&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 2018 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018/</link><description>Recent content in Articles from 2018 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!</description><generator>Hugo</generator><language>en-us</language><atom:link href="https://powershell.org/articles/2018/index.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 21-December-2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-12-21-icymi-powershell-week-of-21-december-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-12-21-icymi-powershell-week-of-21-december-2018/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2018 15:45:38 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include Group-Object, the Azure Module, Windows Forms and Teams membership.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include Group-Object, the Azure Module, Windows Forms and Teams membership.</p><p>Content pulled together by Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, and Mark Roloff</p><h6 id="i-love-group-object-and-so-should-you" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181221.md#i-love-group-object-and-so-should-you"/><a href="https://www.pwsh.site/powershell/2018/12/17/i-love-group-object-and-so-should-you.html">I love Group-Object and so should you</a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#i-love-group-object-and-so-should-you" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Anthony Allen on December 17th<br>
Getting data and want to do some analysis on it, take a dive into the Group-Object cmdlet and some of it&rsquo;s use cases with Anthony.</p><h6 id="azure-powershell-az-module-version-10" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181221.md#azure-powershell-az-module-version-10"/><a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-powershell-az-module-version-1/">Azure PowerShell ‘Az’ Module version 1.0</a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#azure-powershell-az-module-version-10" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Mark Cowlishaw on December 18th<br>
Find out about big changes for the Azure PowerShell module and guidance on how to move away from the old AzureRM module.</p><h6 id="windows-forms" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181221.md#windows-forms"/><a href="https://powershell.anovelidea.org/powershell/windows-forms/">Windows Forms</a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#windows-forms" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Dave Carroll on December 19th<br>
Take an interesting foray into the .Net [System.Windows.Forms] class.</p><h6 id="using-powershell-to-check-group-or-team-membership" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181221.md#using-powershell-to-check-group-or-team-membership"/><a href="https://www.petri.com/powershell-check-group-team-membership">Using PowerShell to Check Group or Team Membership</a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#using-powershell-to-check-group-or-team-membership" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Tony Redmond on December 20th<br>
Probing membership for Office 365 Groups, Teams and Azure AD Groups, making use of the Teams, AzureAD and Exchange PowerShell Modules.</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181221.md#reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post"/><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/a85r1s/why_outnull/"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Popular Weekly Post</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Answers to the question &lsquo;Why Out-Null?&rsquo;.</p><h6 id="youtube-pspowerhour-006-2018-12-18" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181221.md#youtube-pspowerhour-006-2018-12-18"/><a href="https://youtu.be/iGEFqRLwdzg">YouTube: PSPowerHour 006: 2018-12-18</a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube-pspowerhour-006-2018-12-18" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>The 6th PSPowerHour, in which topics include &ldquo;Assert: Write less Pester tests to cover more code&rdquo;, &ldquo;Git Rebase: Don&rsquo;t fear the Rebase-r&rdquo;, &ldquo;Using PowerShell to extend the GUI&rdquo; and &ldquo;7 Reasons To Build a Workplace Module&rdquo;</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 14-December-2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-12-14-icymi-powershell-week-of-14-december-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-12-14-icymi-powershell-week-of-14-december-2018/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 14 Dec 2018 16:00:59 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include Advent of Code, talking to Teams with the Graph API, AWS tools in PowerShell, and more&amp;hellip;&lt;br&gt;
Content pulled together by Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, and Mark Roloff&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h6 id="speed-tweaking-advent-of-code-day-8" class="ps-heading"&gt;&lt;a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181214.md#speed-tweaking-advent-of-code-day-8"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="https://humanequivalentunit.github.io/Speed-Tweaks-AoC-Day-8/"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Speed tweaking Advent of Code Day 8&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#speed-tweaking-advent-of-code-day-8" 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;/h6&gt;
&lt;p&gt;by HumanEquivalentUnit on December 8th&lt;br&gt;
Advent of Code spoilers ahead! This is a fun walk through the thought process of solving some of these code puzzles. Useful if you&amp;rsquo;re stuck on day 8, and still something to learn here if you&amp;rsquo;re just curious.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include Advent of Code, talking to Teams with the Graph API, AWS tools in PowerShell, and more&hellip;<br>
Content pulled together by Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, and Mark Roloff</p><h6 id="speed-tweaking-advent-of-code-day-8" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181214.md#speed-tweaking-advent-of-code-day-8"/><a href="https://humanequivalentunit.github.io/Speed-Tweaks-AoC-Day-8/"><em>Speed tweaking Advent of Code Day 8</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#speed-tweaking-advent-of-code-day-8" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by HumanEquivalentUnit on December 8th<br>
Advent of Code spoilers ahead! This is a fun walk through the thought process of solving some of these code puzzles. Useful if you&rsquo;re stuck on day 8, and still something to learn here if you&rsquo;re just curious.</p><h6 id="how-to-quickly-test-a-sql-connection-with-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181214.md#how-to-quickly-test-a-sql-connection-with-powershell"/><a href="https://mcpmag.com/articles/2018/12/10/test-sql-connection-with-powershell.aspx"><em>How To Quickly Test a SQL Connection with PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#how-to-quickly-test-a-sql-connection-with-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Adam Bertram on December 10th<br>
Testing connections before trying to run a bunch of code can often save you some time and headaches. Adam shows us how to quickly accomplish this with a short function.</p><h6 id="removing-special-characters-from-utf8-input-for-use-in-email-addresses-or-login-names" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181214.md#removing-special-characters-from-utf8-input-for-use-in-email-addresses-or-login-names"/><a href="https://www.lieben.nu/liebensraum/2018/12/removing-special-characters-from-utf8-input-for-use-in-email-addresses-or-login-names/"><em>Removing Special Characters From UTF8 Input For Use In Email Addresses or Login Names</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#removing-special-characters-from-utf8-input-for-use-in-email-addresses-or-login-names" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Jos Lieben on December 11th<br>
I&rsquo;ve been bitten by these on a few occassions, so don&rsquo;t be me. Jos has a function to help you convert these tricksey characters and even points to a few other solutions.</p><h6 id="post-a-microsoftteams-channel-chat-message-from-powershell-using-graph-api" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181214.md#post-a-microsoftteams-channel-chat-message-from-powershell-using-graph-api"/><a href="https://msunified.net/2018/12/12/post-at-microsoftteams-channel-chat-message-from-powershell-using-graph-api/"><em>Post a #MicrosoftTeams channel chat message from #PowerShell using Graph API</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#post-a-microsoftteams-channel-chat-message-from-powershell-using-graph-api" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Ståle Hansen on December 12th<br>
Microsoft&rsquo;s Graph API is getting some updates that make it easier to post to Teams using PowerShell. Ståle has a nice guide to help you get started with this new method.</p><h6 id="powershell-basics-finding-your-way-in-the-powershell-console" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181214.md#powershell-basics-finding-your-way-in-the-powershell-console"/><a href="https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ITOps-Talk-Blog/PowerShell-Basics-Finding-Your-Way-in-the-PowerShell-Console/ba-p/300935"><em>PowerShell Basics: Finding Your Way in the PowerShell Console</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-basics-finding-your-way-in-the-powershell-console" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Michael Bender on December 13th<br>
PowerShell&rsquo;s discoverability is truly top-notch. By understanding how to use just two cmdlets, Michael demonstrates how easy it is to get a ton of information out of PowerShell.</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181214.md#reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post"/><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/a4u4rv/what_is_the_absolute_best_powershell_training"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Popular Weekly Post</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>The question of what courses or books are great for learning PowerShell comes up <em>a lot</em>. Fortunately, the community is always ready to throw some excellent resources out there for the curious.</p><h6 id="youtube-getting-started-with-the-aws-tools-for-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181214.md#youtube-getting-started-with-the-aws-tools-for-powershell"/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4k0v754sCI"><em>Youtube: Getting Started with the AWS Tools for PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube-getting-started-with-the-aws-tools-for-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>For you AWS admins, here&rsquo;s a brief video tour to help you get acquianted with the PowerShell module for AWS.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Welcome, New and Returning @PSHSummit Summiteers!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-12-12-welcome-new-and-returning-pshsummit-summiteers/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-12-12-welcome-new-and-returning-pshsummit-summiteers/</guid><pubDate>Wed, 12 Dec 2018 15:40:16 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The following was recently posted in the Slack team for PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2018. Yesterday, we invited all current registered Summiteers into the Slack team; if you missed your invitation, please email summit@ (this website&amp;rsquo;s domain name) with your email address (ideally a personal one, not work) and your Eventbrite order number. We&amp;rsquo;ll be happy to re-send the invite.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Another reminder for all @here - please go to &lt;a href="http://leanpub.com/summiteermanual/"&gt;http://leanpub.com/summiteermanual/&lt;/a&gt; and &amp;ldquo;buy&amp;rdquo; the book (for $0, of course), and enable the option to have Leanpub notify you via email of updates. That&amp;rsquo;s The Summiteer Manual, and it&amp;rsquo;s our best way to provide a consolidated view of everything that happens at Summit. From understanding how we handle special dietary requests, to understanding what &amp;ldquo;Iron Scripter&amp;rdquo; is all about, it&amp;rsquo;s the best way to take advantage of all that goes on. Summit is a **lot** more than just great breakout sessions, but it&amp;rsquo;s very easy to &amp;ldquo;miss out&amp;rdquo; on things if you don&amp;rsquo;t know they&amp;rsquo;re available. We update this a lot as we get closer, and will even be including information (and possible discounts) on stuff around the Puget Sound area for early/late arrivals who want to see some sights. A week or two out, it&amp;rsquo;s not even a bad idea to make sure your phone/tablet/laptop has a copy to refer to (Leanpub offers PDF/MOBI/EPUB formats), and some folks even print a copy to bring along.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p><em>The following was recently posted in the Slack team for PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2018. Yesterday, we invited all current registered Summiteers into the Slack team; if you missed your invitation, please email summit@ (this website&rsquo;s domain name) with your email address (ideally a personal one, not work) and your Eventbrite order number. We&rsquo;ll be happy to re-send the invite.</em><br>
Another reminder for all @here - please go to<a href="http://leanpub.com/summiteermanual/">http://leanpub.com/summiteermanual/</a> and &ldquo;buy&rdquo; the book (for $0, of course), and enable the option to have Leanpub notify you via email of updates. That&rsquo;s The Summiteer Manual, and it&rsquo;s our best way to provide a consolidated view of everything that happens at Summit. From understanding how we handle special dietary requests, to understanding what &ldquo;Iron Scripter&rdquo; is all about, it&rsquo;s the best way to take advantage of all that goes on. Summit is a **lot** more than just great breakout sessions, but it&rsquo;s very easy to &ldquo;miss out&rdquo; on things if you don&rsquo;t know they&rsquo;re available. We update this a lot as we get closer, and will even be including information (and possible discounts) on stuff around the Puget Sound area for early/late arrivals who want to see some sights. A week or two out, it&rsquo;s not even a bad idea to make sure your phone/tablet/laptop has a copy to refer to (Leanpub offers PDF/MOBI/EPUB formats), and some folks even print a copy to bring along.</p><p>Especially important: **get the app** (linked from<a href="http://powershellsummit.org">http://powershellsummit.org</a> as well) because that&rsquo;s got the full agenda, including breaking changes, and we can use push notifications to call out important changes on-site.<br>
Finally, **book your hotel** per the instructions in the brochure (again,<a href="http://powershellsummit.org">http://powershellsummit.org</a>), because the sure-fire way to make sure Summit never happens again is to leave us on the financial hook for the 200 rooms at the Marriott and 50 at the Courtyard.<br>
The #summit-events channel is a great place to ask questions and offer answers about the event! This Slack Team is also where @pscookiemonster and @thedevopsdiva usually conduct Lightning Demo signup, and if you&rsquo;ve never presented before, Lightning Demos are a *fantastic* way to give it a try. It&rsquo;s just a ~5m demo of something cool you&rsquo;ve done with PowerShell, and it&rsquo;s one of the most popular blocks in our agenda. You&rsquo;re guaranteed a round of applause from one of the friendliest and most supportive technology communities in existence.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 07-December-2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-12-07-icymi-powershell-week-of-07-december-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-12-07-icymi-powershell-week-of-07-december-2018/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 07 Dec 2018 16:00:05 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include watching Bitcoin plummet in the shell, getting maintenance plan info out of SQL, setting up automated access to AWS, and more&amp;hellip;&lt;br&gt;
