Visualize yourself the scenario were you are about to set up a SharePoint environment containing a lot of Web Applications and that some of them needs to be extended both two and three times. Add to that, that you need to set it up in a Test, QA and a production environment and in the same way have a good recovery plan for setting them up again in case of a disaster.

In two earlier posts I have written about how to create a Web Application and how to extend a Web Applicationusing PowerShell. Now it’s time to combine the two into one script where we use a input file as source. In this case I decided to use Excel, so it’s easy to fill in all info on your Web Applications in an Excel file. By using a macro you can then by pushing a button in Excel generate a xml-config and that’s the one to use as input for your PowerShell script.

First, let me introduce the Config Generator. This is an excel file where you fill in the info on the Web Applications that you want to set up. Below is a list of all the settings you fill in, in the Excel sheet. One Web Application or extend of Web Application per row.

Setting	Value	Example
Type	New/Extend (drop down)	New
Extend	url of site to extend if applicable	http://portalsite.com
WebAppDisplayName	Used e.g. in IIS	The Portal site
WebAppHostHeader	the url of the site	portalsite.com
LoadBalancerURL	The load balancer url	http://portalsite.com
WebAppPort	Port to use	80
SSL	true/false (drop down)	false
AllowAnynomousAccess	true/false (drop down)	false
Zone	Default/Internet/Extranet/Intranet/Custom (drop down)	Default
WebAppContentDBName	Name of the content database	WebApp_PortalSite_01
WebAppPoolName	IIS Application pool to use.	Portalsite
WebAppPoolUsername	Username to use as identity of Application Pool, if applicable	Username
WebAppPoolPassword	Password for the Application Pool identity account	Password
DatabaseServer	Database server to use	SQLsrv01
ISSRootDirectory	File path to your IIS root directory	c:\inetpub\wwwroot\…

As you can see you have a couple of fields related to the IIS Application Pool. What the script does is that, if you have filled in the WebAppUsername the Application Pool will be created with the new credentials. If you leave the WebAppUsername blank it assumes that the Application Pool exist and connects the site to that Application Pool.

You will also find columns to insert Site Collection information. This info will be put into the config file as well and used for creating the root Site Collection of your new Web Application. The following settings are available:

Setting	Value	Example
Title	Title of the site	Start page
Description	Description of the site	This is the start page for the Sales organisation
Template	The template name to use. To view existing templates an their name check this article	STS#1
Admin	AD-account of who should be owner of the site	AD\username
AdminName	The display name of the admin	Mattias Karlsson
AdminEmail	The e-mail address of the admin	Mattias.Karlsson@nima.com

When you have filled in the info on all your Web Applications just push the Generate Config File button and Excel will generate a config.xml file in the same folder as the Excel file is located in.

What you then need to do is to copy the config.xml to the server along with the CreateWebApps.ps1 file.

Open up the PowerShell command shell, include the file CreateWebApps.ps1 file by typing:

. ./CreateWebApps.ps1

Then you call the function by typing:

SP-WebAppBuilder -ConfigPath [path]\config.xml

This will now generate all your Web Applications as you have specified in the Excel-file so go grab yourself some coffee and let the script handle the rest.

The above example is an teaser of what will be covered in the coming book SharePoint and PowerShell – In real life that I together with Niklas Goude is writing. The code can be found in the download section.