Sending AD User details through SMTP

Question

I used the following PowerShell script to make new AD users, and after the user is created, a user id and password are displayed in Powershell. Now, I will like to have this userID and password to be sent automaticall to the new user with a pdf attachment on how to reset the password using an SMTP server.

# Import active directory module for running AD cmdlets
Import-Module activedirectory

#Store the data from user.csv in the $user variable
$ADUsers = Import-csv d:useraccount\user.csv

#Loop through each row containing user details in the CSV file 
foreach ($User in $ADUsers)
{
    #Read user data from each field in each row and assign the data to a variable as below

    $FirstName      = $User.FirstName
    $Initials       = $User.Initials
    $Surname        = $User.LastName
    $DisplayName    = $User.DisplayName
    $Path           = $User.Path 
    $SamAccountName = $User.SamAccountName
    $Password       = $User.Password
    $Description    = $User.Description

    if (Get-ADUser -F {SamAccountName -eq $SamAccountName})
    {
         #If user does exist, give a warning
         Write-Warning "A user account with Logon Name $SamAccountName already exist in Active Directory."
    }
    else
    {
        #User does not exist then proceed to create the new user account

        #Account will be created in the OU provided by the $OU variable read from the CSV file
        New-ADUser `
            -SamAccountName $SamAccountName `
            -UserPrincipalName "$SamAccountName@DCNAME" `
            -Name "$Firstname $Lastname" `
            -GivenName $Firstname `
            -Surname $Lastname `
            -Initials $Initials `
            -DisplayName $DisplayName `
            -Description $Description `
            -AccountPassword (convertto-securestring $Password -AsPlainText -Force) -ChangePasswordAtLogon $True
             add-adgroupmember $MemberGroup $SamAccountName 


    }
}

My Question is, has anyone does this of have a sample script that i can reference to complete this task. I have installed and configured SMTP, but not really sure how to add a script to trigger the email upon new user creation.

Answer 1

PowerShell has built-in support for sending SMTP messages: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.utility/send-mailmessage.

Basic syntax:

Send-MailMessage -From 'User01 <user01@fabrikam.com>' -To 'User02 <user02@fabrikam.com>' -Subject 'Test mail'

More detailed example (taken from the same article), which also includes an attachment and the mail server to use:

Send-MailMessage -From 'User01 <user01@fabrikam.com>' -To 'User02 <user02@fabrikam.com>' -Subject 'Sending the Attachment' -Body "Forgot to send the attachment. Sending now." -Attachments .\data.csv -SmtpServer 'smtp.fabrikam.com'

BTW, you don't need to install a SMTP server in order to send emails, and it probably won't work unless you properly configure it and several other things (such as SPF); it's a lot easier to use an existing one.