Add a list and column to about 200 sites using powershell in SharePoint online

Question


I have a sitecollection with about 200 identical sites. However I need to add a new list to each site and a lookup column (referring to this list) to two other lists. I'm not a developer so I struggle a bit. I found this as a starting point:
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint.Client") | Out-Null
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime") | Out-Null
$WebUrl = 'https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/somesite'
$EmailAddress = "[email protected]"
$Context = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($WebUrl)
$Credentials = Get-Credential -UserName $EmailAddress -Message "Please enter your Office 365 Password"
$Context.Credentials = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($EmailAddress,$Credentials.Password)
$List = $Context.Web.Lists.GetByTitle("YourList")
$FieldXml = "<Field Type='Text' DisplayName='New_Field_Display_Name' />"
$Option=[Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.AddFieldOptions]::AddFieldToDefaultView
$List.Fields.AddFieldAsXml($fieldxml,$true,$option)
$Context.Load($list)
$Context.ExecuteQuery()
$Context.Dispose()
Can someone help me out or is there a better solution?
Thanks.


Answer 1

Hi,
According to your post, my understanding is that you wanted to add a list and a lookup column in about 200 identical sites.
Per my knowledge, there is no out of the box way to achieve it in SharePoint Server, however, I’m not sure whether it is in SharePoint online.
As this is the forum for SharePoint Server, you can post your question in the forum for SharePoint online.
http://community.office365.com/en-us/forums/154.aspx.
However, as you had known, we can achieve it programmatically.
Besides the PowerShell command, we can also use the Client Object Model to achieve your scenario.
If all the 200 sites in one site collection, we can first retrieve all the sites in the site collection, then add the list in every site.
To retrieve all the sites in a site collection, you can refer to the following code snippets.
static string mainpath = "SiteURL";
static void Main(string[] args)
getSubWebs(mainpath);
Console.Read();
public static void getSubWebs(string path)
try
ClientContext clientContext = new ClientContext( path );
Web oWebsite = clientContext.Web;
clientContext.Load(oWebsite, website => website.Webs, website => website.Title);
clientContext.ExecuteQuery();
foreach (Web orWebsite in oWebsite.Webs)
string newpath = mainpath + orWebsite.ServerRelativeUrl;
getSubWebs(newpath);
Console.WriteLine(newpath + "\n" + orWebsite.Title );
catch (Exception ex)
http://chennaisharepointtraining.blogspot.in/2011/11/get-all-subwebs-using-client-object.html
To create a list, you can have a look at the following article.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/fp179912(v=office.15).aspx
Thanks,
Jason
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