Articles from February 2016 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!

A study in Powershell scripting – A beginners guide Part 2

Fri, 26 Feb 2016 21:54:50 +0000

In this post I elaborate the steps that I went through to build the function to extract users into alphabetical order. I talk about the problems I face and how I resolved them.
I also post snippets of my code that I used so that new people can see how I wrote it.
I’m hoping that this help the new people that are out there.
Biggest tip in the post is what the secret sauce is on how to pass results from one cmdlet to another. As always always pleased to know people’s thoughts.
Link here.

A study in Powershell Scripting – A beginners Guide Part I

Thu, 25 Feb 2016 11:27:42 +0000

I thought I would post my learning experiences as a person that has very little programming background. Don did say in one of the TechEd’s a few years ago that even a beginner could share their experiences with others. So I thought that I should contribute with the approach that I use to write my scripts so that other people starting to begin their Powershell adventure could benefit.
The scenario in this case is to do with three Active Directory security groups and synchronizing with a master Active Directory security group.
Link to blog post here.

I'm Not A Developer

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 12:57:33 +0000

Are you intimidated by scripting? Does PowerShell seem too much like programming to you? You aren’t a developer, why should you learn this mumbo jumbo?
It turns out, PowerShell is quite easy to get started with. Can you run ipconfig? Do you know how to give someone instructions? You could probably pick up the PowerShell basics in a month of lunches or so.
Don’t believe me?I spent a few minutes to compare a simple task in four languages. PowerShell is a single, easy to understand command. Python is two lines and starts to include some syntax like .().
We won’t even look at the C example here, but check out this C# code that simply reads and prints out the content of a file:

// Modified with suggestions from Anton. // Better ways to do this, but, I'm not a developer ; ) using System; using System.IO; class ReadFromFile { static void Main() { foreach(string s in File.ReadAllLines(@"C:\file.txt")) { Console.WriteLine(s); } } }You can get a feel for what’s going on, and there are many ways to skin a cat, but let’s compare this to PowerShell:

Get-Content C:\file.txtThis was one example among many. Read or write a CSV, execute a SQL query, create a VM, kick off an AzureRM template, modify an AD user, the list goes on. All of these are individual PowerShell commands, that handle a whole bunch of code behind the scenes, giving you simple, task-based commands.
This lets you worry about the actual problem you are trying to solve, not the nitty gritty programming details. Have you ever had to write your ownsorting code, rather than just using

Sort-Object?
Come join the fun, you’ll save yourself time and effort, and help out your team and organization in the process. Learn PowerShell.
Cheers!

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Last Chance for PowerShellSummit.org Registration

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 18:52:02 +0000

Here’s a sort of last call: Registration ends on March 1st, 2016, giving you just about ten days from today (Feb 18th). Additionally, we’ve got just around 24 seats remaining. About 5 of those are available as 3-day seats, and about 19 as 4-day seats. We’ll try and slide that availability around so you’re not forced into one or the other, but this is basically last call for attendees either way. Hope we’ll see you there!

Convert VBA Macros To PowerShell for Microsoft Office Automation

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 14:46:34 +0000

There is a lot of documentation out there for interacting with Microsoft Office including Outlook, Excel, Word, etc with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). A lot of time you may only be able to find VBA examples. VBA’s require template files to be sent to the desktop and are a real hassle when trying to automate across multiple machines.
There are not many A to B examples of translating VBA to PowerShell so I took a problem I had solved in the past and presented the before and after. Hopefully it will provide enough information to allow others to convert VBA code into PowerShell for their scenarios.
You can check out the full article on PowerShellBlogger.com.