Content curated by Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, and Mark Roloff&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h6 id="friday-fun-with-timely-powershell-prompts" class="ps-heading"&gt;&lt;a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181207.md#friday-fun-with-timely-powershell-prompts"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="https://jdhitsolutions.com/blog/powershell/6240/friday-fun-with-timely-powershell-prompts/"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Friday Fun With Timely PowerShell Prompts&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#friday-fun-with-timely-powershell-prompts" 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;/h6&gt;
&lt;p&gt;by Jeff Hicks on Novermber 30th&lt;br&gt;
Like furnishing a home, decorating your work desk, or building a wardrobe, customizing your shell experience is as much a matter of utility as it is aesthetics. Jeff brings has a nice introduction to changing the default prompt, which will help you open the doors to all manner of fun.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include watching Bitcoin plummet in the shell, getting maintenance plan info out of SQL, setting up automated access to AWS, and more&hellip;<br>
Content curated by Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, and Mark Roloff</p><h6 id="friday-fun-with-timely-powershell-prompts" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181207.md#friday-fun-with-timely-powershell-prompts"/><a href="https://jdhitsolutions.com/blog/powershell/6240/friday-fun-with-timely-powershell-prompts/"><em>Friday Fun With Timely PowerShell Prompts</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#friday-fun-with-timely-powershell-prompts" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Jeff Hicks on Novermber 30th<br>
Like furnishing a home, decorating your work desk, or building a wardrobe, customizing your shell experience is as much a matter of utility as it is aesthetics. Jeff brings has a nice introduction to changing the default prompt, which will help you open the doors to all manner of fun.</p><h6 id="visualizing-historical-data-of-top-cryptocurrency-with-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181207.md#visualizing-historical-data-of-top-cryptocurrency-with-powershell"/><a href="https://ridicurious.com/2018/12/03/visualizing-historical-data-of-top-cryptocurrency-with-powershell/"><em>Visualizing Historical data of Top CryptoCurrency with PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#visualizing-historical-data-of-top-cryptocurrency-with-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Prateek Singh on December 3rd<br>
Even if you don&rsquo;t dabble in cryptocurrencies, you could easily adapt Prateek&rsquo;s new blog to other uses. He demonstrates how his <em>Graphical</em> module can easily take data points to create colorful graphs in your console.</p><h6 id="getting-details-from-a-maintenance-plan-using-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181207.md#getting-details-from-a-maintenance-plan-using-powershell"/><a href="https://nocolumnname.blog/2018/12/04/getting-details-from-a-maintenance-plan-using-powershell/"><em>Getting Details from a Maintenance Plan using PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#getting-details-from-a-maintenance-plan-using-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Shane O&rsquo;Neill on December 4th<br>
Clicking through a GUI is so last decade. Shane combines his knowledge of SQL with PowerShell to create a function for retreiving maintenance plan details from the comfort of his shell.</p><h6 id="powershell-module-to-read-directory-contents-and-store-in-a-sql-server-table" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181207.md#powershell-module-to-read-directory-contents-and-store-in-a-sql-server-table"/><a href="https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/5802/powershell-module-to-read-directory-contents-and-store-in-a-sql-server-table/"><em>PowerShell Module to Read Directory Contents and Store in a SQL Server Table</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-module-to-read-directory-contents-and-store-in-a-sql-server-table" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Nisarg Upadhyay on December 4th<br>
Nisarg shows us how easy it is to insert data into SQL using PowerShell, but the icing on the cake for us was calling his script from T-SQL to accomplish this. The more you know!</p><h6 id="working-with-aws-credentials-using-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181207.md#working-with-aws-credentials-using-powershell"/><a href="https://4sysops.com/archives/working-with-aws-credentials-using-powershell/"><em>Working with AWS credentials using PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#working-with-aws-credentials-using-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Graham Beer on December 4th<br>
For automated access to AWS from PowerShell, there&rsquo;s some hoops that you&rsquo;ll need to jump through. Graham has an easy to follow write-up to help get you going.</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181207.md#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post"/><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/a1u5ln/install_all_windows_updates_on_the_first_round/"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Weekly Post</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Time for some good ole fashioned script sharing. u/jcholder has leveraged PDQ Deploy &amp; Inventory with PowerShell to handle all Windows updates in a single push.</p><h6 id="tweet-of-the-week" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181207.md#tweet-of-the-week"/><a href="https://twitter.com/nohwnd/status/1069591949282299904"><em>Tweet of the Week</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#tweet-of-the-week" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>This was an interesting thread that touches on the long road that seemingly small projects can take to becoming officially adopted by a community. Jakub Jares shares some of Pester&rsquo;s history and how it is currently maintained.</p><h6 id="youtube-socal-powershell-pester-in-action" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181207.md#youtube-socal-powershell-pester-in-action"/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vooOG3mmoY"><em>Youtube: SoCal PowerShell: Pester in Action</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube-socal-powershell-pester-in-action" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Fresh from the SoCal PowerShell UserGroup, Kevin Marquette gives an hour and a half long dive into a myriad of use-cases for Pester.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Ticket Sales Update for PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2019</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-12-01-ticket-sales-update-for-powershell-devops-global-summit-2019/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-12-01-ticket-sales-update-for-powershell-devops-global-summit-2019/</guid><pubDate>Sat, 01 Dec 2018 16:22:33 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Wanted to offer a brief update on ticket sales for those who may not have purchased already - I know a lot of folks have to wait until 2019.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Wanted to offer a brief update on ticket sales for those who may not have purchased already - I know a lot of folks have to wait until 2019.</p><p>As of right now, we have 118 regular admission tickets left, which is just a smidge over half our original inventory. However, we also have 58 Alumni tickets remaining. Those are the same price, but they come with some extra thank-you amenities, and they&rsquo;re available to any prior Summiteer who uses the promotional code we sent out earlier this year (sorry if you missed it; that&rsquo;s why we encourage use of a personal email address versus a work one - they&rsquo;re less filter-y and they follow you when you change jobs). At the end of January 2019, any leftover Alumni tickets will go into the main &ldquo;pool,&rdquo; which will help increase availability a bit. So, all told, we have 176 spots open.<br>
We also have 10 spots in our new, entry-level, hands-on OnRamp track led my myself, Jason Helmick, and Jeffery Hicks. Those will <em>not</em> convert to &ldquo;standard&rdquo; inventory, as the main event is already scheduled to be at-capacity.<br>
Some frequently asked questions:<br>
**Is there a waitlist? **There is. Each year, we invariably have a few people who have to bail out at the last minute. If we can fill their space from the waitlist, we&rsquo;ll refund their ticket. The waitlist emails one person at a time and gives them 24 hours to buy a ticket. PLEASE register for the waitlist using an email address you check DAILY. Lots of people miss out because they use a work address, and don&rsquo;t get the notification in time.<br>
**Are sessions recorded? **Please review our Summiteer&rsquo;s Manual / Survival Guide (linked from<a href="http://powershellsummit.org">powershellsummit.org</a>) for information on recordings. We do not live-stream, and we do not record our Monday general sessions nor the OnRamp track.<br>
**What about hotels? **Please, once you&rsquo;ve registered, book in our official room block at the Marriott or Courtyard, because otherwise we have to pay for unused rooms anyway, which could easily put us out of business. The Summit Brochure provides the registration URLs and, if you need to register through some other means, our group codes. Even if you register through a corporate portal, please simply CALL the hotel and ask that they attach your room to our group. That won&rsquo;t change your rate, and will simply credit us for using the rooms we&rsquo;ve contracted for.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 30-November-2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-11-30-icymi-powershell-week-of-30-november-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-11-30-icymi-powershell-week-of-30-november-2018/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2018 16:00:22 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Of note this week&amp;hellip; Managing credentials in your scripts, PowerShell&amp;rsquo;s constrained language mode, why you should absolutely reinvent the wheel, and more.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Of note this week&hellip; Managing credentials in your scripts, PowerShell&rsquo;s constrained language mode, why you should absolutely reinvent the wheel, and more.</p><p>Content curated by Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, and Mark Roloff</p><h6 id="powershell-constrained-language-mode-and-the-dot-source-operator" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181130.md#powershell-constrained-language-mode-and-the-dot-source-operator"/><a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/11/26/powershell-constrained-language-mode-and-the-dot-source-operator/"><em>PowerShell Constrained Language mode and the Dot-Source Operator</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-constrained-language-mode-and-the-dot-source-operator" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Paul Higinbotham on November 26th<br>
Deep dive blogs are some of our favorite things to read and Paul, from the PowerShell team, has a good one for everybody this week. He takes us on a brief exploration of how PowerShell handles dot-sourced scripts when you&rsquo;re using Constrained Language mode.</p><h6 id="learning-powershell-by-reinventing-the-wheel" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181130.md#learning-powershell-by-reinventing-the-wheel"/><a href="https://winsysblog.com/2018/11/learning-powershell-by-reinventing-the-wheel.html"><em>Learning PowerShell by Reinventing the Wheel</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#learning-powershell-by-reinventing-the-wheel" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Dan Franciscus on November 26th<br>
Finding projects to advance your knowledge can be a little rough sometimes. But you don&rsquo;t need to be novel. Dan offers some rock solid advice as to why you <em>should</em> attempt to build things that others already have.</p><h6 id="using-credentials-in-production-scripts" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181130.md#using-credentials-in-production-scripts"/><a href="https://www.randomizedharmony.com/blog/2018/11/25/using-credentials-in-production-scripts"><em>Using Credentials In Production Scripts</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#using-credentials-in-production-scripts" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Paul DeArment on November 25th<br>
Securely handling the storage of credentials for a scheduled script to use is something thats frequently asked about. Paul has wrote a couple of functions to help make this easier for people with the additional requirement of hiding the username.</p><h6 id="importing-enriched-data-into-azure-data-lake-storage-adls-with-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181130.md#importing-enriched-data-into-azure-data-lake-storage-adls-with-powershell"/><a href="https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/5811/importing-enriched-data-into-azure-data-lake-storage-adls-with-powershell/"><em>Importing Enriched Data into Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) with PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#importing-enriched-data-into-azure-data-lake-storage-adls-with-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by John Miner on November 26th<br>
If your work is more on the SQL-side, or you&rsquo;re just inquisitive, this is a great write-up on using PowerShell to migrate the migration of data up to Azure Data Lake.</p><h6 id="creating-dynamic-sets-for-validateset" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181130.md#creating-dynamic-sets-for-validateset"/><a href="https://vexx32.github.io/2018/11/29/Dynamic-ValidateSet/"><em>Creating Dynamic Sets for ValidateSet</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#creating-dynamic-sets-for-validateset" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Joel Sallow on November 29th<br>
