Create Admin User in SDL Web 8.5 via core service

Question

In the past (2013 SP1), adding a user that was an admin via core service, I could do something like this:

$user.Privileges = 1

but now, with SDL Web 8.5, UserData.Privileges is "obsolete" and doesn't work (shame on SDL for not deprecating it and giving us time to migrate to new API, but I digress). So, using that fails. What's the new approach for marking a user as system administrator? Do I have to explicitly add the new "System Administrator" group to the user?

Answer 1

Well... I think that I have a solution (I realize it has some helper function calls) but this appears to work. Unless someone has a better way of doing this.

     if (((Get-TridionCoreServiceSettings).Version).toLower().startsWith("sdlweb"))
        {
            #it's a whole new way...
            if ($IsAdmin)
            {
                #add "System Administrator" to existing group assignments
                $GroupAssignments = Set-TridionUserGroups -GroupList "System Administrator" -AllGroups (Get-TridionGroups) -ExistingGroupAssignments $GroupAssignments
            }
        }
        else
        {
            if ($IsAdmin)
            {
                $user.Privileges = 1
            }
            else
            {
                $user.Privileges = 0
            }
        }