Create your own org chart from AD with PowerGUI!

Posted on by Kirk Munro

Another week has gone by and I have another brand new PowerPack ready for download.  This time around it’s the Org Chart PowerPack.  This is a PowerPack that I put together based on a Get-OrgChart function I wrote to analyze org chart data at work.  It lets you do some really cool things such as:

  1. Dynamically create an org chart from users in Active Directory using title, department, office, address, and other properties.
  2. Generate a Visio Org Chart from PowerGUI for the any branch of an organization.
  3. Create statistical reports for the employees in your organization to see breakdowns of employees by office, department, management, etc.
  4. Dynamically generate Office Directory reports in HTML when using it in conjunction with the Advanced Reporting PowerPack.

Note: The Org Chart PowerPack uses the Quest AD cmdlets to retrieve information from AD so you will need to install those first before you can use the PowerPack.

If you would like to see how this PowerPack can be of benefit to you, check out this screencast:

This screencast was recorded in HD format so you can click on the HD button once you start watching it to enable high definition video.  Alternatively, if you would prefer to watch a high resolution flash version with a table of contents you can watch the screencast here.  I decided to try widescreen format this time since that is my format preference…let me know if this is a problem for you.

This is the first release of this PowerPack and I’m anxious to hear what you think so please give it a look and share your feedback so that I can improve it with another update in the future.

Thanks for listening!

Kirk out.

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18 thoughts on “Create your own org chart from AD with PowerGUI!”

  4. Does this require a specific version of Visio? We are still running an older version and when I attempt it I get an error.

    “Method invocation failed because [System.__ComObject] doesn’t contain a method named ‘ItemU’. At line: 12 char: 38”

    I am assuming I need to get a newer version. This looks like it will help us keep the ORG chart more up to date, once I get past this! Thanks.

    1. Glad you figured it out. I just love this PowerPack. I’ll have to circle around and update it one of these days.

  6. Can we include the pictures from Active Directory. This crazy request, yet curious to get it going, came from HR as they would just like to have it imported from VISIO rather than doing it it manually.

    1. It is definitely possible to create an org chart including pictures from Active Directory. The current PowerPack does not support this right now though, and I don’t have any time to add this support as community (unpaid) work. I am available for contract work though should you want to discuss this further.

      Kirk out.

  7. Hi, when I export to visio, all accent caracters are replaced by a question mark.
    Ex: “Président” by “Pr?sident”, “Frédéric” by “Fr?d?ric”…
    If it can’t support French caracters, then it is useless for us. Any idea?

    1. Hmmm…nothing comes to mind right off the bat. I’m surprised I didn’t test that (je parle français aussi). But it has been quite a while. If you look at the file it generates for the Visio org chart, is that where you see the question marks? If so I can probably do something about that.

      2. A temp file is used for this. If you look at the Export to Visio action, look at this portion of that script:

        $csvPath = [System.IO.Path]::GetTempFileName() -replace ‘\.tmp$’,’.txt’
        $input `
        | Expand-Property -Property DirectReports -OutputSourceObject -Recurse `
        | Select-Object -Property $properties | Export-Csv -Force -NoTypeInformation -Encoding ASCII -Path $csvPath

        $csvPath contains the path used to store the data that is sent to Visio. Right after the line that has Export-Csv, insert the following:

        notepad $csvPath

        That will open the temp file in notepad so that you can look at the contents. If that file contains French characters, then the problem is on Visio’s side of the fence and I can see if I can figure that out. If that file does not contain French characters, then the problem is in the PowerShell script used to export the data. Let me know what you find out from that and I’ll see if I can work out the problem.

  8. Hi Kirk, I am new to PowerGUI. I saw your code under the properties of the action in the admin console, but I can’t modify it from there.
    How to do that, thank you !

    1. I found it, under “C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp”… and the file already contains “?”, no French caracters, so not a visio issue.
      Are you able to fix it?
      Thanks a lot for you work !

      1. Just to add, (to help you), that when I click on “export to CSV…” it DOES include the French character in the generated file.

      2. if you put “-Encoding Unicode” instead of “-Encoding ASCII”, it should work. Can I test that? how?

      3. Oh, I got it, need to open powerGUI in authoring mode.
        And it works fine by using Unicode.
        Thank you, merci !

      4. Excellent, thanks for letting me know you worked it out (and sorry for not replying to the last few messages…was busy yesterday afternoon and took a vacation day today).

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