Thinking of using a dynamic parameter in your next function? Joel might have an interesting and much simpler alternative for you to look at.</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181130.md#reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post"/><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9zyrg1/jottey_a_notepad_written_in_powershell"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Popular Weekly Post</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>This week, /u/dolorfox shared a cool little notepad app that they wrote in PowerShell. Say hello to Jottey!</p><h6 id="tweet-of-the-week" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181130.md#tweet-of-the-week"/><a href="https://twitter.com/guyrleech/status/1067049809398382593"><em>Tweet of the Week</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#tweet-of-the-week" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>@guyrleech shows off a pretty cool little script that adds a checksum option to your file explorer&rsquo;s right-click context menu.</p><h6 id="youtube-mvpdays---essential-powershell-for-office-365" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181130.md#youtube-mvpdays---essential-powershell-for-office-365"/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzA9n4NSals"><em>Youtube: MVPDays - Essential PowerShell for Office 365</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube-mvpdays---essential-powershell-for-office-365" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Vlad Catrinescu demonstrats some essential PowerShell for anyone working with O365. The icing on this particular cake is that he uses the new AzureAD module, which is replacing the MSOnline module.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 22-November-2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-11-23-icymi-powershell-week-of-22-november-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-11-23-icymi-powershell-week-of-22-november-2018/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 23 Nov 2018 16:00:01 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include pizza and wildcards, getting involved with the community, a new PowerHour, making your scripts pipeline friendly, and more&amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include pizza and wildcards, getting involved with the community, a new PowerHour, making your scripts pipeline friendly, and more&hellip;</p><p>Content assembled between mouthfuls of turkey by Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, and Mark Roloff</p><h6 id="adding-pipeline-support-to-your-scripts" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181122.md#adding-pipeline-support-to-your-scripts"/><a href="https://steviecoaster.github.io/Pipelines-in-scripts/"><em>Adding Pipeline Support to Your Scripts!</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#adding-pipeline-support-to-your-scripts" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Stephen Valdinger on November 18th<br>
Stephen debuted his PS blog just last week and he&rsquo;s already racking up some great content. In this post, he lays out what you need to know to get your functions working in a pipeline, a central component in building great tools for the shell.</p><h6 id="controlling-guest-access-in-office365-with-ms-graph-and-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181122.md#controlling-guest-access-in-office365-with-ms-graph-and-powershell"/><a href="https://automativity.com/Controlling-Guest-access-in-Office365-with-MS-Graph-and-Powershell/"><em>Controlling Guest access in Office365 with MS Graph and Powershell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#controlling-guest-access-in-office365-with-ms-graph-and-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Alex Asplund on November 18th<br>
The job was supposed to be simple; just enable guest access on some groups in O365. Follow Alex on a journey of discovering that the documented method is incorrect, he needs to make his own tools to get the job done, and then finally implements an automated solution on a schedule.</p><h6 id="powershell--working-with-format-table-in-verbose-debug-output-streams" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181122.md#powershell--working-with-format-table-in-verbose-debug-output-streams"/><a href="https://evotec.xyz/powershell-working-with-format-table-in-verbose-debug-output-streams/"><em>PowerShell – Working with Format-Table in Verbose, Debug, Output Streams</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell--working-with-format-table-in-verbose-debug-output-streams" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Przemyslaw Klys on November 18th<br>
There&rsquo;s a lot of flexibility in PowerShell for displaying information in nice tables or lists, but it all revolves around your standard output. <em>Format-Stream</em> is a fancy little function that Przemyslaw made, which can allow you to easily apply nicer formatting to other data streams, such as Verbose and Debug.</p><h6 id="10-ways-anyone-can-easily-contribute-to-the-powershell-community" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181122.md#10-ways-anyone-can-easily-contribute-to-the-powershell-community"/><a href="https://www.networkadm.in/how-anyone-can-easily-contribute-to-the-powershell-community/"><em>10 Ways Anyone Can Easily Contribute to the PowerShell Community</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#10-ways-anyone-can-easily-contribute-to-the-powershell-community" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Mike Kanakos on November 18th<br>
Have you been bitten by the desire to start contributing to the community? It can be an intimidating step. Thankfully, guys like Mike are here to offer some great ideas for taking that first plunge.</p><h6 id="powershell-wildcard-in-pizza-shop" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181122.md#powershell-wildcard-in-pizza-shop"/><a href="http://powershell.damiangarbus.pl/powershell-wildcard-in-pizza-shop/"><em>Powershell wildcard in pizza shop???</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-wildcard-in-pizza-shop" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Damian Garbus on November 19th<br>
For a while now, Damian has been helping newcomers to PS get acquianted with the basics using concise visual lessons. This week, a demonstration on how to use wildcards.</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181122.md#reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post"/><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9xs6hj/anyone_else_not_in_it_and_still_use_powershell/"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Popular Weekly Post</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Admins and the like might dominate the population of PowerShell users, but it&rsquo;s not just for us. Retail, banking, finance, and even a chef are all examples of people chiming in with their experiences in this thread.</p><h6 id="tweet-of-the-week" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181122.md#tweet-of-the-week"/><a href="https://twitter.com/nohwnd/status/1065304273376997376"><em>Tweet of the Week</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#tweet-of-the-week" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Pester&rsquo;s companion module, Assert, gets a little love with a new update this week. This was the first we&rsquo;d heard of a function that could easily determine equivalence between two objects, so it&rsquo;s definitely on our list to check out on Monday.</p><h6 id="youtube-powerhour-005-2018-11-20" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181122.md#youtube-powerhour-005-2018-11-20"/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt-nrHbgTns"><em>Youtube: PowerHour 005: 2018-11-20</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube-powerhour-005-2018-11-20" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>This month&rsquo;s PS PowerHour had a round of great demos ranging from using PS Core in AWS Lambda, getting started with ChatOps in MS Teams, and reason why you should consider sharing your experiences with the community.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 16-November-2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-11-16-icymi-powershell-week-of-16-november-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-11-16-icymi-powershell-week-of-16-november-2018/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:00:24 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include pie charts, flattening your modules, selecting unique items, the WindowsCompatibility module goes GA, and more&amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include pie charts, flattening your modules, selecting unique items, the WindowsCompatibility module goes GA, and more&hellip;</p><p>Curated by Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, and Mark Roloff</p><h6 id="convert-powershell-output-into-a-pie-chart" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181116.md#convert-powershell-output-into-a-pie-chart"/><a href="https://4sysops.com/archives/convert-powershell-csv-output-into-a-pie-chart/"><em>Convert PowerShell output into a pie chart</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#convert-powershell-output-into-a-pie-chart" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Graham Beer on November 9th<br>
Piping information to CSVs and turning it into pretty tables or charts with Excel seems like a staple of admin work sometimes. Lucky for us, Graham has worked out a function for quickly creating pie charts from PowerShell data. Display them right away for a quick visualization or save them to file for use later, and if you dig into the function a little you might find a way to generate even more chart types.</p><h6 id="azure-blueprint" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181116.md#azure-blueprint"/><a href="https://agazoth.github.io/blogpost/2018/11/11/Azure-Blueprint.html"><em>Azure Blueprint</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#azure-blueprint" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Axel Anderson on November 11th<br>
Blueprint is an interesting new tool in the world of Azure; it pretty much works to orchestrate policies, roles, ARM templates, and resource groups across multiple subscriptions. Axel&rsquo;s blog post gives a brief introduction to this service before jumping into a module that he wrote for applying a little automation around it.</p><h6 id="create-custom-reports-using-the-updated-teams-powershell-module" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181116.md#create-custom-reports-using-the-updated-teams-powershell-module"/><a href="https://practical365.com/teams-2/create-custom-reports-using-the-updated-teams-powershell-module/"><em>Create custom reports using the updated Teams PowerShell module</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#create-custom-reports-using-the-updated-teams-powershell-module" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Steve Goodman on November 12th<br>
Teams is soon replacing Skype for Business and it&rsquo;s PowerShell module is slowly coming into its own. A recent update added in a little extra functionality and Steve decided to explore that by showing us a handy script to assist with auditing Teams in a tenant.</p><h6 id="powershell--single-psm1-file-versus-multi-file-modules" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181116.md#powershell--single-psm1-file-versus-multi-file-modules"/><a href="https://evotec.xyz/powershell-single-psm1-file-versus-multi-file-modules/"><em>PowerShell – Single PSM1 file versus multi-file modules</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell--single-psm1-file-versus-multi-file-modules" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Przemyslaw Klys on November 16th<br>
Flattening your modules into a single file before deploying to the PowerShell Gallery seems to be trending a bit. Przemyslaw tested the idea on one of his modules that previously took 12 seconds to load. Now? Less than 1 second. To call that impressive would be putting it mildly.</p><h6 id="announcing-general-availability-of-the-windows-compatibility-module-100" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181116.md#announcing-general-availability-of-the-windows-compatibility-module-100"/><a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/11/15/announcing-general-availability-of-the-windows-compatibility-module-1-0-0/"><em>Announcing General Availability of the Windows Compatibility Module 1.0.0</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#announcing-general-availability-of-the-windows-compatibility-module-100" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Steve Lee on November 15th<br>
After a lot of hard work, the WindowsCompatibility module is now GA! This bad boy (<em>slaps module</em>) will let PS Core access Windows PS modules via implicit remoting. If a lack of native support for your favorite modules in Core has been holding you back, give this a shot.</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181116.md#reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post"/><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9w61lj/lord_i_feel_dumb_i_just_want_to_compare_two"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Popular Weekly Post</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---popular-weekly-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Help with CSVs is a pretty common request, so this seems fitting. Want to know how to compare values from two columns? Look no further for a simple solution, plus some other tidbits on working with CSVs.</p><h6 id="youtube-5-ways-to-select-unique-items-in-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181116.md#youtube-5-ways-to-select-unique-items-in-powershell"/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEfXck_NAX4"><em>Youtube: 5 ways to select Unique items in PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube-5-ways-to-select-unique-items-in-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Prateek Singh has put out a nice and short video to demonstrate 5 ways that you can select unique items in PowerShell. All of us learned at least one new technique from this, so hopefully you do too.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 9-November-2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-11-09-icymi-powershell-week-of-9-november-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-11-09-icymi-powershell-week-of-9-november-2018/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 09 Nov 2018 15:00:49 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;h1 id="icymi-powershell-week-of-9-november-2018" class="ps-heading"&gt;ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 9-November-2018&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#icymi-powershell-week-of-9-november-2018" 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;/h1&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Topics include replacing the MDT final summary, Azure Functions, dumping wifi passwords from your computer, code golf, and more&amp;hellip;&lt;br&gt;
Curated by Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, and Mark Roloff.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h6 id="transferring-functions-with-psremoting" class="ps-heading"&gt;&lt;a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181109.md#transferring-functions-with-psremoting"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="https://vexx32.github.io/2018/11/02/Transferring-Functions"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Transferring Functions with PSRemoting&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#transferring-functions-with-psremoting" 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;/h6&gt;
&lt;p&gt;by Joel Francis on November 2nd&lt;br&gt;
What do you do when you&amp;rsquo;re in a remote session and you need to bring a custom function over? You could write it up on the remote side but that sounds a lot like work. What about passing it through as an object? Joel shows us how we can earn some street cred at the water cooler with these cool tricks.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<h1 id="icymi-powershell-week-of-9-november-2018" class="ps-heading">ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 9-November-2018<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#icymi-powershell-week-of-9-november-2018" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h1><p>Topics include replacing the MDT final summary, Azure Functions, dumping wifi passwords from your computer, code golf, and more&hellip;<br>
