When a user leaves an organisation, their account is usually cleaned up – either by disabling or deleting it.  In Sharepoint this cleaning up is not automatic – generally Sharepoint hangs on to user accounts so that information about that user is still linked to the documents the user worked on. One of the side effects of this is that any alerts that user may have set up will remain, at least in Sharepoint 2007.  This leads to a lot of undeliverable messages going to Site Administrators.  Manually removing the alerts for a user requires visiting each site that has alerts, going to the site settings, User Alerts, finding the user and deleting their alerts.  I wrote the following PowerShell script to remove all alerts for a given user in one step. The script requires my supporting functions script (Download SPFunctions) – you need to save this in the same directory as the script below.  It works in a similar way to my Edit-SPAdmins script – it allows you to select a Web Application via GUID (don’t worry, it lists all the Web Applications and their GUIDs), and then loops through all the site collections and sites, removing the users alerts as it goes. So – on with the script:

# Remove alerts for a given user from all SharePoint sites in a web application
# Usage:  delete-spalert.ps1  
# Example:  delete-spalert.ps1 DOMAINUser

# Validate arguments
if ($args.Count -lt 1)
{
    Write-Warning "Usage: alerts.ps1 "
	Write-Warning "Username must be in DOMAINuser format"
    exit
}

# check that arguement is in correct format including domain
if ($args[0] -inotmatch '^w+[\]w+$')
{
    Write-Warning "Username must be in DOMAINUser format"
    exit
}

# Load Sharepoint functions
.SPFunctions.ps1;

# store arguement in variable
$myuser = $args[0]

# Preamble
cls;
write-host "###################################################################################

This application adds or removes alerts for a user in a specified web application
Here is a list of all Web Applications on the farm" -foregroundcolor yellow;

# List the GUIDs of all web apps on this farm
List-SPWebApp-GUID;

write-host "Please copy the GUID for the web application you wish to use by selecting then
clicking the right mouse button."  -foregroundcolor yellow;

write-host "
Note that the Central Admin site collection has no name,
but does have a GUID!  Don't select this one by accident!
" -foregroundcolor red;

Write-Host "You can paste the GUID by clicking the Right mouse button again" -ForegroundColor yellow;
# Prompt user for GUID to use
$guid = Read-Host -Prompt "GUID";
$guid = $guid.Trim();

# Check GUID for correct format
Write-Host "Checking GUID";
switch(Check-GUID($guid)){
	"False" { Write-Host "Error: Invalid GUID.  Exiting..." -ForegroundColor red; return;}
}

# Get the specified web app
$webapp = Get-SPWebApp($guid);

# Check that webapp has been got and if not inform user
Write-Host "The following Web App will be affected: $($webapp.name)"
Write-Host "You will be removing alerts for the following user: $myuser"

$continue = Read-Host -Prompt "Continue? (y|n)>";
switch($continue){
	"y" {break;}
	default {Write-Host "Exiting..." -ForegroundColor red; return;}
}

$alertcount = 0

# For each site collection remove all alerts for the given user
$time = Measure-Command {
    foreach ($site in $webapp.Sites)
    {
        # get the collection of webs
        $webs = $site.AllWebs
        foreach ($web in $webs)
        {
            # get the alerts
            $alerts = $web.Alerts

            # if more than 0 alerts, iterate through these alerts to see if there is one for the user
            if ($alerts.Count -gt 0)
            {
                $myalerts = @()
                $mysites += $web.Url
                foreach ($alert in $alerts)
                {
                    if ($alert.User.LoginName -eq $myuser)
                    {
                        echo "Deleting $($alert.Title)"
                        $myalerts += $alert
                        $alertcount++
                    }
                }

                # now we have alerts for this site, we can delete them
                foreach ($alertdel in $myalerts)
                {
                    $alerts.Delete($alertdel.ID)
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

echo "Deleted $alertcount alerts in $($time.TotalSeconds) seconds"

One of the shortcomings of Sharepoint 2007 is the lack of a tabular view of User Profile Properties.  This would be really useful, so I wrote a PowerShell script which gets specified profile properties for every user and writes them into a delimited file.

First up however, you need a list of the profile property names so you know what to select.  The following PowerShell script will display a table showing the internal name used by Sharepoint, and the property name displayed in the Sharepoint UI:

# Outputs a list of User profile names - both the internal name, and the name displayed in Sharepoint

[void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.Office.Server")
[void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles")
# Function:          Get-UserProfileConfigManager
# Description:       return a UserProfileConfigManager object which is used for management of MOSS User Profiles
# Parameters:        SSPName          Shared Service Provider Name    

Function global:Get-UserProfileConfigManager($SSPName)
{
$ServerContext = [Microsoft.Office.Server.ServerContext]::GetContext($SSPName);
new-object Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileConfigmanager($servercontext)
}

$cm=Get-UserProfileConfigManager("SharedServices");
$cm.getProperties() | ft name,displayname

The output from this can be used to determine the names of the properties you want to use in the next script.  To use this script, update the  $arProperties list with the property names you need.  By default this saves the results to a file UserProfiles.csv in the directory from which you run the script.  You can then import this into Excel or whatever.

# Outputs a delimited file with specified user profile properties for each user in Sharepoint

# Create array of desired properties
$arProperties = 'UserName','FirstName','LastName','Title','WorkEmail','WorkPhone','Manager','AlternateContact','RoleDescription','PictureURL';
# Specify output file
$outfile = 'UserProfiles.csv';
#Specify delimiter character (i.e. not one that might appear in your user profile data)
$delim = '^';
# Specify Shared Service Provider that contains the user profiles.
$SSP = "SharedServices";

[void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.Office.Server")
[void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles")

# Function:          Get-UserProfiles
# Description:       return a UserProfileManager object containing all user profiles
# Parameters:        SSPName          SSPName

Function global:Get-UserProfiles($SSPName)
{
	$ServerContext = [Microsoft.Office.Server.ServerContext]::GetContext($SSPName);
	$UPManager = new-object Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager($ServerContext);
	return $UPManager.GetEnumerator();
}
$profiles = Get-UserProfiles($SSP);

#Initialise Output file with headings
$header = [string]::join($delim,$arProperties);
Write-Output $header | Out-File $outfile

#Output the specified properties for each
$profiles | ForEach-Object {
	foreach($p in $arProperties){
		# Get the property name and add it to a new array, which will be used to construct the result string
		$arProfileProps += $_.Item($p);
	}
	$results = [string]::join($delim,$arProfileProps);
	# Get rid of any newlines that may be in there.
	$CleanResults = $results.Replace("`n",'');
	Write-Output $CleanResults
	Remove-Variable -Name arProfileProps
} | Out-File -Append $outfile

The next stage of development would be to pipe the output of the first script into the second, instead of setting up a list of desired properties – it is probably more useful to just grab everything.

I’m sure this could be written much more gracefully, but I can’t work out how to iterate through the UserProfile.Item array/object.  Any suggestions gratefully received!