Adding IIS Manager Users and Permissions using PowerShell

Today somebody ask in the IIS.net Forums how could they automate the process of adding IIS Manager Users and their Permissions using a script or a command line and I thought it would be useful to post something that hopefully will be easy to find and refer to.

One way they found to do it through configuration however they were not getting the password encrypted.

The first thing that I would like to highlight is that the password is not encrypted, it is actually stored as a hash which means just entering the password in clear text will not work the only way it will work is if  you calculate the same hash our current implementation does.

Having said that manually adding the users is also not a good idea since the IIS Manager functionality is extensible and its storage can be replaced to store the users in SQL Server or any other backend. Our built-in implementation stores them in Administration.config but at any given time someone could have a different provider which means your code will not work either.

So then what is the right way? Well the right way is using existing API’s we surface in Microsoft.Web.Management.dll, in particular Microsoft.Web.Management.Server.ManagementAuthentication and Microsoft.Web.Management.ManagementAuthorization. Using these API’s will make sure that it will call the right provider and pass the correct arguments ensuring that you do not have to implement or know any details about their implementation.

These types are really easy to consume from managed code but it does mean you have to write code for it. However the good news is that through PowerShell this gets as simple as it can possibly get.

So just launch PowerShell (make sure its in elevated as an administrator)

Here is how you add a user and grant him access for Default Web Site: