is the use case in SharePoint 2010/2013: HR wants all employees to add some key people in your organization as colleagues, so that everyone inside the company would be able to see their posts and feeds. A simple powershell script can do the job:
## Add SharePoint Snap-in Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue ## Get profiles $site = Get-SPSite("https://my_company_portal") $context = Get-SPServiceContext $site $profilemanager = New-object Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager($context) ## People who will be the common colleagues for all employees $vipNames = "domain\user1", "domain\user2", "domain\user3" $vipMembers = @() foreach($vipName in $vipNames) { try { $vipUser = $profilemanager.GetUserProfile($ecName) $vipMembers += $vipUser } catch { write-output $_.Exception.Message } } ## Colleague setting $group = "General" $groupType = [microsoft.office.server.userprofiles.colleaguegrouptype]::General $privacy = [microsoft.office.server.userprofiles.privacy]::Public $isInWorkGroup = $false ## Go through all users and add colleagues $profiles = $profilemanager.GetEnumerator() foreach($user in $profiles) { foreach($vipMember in $vipMembers) { if (($user.ID -ne $vipMember.ID) -and !($user.Colleagues.IsColleague($vipMember[0].ID))) { try { $user.Colleagues.CreateWithoutEmailNotification($vipMember, $groupType, $group, $isInWorkGroup, $privacy) } catch { write-output $_.Exception.Message } } } }How about the new hires? We can setup a scheduled task to run the powershell script so the profile update will be applied weekly or daily. Open Task Scheduler from Administrative Tools or Control Panel, create a Task with following settings:
- General tab:
- Name: "Add colleagues"
- Make sure the account running the task having sufficient permission to update the SharePoint Profile database
- Check (enable) "Run whether user is logged on or not"
- Check (enable) "Run as highest privileges"
- Triggers tab:
- Create a new trigger: Weekly or daily at midnight
- Actions tab:
- Select "Start a program" type
- Program/script: powershell
- Add arguments (optional): -Command "C:\SharePointScheduledTasks\addColleagues.ps1"
In case you don't like powershell script, following code is the equivalent c# version doing the exact same task:
using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.SharePoint; using Microsoft.Office.Server; using Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles; class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { UpdateUsersProfile("https://my_company_portal"); } private static void UpdateUsersProfile(string siteUrl) { using (SPSite spSite = new SPSite(siteUrl)) { SPServiceContext context = SPServiceContext.GetContext(spSite); UserProfileManager profileManager = new UserProfileManager(context); List<UserProfile> vipMeMembers = GetVipMembers(profileManager); foreach (UserProfile profile in profileManager) { AddColleagues(profile, vipMeMembers); } } } private static List<UserProfile> GetVipMembers(UserProfileManager profileManager) { List<string> vipUserNames = new List<string>() { "domain\\user1", "domain\\user2", "domain\\user3" }; List<UserProfile> vipMembers = new List<UserProfile>(); foreach (string name in vipUserNames) { try { UserProfile vipMember = profileManager.GetUserProfile(name); vipMembers.Add(vipMember); } catch (Exception ex) { // User doesn't exit } } return vipMembers; } private static void AddColleagues(UserProfile user, List<UserProfile> colleagues) { foreach (UserProfile colleague in colleagues) { if (user.ID != colleague.ID && !user.Colleagues.IsColleague(colleague.ID)) { user.Colleagues.CreateWithoutEmailNotification(colleague, ColleagueGroupType.General, "General", false, Privacy.Public); } } } }
