PowerShell: Getting Sandbox Solutions in a SharePoint Web Application

Introduction

Like all good SharePoint developers we have been using Sandbox Solutions where we can. Of course one of the problems with Sandbox solutions is that its difficult to find out what you have installed and where.

This is particularly important if you have a Sandbox solution that is used for branding and is installed into a number of site collections.

Therefore I built a script which will retrieve sandbox solutions in a web application.

You can filter which sandbox solutions by the name.

Please fill free to use and modify the script, though make sure you test it before using in Production.

If you do make some enhancement that you think is useful, please let me know as would love to see what additional functionality is useful.

How does the script works

The script is a PowerShell script which works in the following way:

The script is run by providing the Url for the Web Application
The script will enumerate through all the site collections in the web application and creates an array object which has two properties, SiteCollection and Solution
Once all site collections have been enumerated then the array will be outputted.

This way you can use the output for further processing steps. For example, to filter the results for one solution and upgrade the solutions in all the site collections returned.

The script is shown below:

param
(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$false, HelpMessage='Solution Name')]
[string]$SolutionName="",
[Parameter(Mandatory=$false, HelpMessage='Solution Name')]
[string]$WebApplicationUrl="")$memoryAssignment = Start-SPAssignment;
$numberOfSolutionsFound = 0;
$webApplication = Get-SPWebApplication -Identity $WebApplicationUrl -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -AssignmentCollection $memoryAssignment;
if($webApplication -ne $null)
{
#enumerate through site collections in web application
$allSites = Get-SPSite -WebApplication $webApplication -Limit ALL -Confirm:$false -AssignmentCollection $memoryAssignment;
foreach($checkSite in $allSites)
{
#Write-Output "Checking Site " $checkSite.Url " for solution " $SolutionName;
if($SolutionName -eq "")
{
$checkSolutions = Get-SPUserSolution -Site $checkSite -AssignmentCollection $memoryAssignment;
foreach($solution in $checkSolutions)
{
$output = New-Object -TypeName "System.Object";
Add-Member -InputObject $output -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Solution" -Value "";
Add-Member -InputObject $output -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "SiteCollection" -Value "";
$output.Solution = $solution;
$output.SiteCollection = $checkSite;
Write-Output -InputObject $output;
$numberOfSolutionsFound++
}
}
else
{
$checkSolution = Get-SPUserSolution -Identity $SolutionName -Site $checkSite -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -AssignmentCollection $memoryAssignment;
if($checkSolution -ne $null)
{
$output = New-Object -TypeName "System.Object";
Add-Member -InputObject $output -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Solution" -Value "";
Add-Member -InputObject $output -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "SiteCollection" -Value "";
$output.Solution = $checkSolution;
$output.SiteCollection = $checkSite;
Write-Output -InputObject $output;
$numberOfSolutionsFound++
}
}
}
}&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="direction: ltr; margin-top: 0; margin-left: 0; width: 7.5875in;"&gt;Write-Output "Found $numberOfSolutionsFound Instances of Solution $SolutionName";
Stop-SPAssignment $memoryAssignment;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="direction: ltr; margin-top: 0; margin-left: 0; width: 7.5875in;"&gt;

How to execute the script

To execute the script do the following:

Logon to SharePoint 2013 server
Run the SharePoint Management Shell
- .\Get-SPUserSolutionInWebApplication -WebApplicationUrl https://sharepoint
- There is an optional parameter -SolutionName which allows you to only return the solutions with a particular name

The script will output an array of Solution Objects with an associated Site Collection object.

We can assign a value to the output and then do some further processing using that value.

Here is an example of the output from the script without assigning the result to a variable.

To do something more useful then assign the output to a variable. You can then enumerate through the variable array.

For example, the following screenshot shows the output being assigned to a variable $solutions and then it is being enumerated using the following:

$solutions | %{Write-Host $_.Solution.Name “in” $_.SiteCollection.Url}

Downloads

If you would like to try out the PowerShell script, then you can download the script here:

Get-SPUserSolutionInWebApplication.zip

Please fill free to use and modify the script, though make sure you test it before using in Production.

Also let me know if you find it useful and if you have made some cool changes let me know as always looking for ways to make things better!

Doy's Microsoft 365 and Azure Dev Blog

Simon Doy blogs about stuff related to Microsoft 365 and Azure

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