I have a powershell custom object which shows the GPONames and the values of particular settings like below:
Group Policy: Group MemberOf
GPO1 test\Group1 Builtin\BackupOperators
GPO1 test\Group2 Builtin\RemoteDesktopUsers
I want the GPO Name to display only once for multiple corresponding values of Group and Member Off columns like:
Group Policy Group MemberOf
GPO1 test\Group1 Builtin\BackupOperators
test\Group2 Builtin\RemoteDesktopUsers
How can I achieve this output in my powershell script?
This is an example that might work for you.
#test object
$obj = @"
GroupPolicy: Group MemberOf
GPO1 test\Group1 Builtin\BackupOperators
GPO1 test\Group2 Builtin\RemoteDesktopUsers
GPO2 test\Group3 Builtin\BackupOperators
"@
# group objects by grouppolicy
$group = $obj | ConvertFrom-Csv -Delimiter ' ' |
Group-Object -Property GroupPolicy:
# display properties of each group
$group | ForEach-Object {
[PSCustomObject]@{
GroupPolicy = $_.Name
Group=$_.group.group
MemberOf=$_.group.MemberOf
}
} | Format-List
Thanks for the reply. It is not a static list which I can put inside the $obj = @"
It is a long list, which I want to format in such a way so as to show the GPO Name only once.
Try this, on top of my head,didn’t test…
$YourCustomObject | Sort-Object -Property 'GroupPolicy' | Foreach-Object -Process {
If($Previous -eq $_.GroupPolicy) {
$_.GroupPolicy = $Null
}
$Previous = $_.GroupPolicy
$_
}
Tried it. It does not work.
I want the output like below:
| Group Policy Name | Groups | Members Of |
| GPO1 | Lab\Group1 | Builtin\administrators |
| Lab\Goup2 | Builtin\Backup Operators |
You are generating a column/table -based object, so, yep that is going be repeated by design.
You can do the layout below, meaning, header then the remaining column layout, where the GPO name is separate from the table.
Group Policy Name : GPO1
Groups Members Of
Lab\Group1 Builtin\administrators
Lab\Goup2 Builtin\Backup Operators
I don’t have a bunch of GPO’s to work with, but using Get-Process, what I’m trying to say is this…
Get-Process | Group-Object -Property ProcessName | %{
"Processing $($PSItem.Name)"
$PSItem | Select -ExpandProperty Group
}
# Results
Processing aesm_service
Handles NPM(K) PM(K) WS(K) CPU(s) Id SI ProcessName
------- ------ ----- ----- ------ -- -- -----------
187 11 3364 9552 0.08 5480 0 aesm_service
Processing ApplicationFrameHost
537 31 26932 43048 7.70 14096 6 ApplicationFrameHost
Processing AppVShNotify
163 8 2004 7520 0.08 14732 0 AppVShNotify
Processing armsvc
330 17 3228 15660 0.28 5624 0 armsvc
Processing audiodg
237 19 10628 15604 9,892.06 14292 0 audiodg
Processing backgroundTaskHost
562 26 8012 33304 0.31 9748 6 backgroundTaskHost
322 29 11996 31340 0.17 9984 6 backgroundTaskHost
482 37 14212 35188 0.14 16748 6 backgroundTaskHost
Processing browser_broker
154 9 1792 8804 0.06 29584 6 browser_broker
Processing BuildService
236 20 4876 10960 110.86 3904 0 BuildService
Processing Code
215 14 6456 13024 0.05 8460 6 Code
391 35 54352 81184 5.19 19420 6 Code
486 75 175652 220948 94.61 35172 6 Code
389 74 117940 135592 12.14 38148 6 Code
...
No basically I want a column wise/tabular wise output with the GPO name displayed only once. Later I want to export the output as csv and view it in excel. However I want the powershell script to handle the displaying of GPO name only once.
Why?
Because one GPO name is corresponding to multiple values for Group and Member Of Columns and just for completeness I want to display the GPOName only once. For example one server can have multiple disks, so I want the servername to appear only once for all disks on the server and export the output as csv.
So you will have to do the parsing of that output yourself. And it actually breaks the data structure. You’re not able to use this data for something else than showing it to human beeings I think.
how to do it from powershell?
You can name your object an make a view in a .format.ps1xml file. Then you wouldn’t have to parse it afterwards.
Okay so there is no other easier way to do this?