Curated by Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, and Mark Roloff.</p><h6 id="transferring-functions-with-psremoting" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181109.md#transferring-functions-with-psremoting"/><a href="https://vexx32.github.io/2018/11/02/Transferring-Functions"><em>Transferring Functions with PSRemoting</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#transferring-functions-with-psremoting" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Joel Francis on November 2nd<br>
What do you do when you&rsquo;re in a remote session and you need to bring a custom function over? You could write it up on the remote side but that sounds a lot like work. What about passing it through as an object? Joel shows us how we can earn some street cred at the water cooler with these cool tricks.</p><h6 id="create-your-own-mdt-final-summary-wizard-with-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181109.md#create-your-own-mdt-final-summary-wizard-with-powershell"/><a href="http://www.systanddeploy.com/2018/11/create-your-own-mdt-final-summary.html"><em>Create your own MDT Final Summary wizard with PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#create-your-own-mdt-final-summary-wizard-with-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Damien Van Robaeys on November 5th<br>
When&rsquo;s the last time you thought of PowerShell and MDT together? Kicking off a series, Damien demonstrates how we can replace that boring final summary with a jazzed-up PowerShell one.</p><h6 id="creating-an-azure-sql-database-with-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181109.md#creating-an-azure-sql-database-with-powershell"/><a href="https://mcpmag.com/articles/2018/11/06/azure-sql-database-with-powershell.aspx"><em>Creating an Azure SQL Database with PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#creating-an-azure-sql-database-with-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Adam Bertram on November 6th<br>
If you sometimes find yourself in need of a database and don&rsquo;t have an instance on hand, or maybe you just want to show how quick and easy it is to stand one up in Azure, Adam&rsquo;s got you covered. Using just three cmdlets, you can have a SQL database in the cloud ready to go faster than a finance intern locking their AD account after a password change.</p><h6 id="an-azure-powershell-trigger-function-for-mac-address-vendor--manufacturer-lookup" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181109.md#an-azure-powershell-trigger-function-for-mac-address-vendor--manufacturer-lookup"/><a href="https://blog.darrenjrobinson.com/an-azure-powershell-trigger-function-for-mac-address-vendor-manufacturer-lookup/"><em>An Azure PowerShell Trigger Function for MAC Address Vendor / Manufacturer Lookup</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#an-azure-powershell-trigger-function-for-mac-address-vendor--manufacturer-lookup" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Darren Robinson on November 6th<br>
Darren is working on an IoT project that requires looking up vendor names from MAC addresses. In this post, he details his approach to creating a list of vendors easily consumable by PowerShell, plus setting up an Azure Function to handle querying this list with a REST API.</p><h6 id="get-known-wifi-networks-passwords-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181109.md#get-known-wifi-networks-passwords-powershell"/><a href="https://itfordummies.net/2018/11/05/get-known-wifi-networks-passwords-powershell/"><em>Get Known Wifi Networks Passwords PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#get-known-wifi-networks-passwords-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Emmanuel Demillière on November 5th<br>
If you&rsquo;re running a Windows machine, it&rsquo;s exceedingly easy to retrieve the passwords for any remembered wireless networks. Whether you&rsquo;re pen-testing or you just forgot the password and somebody needs it, Emmanuel has written up a nice PowerShell function that wraps around the <em>netsh</em> command to give you a nice collection of objects containing network names and their passwords.</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181109.md#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post"/><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9u2ynr/shortest_script_challenge_make_a_maze/"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Weekly Post</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>For all you code golf fans, the PowerShell subreddit hosts occasional &ldquo;Shortest Script Challenges&rdquo; that always bring out some interesting solutions. The latest is no exception. Browse through to see the various methods people used to randomly generate mazes.</p><h6 id="tweet-of-the-week" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181109.md#tweet-of-the-week"/><a href="https://twitter.com/IISResetMe/status/1060164938822500352"><em>Tweet of the Week</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#tweet-of-the-week" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Mathias Jessen has made a handy little tool for folks that have a need to consume Event Logs with PowerShell. His function will take your event log records and convert them into easy-to-work with objects.</p><h6 id="youtube---socal-powershell-advanced-functions" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181109.md#youtube---socal-powershell-advanced-functions"/><a href="https://youtu.be/3gDa5xQynZA?t=1740"><em>YouTube - SoCal PowerShell: Advanced Functions</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube---socal-powershell-advanced-functions" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Coming from the SoCal PowerShell user group this week, Kevin Marquette gives a presentation on advanced functions. This is great material to familiarize yourself with if you&rsquo;re looking to take your functions up a notch or two.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 2-November-2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-11-02-icymi-powershell-week-of-2-november-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-11-02-icymi-powershell-week-of-2-november-2018/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 02 Nov 2018 15:00:16 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include analyzing your scripts for code injection, configuring DSC with SQL, presentations from PSConfAsia, and more&amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include analyzing your scripts for code injection, configuring DSC with SQL, presentations from PSConfAsia, and more&hellip;</p><p>Intertubes scoured for content by Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, and Mark Roloff.</p><h6 id="how-to-secure-powershell-remoting-in-a-windows-domain" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181102.md#how-to-secure-powershell-remoting-in-a-windows-domain"/><a href="https://www.networkadm.in/securing-powershell/"><em>How To Secure PowerShell Remoting In A Windows Domain</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#how-to-secure-powershell-remoting-in-a-windows-domain" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Mike Kanakos on October 27th<br>
Digging into the security considerations surrounding PowerShell remoting can be a bit daunting. Fortunate for the rest of us, Mike was recently tasked with defining PowerShell&rsquo;s security posture in his organization and has written about his findings in this blog post. This is a great place to dive in for anyone looking to learn about it.</p><h6 id="using-powershell-injection-hunter-at-scale" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181102.md#using-powershell-injection-hunter-at-scale"/><a href="https://p0w3rsh3ll.wordpress.com/2018/10/30/using-powershell-injection-hunter-at-scale/"><em>Using PowerShell Injection Hunter at Scale</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#using-powershell-injection-hunter-at-scale" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Emin Atac on October 30th<br>
Malicious code injection probably isn&rsquo;t something many of us think about often, but we probably should. The InjectionHunter module can help you spot these in your scripts, but only if you pass them in as a ScriptBlockAst. Emin wanted something more accessible. This is a pretty cool write up about how Emin wrote a function to extend the inputs for this module, making it easier to analyze your code for these particular issues.</p><h6 id="powershell-script-module-design-building-tools-to-automate-the-process" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181102.md#powershell-script-module-design-building-tools-to-automate-the-process"/><a href="https://mikefrobbins.com/2018/11/01/powershell-script-module-design-building-tools-to-automate-the-process/"><em>PowerShell Script Module Design: Building Tools to Automate the Process</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-script-module-design-building-tools-to-automate-the-process" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Mike Robbins on November 1st<br>
Mike is up to the fourth part in his series on PowerShell&rsquo;s AST. In this post, he pulls together knowledge from the previous three to build an advanced function which can pull in code from a variety of sources and output an AST from it.</p><h6 id="dsc-pull-server-reloaded-part-3-pre-create-the-pull-server-database" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181102.md#dsc-pull-server-reloaded-part-3-pre-create-the-pull-server-database"/><a href="https://bgelens.nl/dsc-pull-server-reloaded-part-3-precreate-pull-server-database/"><em>DSC Pull Server reloaded. Part 3: Pre-create the Pull Server Database</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#dsc-pull-server-reloaded-part-3-pre-create-the-pull-server-database" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Ben Gelens on November 1st<br>
Windows Server is introducing the capability for a SQL-backed DSC pull server, and Ben has been working on a series to explore that. In his third post, he dives into configuring an Azure SQL instance, setting up the pull server, and registering a node. All with PowerShell!</p><h6 id="how-to-use-internal-powershell-gallery-app" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181102.md#how-to-use-internal-powershell-gallery-app"/><a href="https://practical365.com/blog/how-to-use-internal-powershell-gallery-app/?utm_content=79231324"><em>How to use Internal PowerShell Gallery App</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#how-to-use-internal-powershell-gallery-app" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Daler Sayfiddinov on November 2nd<br>
Here&rsquo;s an interesting way to store and distribute your scripts internally. Daler shows us how to use a SharePoint list as a backend repository with PowerApps acting as a frontend. Search, filtering, and the ability to submit new scripts all built-in.</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181102.md#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post"/><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9sxkzh/i_just_want_to_thank_the_whole_community_for/?st=jnzk5fyx&amp;sh=44be7d78"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Weekly Post</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>/u/WhatTheHomePod just wants to spread a little love and appreciation by thanking /r/PowerShell for being such an awesome community that helped them to get started learning this great tool.</p><h6 id="tweet-of-the-week" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181102.md#tweet-of-the-week"/><a href="https://twitter.com/cyberhayden/status/1057098123720310785"><em>Tweet of the Week</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#tweet-of-the-week" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>If cloud security is part of your jam, Azure ATP can now help you monitor for remote PowerShell execution.</p><h6 id="livestream-manage-your-heterogeneous-environments-with-powershell-core" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181102.md#livestream-manage-your-heterogeneous-environments-with-powershell-core"/><a href="https://livestream.com/gaelcolas/PSConfAsia/videos/182706737"><em>LiveStream: Manage Your Heterogeneous Environments with PowerShell Core</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#livestream-manage-your-heterogeneous-environments-with-powershell-core" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>At this year&rsquo;s PSConfAsia, Steve Lee gave a great presentation that shows off some of the great cross-platform features that he and his team have brought to PS Core.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>The New PowerShell.org Logo (and eBooks! and Swag!)</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-29-the-new-powershell-org-logo-and-ebooks-and-swag/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-29-the-new-powershell-org-logo-and-ebooks-and-swag/</guid><pubDate>Mon, 29 Oct 2018 14:37:27 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;If you check out our free eBook, &lt;a href="https://leanpub.com/powershellorghistoryofacommunity"&gt;&lt;em&gt;PowerShell.org: History of a Community&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, you&amp;rsquo;ll see both the original PowerShell.org logo and our second, &amp;ldquo;Metro-fied&amp;rdquo; take on it. The first one is probably easy to make sense of, with the PowerShell logo superimposed over the Earth, suggesting a global community. The &amp;ldquo;Metro&amp;rdquo; version go a bit abstract, since the Earth became just a simple round circle.&lt;br&gt;
What both logos lacked was a clear commitment to a diverse community of _people. _Part of the recent re-launch of PowerShell.org included our Community Member Directory, with &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/members/our-verified-profile-program/"&gt;specific rules of inclusion&lt;/a&gt; that are designed to emphasize the &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; in our community, and to highlight their contributions and accomplishments.&lt;br&gt;
With that in mind, today we&amp;rsquo;re launching a new logo for PowerShell.org. It&amp;rsquo;s designed to clearly communicate &amp;ldquo;people working together around PowerShell,&amp;rdquo; and it stands as a more unique identifier for this website and the community it supports. We&amp;rsquo;re also launching a page to help people understand how they can &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/contributing/"&gt;contribute to the broader community&lt;/a&gt;, using PowerShell.org as a platform for their efforts.&lt;br&gt;
In celebration of our new logo, we&amp;rsquo;re offering an exclusive, &lt;strong&gt;limited-time&lt;/strong&gt; selection of cool merchandise. All proceeds benefit our nonprofit programs, and be aware that these items will only be available for a few months. You can &lt;a href="https://www.zazzle.com/powershellorg/products"&gt;visit our Zazzle Store now&lt;/a&gt; to start selecting your items. Pay close attention, because many of them offer customization options for style, color, size, and so on. We&amp;rsquo;re aware that a few of the prices are a bit on the higher side, but that&amp;rsquo;s the nature of these one-of-a-kind, print-on-demand items, as we can&amp;rsquo;t financially or logistically bulk-order, warehouse, and fulfill items ourselves. Keep in mind that Zazzle routinely offers significant discount codes, too - watch their site for those. And yes, some of the items &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; a little silly, but we couldn&amp;rsquo;t resist putting the logo on stuff like Oreo cookies, cake pops, and wrapping paper.&lt;br&gt;
