Skip to main content

Creating a Contact with Exchange Web Services from Powershell

The following is a script that demonstrates how to create a contact using a SOAP string and a simple web request. While this is not a very elegant solution as long as you have your SSL certs sorted out it should work okay. I was planning something a little cooler but time is really short at moment but this is still okay though. When creating a contact there are a few properties that you should set to get a fully working contact object. So the first part of the script is divided into required props which if you are using this in a pipeline you should always make sure you set. If you don’t you may find things like your contacts don’t appear properly when you try to use the contact in the Outlook Address book. The rest of the properties are optional which you can set if you have the information. This is not a complete list of contact properties that can be set within EWS just the majority of the most common ones for a full list please refer to the Exchange SDK. The big advantage if you’re using scripting with EWS in Powershell compared to VBS. is if you combine this script with some simple Import-csv code you can basically create contacts with in a mailbox from any properly formatted CSV (no matter where it came from).

The changeable part of this script is the credential section which allows you to specify the credentials to use when connecting to EWS if you don’t want to specify the credentials you can comment out the following lines

$unUserName = "username"
$psPassword = "password"
$dnDomainName = "domain"
$cdUsrCredentials = new-object System.Net.NetworkCredential($unUserName , $psPassword , $dnDomainName)

To change the script to use the currently logged on user credentials you need to change the following lines

# $WDRequest.Credentials = $cdUsrCredentials
$WDRequest.UseDefaultCredentials = $True

The only other thing you may want to change is to make the script use impersonation if you want to create contacts in mailboxes other than the one associated with the security credentials you are using. The impersonation header should be something like

<t:ExchangeImpersonation> `
<t:ConnectingSID> `
<t:SID>" + $siSIDToSearch.SID + "</t:SID> `
</t:ConnectingSID>" `
</t:ExchangeImpersonation>" `

I’ve put a downloadable copy of the script here the script itself looks like

#Required Props
$subject = "Skippy(Skippys Email)"
$EmailDisplayAS = "Skippy Roo(Skippys Emaill)"
$EmailDisplayName = "skippy@acme.com"
$EmailAddress1 = "skippy@acme.com"
$FileAs = "Roo, Skippy"

#Optional Props

$givenName = "Skippy"
$middleName = "The"
$Surname = "Roo"
$nickName = "Skip"
$CompanyName = "Skips Helicopters"
$HomeStreet = "32 Walaby Street"
$HomeCity = "Maroobra"
$HomeState = "NSW"
$HomeCountry = "Australia"
$HomePostCode = "2000"
$BusinessStreet = "45 Emu Place"
$BusinessCity = "Woolloomooloo"
$BusinessState = "NSW"
$BusinessCountry = "Australia"
$BusinessPostCode = "2000"
$HomePhone = "9999-99999"
$HomeFax = "9999-99999"
$BusinessPhone = "9999-99999"
$BusinessFax = "9999-99999"
$MobilePhone = "999-9999-99999"
$AssistantName = "Wally"
$BusinessWebPage = "www.skipshelis.com"
$Department = "Flying"
$OfficeLocation = "1st Floor"
$Profession = "Pilot"

$soapString = "<?xml version=`"1.0`" encoding=`"utf-8`" ?> `
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap=`"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/`"
xmlns:xsi=`"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance`" `
xmlns:xsd=`"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema`">`
<soap:Header>`
<RequestServerVersion Version=`"Exchange2007_SP1`" xmlns=`"http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types`"
/> `
</soap:Header>`
<soap:Body> `
<CreateItem MessageDisposition=`"SaveOnly`" xmlns=`"http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages`">`
<SavedItemFolderId> `
<DistinguishedFolderId Id=`"contacts`" xmlns=`"http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types`"
/>`
</SavedItemFolderId>`
<Items>`
<Contact xmlns=`"http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types`"> `
<Subject>" + $subject + "</Subject> `
<ExtendedProperty>`
<ExtendedFieldURI PropertySetId=`"00062004-0000-0000-C000-000000000046`"
PropertyId=`"32898`" PropertyType=`"String`" /> `
<Value>SMTP</Value> `
</ExtendedProperty>`
<ExtendedProperty>`
<ExtendedFieldURI PropertySetId=`"00062004-0000-0000-C000-000000000046`"
PropertyId=`"32896`" PropertyType=`"String`" /> `
<Value>" + $EmailDisplayAS + "</Value> `
</ExtendedProperty>`
<ExtendedProperty>`
<ExtendedFieldURI PropertySetId=`"00062004-0000-0000-C000-000000000046`"
PropertyId=`"32900`" PropertyType=`"String`" /> `
<Value>" + $EmailDisplayName + "</Value> `
</ExtendedProperty>`
<FileAs>" + $fileas + "</FileAs> `
<GivenName>" + $givenName + "</GivenName> `
<MiddleName>" + $middleName + "</MiddleName> `
<Nickname>" + $nickName + "</Nickname> `
<CompanyName>" + $CompanyName + "</CompanyName> `
<EmailAddresses>`
<Entry Key=`"EmailAddress1`">" + $EmailAddress1 + "</Entry> `
</EmailAddresses>`
<PhysicalAddresses>`
<Entry Key=`"Home`">`
<Street>" + $HomeStreet + "</Street> `
<City>" + $HomeCity + "</City> `
<State>" + $HomeState + "</State> `
<CountryOrRegion>" + $HomeCountry + "</CountryOrRegion> `
<PostalCode>" + $HomePostCode + "</PostalCode> `
</Entry>`
<Entry Key=`"Business`">
<Street>" + $BusinessStreet + "</Street> `
<City>" + $BusinessCity + "</City> `
<State>" + $BusinessState + "</State> `
<CountryOrRegion>" + $BusinessCountry + "</CountryOrRegion> `
<PostalCode>" + $BusinessPostCode + "</PostalCode> `
</Entry>`
</PhysicalAddresses>`
<PhoneNumbers>`
<Entry Key=`"HomePhone`">" + $HomePhone + "</Entry> `
<Entry Key=`"HomeFax`">" + $HomeFax + "</Entry> `
<Entry Key=`"BusinessPhone`">" + $BusinessPhone + "</Entry> `
<Entry Key=`"BusinessFax`">" + $BusinessFax + "</Entry> `
<Entry Key=`"MobilePhone`">" + $MobilePhone + "</Entry> `
</PhoneNumbers>`
<AssistantName>" + $AssistantName + "</AssistantName> `
<BusinessHomePage>" + $BusinessWebPage + "</BusinessHomePage> `
<Department>" + $Department + "</Department> `
<OfficeLocation>" + $OfficeLocation + "</OfficeLocation> `
<Profession>" + $Profession + "</Profession> `
<Surname>" + $Surname + "</Surname> `
</Contact>`
</Items>`
</CreateItem>`
</soap:Body>`
</soap:Envelope>"

