Azure AD – Create Security Groups and Add Members using PowerShell

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Azure AD security groups can be used to manage member and computer access to shared resources for a group of users. A security group can have users, devices, groups and SPNs as its members. In this post, I’ll go over steps on how to create a Azure AD security group, add users to one group and also bulk import users to one group and multiple groups.

Make sure you are connected to Azure AD,

$credential = Get-Credential
Connect-AzureAD -credential $credential

To create an Azure AD security group:

$GroupName = Read-Host "Enter name for Azure AD group"
New-AzureADGroup -DisplayName $GroupName -MailEnabled $false -SecurityEnabled $true -MailNickName "NotSet"

To create multiple Azure AD security groups:

Note: csv file has name,description as column headers

$groups = import-csv "C:\tmp\AzureAD Groups\groups.csv"

Foreach($group in $groups) {
New-AzureADGroup -DisplayName $group.name -Description $group.description -MailEnabled $false -SecurityEnabled $true -MailNickName "NotSet"
}

To add an user and an owner to an existing group:

$Group = Read-Host "Enter name of Azure AD group"
$User = Read-Host "Enter username of user to be added"
$Owner = Read-Host "Enter username of group owner"

$GroupObj = Get-AzureADGroup -SearchString $Group
$UserObj = Get-AzureADUser -SearchString $User
$OwnerObj = Get-AzureADUser -SearchString $Owner

Add-AzureADGroupMember -ObjectId $GroupObj.ObjectId -RefObjectId $UserObj.ObjectId
Add-AzureADGroupOwner -ObjectId $GroupObj.ObjectId -RefObjectId $OwnerObj.ObjectId

To display members of a security group:

$Group = Read-Host "Enter name of Azure AD group to display members"
$GroupObj = Get-AzureADGroup -SearchString $Group
Get-AzureADGroupMember -ObjectId $GroupObj.ObjectId

To display owners of a security group:

$Group = Read-Host "Enter name of Azure AD group to display owner(s)"
$GroupObj = Get-AzureADGroup -SearchString $Group
Get-AzureADGroupOwner -ObjectId $GroupObj.ObjectId

To bulk add multiple users to a specific group:

Note: csv file has UserPrincipalName as column header

$Group = Read-Host "Enter name of Azure AD group to add users"
$GroupObj = Get-AzureADGroup -SearchString $Group
$Members = Import-csv "C:\tmp\GroupMembers.csv"
Foreach($Member in $Members) {

$User = $Member.UserPrincipalName
Write-Progress -Activity "Adding user.." -Status $User

Try {
$UserObj = Get-AzureADUser -SearchString $User
Add-AzureADGroupMember -ObjectId $GroupObj.ObjectId -RefObjectId $UserObj.ObjectId
}
catch {
Write-Host "Error occured while adding $User" -ForegroundColor Red
}
}

To bulk add multiple users to multiple groups. This below script checks to see if the user is already part of the Azure AD group and returns an error.

Note: csv file has UserPrincipalName,Group as column headers

$list = Import-csv "C:\tmp\UsersGroups.csv"
Foreach($entry in $list) {

$User = $entry.UserPrincipalName
$Group = $entry.Group
$UserObj = Get-AzureADUser -SearchString $User
$GroupObj = Get-AzureADGroup -SearchString $Group
$GroupMembers = (Get-AzureADGroupMember -ObjectId $GroupObj.ObjectId).UserPrincipalName

If ($User -notin $GroupMembers) {
    Add-AzureADGroupMember -ObjectId $GroupObj.ObjectId -RefObjectId $UserObj.ObjectId
    Write-Host "$User added to $Group" -ForegroundColor Green
    }
    else {
    Write-Host "$User already in $Group" -ForegroundColor Red
    }
}

Hope this was helpful for you in exploring Azure AD security groups.

Thank you for stopping by. ✌

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