&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"><channel><title>Articles from November 2015 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2015/11/</link><description>Recent content in Articles from November 2015 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!</description><generator>Hugo</generator><language>en-us</language><atom:link href="https://powershell.org/articles/2015/11/index.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title>The Popular Week of PowerShell Blogging is back! #PSBlogWeek</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-30-the-popular-week-of-powershell-blogging-is-back-psblogweek/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-30-the-popular-week-of-powershell-blogging-is-back-psblogweek/</guid><pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov 2015 14:00:28 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Back by popular demand is the week-long coordination of blog posts on a single PowerShell topic known as &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PSBlogWeek?src=hash"&gt;#PSBlogWeek&lt;/a&gt;! This week, 5 hand-picked bloggers will be writing informative content around the topic of logging.&lt;br&gt;
The daily schedule for this week is as follows:&lt;br&gt;
Monday (Jason Wasser &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/wasserja"&gt;@wasserja&lt;/a&gt;) - &lt;a href="http://mrautomaton.com/2015/11/30/psblogweek-building-readable-text-log-files/"&gt;Building Readable Text Log Files&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Tuesay (Thom Schumacher &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/driberif"&gt;@driberif&lt;/a&gt;) - &lt;a href="https://crshnbrn66.wordpress.com/2015/11/30/slicing-and-dicing-log-files/"&gt;Slicing and Dicing Text Log Files&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Wednesday (Jaap Brasser &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/jaap_brasser"&gt;@jaap_brasser&lt;/a&gt;) - &lt;a href="http://www.jaapbrasser.com/psblogweek-powershell-logging-in-the-windows-event-log"&gt;PowerShell Logging in the Windows Event Log&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Thursday (Adam Platt &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/platta"&gt;@platta&lt;/a&gt;) - &lt;a href="http://www.plattsoft.net/2015/12/03/reading-the-event-log-with-windows-powershell"&gt;Reading Events from Event Logs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Friday - (Adam Bertram &lt;a href="https://www.twitter.com/adbertram"&gt;@adbertram&lt;/a&gt;) - &lt;a href="http://www.adamtheautomator.com/building-logs-for-cmtrace-powershell/"&gt;Building Logs for CMTrace&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
A big thanks to June Blender (&lt;a href="https://twitter.com/juneb_get_help"&gt;@juneb_get_help&lt;/a&gt;) for her help in editing these posts.&lt;br&gt;
If you&amp;rsquo;d like to download an eBook containing a nicely laid out compilation of all the content provided this week, head over to &lt;a href="http://www.adamtheautomator.com/psblogweek-ebook"&gt;adamtheautomator.com&lt;/a&gt; to snag a copy. Feel free to share it wherever you&amp;rsquo;d like. Consider it public domain.&lt;br&gt;
If you missed our last #PSBlogWeek, download the eBook to bone up on &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/PowerShell-Blog-Week-Advanced-Functions-Bertram-Blender-Cat-Hicks-Prox1.pdf"&gt;everything you need to know about PowerShell advanced functions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Back by popular demand is the week-long coordination of blog posts on a single PowerShell topic known as<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PSBlogWeek?src=hash">#PSBlogWeek</a>! This week, 5 hand-picked bloggers will be writing informative content around the topic of logging.<br>
The daily schedule for this week is as follows:<br>
Monday (Jason Wasser<a href="https://twitter.com/wasserja">@wasserja</a>) -<a href="http://mrautomaton.com/2015/11/30/psblogweek-building-readable-text-log-files/">Building Readable Text Log Files</a><br>
Tuesay (Thom Schumacher<a href="https://twitter.com/driberif">@driberif</a>) -<a href="https://crshnbrn66.wordpress.com/2015/11/30/slicing-and-dicing-log-files/">Slicing and Dicing Text Log Files</a><br>
Wednesday (Jaap Brasser<a href="https://twitter.com/jaap_brasser">@jaap_brasser</a>) -<a href="http://www.jaapbrasser.com/psblogweek-powershell-logging-in-the-windows-event-log">PowerShell Logging in the Windows Event Log</a><br>
Thursday (Adam Platt<a href="https://twitter.com/platta">@platta</a>) -<a href="http://www.plattsoft.net/2015/12/03/reading-the-event-log-with-windows-powershell">Reading Events from Event Logs</a><br>
Friday - (Adam Bertram<a href="https://www.twitter.com/adbertram">@adbertram</a>) -<a href="http://www.adamtheautomator.com/building-logs-for-cmtrace-powershell/">Building Logs for CMTrace</a><br>
A big thanks to June Blender (<a href="https://twitter.com/juneb_get_help">@juneb_get_help</a>) for her help in editing these posts.<br>
If you&rsquo;d like to download an eBook containing a nicely laid out compilation of all the content provided this week, head over to <a href="http://www.adamtheautomator.com/psblogweek-ebook">adamtheautomator.com</a> to snag a copy. Feel free to share it wherever you&rsquo;d like. Consider it public domain.<br>
If you missed our last #PSBlogWeek, download the eBook to bone up on<a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/PowerShell-Blog-Week-Advanced-Functions-Bertram-Blender-Cat-Hicks-Prox1.pdf">everything you need to know about PowerShell advanced functions</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Keeping Windows PowerShell Help Up To Date</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-24-keeping-windows-powershell-help-up-to-date/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-24-keeping-windows-powershell-help-up-to-date/</guid><pubDate>Tue, 24 Nov 2015 19:21:37 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;After a two week hiatus I am back this week with a quick write up on how to automate the updating of PowerShell help. Update-Help should be one of the first things typed in PowerShell on a new workstation build. I jump into the topic and demonstrate how to automate the updating of the help files from the Internet or from a local network share. You can view the full article over at &lt;a href="http://powershellblogger.com/?p=237"&gt;PowerShellBlogger.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;
I look forward to getting another article out to everyone next week and I hope everyone in the US enjoys their long weekend!&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>After a two week hiatus I am back this week with a quick write up on how to automate the updating of PowerShell help. Update-Help should be one of the first things typed in PowerShell on a new workstation build. I jump into the topic and demonstrate how to automate the updating of the help files from the Internet or from a local network share. You can view the full article over at<a href="http://powershellblogger.com/?p=237">PowerShellBlogger.com</a>.<br>
I look forward to getting another article out to everyone next week and I hope everyone in the US enjoys their long weekend!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Atlanta PowerShell User's Group Meeting – December 8th with June Blender</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-19-atlanta-powershell-users-group-meeting-december-8th-with-june-blender/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-19-atlanta-powershell-users-group-meeting-december-8th-with-june-blender/</guid><pubDate>Thu, 19 Nov 2015 15:03:47 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.meetup.com/Atlanta-PowerShell-Users-Group/"&gt;&lt;img src="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/PUG-wide-text-968x142.png" alt="PUG wide text"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE: The new venue will not be ready until next months&amp;rsquo; meeting, so please meet us instead at the Microsoft office in Alpharetta, Microsoft Corporation&lt;br&gt;
1125 Sanctuary Pkwy Ste 300, Alpharetta&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Join us on Tuesday, December 8th when &lt;a href="http://www.sapien.com/blog/"&gt;June Blender&lt;/a&gt; will be giving a talk on PowerShell Events!  This will be in our brand-new venue and meeting place, Microsoft&amp;rsquo;s new Innovation Center, in the famous Atlanta Flat Iron building.  Wear your Santa hats for a special door prize!&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;About June Blender&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
June Blender is a technology evangelist for SAPIEN Technologies, Inc. Formerly a Senior Programming Writer at Microsoft Corporation, she is best known for her work with the Windows PowerShell product team from 2006-2012, developing the help system and writing the Get-Help help topics for PowerShell 1.0 – 3.0. In other roles, June wrote content for the Azure Active Directory SDK and Azure PowerShell Help, Windows Driver Kits, Windows Support Tools, and Windows Resource Kits. She lives in magnificent Escalante, Utah, where she works remotely when she&amp;rsquo;s not out hiking, canyoneering, or convincing lost tourists to try Windows PowerShell. She is a Windows PowerShell MVP, a PowerShell Hero, an Honorary Scripting Guy, and a frequent contributor to PowerShell.org. Contact her at  &lt;a href="http://www.eventbrite.com/e/phillyposh-december-3rd-2015-adam-bertram-tickets-19612925789?ref=ebtnebregn"&gt; and follow her on the &lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.sapien.com/blog/"&gt;SAPIEN Blog&lt;/a&gt; and on Twitter at &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/juneb_get_help"&gt;@juneb_get_help&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.meetup.com/Atlanta-PowerShell-Users-Group/events/226320634/?a=socialmedia"&gt;Register now on Meetup!