We&amp;rsquo;re also re-branding &lt;a href="https://leanpub.com/u/devopscollective"&gt;our library of free eBooks&lt;/a&gt; with all-new covers featuring the new logo. If you&amp;rsquo;ve not checked them out, this is a great time to download the entire collection (any money you choose to pay supports our nonprofit programs, and you&amp;rsquo;re welcome to pay nothing). If you&amp;rsquo;ve already got them, go ahead and re-download these great new covers. Don&amp;rsquo;t forget to let Leanpub notify you via email of updates, as these are &amp;ldquo;living books,&amp;rdquo; open-source hosted in GitHub, and we do periodically make corrections and updates.&lt;br&gt;
We hope you&amp;rsquo;ll join us in spreading the word, and welcome to the new PowerShell.org!&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>If you check out our free eBook, <a href="https://leanpub.com/powershellorghistoryofacommunity"><em>PowerShell.org: History of a Community</em></a>, you&rsquo;ll see both the original PowerShell.org logo and our second, &ldquo;Metro-fied&rdquo; take on it. The first one is probably easy to make sense of, with the PowerShell logo superimposed over the Earth, suggesting a global community. The &ldquo;Metro&rdquo; version go a bit abstract, since the Earth became just a simple round circle.<br>
What both logos lacked was a clear commitment to a diverse community of _people. _Part of the recent re-launch of PowerShell.org included our Community Member Directory, with<a href="https://powershell.org/members/our-verified-profile-program/">specific rules of inclusion</a> that are designed to emphasize the <em>people</em> in our community, and to highlight their contributions and accomplishments.<br>
With that in mind, today we&rsquo;re launching a new logo for PowerShell.org. It&rsquo;s designed to clearly communicate &ldquo;people working together around PowerShell,&rdquo; and it stands as a more unique identifier for this website and the community it supports. We&rsquo;re also launching a page to help people understand how they can<a href="https://powershell.org/contributing/">contribute to the broader community</a>, using PowerShell.org as a platform for their efforts.<br>
In celebration of our new logo, we&rsquo;re offering an exclusive, <strong>limited-time</strong> selection of cool merchandise. All proceeds benefit our nonprofit programs, and be aware that these items will only be available for a few months. You can<a href="https://www.zazzle.com/powershellorg/products">visit our Zazzle Store now</a> to start selecting your items. Pay close attention, because many of them offer customization options for style, color, size, and so on. We&rsquo;re aware that a few of the prices are a bit on the higher side, but that&rsquo;s the nature of these one-of-a-kind, print-on-demand items, as we can&rsquo;t financially or logistically bulk-order, warehouse, and fulfill items ourselves. Keep in mind that Zazzle routinely offers significant discount codes, too - watch their site for those. And yes, some of the items <em>are</em> a little silly, but we couldn&rsquo;t resist putting the logo on stuff like Oreo cookies, cake pops, and wrapping paper.<br>
We&rsquo;re also re-branding<a href="https://leanpub.com/u/devopscollective">our library of free eBooks</a> with all-new covers featuring the new logo. If you&rsquo;ve not checked them out, this is a great time to download the entire collection (any money you choose to pay supports our nonprofit programs, and you&rsquo;re welcome to pay nothing). If you&rsquo;ve already got them, go ahead and re-download these great new covers. Don&rsquo;t forget to let Leanpub notify you via email of updates, as these are &ldquo;living books,&rdquo; open-source hosted in GitHub, and we do periodically make corrections and updates.<br>
We hope you&rsquo;ll join us in spreading the word, and welcome to the new PowerShell.org!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 26-October-2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-26-icymi-powershell-week-of-26-october-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-26-icymi-powershell-week-of-26-october-2018/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 26 Oct 2018 15:00:06 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include plenty of AST, using the WindowsCompatibility module, Azure Cloud Shell updates, and many more&amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include plenty of AST, using the WindowsCompatibility module, Azure Cloud Shell updates, and many more&hellip;</p><p>Brought to you by your ICYMI team: Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, Mark Roloff, and Greg Tate.</p><h6 id="introducing-windowscompatibility-for-powershell-core" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181026.md#introducing-windowscompatibility-for-powershell-core"/><a href="https://pwsh.nl/2018/10/19/introducing-windowscompatibility-for-powershell-core/"><em>Introducing WindowsCompatibility for PowerShell Core</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#introducing-windowscompatibility-for-powershell-core" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Gerbrand van der Weg on October 19th<br>
The <strong>WindowsCompatibility</strong> module, which is in Release Candidate right now, aims to ease the transition from Windows PowerShell to PowerShell Core by using PSRemoting to allow you to run your Windows PowerShell modules seamlessly through PowerShell Core.</p><h6 id="so-you-think-you-can-parse" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181026.md#so-you-think-you-can-parse"/><a href="https://blog.iisreset.me/so-you-think-you-can-parse/"><em>So You Think You Can Parse?</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#so-you-think-you-can-parse" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Mathias Jessen on October 22nd<br>
We love deep dives into little niche problems. You always end up learning interesting nuggets that, even if never used, are just plain cool. Mathias has thrown together a pretty rad demonstration of utilizing PowerShell&rsquo;s parser to interpret a string of mixed data types.</p><h6 id="powershell-module-sysinfo" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181026.md#powershell-module-sysinfo"/><a href="https://www.sconstantinou.com/powershell-module-sysinfo/"><em>PowerShell Module SysInfo</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-module-sysinfo" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Stephanos Constantinou on October 24th<br>
This is a pretty handy little module that wraps around CIM cmdlets, making it easier for you to grab hardware details about your computer. In this post, Stephanos gives us a brief tour of his handiwork.</p><h6 id="office-365-mailbox-forwarding-rules-report-using-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181026.md#office-365-mailbox-forwarding-rules-report-using-powershell"/><a href="https://www.lazyexchangeadmin.com/2018/10/office-365-mailbox-forwarding-rules.html"><em>Office 365 Mailbox Forwarding Rules Report using PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#office-365-mailbox-forwarding-rules-report-using-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by June Castillote on October 20th<br>
If you have a need to ever audit email forwarding and redirect rules in your Exchange Online environment, June has got something nice for you. This script will email a report on those rules found to help you get a handle on exactly where people in your organization are forwarding things.</p><h6 id="learn-about-the-powershell-abstract-syntax-tree-ast--part-3" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181026.md#learn-about-the-powershell-abstract-syntax-tree-ast--part-3"/><a href="https://mikefrobbins.com/2018/10/25/learn-about-the-powershell-abstract-syntax-tree-ast-part-3/"><em>Learn about the PowerShell Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) – Part 3</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#learn-about-the-powershell-abstract-syntax-tree-ast--part-3" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Mike Robbins on October 25th<br>
Mike is up to the third part in his series to learn AST. In this one, he focuses on showing us how to recursively query the AST to find a list of all variables used in a function.</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181026.md#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post"/><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9pcu1f/anyone_have_move_in_scripts/"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Weekly Post</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Who doesn&rsquo;t enjoy getting a new computer? If you&rsquo;ve got a lot of tools and particular configurations, probably you. New hardware is nice but, man, can it be a pain to remember every little thing we need to reinstall. /u/Southpaw018 has a nice solution to this; script it with PowerShell! Check this thread out to see plenty of examples of others&rsquo; &ldquo;move-in&rdquo; scripts.</p><h6 id="tweet-of-the-week" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181026.md#tweet-of-the-week"/><a href="https://twitter.com/DarrylvdPeijl/status/1054698290850267136"><em>Tweet of the Week</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#tweet-of-the-week" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>If you like to log the start and stop times for your scripts, or see how long it takes your intern to fetch a fresh cup of coffee, you may want to use .NET&rsquo;s Stopwatch class. @DarrylvdPeijl discovered this useful tool and shares a quick screenshot demo.</p><h6 id="youtube-powershell-in-azure-cloud-shell-ga" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181026.md#youtube-powershell-in-azure-cloud-shell-ga"/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LT4cjeP-28"><em>Youtube: PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell GA</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube-powershell-in-azure-cloud-shell-ga" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Scott Hanselman and Danny Maertens discuss the GA release of Azure Cloud Shell, now running PS Core 6.1 on Linux. New cmdlets, seamless switching between Bash and PowerShell, a teaser for integrated Exchange Online, and more great features.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PowerShell.org Site Status Update</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-24-powershell-org-site-status-update/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-24-powershell-org-site-status-update/</guid><pubDate>Wed, 24 Oct 2018 17:45:55 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This post will be periodically updated as needed, so feel free to check back.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Our site upgrade and re-theme is going well, and I wanted to outline some of the major changes and current issues. If you&amp;rsquo;re encountering any lingering issues, please drop a comment; rather than replying, I&amp;rsquo;ll update the main article.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p><em>This post will be periodically updated as needed, so feel free to check back.</em><br>
Our site upgrade and re-theme is going well, and I wanted to outline some of the major changes and current issues. If you&rsquo;re encountering any lingering issues, please drop a comment; rather than replying, I&rsquo;ll update the main article.</p><p>The <strong>new theme</strong> is largely successful and is fully implemented. We&rsquo;ve seen some issues with the pop-up login/register dialog for some users; you can always visit
if you need a non-pop-up login experience.<br>
The <strong>new user profile and directory system</strong> is online. This includes a Member Directory, and a<a href="https://powershell.org/members/our-verified-profile-program/">Verified Profile Program</a>. Please read about the program very carefully if you intend to participate. We&rsquo;ve unfortunately seen a lot of profiles missing photos, including photos of someone&rsquo;s dog, or using unacceptable Display Names. Not being in the Program does not impact your ability to use the rest of the site, but if you want to be in the Member Directory, you&rsquo;ll need to comply with the rules.<br>
The new user profile system also, by default, <strong>was sending clear-text passwords</strong> for new registrations and password changes. That is demonstrably a bad idea, and I&rsquo;ve finally figured out how to fix it. The problem was an interaction between about nine plugins and the core WordPress code, which took a hot minute (whilst dodging justifiably angry emails) to unravel.<br>
If you are requesting a <strong>password reset</strong> and not getting the email, your spam filters are blocking it. Sorry. Emails of that type are commonly sent as phishing attempts, and so that&rsquo;s why they get blocked. You&rsquo;re welcome to create a new account, if you wish.<br><strong>Forums notifications</strong> were known to be not-working and are now verified to be working. If you&rsquo;re not getting them, check the spam filters.<br>
The specialized **forums views, **including things like &ldquo;Topics with No Replies,&rdquo; are borked. That&rsquo;s on my list.<br>
From the <strong>authentication</strong> front, we do not yet support 2FA. We&rsquo;re speaking with the user manager module developer about adding that, as whatever we do needs to be compatible with that module. We&rsquo;ll aim for Authy/Authenticator first, and then move on to working on physical tokens like yubikey. It is too early to place requests for Your Favorite 2FA to be supported.<br>
**UPDATE: **Also in the <strong>authentication</strong> front, I&rsquo;ve been looking into re-adding social logins (Twitter, etc) to the site. At this time I&rsquo;m pausing that effort. While I grok the convenience, there are some serious downsides, like a total inability to influence whatever the social services decide to impose in terms of rules from moment to moment. Removing one of those services, once you rely on it, is damn near impossible, and I&rsquo;m not necessarily keen to give companies like Facebook any more hooks into people&rsquo;s lives. We&rsquo;re instead going to try and focus deeply on enabling 2FA within the site, to provide a more secure login experience right here. Seeing how Facebook has been using people&rsquo;s mobile phone numbers (provided to FB only to enable 2FA) for ad targeting, I&rsquo;m just even more distrustful of what they&rsquo;re doing with their login services. The general feeling in the InfoSec community is &ldquo;don&rsquo;t do social logins to your websites&rdquo; and that&rsquo;s kind of where I&rsquo;m at right now.<br>
We&rsquo;ve added support for **Ranks &amp; Badges **on the site, which display in your<a href="/profile">profile</a> and are attached to site activity. Open to suggestions on how to expand that program, and know that the current badge graphs are drafts until we have some proper ones made by someone talented. Volunteers welcome.<br>