Planning for PowerShell+DevOps Global Summit 2017… Need Your Opinion

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 17:35:31 +0000

So, we’re already doing some planning for the 2017, 2018, and 2019 events. Because, you know. We do that around here ;).
One thing we’re considering is an option to lock-in venue pricing for that three-year period, helping to ensure we can keep our pricing at around $950 for a 3-day event. Doing so requires a hotel room block lock-in as well. On the plus side, that’ll lock in hotel pricing for 3 years too, which is great in terms of affordability and predictability. It’s scary, because we’re committing to paying for those rooms whether people sleep in ’em or not. Another upside is bringing all or most attendees together into one hotel, along with our speakers.
So what we’re considering is opening 2017 registration by only offering packages of either 3 or 4 days (it’ll be your pick) which are _inclusive of your hotel room. _This would be at a Marriott property, and we could provide receipts/invoices that showed the conference/travel expense breakout, if you needed. So up front, you’d only be able to buy that complete package. The package would also likely include something like a Sunday night meet ’n’ greet at the hotel - again, only open to people staying there.
Closer to the event, say in the 60 days before, we’d open registration to ticket-only sales, for however many seats we had remaining.
This is obviously an unabashed attempt to reduce risk by “forcing” people into the hotel package. Realizing that some people might not be able to book “inclusive” packages due to company policies, we’d try to also offer an option where you could buy just a ticket early-on, but were required to book your room in our block. Honestly, this is all about making sure we fill the block.
Our feeling is that a 3-day package would be around $1500 including hotel (3 nights), and you’d have the option of booking on additional nights if you wanted to. it’d be about $2300 for a 4-day/4-night package, if we do the pre-con day again (which is likely as it’s been our most popular option for 2016).
Another advantage of having our rates and dates locked in so far out is that we could let attendees put down a (refundable) deposit for 2017, 2018, and/or 2019 - locking in your seat before registration even opens, so you don’t have to worry about hitting the website at midnight sharp the day sales open ;). Now that we’re a nonprofit, collecting that in advance is much more do-able.
Anyway… we’d like some input from the community. Take a quick, one-question poll to tell us what you think.

2016-February Scripting Games Puzzle

Sat, 06 Feb 2016 15:07:55 +0000

Although we have a couple of puzzles queued up, we’ll be taking a brief break for the month of February 2016. So, no puzzle this month!
However, **we are in need of puzzles, including sample solutions and explanations. **This is a community effort, so if you’ve never contributed - now’s a great time to start! Drop an email to admin@ this domain. Include a ZIP file with your puzzle, solution, and explanation - all in plain-text files, please. You can include screen shots, as needed, as PNG files.
We’re also in need of a Games Master, who can collect monthly puzzles, queue them up for publishing, and scan reader submissions for noteworthy entries. Drop an e-mail if you’re interested.
Belong to a user group? Why not spend some time in your next meeting coming up with a puzzle or two that your group can submit? Make them easy or tricky, fun or devilish - it’s up to you. A user group could also collectively take on the Games Master role, giving you an important activity (reviewing entries and queuing them for publishing) at each monthly group meeting.
Become a contributor, and help keep this highly visible part of the PowerShell community up and running!

MSPSUG Feb 9th Virtual Meeting: Intro into the #PowerShell ISE, #Git, #PSPester & #OneDrive

Fri, 05 Feb 2016 15:01:11 +0000

Join the Mississippi PowerShell User Group virtually on Tuesday, February 9th 2016 at 8:30pm Central Time when Ryan Yates will be presenting an “Intro session to Teaching the IT Pro how to Dev with ISE, Git, Pester & OneDrive”.
With the amount of additional technologies needed to optimise the efficency of writing PowerShell this can seem very overwelming to someone new to PowerShell and could even put them completely off following an efficency optimised script creation workflow. So in this session I will be Demoing a way of working that can help users progress into Test Driven Development with the Help of a module that adds additional functionality to PowerShell ISE to make this easier to work with.
Visit the Mississippi PowerShell User Group website to learn more about Ryan and to find out more details about this month’s meeting.
The Mississippi PowerShell User Group Meetings are held online (via Skype for Business) on the second Tuesday of each month at 8:30pm Central Time and are free to attend. The system requirements to attend these online meetings can be found on the MSPSUG website under the “Attendee Info” section.
Register via EventBrite to receive the URL for this meeting.
Note: It is not necessary to live in Mississippi or join our user group to attend our meetings or present a session for our user group.
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Using PowerShell to make Azure Automation Graphical Runbooks – Part 2

Thu, 04 Feb 2016 07:08:25 +0000

The previous article in this series covered the release of the Microsoft Azure Automation Graphical Authoring SDK, and began to outline some of the classes used and, where possible, the visible elements they relate to in the Azure portal itself.
This second part of the series focuses on probably the most time consuming and challenging part of scripting these runbooks, those to do with Activities.
You can read the full article at www.powershell.amsterdam