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.meetup.com/Atlanta-PowerShell-Users-Group/events/226320634/?a=socialmedia"&gt;&lt;img src="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/MeetUp.png" alt="MeetUp"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.meetup.com/Atlanta-PowerShell-Users-Group/"><img src="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/PUG-wide-text-968x142.png" alt="PUG wide text"/><br><strong>UPDATE: The new venue will not be ready until next months&rsquo; meeting, so please meet us instead at the Microsoft office in Alpharetta, Microsoft Corporation<br>
1125 Sanctuary Pkwy Ste 300, Alpharetta</strong><br>
Join us on Tuesday, December 8th when<a href="http://www.sapien.com/blog/">June Blender</a> will be giving a talk on PowerShell Events!  This will be in our brand-new venue and meeting place, Microsoft&rsquo;s new Innovation Center, in the famous Atlanta Flat Iron building.  Wear your Santa hats for a special door prize!<br><strong>About June Blender</strong><br>
June Blender is a technology evangelist for SAPIEN Technologies, Inc. Formerly a Senior Programming Writer at Microsoft Corporation, she is best known for her work with the Windows PowerShell product team from 2006-2012, developing the help system and writing the Get-Help help topics for PowerShell 1.0 – 3.0. In other roles, June wrote content for the Azure Active Directory SDK and Azure PowerShell Help, Windows Driver Kits, Windows Support Tools, and Windows Resource Kits. She lives in magnificent Escalante, Utah, where she works remotely when she&rsquo;s not out hiking, canyoneering, or convincing lost tourists to try Windows PowerShell. She is a Windows PowerShell MVP, a PowerShell Hero, an Honorary Scripting Guy, and a frequent contributor to PowerShell.org. Contact her at <a href="http://www.eventbrite.com/e/phillyposh-december-3rd-2015-adam-bertram-tickets-19612925789?ref=ebtnebregn"> and follow her on the </a><a href="http://www.sapien.com/blog/">SAPIEN Blog</a> and on Twitter at<a href="https://twitter.com/juneb_get_help">@juneb_get_help</a><br><a href="http://www.meetup.com/Atlanta-PowerShell-Users-Group/events/226320634/?a=socialmedia">Register now on Meetup!</a><br><a href="http://www.meetup.com/Atlanta-PowerShell-Users-Group/events/226320634/?a=socialmedia"><img src="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/MeetUp.png" alt="MeetUp"/></p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Philadelphia PowerShell User Group Meeting – December 3rd 2015 with Adam Bertram</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-17-philadelphia-powershell-user-group-meeting-december-3rd-2015-with-adam-bertram/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-17-philadelphia-powershell-user-group-meeting-december-3rd-2015-with-adam-bertram/</guid><pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2015 01:24:39 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Join us on Thursday, December 3rd when &lt;a href="http://adamtheautomator.com"&gt;Adam Bertram&lt;/a&gt; will be giving a talk called a &amp;ldquo;&lt;strong&gt;Top 10 PowerShell mistakes&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;quot;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;About Adam Bertram&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Adam Bertram is an independent consultant, technical writer, trainer and presenter. Adam specializes in consulting and evangelizing all things IT automation mainly focused around Windows PowerShell. Adam is a Microsoft Windows PowerShell MVP, 2015 &lt;a href="https://powershell.org"&gt;powershell.org&lt;/a&gt; PowerShell hero and has numerous Microsoft IT pro certifications. He authors IT pro course content for Pluralsight, is a regular contributor to numerous print and online publications and presents at various user groups and conferences.  You can find Adam at &lt;a href="http://adamtheautomator.com"&gt;adamtheautomator.com&lt;/a&gt; or on Twitter at &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/adbertram"&gt;@adbertram&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.eventbrite.com/e/phillyposh-december-3rd-2015-adam-bertram-tickets-19612925789?ref=ebtnebregn"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.eventbrite.com/custombutton?eid=19612925789" alt="Eventbrite - PhillyPosh December 3rd 2015 - Adam Bertram"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Join us on Thursday, December 3rd when<a href="http://adamtheautomator.com">Adam Bertram</a> will be giving a talk called a &ldquo;<strong>Top 10 PowerShell mistakes</strong> "<br><strong>About Adam Bertram</strong><br>