I think that&rsquo;s it. If I&rsquo;m missing anything, ask in the Comments, and I&rsquo;ll update above.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit 2019 – Post-CFP Thoughts</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-22-powershell-and-devops-global-summit-2019-post-cfp-thoughts/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-22-powershell-and-devops-global-summit-2019-post-cfp-thoughts/</guid><pubDate>Mon, 22 Oct 2018 08:00:49 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Now that Warren Frame and I have finally come up for air after reviewing all the submissions for the 2019 PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit, we wanted to send a great big THANK YOU!!! to all who submitted.  You all definitely made our job challenging and we think we have a fabulous lineup for this year’s show!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Many of you have asked for feedback regarding your submissions, and while we would love to send everyone individualized feedback - with the sheer number of submissions, that just isn’t feasible. &lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Now that Warren Frame and I have finally come up for air after reviewing all the submissions for the 2019 PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit, we wanted to send a great big THANK YOU!!! to all who submitted.  You all definitely made our job challenging and we think we have a fabulous lineup for this year’s show!</p><p>Many of you have asked for feedback regarding your submissions, and while we would love to send everyone individualized feedback - with the sheer number of submissions, that just isn’t feasible. </p><p>But we did want to share some thoughts that we had while reviewing the submissions and talk about what made a submission stand out to us.  We also wanted to provide some statistics on the submissions, so you know what topics were uber-popular and which weren’t (spoiler: “Release Pipeline” won hands down for most submissions).  Warren has provided a great writeup on how we were able to narrow the field down from 200 to around 60 here: <a href="http://ramblingcookiemonster.github.io/Summit-CFP/">http://ramblingcookiemonster.github.io/Summit-CFP/</a></p><p>There are still numerous ways to share your ideas and stories at Summit.  Sign up for the lightning demos, or a side session, or share your war stories at your lunch table.  Many good ideas for sessions start as casual conversation or an “I wish I had a way to do ‘X’” … and definitely, submit again for next year!  And don’t forget to register starting November 1st</p><p>!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 19-October-2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-19-icymi-powershell-week-of-19-october-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-19-icymi-powershell-week-of-19-october-2018/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 19 Oct 2018 15:00:49 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include creating PSObjects, a deep dive on arrays, controlling your Raspberry Pi with the IoT module, and more&amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include creating PSObjects, a deep dive on arrays, controlling your Raspberry Pi with the IoT module, and more&hellip;</p><p>Brought to you by your ICYMI team: Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, Mark Roloff, and Greg Tate.</p><h6 id="input-object-subproperty-tip" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181019.md#input-object-subproperty-tip"/><a href="https://andrewpla.github.io/Input-Object-Subproperty-Tip/"><em>Input Object Subproperty Tip</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#input-object-subproperty-tip" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Andrew Pla on October 14th<br>
Suppose the output of one function isn&rsquo;t quite in the format needed for the next in a pipeline. You may think of calculated properties with <em>Select-Object</em> but if these are custom functions, you can cut the middle-man out entirely. Andrew developed a simple and clever solution for this by using the <em>param</em> block of receiving function.</p><h6 id="ps-core---numeric-literals" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181019.md#ps-core---numeric-literals"/><a href="https://vexx32.github.io/PS-Core-Numeric-Literals/"><em>PS Core - Numeric Literals</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#ps-core---numeric-literals" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Joel Francis on October 14th<br>
If you don&rsquo;t know Joel, he&rsquo;s a helpful regular in the community and a PS Core contributor. In his first blog, he discusses PowerShell&rsquo;s somewhat dodgy support for large numeric literals and introduces newly implemented ones to address that shortcoming.</p><h6 id="everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-arrays" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181019.md#everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-arrays"/><a href="https://kevinmarquette.github.io/2018-10-15-Powershell-arrays-Everything-you-wanted-to-know/"><em>Everything you wanted to know about arrays</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-arrays" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Kevin Marquette on October 15th<br>
Time to jump down the rabbit hole and dive deep into PowerShell&rsquo;s arrays. Building them, using them with operators, the various types, and more. Like his much touted guide to hashtables, Kevin&rsquo;s guide to arrays belongs in your bookmarks folder. Like, now.</p><h6 id="4-ways-to-create-powershell-objects" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181019.md#4-ways-to-create-powershell-objects"/><a href="https://ridicurious.com/2018/10/15/4-ways-to-create-powershell-objects/"><em>4 Ways to Create PowerShell Objects</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#4-ways-to-create-powershell-objects" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Prateek Singh on October 15th<br>
Everyone&rsquo;s got their favorite way to create objects. You probably know a few different ones, too. Today, I learned one I didn&rsquo;t know. Prateek&rsquo;s latest blog shows you 4 ways to create custom objects in PowerShell.</p><h6 id="running-ping-tests" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181019.md#running-ping-tests"/><a href="https://richardspowershellblog.wordpress.com/2018/10/16/running-ping-tests/"><em>Running Ping tests</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#running-ping-tests" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Richard Siddaway on October 16th<br>
In prior posts over the weekend, Richard walked us through gathering some general network info for troubleshooting and using Pester for ping tests. Now, he shows us how to take those prior scripts and wrap them up in a control script to glue all of the functionality together.</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181019.md#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post"/><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9oz1ie/powershell_is_the_4_fastest_growing_language_of/"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Weekly Post</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>The PowerShell-verse is growing, and perhaps one of the best indicators of this is that it is officially the fourth fastest growing language on GitHub. It&rsquo;s a little crazy to think that a language made for Windows automation would pull off something like that but here we are; cross-platform, open-sourced, making waves. And it&rsquo;s pretty cool.</p><h6 id="tweet-of-the-week" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181019.md#tweet-of-the-week"/><a href="https://twitter.com/DirectoryRanger/status/1051072287699558401"><em>Tweet of the Week</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#tweet-of-the-week" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>This is a fun find. @DirectoryRanger pointed us to a PowerShell script written by Mike Loss. The script, Grouper, analyzes the XML from Get-GPOReport to identify security holes in policy settings.</p><h6 id="youtube-anzpsug---october-2018" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181019.md#youtube-anzpsug---october-2018"/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m9PnWBF1vI"><em>Youtube: ANZPSUG - October 2018</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube-anzpsug---october-2018" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>This month&rsquo;s Australia and New Zealand PowerShell User Group featured guest speaker Daniel Silva. In a departure from the typical admin-related use-cases, Daniel gives a great presentation on using PowerShell Core with the Raspberry Pi, including the IoT module.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PowerShell.org Site Maintenance Today</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-19-powershell-org-site-maintenance-today/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-19-powershell-org-site-maintenance-today/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 19 Oct 2018 14:27:59 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;PowerShell.org will be undergoing upgrading and maintenance on Friday and Saturday. We&amp;rsquo;ll leave the site open, as Articles and Forums should remain accessible, but the site may look a little rough around the edges at times.&lt;br&gt;
The site does use some pretty aggressive caching, so if you&amp;rsquo;re visiting throughout the day, use a force-reload (Shift+Refresh or whatever in your browser) to pull a fresh set of pages as we work.&lt;br&gt;
We hope to have everything done by Sunday morning.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>PowerShell.org will be undergoing upgrading and maintenance on Friday and Saturday. We&rsquo;ll leave the site open, as Articles and Forums should remain accessible, but the site may look a little rough around the edges at times.<br>
The site does use some pretty aggressive caching, so if you&rsquo;re visiting throughout the day, use a force-reload (Shift+Refresh or whatever in your browser) to pull a fresh set of pages as we work.<br>
We hope to have everything done by Sunday morning.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 12-October-2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-12-icymi-powershell-week-of-12-october-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-12-icymi-powershell-week-of-12-october-2018/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2018 15:00:00 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include the Switch statement, Chocolatey Fest, Graph API, HTML disk reports, auditing Office 365 document sharing and Teams usage.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include the Switch statement, Chocolatey Fest, Graph API, HTML disk reports, auditing Office 365 document sharing and Teams usage.</p><p>Special thanks to Mark Roloff for his creative writing and Robin Dadswell for content curation!</p><h6 id="powershell-switch" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181012.md#powershell-switch"/><a href="https://www.sconstantinou.com/powershell-switch/"><em>PowerShell Switch</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-switch" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Stephanos Constantinou on October 8th<br>
There are times when we&rsquo;ve got a large number of conditions to check against and having more than a few <em>if</em> statements gets pretty ugly real fast. Enter the <em>switch</em> statement. Stephanos has written a nice rundown of how to use it when evaluating lots of conditions, as well as some of its more advanced features.</p><h6 id="my-chocolateyfest-winops-conference-experience" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181012.md#my-chocolateyfest-winops-conference-experience"/><a href="https://winsysblog.com/2018/10/my-chocolateyfest-winops-conference-experience.html"><em>My Chocolateyfest (WinOps) Conference Experience</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#my-chocolateyfest-winops-conference-experience" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Dan Franciscus on October 9th<br>
In a more community-meta post, Dan shares his thoughts after attending this year&rsquo;s Chocolatey Fest; that&rsquo;s a conference broadly focused around everything Windows automation. I didn&rsquo;t know much about the event before, but Dan&rsquo;s candid perspective of the experience has convinced me to mark my calendar for hopefully attending next year.</p><h6 id="getting-started-with-graph-api-and-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181012.md#getting-started-with-graph-api-and-powershell"/><a href="https://alexholmeset.blog/2018/10/10/getting-started-with-graph-api-and-powershell/"><em>Getting started with Graph API and PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#getting-started-with-graph-api-and-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Alexander Holmeset on October 10th<br>
We love playing with cool new APIs, and while the Graph API isn&rsquo;t exactly new, to a lot of people it probably is. It can also open the door to a lot of cross-service automation for those of us working in the Azure/O365 world. Alexander has published a great introduction to Graph, how to explore it, and how to get started using it in your PowerShell scripts.</p><h6 id="creating-colorful-html-disk-reports-with-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181012.md#creating-colorful-html-disk-reports-with-powershell"/><a href="https://jdhitsolutions.com/blog/powershell/6130/creating-colorful-html-disk-reports-with-powershell/"><em>Creating Colorful HTML Disk Reports with PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#creating-colorful-html-disk-reports-with-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Jeffrey Hicks on October 11th<br>
One of the best ways to expand your scripting knowledge is to read someone else&rsquo;s work. Jeff has offered an opportunity to do that right here. In this post, he found an old script, and decided to dust it off and add some new features to it. The result is a clean and professional looking HTML report.</p><h6 id="a-quick-start-guide-for-powershell-i-made-for-work" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181012.md#a-quick-start-guide-for-powershell-i-made-for-work"/><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9mpf9u/a_quick_start_guide_for_powershell_i_made_for_work"><em>A quick start guide for powershell I made for work</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#a-quick-start-guide-for-powershell-i-made-for-work" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>There doesn&rsquo;t seem to ever be any real shortage of newcomers to PowerShell, so it&rsquo;s no surprise that new beginner material is always popping up. Reddit user /u/tamtt has thrown together a pretty nice guide to getting started, with quick explanations and examples of many foundational concepts.</p><h6 id="tweet-of-the-week" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181012.md#tweet-of-the-week"/><a href="https://twitter.com/gerbrandvdweg/status/1049928642015444992"><em>Tweet of the Week</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#tweet-of-the-week" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Stepping back from highlighting just popular media for a moment, we felt that this interaction served as a nice reminder of how accessible help in the community is. One of our team members also got burned by this error in a PowerShell module, but the maintainers were able to point to a quick and easy solution.</p><h6 id="youtube-getting-stuff-done-solving-office-365-problems-with-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181012.md#youtube-getting-stuff-done-solving-office-365-problems-with-powershell"/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUY2_fwKmoY"><em>Youtube: Getting Stuff Done: Solving Office 365 Problems with PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube-getting-stuff-done-solving-office-365-problems-with-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>This 20-minute session from Ignite covers a number of useful tips around auditing document sharing, Teams usage, and license management. Topics include using the Office 365 audit log to discover who&rsquo;s creating new Office 365 Groups, analyzing document sharing habits, understanding guest user activity, investigating Teams compliance, managing license features, and finding <strong>pwned</strong> mailboxes.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PowerShell + DevOps Summit 2019 Update – Agenda Online!