Microsoft PowerShell team panel – Twin Cities February meeting

Thu, 04 Feb 2016 00:21:21 +0000

Ever wonder just what the heck the Microsoft PowerShell team was thinking? Come find out!
Keith Bankston is the senior program manager for PowerShell. Mark Gray is the senior program manager for DSC. Michael Greene is the program manager responsible for understanding customer feedback and getting it into PowerShell.
Join us for a panel discussion where they will answer all of our questions about PowerShell and we in turn will answer their questions about how we use PowerShell and how we would like to use it in the future.
Target North Campus
7300 Oak Grove Parkway
Brooklyn Park, MN
This is a secure facility. RSVP with full name is required. If you do not use your full name on meetup, please email us your full name. Park in the guest lot to the west of the complex. Check in with security with photo ID. You will be escorted to the meeting room.
Food and networking begin at 4:30. The main meeting will run from 5 to 7.

Connect to all Office 365 Services with PowerShell

Tue, 02 Feb 2016 18:50:40 +0000

If you are not on Office 365 or have a tenant set up with Microsoft yet, now is the time to reserve your tenant name! With utilizing Office 365, a lot of administration is only available from a PowerShell session. There is a mix of outdated information on what you actually need to install and execute in order to connect to all of the Office 365 services. As a result, I accumulated and wrote up the current download requirements and commands to connect and administer every Office 365 service from one PowerShell session. I hope this saves everyone a lot of time and effort!
Head over to PowerShellBlogger.com to read the full article here.

PowerShellSummit.org Registration Status for 2-Feb-2016 (also, recordings)

Tue, 02 Feb 2016 14:43:52 +0000

OK, here’s a quick update of where we’re at with registration for PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2016.
We’d originally scheduled 150 seats for the April event, inclusive of speakers. Yesterday (1st Feb) we opened 3-day sales (previously, only 4-day seats had been available), and are now at 126 total attendees. So we’ve got 24 seats of our original space remaining.
The venue assures us that we can accommodate at least another 25 people, possible as many as 50 more. So we’re working with them to make that happen - in the meantime, I strongly recommend you register soon if you plan to attend. It looks like, no matter what, we’ll be in a sellout situation again this year.
Now, keep in mind that we’ve greatly expanded the event this year. We’re running three full-day pre-conference workshops (that’s what you get for the extra day in the 4-day pass). We’re having an informal gathering on Sunday evening (after the pre-cons) at the Courtyard Downtown Bellevue, a bar crawl Monday night, and a reception with the WMF team on Tuesday evening. In addition to two tracks of content, we have a third track which will run some extra-long sessions (although not all day). We’re also welcoming the WMF team on Tuesday after lunch for a “State of the Shell” address by two of the main team leaders, followed by “Lightning Demos” from a variety of team members. It’s a lot of content.
As always, we’ll be recording most of the sessions. Basically, the pre-con sessions won’t be recorded, nor will the extra-long “bonus” sessions in the third track (we only have two sets of recording gear). All of what we do record will go on YouTube as usual. However, this year, Pluralsight will be on-hand with camera crews in our two main rooms, and they’ll be producing recordings that include screen capture as well as live video of the speakers. Those “better” recordings will go into the Pluralsight library, and everyone attending in person will receive free access to those even if you don’t have a subscription. For anyone not attending, you can either access our screen-caps on YouTube for free, or use a Pluralsight subscription to access the nicer videos. This is an experiment with Pluralsight and we appreciate their support!
Oh, and we’ll also be offering Verified Effective exams (no computer required!) on Wednesday, to anyone who’s interested (no advance registration required).
Anyway, as you can see, it’s going to be a busy-busy-busy Summit, and it’s looking firmly to be a sellout, even if we’re able to secure the extra space at the venue. So register right the heck now if you plan to attend. If you’re just now getting around to talking the boss into it - well, honestly, you shoulda started back in November ;). At $950 for the 3-day pass, though, this is probably the best educational deal you or your company will ever find, and more than a few people see enough value to pay their own way every year.
So I hope we’ll see you there!