There’s (sort of) a way to do this, but it’s only usable for display formatting. It looks nice, but it won’t let you process the objects any further in your code with any coherency as it just converts them to format data.
$Groups | Format-Table -Property Group, MemberOf -GroupBy 'Group Policy'
Assuming, of course, that those are the actual names of the properties you’re looking to show. Adjust as needed if your actual object properties differ. 
Tried this also, it does not give the output as I want it.
So you will have to do the parsing of that output yourself. Use a loop, check if the property you want to dismiss is the same as the one one loop-run before and dismiss it.
What Joel /u/ta11ow gave you is basically the same as what I gave you.
As for …
Okay so there is no other easier way to do this?
… nope.
As for…
Later I want to export the output as csv and view it in excel.
You can use the default output, swing it into Excel then use Excel to clean it up, you can automate that as well if you so choose to.
As we said, off the top of our heads, there is no easy way to do this, but it just bothered me to the degree that I could not let it go.
All that being said. I went back to my personal library of old file system code, and completely refactored an item from the past and got this thing to work for the look and feel you are after.
It took several hours of experimentation to figure this out BTW, to dig thru my library, and find a suitable item to mess with. Yet, once I got it, is was an OMG moment and this reminded my why I never throw my code away, that I thought I’d not need again.
The code, will create the report, populate it out to a pre-created CSV dynamically, once complete, it will then show it on screen, in Out-GridView as it will show in Excel. Based on your use case, no further manipulation would be required. All with no custom object required.
So, is this use case doable, yes, and I just proved that. Was it easy, nope. Yet, most new attempt at some things are a challenge, in many cases and that was why I decided to tackle it. Just because. Once done though, just like when you see an amazing magic trick, once they show you how it’s done, it’s often dead simple.
Yet in PowerShell, there is always a dozen different ways to do something, and I am sure others could make this more elegant. so, this is just my success at it. Take it for what it is worth. It took a while to whittle this all down to the smallest amount of code I could wire up.
### Nested tabular reporting
Clear-Host
# Remove old log and create Log
Remove-Item -Path 'D:\Scripts\Log.csv' -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Start-Sleep -Seconds 2
$Output = 'D:\Scripts\Log.csv'
Add-Content $Output 'RootObject,DataKey,ChildObjects'
# Populate dataset for each object - Change the input to suit your needs
$DataSetArray_1 = Get-Process |
Sort-Object -Property ProcessName |
Select-Object -Property ProcessName -Unique
$DataSetArray_2 = Get-Process |
Sort-Object -Property ProcessName |
Select ProcessName, Id, SI
# Retrieve the dataset from each Object path
ForEach ($DataSet_1 in $DataSetArray_1)
{
# "Checking for matches for $($DataSet_1.ProcessName)"
$DataCheck = 0
# Write-Host "Getting $($DataSet_1.ProcessName)" -Foreground Gray
ForEach ($DataSet_2 in $DataSetArray_2)
{
# Write-Host "Validating against $($DataSet_2.ProcessName)" -Foreground Green
#Compare DataSet
If ($DataSet_1.ProcessName -eq $DataSet_2.ProcessName)
{
#Output results to csv
If ($DataCheck -eq 0)
{
$DataCheck = 1
$Text = "$($DataSet_1.ProcessName), $($DataSet_2.Id), $($DataSet_2.ProcessName)"
# Write-Host "Adding primary results content $Text" -Foreground Cyan
Add-Content $Output $Text
}
else
{
$Text = ", $($DataSet_2.Id), $($DataSet_2.ProcessName)"
# Write-Host "Adding secondary results content $Text" -Foreground Yellow
Add-Content $Output $Text
}
}
}
}
Import-Csv -Path 'D:\Scripts\Log.csv' # Send to screen
Import-Csv -Path 'D:\Scripts\Log.csv' |
Out-GridView -Title 'Nested processes report' # Send to GUI
Start-Process -FilePath Excel 'D:\Scripts\Log.csv' # Open in Excel
# Results (truncated for this response)
RootObject DataKey ChildObjects
---------- ------- ------------
...
browser_broker 7796 browser_broker
BuildService 3904 BuildService
conhost 7248 conhost
12800 conhost
5256 conhost
CoordService 4700 CoordService
csrss 880 csrss
38024 csrss
ctfmon 8008 ctfmon
dasHost 5052 dasHost
...
O M G