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-12-powershell-devops-summit-2019-update-agenda-online/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-12-powershell-devops-summit-2019-update-agenda-online/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2018 10:01:47 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Missy Januszko and Warren Frame, our Co-Directors of Summit Content for 2019, have finally completed the arduous task of combing through the dozens of topic submissions from all of you in the community! The Official Agenda is now online, and is linked &lt;a href="http://powershellsummit.org"&gt;from the main Summit page&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Missy Januszko and Warren Frame, our Co-Directors of Summit Content for 2019, have finally completed the arduous task of combing through the dozens of topic submissions from all of you in the community! The Official Agenda is now online, and is linked<a href="http://powershellsummit.org">from the main Summit page</a>!</p><p>You&rsquo;ll find some other key resources on that page as well, including:</p><ul><li>Information about our new entry-level OnRamp hands-on track</li><li>Links to our new Official App (highly recommended)</li><li>The Summiteer Manual, freshly updated with key facts for 2019</li></ul><p>Registration opens 1-November-2018 (links are on the main page along with everything else), and we look forward to seeing you!</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 5-October-2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-05-icymi-powershell-week-of-5-october-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-05-icymi-powershell-week-of-5-october-2018/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 05 Oct 2018 15:00:38 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include the &lt;strong&gt;Az&lt;/strong&gt; module, PowerShell module design, PowerShell &amp;amp; Puppet, Hacktoberfest, SQL Server backups, and a PowerShell session from Ignite.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include the <strong>Az</strong> module, PowerShell module design, PowerShell &amp; Puppet, Hacktoberfest, SQL Server backups, and a PowerShell session from Ignite.</p><p>Special thanks to Mark Roloff, Robin Dadswell, and Brett Bunker for contributions this week.</p><h6 id="announcing-new-module" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181005.md#announcing-new-module-az"/><a href="https://github.com/Azure/azure-powershell/blob/preview/documentation/announcing-az-module.md"><em>Announcing New Module &lsquo;Az&rsquo;</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#announcing-new-module" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Mark Cowlishaw on Friday, September 28th<br>
The Az module is intended as a replacmeent for AzureRM and will become the new standard Azure PowerShell commands. The final feature update to AzureRM will be in December 2018.</p><h6 id="learning-about-the-powershell-abstract-syntax-tree-ast" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181005.md#learning-about-the-powershell-abstract-syntax-tree-ast"/><a href="https://mikefrobbins.com/2018/09/28/learning-about-the-powershell-abstract-syntax-tree-ast/"><em>Learning about the PowerShell Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#learning-about-the-powershell-abstract-syntax-tree-ast" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Mike Robbins on Friday, September 28th<br>
Mike is on a journey to piece together many separate script files into a single PSM1 file. Rather than rely on potentially complicated regex or string parsing to do the job, he opts for exploring how with PowerShell&rsquo;s far more interesting Abstract Syntax Tree.</p><h6 id="executing-puppet-tasks-with-powershell-via-the-puppet-orchestrator-api" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181005.md#executing-puppet-tasks-with-powershell-via-the-puppet-orchestrator-api"/><a href="https://www.joeypiccola.com/puppet-tasks-via-powershell/"><em>Executing Puppet Tasks with PowerShell via the Puppet Orchestrator API</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#executing-puppet-tasks-with-powershell-via-the-puppet-orchestrator-api" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Joey Piccola on Sunday, September 30th<br>
Interested in using PowerShell to manage Puppet? Learn how with a quick tutorial on using the Puppet Orchestrator API with <strong>Invoke-WebRequest</strong>.</p><h6 id="i-need-you-hacktoberfest" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181005.md#i-need-you-hacktoberfest"/><a href="https://king.geek.nz/2018/10/02/hacktoberfest-2018/"><em>I Need You! #Hacktoberfest</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#i-need-you-hacktoberfest" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Josh King on Monday, October 1st<br>
Hacktoberfest is officially in full swing and there are tons of open-source projects out there looking for some love. Josh King, creator of the BurntToast module, has a project board set up with tasks to complete for the module&rsquo;s next release. If you&rsquo;re looking for a chance to contribute more openly to the PowerShell community or would just like a project for the month&rsquo;s event, stop in and take a look.</p><h6 id="does-it-loop-foreach-experiences-with-an-emtpy-variable" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://patrickwahlmueller.wordpress.com/2018/10/03/does-it-loop-foreach-experiences-with-empty-variable/"><em>Does it Loop? Foreach Experiences with an Emtpy Variable</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#does-it-loop-foreach-experiences-with-an-emtpy-variable" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Patrick Wahlmüller on October 3rd<br>
Patrick shares an important lesson to consider when using the<strong>foreach</strong> scripting construct:  initialize your variables!</p><h6 id="ms-sql-db-backup-and-restore-with-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181005.md#ms-sql-db-backup-and-restore-with-powershell"/><a href="https://www.scriptinglibrary.com/languages/powershell/ms-sql-db-backup-and-restore-with-powershell/"><em>MS SQL DB Backup and Restore with PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#ms-sql-db-backup-and-restore-with-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Pauolo Frigo on October 4th<br>
Find out how easy it is to automate your SQL Server backup jobs using the <strong>SQLServer</strong> PowerShell module. Hint: It&rsquo;s a lot easier than point-and-clicking your way through SQL Server Management Studio!</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181005.md#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post"/><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9lcrmk/breaking_change_with_powershell_jobs_and_the/"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Weekly Post</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-weekly-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>For those of you deploying Windows 10 1809, watch out for a change in behavior when calling <strong>cmd.exe</strong> within a scriptblock using <strong>start-job</strong>.</p><h6 id="tweet-of-the-week" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181005.md#tweet-of-the-week"/><a href="https://twitter.com/JanEgilRing/status/1048069179222495233"><em>Tweet of the Week</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#tweet-of-the-week" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Major increase in coverage for PowerShell Core running on Windows 10 1809 compared to 1803!</p><h6 id="youtube-powershell-cross-platform-scripting-and-ai-infused-automation" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20181005.md#youtube-powershell-cross-platform-scripting-and-ai-infused-automation"/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EVHChiqZOw"><em>Youtube: PowerShell Cross-Platform Scripting and AI-Infused Automation</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube-powershell-cross-platform-scripting-and-ai-infused-automation" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>By Jeffrey Snover on September 30th<br>
Demo-rich show that looks at the evolution of PowerShell as the de facto automation scripting tool across Windows and Linux platforms as presented by the father of PowerShell, Jeffrey Snover. Check out the ability for Visual Studio Code to run PowerShell inside of CloudShell.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Free (beta) eBook: PowerShell.org, History of a Community</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-04-free-beta-ebook-powershell-org-history-of-a-community/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-10-04-free-beta-ebook-powershell-org-history-of-a-community/</guid><pubDate>Thu, 04 Oct 2018 14:45:03 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Now available in &amp;ldquo;preview&amp;rdquo; is a new ebook, &lt;em&gt;**PowerShell.org: History of a Community. **&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;
There&amp;rsquo;s still a bit left to write, but this short (under 30 pages at the moment) ebook is designed to share some of what went into the building of PowerShell.org, the PowerShell Summit, and so on. The goal is to help those who may become involved with the organization in the future understand some of the decisions that have been made to this point. It&amp;rsquo;s also intended as a collection of &amp;ldquo;lessons learned&amp;rdquo; about building and nurturing a technology community in general, for anyone who might be interested. It digs a bit into the organization&amp;rsquo;s path to being a nonprofit, as well.&lt;br&gt;
Grab the book now from &lt;a href="https://leanpub.com/powershellorghistoryofacommunity"&gt;https://leanpub.com/powershellorghistoryofacommunity&lt;/a&gt;. I suggest allowing Leanpub to email you when it&amp;rsquo;s updated, as it assuredly will be.&lt;br&gt;
I&amp;rsquo;d very much like &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; feedback. Ask questions - what about the organization and its past or future isn&amp;rsquo;t currently covered? What questions does the book leave you with after you read it? What could make it more helpful, or clearer? Feel free to drop comments right here on this post, or use the book&amp;rsquo;s &amp;ldquo;Email the author(s)&amp;rdquo; link on Leanpub to send an email.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Now available in &ldquo;preview&rdquo; is a new ebook, <em>**PowerShell.org: History of a Community. **</em><br>
There&rsquo;s still a bit left to write, but this short (under 30 pages at the moment) ebook is designed to share some of what went into the building of PowerShell.org, the PowerShell Summit, and so on. The goal is to help those who may become involved with the organization in the future understand some of the decisions that have been made to this point. It&rsquo;s also intended as a collection of &ldquo;lessons learned&rdquo; about building and nurturing a technology community in general, for anyone who might be interested. It digs a bit into the organization&rsquo;s path to being a nonprofit, as well.<br>
Grab the book now from <a href="https://leanpub.com/powershellorghistoryofacommunity">https://leanpub.com/powershellorghistoryofacommunity</a>. I suggest allowing Leanpub to email you when it&rsquo;s updated, as it assuredly will be.<br>
I&rsquo;d very much like <em>your</em> feedback. Ask questions - what about the organization and its past or future isn&rsquo;t currently covered? What questions does the book leave you with after you read it? What could make it more helpful, or clearer? Feel free to drop comments right here on this post, or use the book&rsquo;s &ldquo;Email the author(s)&rdquo; link on Leanpub to send an email.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 28-September-18</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-09-28-icymi-powershell-week-of-28-september-18/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-09-28-icymi-powershell-week-of-28-september-18/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 28 Sep 2018 15:00:54 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include PowerShell Rest API on AWS Lamda, web applications in PowerShell, using PowerBI to show DB restores, input validation in functions, PowerShell command history, and the Unplugged session at Ignite with Jeffrey Snover and Jason Helmick.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include PowerShell Rest API on AWS Lamda, web applications in PowerShell, using PowerBI to show DB restores, input validation in functions, PowerShell command history, and the Unplugged session at Ignite with Jeffrey Snover and Jason Helmick.</p><p>Special thanks to Mark Roloff and Brett Bunker for pulling it all together this week!</p><h5 id="creating-a-powershell-rest-api-aws" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/developer/creating-a-powershell-rest-api/"><em>Creating a PowerShell REST API (AWS)</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#creating-a-powershell-rest-api-aws" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h5><p>by Norm Johanson on September 23rd<br>
In case you missed it, support for PowerShell Core on AWS Lambda is now a thing. And to help showcase how cool of a thing that is, this article from the AWS Developer Blog walks us through setting up a PowerShell REST API with the Amazon API Gateway.</p><h5 id="building-a-simple-form-using-powershell-polaris-module" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20190928.md#building-a-simple-form-using-powershell-polaris-module"/><a href="https://chen.about-powershell.com/2018/09/building-a-simple-form-using-powershell-polaris-module/"><em>Building a simple form using PowerShell Polaris module</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#building-a-simple-form-using-powershell-polaris-module" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h5><p>by Chen V on September 23rd<br>
If I were a betting man, I&rsquo;d wager you didn&rsquo;t know there&rsquo;s a web framework for PowerShell (multiple, actually). Chen&rsquo;s blog gives us a brief demonstration of how you can leverage Polaris to build simple web applications in PowerShell.</p><h5 id="automate-your-sql-server-restore-tests-with-powershell-dbatools-and-powerbi" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20190928.md#automate-your-sql-server-restore-tests-with-powershell-dbatools-and-powerbi"/><a href="https://marcosfreccia.com/2018/09/24/automate-sql-server-restore-tests/"><em>Automate your SQL Server Restore Tests with PowerShell, dbatools and PowerBI</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#automate-your-sql-server-restore-tests-with-powershell-dbatools-and-powerbi" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h5><p>by Marcos Freccia on September 24th<br>
If you&rsquo;ve been in this gig for any time at all, you know the importance of backups. Especially tested backups. You do test them, right? Well, Marcos here does. In fact, he even has a PowerBI dashboard to show him the results of his database restores at a glance. Read on to see how he sets it all up, along with a link to the GitHub repo.</p><h5 id="how-to-validate-input-in-powershell-functions-part-1" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20190928.md#how-to-validate-input-in-powershell-functions-part-1"/><a href="https://redmondmag.com/articles/2018/09/25/validate-input-in-powershell-functions-1.aspx"><em>How To Validate Input in PowerShell Functions, Part 1</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#how-to-validate-input-in-powershell-functions-part-1" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h5><p>by Brien Posey on September 25th<br>