Adam Bertram is an independent consultant, technical writer, trainer and presenter. Adam specializes in consulting and evangelizing all things IT automation mainly focused around Windows PowerShell. Adam is a Microsoft Windows PowerShell MVP, 2015<a href="https://powershell.org">powershell.org</a> PowerShell hero and has numerous Microsoft IT pro certifications. He authors IT pro course content for Pluralsight, is a regular contributor to numerous print and online publications and presents at various user groups and conferences.  You can find Adam at<a href="http://adamtheautomator.com">adamtheautomator.com</a> or on Twitter at<a href="https://twitter.com/adbertram">@adbertram</a>.<br><a href="http://www.eventbrite.com/e/phillyposh-december-3rd-2015-adam-bertram-tickets-19612925789?ref=ebtnebregn"><img src="https://www.eventbrite.com/custombutton?eid=19612925789" alt="Eventbrite - PhillyPosh December 3rd 2015 - Adam Bertram"/></p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2016 – the agenda</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-14-powershell-devops-global-summit-2016-the-agenda/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-14-powershell-devops-global-summit-2016-the-agenda/</guid><pubDate>Sat, 14 Nov 2015 18:50:03 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;We&amp;rsquo;ve finalised the agenda and we&amp;rsquo;re starting to publish session information on the web site at&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://eventloom.com/event/login/PSNA16"&gt;https://eventloom.com/event/login/PSNA16&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There are a handful of sessions on the site at present. The rest will be added over the next week or so.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Keep checking back to see who&amp;rsquo;s been added.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Registration opens 1 December 2015&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>We&rsquo;ve finalised the agenda and we&rsquo;re starting to publish session information on the web site at</p><p><a href="https://eventloom.com/event/login/PSNA16">https://eventloom.com/event/login/PSNA16</a></p><p>There are a handful of sessions on the site at present. The rest will be added over the next week or so.</p><p>Keep checking back to see who&rsquo;s been added.</p><p>Registration opens 1 December 2015</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2016 Info</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-13-powershell-devops-global-summit-2016-info/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-13-powershell-devops-global-summit-2016-info/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 13 Nov 2015 14:48:49 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;rsquo;s everything that&amp;rsquo;s fit to print regarding Summit 2016, running April 3-4-5-6 in Bellevue, WA! You can also download: &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Brochure-PowerShell-and-DevOps-Summit-2016-copy.pdf"&gt;Brochure-PowerShell and DevOps Summit 2016&lt;/a&gt; to share with your boss and team.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id="registration" class="ps-heading"&gt;Registration&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#registration" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"&gt;&lt;i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Registration for Summit will open December 1, 2015, and run through March 1, 2016. &lt;a href="https://eventloom.com/event/home/PSNA16"&gt;Visit the registration website for more details&lt;/a&gt;. Registration will be limited to about 200 attendees. Initially, we will only offer registration for a 4-day event, which includes full-day pre-conference sessions on April 3rd, 2016. On February 1st, 2016, we will open any remaining space for 3-day registration.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Here&rsquo;s everything that&rsquo;s fit to print regarding Summit 2016, running April 3-4-5-6 in Bellevue, WA! You can also download: <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Brochure-PowerShell-and-DevOps-Summit-2016-copy.pdf">Brochure-PowerShell and DevOps Summit 2016</a> to share with your boss and team.</p><h2 id="registration" class="ps-heading">Registration<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#registration" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>Registration for Summit will open December 1, 2015, and run through March 1, 2016.<a href="https://eventloom.com/event/home/PSNA16">Visit the registration website for more details</a>. Registration will be limited to about 200 attendees. Initially, we will only offer registration for a 4-day event, which includes full-day pre-conference sessions on April 3rd, 2016. On February 1st, 2016, we will open any remaining space for 3-day registration.