$unUserName = "username"
$psPassword = "password"
$dnDomainName = "domain"
$cdUsrCredentials = new-object System.Net.NetworkCredential($unUserName ,
$psPassword , $dnDomainName)

$mbURI = "https://servername/EWS/Exchange.asmx"

$WDRequest = [System.Net.WebRequest]::Create($mbURI)
$WDRequest.ContentType = "text/xml"
$WDRequest.Headers.Add("Translate", "F")
$WDRequest.Method = "POST"
$WDRequest.Credentials = $cdUsrCredentials
# $WDRequest.UseDefaultCredentials = $True
$bytes = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($soapString)
$WDRequest.ContentLength = $bytes.Length
$RequestStream = $WDRequest.GetRequestStream()
$RequestStream.Write($bytes, 0, $bytes.Length)
$RequestStream.Close()
$WDResponse = $WDRequest.GetResponse()
$ResponseStream = $WDResponse.GetResponseStream()
$readStream = new-object System.IO.StreamReader $ResponseStream
$textresult = $readStream.ReadToEnd()
if ($textresult.indexofany("ResponseClass=`"Success`"")){
"Contact Created Sucessfully"
}
else {
$textresult
}

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The MailboxConcurrency limit and using Batching in the Microsoft Graph API

If your getting an error such as Application is over its MailboxConcurrency limit while using the Microsoft Graph API this post may help you understand why. Background   The Mailbox  concurrency limit when your using the Graph API is 4 as per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/throttling#outlook-service-limits . This is evaluated for each app ID and mailbox combination so this means you can have different apps running under the same credentials and the poor behavior of one won't cause the other to be throttled. If you compared that to EWS you could have up to 27 concurrent connections but they are shared across all apps on a first come first served basis. Batching Batching in the Graph API is a way of combining multiple requests into a single HTTP request. Batching in the Exchange Mail API's EWS and MAPI has been around for a long time and its common, for email Apps to process large numbers of smaller items for a variety of reasons.  Batching in the Graph is limited to a m
Read more

Sending a Message in Exchange Online via REST from an Arduino MKR1000

This is part 2 of my MKR1000 article, in this previous post  I looked at sending a Message via EWS using Basic Authentication.  In this Post I'll look at using the new Outlook REST API  which requires using OAuth authentication to get an Access Token. The prerequisites for this sketch are the same as in the other post with the addition of the ArduinoJson library  https://github.com/bblanchon/ArduinoJson  which is used to parse the Authentication Results to extract the Access Token. Also the SSL certificates for the login.windows.net  and outlook.office365.com need to be uploaded to the devices using the wifi101 Firmware updater. To use Token Authentication you need to register an Application in Azure https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/howto/add-common-consent-manually  with the Mail.Send permission. The application should be a Native Client app that use the Out of Band Callback urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob. You need to authorize it in you tenant (eg build a small ap
Read more

How to test SMTP using Opportunistic TLS with Powershell and grab the public certificate a SMTP server is using

Most email services these day employ Opportunistic TLS when trying to send Messages which means that wherever possible the Messages will be encrypted rather then the plain text legacy of SMTP.  This method was defined in RFC 3207 "SMTP Service Extension for Secure SMTP over Transport Layer Security" and  there's a quite a good explanation of Opportunistic TLS on Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunistic_TLS .  This is used for both Server to Server (eg MTA to MTA) and Client to server (Eg a Message client like Outlook which acts as a MSA) the later being generally Authenticated. Basically it allows you to have a normal plain text SMTP conversation that is then upgraded to TLS using the STARTTLS verb. Not all servers will support this verb so if its not supported then a message is just sent as Plain text. TLS relies on PKI certificates and the administrative issue s that come around certificate management like expired certificates which is why I wrote th
Read more
All sample scripts and source code is provided by for illustrative purposes only. All examples are untested in different environments and therefore, I cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs.

All code contained herein is provided to you "AS IS" without any warranties of any kind. The implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are expressly disclaimed.