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I've been working on a PS script that will prompt me for several criteria, then create an Exchange/AD account. It's all going well, but I was thinking, is there a command that will create a new user similar to another user? Typically in our organization most users are setup very similar to others in their department. So if John Doe starts in Accounting, basically I would set him up similar to Jane Smith already in Accounting. He could have a slightly different title (Accountant I vs Accountant II), but other items like the floor he's on, the groups he's in in AD, etc would all be the same. Is there a PS (or otherwise) command that will say "Add-User -like Jane" or something where I could say, "create new user, keep -description -location -ADGroups the same as user Jane", then prompt for the remainder so I could fill it the rest in manually (telephone number, etc)?

It may be a stretch, but it seems once that were done that would just make it that much quicker and efficient for me to set the person up. Any thoughts are welcome, thanks!

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That what the hidden Default User profile is for. It's a template for new users, but I am not sure how to have multiple profiles and apply them. There are also GPOs and Group Policy Preferences, which would be easy to make different sets of. – paradroid Mar 27 '12 at 18:54

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Yes, you can. I followed this blog and it worked fine: http://dmitrysotnikov.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/copy-ad-accounts-with-powershell/

I am quoting the relevant portion.

Get-QADUser 'James Johns' -export | New-QADUser -ParentContainer mydomain.local/test -Name 'Janny Grant' -SamAccountName jgrant -DisplayName 'Janny Grant' -FirstName Janny -LastName Grant -UserPassword 'J@nnysPwd' -import

One gotcha is that it will not copy the group membership, so you will have to use another oneliner for that:

(Get-QADUser 'James Johns').MemberOf | Add-QADGroupMember -Member ps64\jgrant
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You may have to adapt a little though. – johnshen64 Mar 27 '12 at 18:57
John, merely linking to content is frowned upon here. If that page ever moves or goes down at some point in the future (which it will), your answer becomes worthless. So - please provide relevant bits of information here in your answer, of course giving attribution to the original source where necessary. – EEAA Mar 27 '12 at 19:08
ah, ok, sure. i did not want to plagirize as I used someone else's idea and did not come up with my own. Yeah, just edited my answer as you have suggested. Thanks! – johnshen64 Mar 27 '12 at 19:12
Thanks John. Actually, can you just edit your answer and include the content you posted as a comment? That way, we can take advantage of code formatting, etc. – EEAA Mar 27 '12 at 19:13
Thanks for the quick reply! I don't see the "Q-ADUser" cmdlet on my PC. After reading online a bit I assume this is part of Quest AD plugins? Looks to be a paid solution though...is there any way to do this without buying an add-on? Thanks! – Don Mar 27 '12 at 19:51
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