</p><h2 id="agenda" class="ps-heading">Agenda<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#agenda" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>The registration website will list the complete agenda, which is subject to change, so be sure to check the website often. The agenda will be online prior to December 1, 2015. </p><h2 id="session-streamingrecording" class="ps-heading">Session Streaming/Recording<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#session-streamingrecording" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>We will <strong>not</strong> be live-streaming sessions - the cost for sufficient bandwidth is prohibitive. We <strong>will</strong> be recording the two main session rooms on April 4-5-6. We <strong>will not</strong> be recording the full-day sessions on April 3rd, nor will we be recording the &ldquo;extra&rdquo; sessions in the third session room throughout the week (we only have enough equipment to record two rooms, and the third room will not be in use all the time).</p><p><a href="http://pluralsight.com">Pluralsight</a> has agreed to sponsor the event, and will be recording HD video and high-quality audio of our speakers in the two main session rooms. They&rsquo;ll be using that, along with our traditional screen captures, to produce an enhanced set of session recordings. Those recordings will be made available to all of their subscribers, and all Summit attendees will received free access to the enhanced recordings. For non-attendees, our basic screen-capture recordings will be made available free of charge on our<a href="http://youtube.com/powershellorg">YouTube channel</a>, just as in the past.</p><h2 id="special-events" class="ps-heading">Special Events<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#special-events" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>We&rsquo;ll have several special evening events throughout the conference. Most importantly, Tuesday afternoon will feature an all-hands-on-deck address by Microsoft Technical Fellow Jeffrey Snover, followed by &ldquo;lightning demos&rdquo; from members of the WMF product team. After that, we&rsquo;ll move directly into a meet-and-greet reception (kindly sponsored by<a href="http://sapien.com">SAPIEN</a>) where we&rsquo;ve invited the entire product team to come talk to you. Stay tuned for further announcements on special events.</p><h2 id="hotel" class="ps-heading">Hotel<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#hotel" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>We do not have an official arrangement with any hotel. You&rsquo;ll find several hotels near the Meydenbauer Center in downtown Bellevue, including the Red Lion Inn, Hilton, Courtyard by Marriott, and others. You&rsquo;re welcome to stay where you like. Please note that parking <strong>is not free</strong> at the Center, so we do not recommend a rental car. Lyft/Uber are generally available, as are taxis, and several hotels are within a reasonable walking distance (~15min). </p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>2015-November Scripting Games Puzzle</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-07-november-2015-scripting-games-puzzle/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-07-november-2015-scripting-games-puzzle/</guid><pubDate>Sat, 07 Nov 2015 14:06:18 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Our November 2015 puzzle comes from PowerShell.org user [Tim Curwick][1], who created the puzzle based on a challenge he ran across at work. There&amp;rsquo;s nothing more real-world than this!&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Our November 2015 puzzle comes from PowerShell.org user [Tim Curwick][1], who created the puzzle based on a challenge he ran across at work. There&rsquo;s nothing more real-world than this!</p><h2 id="instructions" class="ps-heading"><strong>Instructions</strong><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#instructions" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>The Scripting Games have been re-imagined as a monthly puzzle. We publish puzzles the first Saturday of each month, along with solutions and commentary for the previous month&rsquo;s puzzle. You can find them all at<a href="https://powershell.org/category/announcements/scripting-games/">https://powershell.org/category/announcements/scripting-games/</a>. Many puzzles will include optional challenges, that you can use to really push your skills.</p><p><strong>To participate</strong>, add your solution to a public Gist (<a href="http://gist.github.com">http://gist.github.com</a>; you&rsquo;ll need a free GitHub account, which all PowerShellers should have anyway). After creating your public Gist, just copy the URL from your browser window and paste it, by itself, as a comment of this post. 
