PowerShell Script Duplicating Emails

dustinalbright2 · 2024-01-25T16:25:49.000Z

I am trying to use PowerShell and our local SMTP server to send some mail notifications to our users. The script is meant to notify users that their password is about to expire. I built the script in stages and each stage was successful, and to a degree the final stage was successful, but it was doing too good of a job.

The script is built to:

Import the AD module
Get the current date and store it
Find all enabled users with some exceptions
Create an array/list with the filtered user list
Find all users with the PasswordLastSet attribute greater than 166 days prior to today’s date
Write out those users
And finally use the users’ primary email address to send them a simple notification.

The problem comes in that each user receives two identical emails, and I’m not sure why. Here is the entirety of the script:

Import the Active Directory module

Import-Module ActiveDirectory

Get the current date

$currentDate = Get-Date

Get all enabled user accounts excluding specific email addresses

$enabledUsers = Get-ADUser -Filter {Enabled -eq $true -and (EmailAddress -ne ‘service@domain.com’) -and (EmailAddress -ne ‘sales@domain.com’) -and (EmailAddress -ne ‘helpdesk@domain.com’)} -Properties SamAccountName, DisplayName, EmailAddress, PasswordLastSet, DistinguishedName

Initialize an array to store filtered email addresses

$usersWithEmails = @()

Specify excluded Organizational Unit

$excludedOU = “OU=External,OU=People,DC=domain,DC=com”

Specify allowed domains

$allowedDomains = “@domain.com”, “@domain2.com”, “@domain3.com”

Display the information for each user with $daysSincePasswordSet greater than 166

foreach ($user in $enabledUsers) {

Calculate the number of days since the password was last set

$daysSincePasswordSet = ($currentDate - $user.PasswordLastSet).Days

if ($daysSincePasswordSet -gt 166) {
Write-Host “Username: $($user.SamAccountName)”
Write-Host “Display Name: $($user.DisplayName)”
Write-Host “Email Address: $($user.EmailAddress)”
Write-Host “Password Last Set: $($user.PasswordLastSet)”

Extract and display the Organizational Unit (OU) from DistinguishedName

$organizationalUnit = ($user.DistinguishedName -split ‘,’, 2)[1]
Write-Host “Organizational Unit: $organizationalUnit”

Check if the user is not in the excluded Organizational Unit

if ($organizationalUnit -ne $excludedOU) {
Write-Host “Number of Days Since Password Set: $daysSincePasswordSet days”
Write-Host “-------------------------”

Check if the email address contains any of the allowed domains

if ($allowedDomains | Where-Object { $user.EmailAddress -like “$_” }) {

Add the filtered email address to the array

$usersWithEmails += $user.EmailAddress
}
}
}
}

Output the list of filtered email addresses

Write-Host “List of Filtered Email Addresses for Users with Password Set More Than 166 Days Ago (Excluding specified OU and emails):”
$usersWithEmails

SMTP Server configuration

$smtpServer = “smtp_server.domain.com”
$smtpFrom = “it_admin@domain.com”

Array of recipients

$recipients = $usersWithEmails

Email details

$messageSubject = “Password Expiration Email Testing”
$messageBody = “*** Testing the password expiration notification email, please ignore. I am attempting to troubleshoot to duplicate emails currently. ***”

Loop through recipients and send emails with debugging information

foreach ($recipient in $recipients) {
Write-Host “Processing recipient: $recipient”

if ($recipient -ne $null) {
Write-Host “Sending email to $recipient”
Send-MailMessage -SmtpServer $smtpServer -From $smtpFrom
-To $recipient -Subject $messageSubject
-Body $messageBody -BodyAsHtml
-Priority High
}
else {
Write-Host “Skipping null recipient”
}
}

I am wondering if there is something in that foreach section, but I tried to modify it and it resulted in no emails being sent.

Evan7191 · 2024-01-25T16:36:52.000Z

After your first Foreach loop finishes running, I would check if $usersWithEmails contains duplicate entries. From looking at the code, I’m guessing that some users have multiple email addresses with different domains, and that is probably why one user is receiving multiple emails.

Neally · 2024-01-25T16:37:21.000Z

If you post code, please use the ‘Insert Code’ button. Please and thank you!

PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING! Read if you're new to the PowerShell forum! Programming & Development

Hi, and welcome to the PowerShell forum! Don’t apologize for being a “noob” or “newbie” or “n00b.” There’s just no need – nobody will think you’re stupid, and the forums are all about asking questions. Just ask! Use a descriptive subject. Don’t say “Need help” or “PowerShell Help”, actually summarize what the problem is. It helps the rest of us keep track of which problem is which. Don’t post massive scripts. We’re all volunteers and we don’t have time to read all that, nor will we copy…

https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/187367-write-better-powershell-scripts

Neally Bot

dustinalbright2 · 2024-01-25T16:48:39.000Z

That’s an excellent thought, and I thought you had it nailed, but I checked in the users’ proxyAddresses attribute, and they are blank. I also checked the mail attribute on a few of them and they are a single email address.

Also, I have a section of the script that writes the list just before the emailing portion and when it writes them out, I see no duplicates there"

# Output the list of filtered email addresses
Write-Host "List of Filtered Email Addresses for Users with Password Set More Than 166 Days Ago (Excluding specified OU and emails):"
$usersWithEmails

Neally · 2024-01-25T16:50:55.000Z

dustinalbright2:

$recipients

ya maybe just select the unique ones?

$recipients| select-object -unique

Also a few general tips, look into splatting and avoid the backtick ( ` ).
Also be careful with using +=
I f you compare to $null, $null should be on the left

if ($null -ne $recipient) {

# but in your case you could just leave it a plain if too
if ($recipient) {

Neally · 2024-01-25T16:56:47.000Z

dustinalbright2:

That’s an excellent thought, and I thought you had it nailed, but I checked in the users’ proxyAddresses attribute, and they are blank. I also checked the mail attribute on a few of them and they are a single email address.

Also, I have a section of the script that writes the list just before the emailing portion and when it writes them out, I see no duplicates there"
# Output the list of filtered email addresses
Write-Host "List of Filtered Email Addresses for Users with Password Set More Than 166 Days Ago (Excluding specified OU and emails):"
$usersWithEmails

how do you run this? in the ISE? Have you tried to close and re-open the ISE or run it from the console? sometimes it holds on to variable values.

dustinalbright2 · 2024-01-25T17:01:38.000Z

I just noticed something interesting that may move this out of being a PowerShell issue. I did a mail trace from Exchange Online and I can see the two emails that were sent, but the information in them is different.

The first one simply shows the standard info:

Status
The message was delivered to the recipient’s Inbox folder.

Delivery time: ‎1/25/2024 5:24:50 PM (UTC)‎

More Information

If the recipient can’t find the message in their Inbox folder, it might have been deleted or moved to another folder (such as Junk Email) either manually or automatically based on an Inbox rule or Sweep rule the recipient set up. Ask them to search for the message across all folders in their mailbox.

The second one shows something else:

Status

Office 365 used one of your organization’s connectors to send the message to an external address. An admin in your organization set up a mail flow rule to route messages through that connector. Here are the details:

Connector name: ‎CodeTwo Outbound Connector 202204062053418‎
External address: ‎User@domain2.com
Destination IP: ‎40.86.217.129‎
Destination smart host: ‎ca-emailsignatures-cloud.codetwo.com‎
Mail flow rule: ‎55F4F57E-4347-40E4-94D7-2F1B869BBA14‎

I wonder if somehow there is a duplication happening once it leaves PowerShell, because it certainly looks that way, but this would be out of scope of this board.

dustinalbright2 · 2024-01-25T17:22:58.000Z

I believe that I have found the issue. When we ran the prepackaged process to install the CodeTwo as our signature control measure, it created a rule that had several exceptions on it to prevent this type of behavior. I simply added another exception to exclude the subject with the string of text we will use for the notifications and the first test after doing so was a success, no duplication. Turns out the PowerShell script was correct and it was not to blame.

Neally · 2024-01-25T17:25:23.000Z

dustinalbright2:

I believe that I have found the issue. When we ran the prepackaged process to install the CodeTwo as our signature control measure, it created a rule that had several exceptions on it to prevent this type of behavior. I simply added another exception to exclude the subject with the string of text we will use for the notifications and the first test after doing so was a success, no duplication. Turns out the PowerShell script was correct and it was not to blame.

Still look at a few suggestions for your script, glad you got it figured out.

<\/a>SMTP Server configuration<\/h1>\n
$smtpServer = “smtp_server.domain.com”
\n$smtpFrom = “[email protected]<\/a>”<\/p>\n

<\/a>SMTP Server configuration<\/h1>\n
$smtpServer = “smtp_server.domain.com”
\n$smtpFrom = “[email protected]<\/a>”<\/p>\n