**Only post one entry per person. **However, remember that you can always go back and edit your Gist. We&rsquo;ll always pull the most recent one when we display it, so there&rsquo;s no need to post multiple entries if you want to make an edit.</p><p>Don&rsquo;t forget the [main rules and purpose of these monthly puzzles][2], including the fact that you won&rsquo;t receive individual scoring or commentary on your entry.</p><p><strong>User groups are encouraged to work together</strong> on the monthly puzzles. User group leaders should submit their group&rsquo;s best entry to Ed Wilson, the Scripting Guy, via e-mail, prior to the third Saturday of the month. On the last Saturday of the month, Ed will post his favorite, along with commentary and excerpts from noteworthy entries. The user group with the most &ldquo;favorite&rdquo; entries of the year will win a grand prize from PowerShell.org.</p><h2 id="heading" class="ps-heading"> <a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#heading" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h2 id="our-puzzle" class="ps-heading"><strong>Our Puzzle</strong><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#our-puzzle" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>Scripting challenge: Understanding and cleaning up someone else&rsquo;s code</p><p>Below is an actual script that was in production use at a large enterprise client. The script worked as desired, but as you can see, it could benefit from some clean up. There is some old code in there that may have served a function at one time, but no longer does. The original author and several editors donít seem to have understood PowerShell very well, and it is far more complex than it needs to be.</p><p>Your challenge is to replace everything after the Param statement with a single line of code (no semicolons), while retaining all functionality.</p><p>We are not looking for the<em>shortest</em> line. The whole point is to make the code<em>more readable</em>. Don&rsquo;t replace unnecessarily complex with unnecessarily cryptic.</p><p>As in real life, you should also add internal documentation in the form of any concise comments about the script or your new code which may be of value to the next person troubleshooting or updating the script.</p><p><code>param([string]$VMNameStr) $VMs=@() $VMNames=@() if($VMNameStr.indexof(",") -gt 0) { $Trace="Found Comma..." $VMs=$VMNameStr -split "," | %{$_.trim()} $trace+="Length = $($VMs.length)" $trace+=$VMs -is [array] for($i=0;$i -lt $VMs.length;$i++){ if($VMs[$i] -gt ""){ set-variable -Name ("vmname" + $i) -value $VMs[$i] $VMNames+=$VMs[$i] } } } else{$VMName0=$VMNameStr;$VMNames=$VMName0} $VMNames</code>[1]:<a href="http://madwithpowershell.com">http://madwithpowershell.com</a>
[2]:<a href="https://powershell.org/?p=2574">https://powershell.org/?p=2574</a></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Summit 2016 – Call for topics is closed</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-01-summit-2016-call-for-topics-is-closed/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2015-11-01-summit-2016-call-for-topics-is-closed/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 01 Nov 2015 12:27:11 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;The Call for Topics for the 2016 Summit is now closed. We&amp;rsquo;ve had an amazing number of top quality submissions. We&amp;rsquo;d like to thank everyone who took the time to submit a proposal for a session at the Summit. We&amp;rsquo;ll be working through the submissions over the next few days as we put the agenda together for what looks to be a superb Summit.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We&amp;rsquo;ll publish the schedule as soon as we can. &lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>The Call for Topics for the 2016 Summit is now closed. We&rsquo;ve had an amazing number of top quality submissions. We&rsquo;d like to thank everyone who took the time to submit a proposal for a session at the Summit. We&rsquo;ll be working through the submissions over the next few days as we put the agenda together for what looks to be a superb Summit.</p><p>We&rsquo;ll publish the schedule as soon as we can. </p><p>Once we have the agenda finalised we&rsquo;ll let you know.</p>
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