It happens to everyone. You spend all afternoon working on that script, test it, hand it off, and Gomer Pyle finds a way to make it break by passing in data that you didn&rsquo;t think of. What you need is input validation. Brien kicks things off with an introduction to<em>ValidateSet</em> to help you get a handle on exactly what data people can supply your scripts.</p><h5 id="previous-command-history-in-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20190928.md#previous-command-history-in-powershell"/><a href="http://woshub.com/powershell-commands-history/"><em>Previous Command History in PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#previous-command-history-in-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h5><p>by Windows OS Hub on September 27th<br>
Prior to Windows PowerShell v5, if you closed the PowerShell window, then you lost your command history. Well, this behavior has now changed. Learn how the built-in PSReadline module provides a persistent command line history across PowerShell instances.</p><h5 id="powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://powershell.org/forums/topic/automatically-save-outlook-message-2/"><em>PowerShell.org Challenge - Unanswered Post</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h5><p>Wayne needs help on understanding how to parameterize an email address in his script. Please jump in and offer some help!</p><h5 id="new-module-pudadmincenterprototype" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9hqu76/new_module_pudadmincenterprototype_a_universal/"><em>New Module PUDAdminCenterPrototype</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#new-module-pudadmincenterprototype" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h5><p>Based on the popular PowerShell Universal Dashboard, /u/fourierswager brings us a new tool to assist with remotely managing WIndows systems in a web-based GUI. Restart systems, RDP in, and view all manner of information about what&rsquo;s happening on your hosts. This is a pretty sweet project with lots of potential!</p><h5 id="introducing-the" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://twitter.com/vmkdaily/status/1043358314321661952"><em>Introducing the &lsquo;Fluxor&rsquo; PowerShell Module!</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#introducing-the" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h5><p>by @vmkdaily on September 21st<br>
Now here&rsquo;s a cool thing for you vSphere admins. Mike Nist introduces a new cross-platform module, Fluxor, for collecting stats from vSphere, which can then be exported to InfluxDB for nice visualizations of your environment.</p><h5 id="powershell-unplugged-with-jeffrey-snover-and-jason-helmick" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPICqEiz3m4"><em>PowerShell Unplugged with Jeffrey Snover and Jason Helmick</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-unplugged-with-jeffrey-snover-and-jason-helmick" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h5><p>If you weren&rsquo;t fortunate enough to attend Microsoft Ignite this year, be sure to set aside some time to watch the PowerShell Unplugged session. Jeffrey and Jason discuss the current state of PowerShell, including some of its cool new features and awesome community.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 21-September-18</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-09-21-icymi-powershell-week-of-21-september-18/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-09-21-icymi-powershell-week-of-21-september-18/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 21 Sep 2018 15:00:35 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics Azure Pipelines, PowerShell Core 6.1, PowerShell on Arch Linux, and the PSPowerHour.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics Azure Pipelines, PowerShell Core 6.1, PowerShell on Arch Linux, and the PSPowerHour.</p><p>Special thanks to our PowerShell.org volunteers Mark Roloff, Brett Bunker, and Robin Dadswell.<br>
If you&rsquo;d like to become part of the ICYMI team then send a request to<a href="mailto:willa@powershell.org">willa@powershell.org</a>.</p><h6 id="announcing-powershell-core-61" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180921.md#announcing-powershell-core-61"/><a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/09/13/announcing-powershell-core-6-1/"><em>Announcing PowerShell Core 6.1</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#announcing-powershell-core-61" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Joey Aiello on September 13th<br>
The latest major release of PowerShell introduces compatibility with in-box modules for Windows PowerShell v5, performance improvements, and markdown cmdlets. PSCustomObject now has a count property and supports the Where and ForEach methods.</p><h6 id="powershell--arch-linux--awesome" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180921.md#powershell--arch-linux--awesome"/><a href="https://ephos.github.io/posts/2018-9-17-Pwsh-ArchLinux"><em>Powershell + Arch Linux = AWESOME!</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell--arch-linux--awesome" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Rob Pleau on September 17th<br>
Arch Linux is known as being for geeks that love to tinker (or masochists, depending on who you ask) and now you can tinker with Core on Arch. Rob has put together a great guide on getting the cross-platform PowerShell Core to run on his favorite distribution.</p><h6 id="fun-with-select-object-and-proxycommand" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180921.md#fun-with-select-object-and-proxycommand"/><a href="https://blog.iisreset.me/fun-with-select-object-and-proxycommand/"><em>Fun with Select-Object (and ProxyCommand)</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#fun-with-select-object-and-proxycommand" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Mathias Jessen on September 19th<br>
Suppose there&rsquo;s a cmdlet that just doesn&rsquo;t quite work the way you need. If only you could tweak the behavior a little&hellip; Or a lot. Mathias wrote a great introduction to using .NET&rsquo;s ProxyCommand class to create customized versions of PowerShell cmdlets. This opens the door to some pretty cool and fun possibilities.</p><h6 id="converting-a-powershell-project-to-use-azure-devops-pipelines" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180921.md#converting-a-powershell-project-to-use-azure-devops-pipelines"/><a href="https://www.powershellmagazine.com/2018/09/20/converting-a-powershell-project-to-use-azure-devops-pipelines/"><em>Converting a PowerShell Project to use Azure DevOps Pipelines</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#converting-a-powershell-project-to-use-azure-devops-pipelines" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Daniel Scott-Raynsford on September 20th<br>
Learn how to hook up your GitHub account to an Azure DevOps organization and use Azure Pipelines for PowerShell Core projects across Windows, Linux, and macOS!</p><h6 id="powershell-building-modules-with-the-azure-devops-pipeline" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180921.md#powershell-building-modules-with-the-azure-devops-pipeline"/><a href="https://kevinmarquette.github.io/2018-09-20-Powershell-Building-Modules-with-the-Azure-DevOps-Pipeline/"><em>PowerShell: Building Modules with the Azure DevOps Pipeline</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-building-modules-with-the-azure-devops-pipeline" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Kevin Marquette on September 20th<br>
Kevin provides a separate take on using Azure DevOps Pipelines to enable continuous integration with GitHub.</p><h6 id="pswinreporting---monitoring-active-directory-events-and-sending-it-to-email-microsoft-teams-slack-sql" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9gcvgk/pswinreporting_monitoring_active_directory_events/"><em>PSWinReporting - Monitoring Active Directory Events and Sending it to Email, Microsoft Teams, Slack, SQL</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#pswinreporting---monitoring-active-directory-events-and-sending-it-to-email-microsoft-teams-slack-sql" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by u/MadBoyEvo on September 17th<br>
The top post on Reddit this week covers an interesting module that notifies you for event changes in Active Directory, such as adding users to Domain Admins. There are options for recording these events in Microsoft Teams and SQL!</p><h6 id="get-a-free-t-shirt" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://twitter.com/TylerLeonhardt/status/1042421922317852672"><em>Get a Free T-shirt!</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#get-a-free-t-shirt" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by @TylerLeonhardt on September 19th<br>
Submit a pull request to a Microsoft repo in October and get a limited edition t-shirt!</p><h6 id="pspowerhour-episode-4" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTuwnDtaTWQ"><em>PSPowerHour Episode 4</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#pspowerhour-episode-4" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by PSPowerHour on September 19th<br>
The fourth edition of PSPowerHour includes the following topics:</p><ul><li>ProxyCommands (Joel Bennett)</li><li>PSReflect-Functions (Jared Atkinson)</li><li>VaporShell (Nate Ferrell)</li><li>Implicit remoting (Stepehn Valdinger)</li><li>Docker Compose (Fancisco Navarro)</li><li>VSTS Extensions (Thomas Rayner).</li></ul>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 14-September-18</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-09-14-icymi-powershell-week-of-14-september-18/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-09-14-icymi-powershell-week-of-14-september-18/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 14 Sep 2018 15:00:10 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include log file notifications, checking uptime, AWS Lamda support for PowerShell Core, organizing code, and episode 3 of PowerHour!&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include log file notifications, checking uptime, AWS Lamda support for PowerShell Core, organizing code, and episode 3 of PowerHour!</p><p>Special thanks to Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, and Mark Roloff for weekly contributions.</p><h2 id="blogs" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180914.md#blogs"/>Blogs<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#blogs" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="get-log-file-changes" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180914.md#get-log-file-changes"/><a href="https://www.sconstantinou.com/get-log-file-changes/"><em>Get Log File Changes</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#get-log-file-changes" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Stephanos Constantinou on September 7th<br>
Inspired by a recent post on Reddit, see how Stephanos creates a solution to notify with changes to a log file.</p><h6 id="showing-the-uptime-of-all-windows-servers" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180914.md#showing-the-uptime-of-all-windows-servers"/><a href="https://sid-500.com/2018/09/09/powershell-showing-the-uptime-of-all-windows-servers/"><em>Showing the Uptime of all Windows Servers</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#showing-the-uptime-of-all-windows-servers" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Patrick Gruenauer on September 9th<br>
Check out a simple function that provides the uptime of all your servers in the domain!</p><h6 id="amazon-announces-aws-lambda-support-for-powershell-core-60" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180914.md#amazon-announces-aws-lambda-support-for-powershell-core-60"/><a href="https://hub.packtpub.com/amazon-announces-aws-lambda-support-for-powershell-core-6-0/"><em>Amazon announces AWS Lambda Support for PowerShell Core 6.0</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#amazon-announces-aws-lambda-support-for-powershell-core-60" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Melisha Dsouza on September 12th<br>
Exciting news about AWS Lambda PowerShell Core 6.0 Support.</p><h6 id="don-jones-on-everything-you" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180914.md#don-jones-on-everything-youre-doing-wrong-in-powershell"/><a href="https://redmondmag.com/articles/2018/09/12/don-jones-qa-on-powershell.aspx"><em>Don Jones on Everything You&rsquo;re Doing Wrong in PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#don-jones-on-everything-you" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Becky Nagel on September 12th<br>
Here&rsquo;s a short Q&amp;A with Don Jones and Redmond Magazine on guidance for being efficient with PowerShell.</p><h6 id="windows-administration-with-powershell-3-organizing-your-code" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180914.md#windows-administration-with-powershell-3-organizing-your-code"/><a href="https://www.automox.com/blog/windows-admin-powershell-3"><em>Windows Administration with PowerShell #3: Organizing Your Code</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#windows-administration-with-powershell-3-organizing-your-code" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Nicholas Almiron on September 12th<br>
Some small tips and tricks to organization of PowerShell Code</p><h2 id="forums" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180914.md#forums"/>Forums<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#forums" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180914.md#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post"/>PowerShell.org Challenge - Unanswered Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://powershell.org/forums/topic/finding-powershell-processid-using-runspaceid-and-logs/"><em>ProcessID Using RunspaceID and Logs</em></a> by Deep Droid on September 10th<br>
There&rsquo;s a challenging question on the forums that needs a response. Topic is related to event logging and runspaces.</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180914.md#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post"/>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9dj5dn/give_your_clients_slaps_a_colleague_of_mine_wrote/"><em>Give Your Clients SLAPS</em></a> by u/Pietovic on September 7th<br>
Check out a scripted approach to a serverless local administrator password solution using Azure Functions, Azure Key Vault, and Microsoft Intune. This solution was published by John Seerdeen on his <a href="https://www.srdn.io/2018/09/serverless-laps-powered-by-microsoft-intune-azure-functions-and-azure-key-vault/"><em>blog</em></a>.</p><h2 id="media" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180914.md#media"/>Media<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#media" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="twitter" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180914.md#twitter"/>Twitter<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#twitter" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://twitter.com/jsnover/status/1039711699933118464"><em>If you know PowerShell, you just became more valuable</em></a> by Jeffrey Snover on September 11th<br>
Jeffey&rsquo;s tweet links to Amazon&rsquo;s announcement to support PowerShell Core with AWS Lamda!</p><h6 id="youtube" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180914.md#youtube"/>Youtube<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRdoCrA-PnU&amp;feature=push-lbss&amp;attr_tag=zjw54qjfXcesPhjF%3A6"><em>The PowerShell PowerHour_Episode 3</em></a> by PSPowerHour on September 13th<br>
The third edition of PowerHour includes lightning demos on troubleshooting basics, managing Docker in Visual Studio Code, customizing a Windows desktop, infrastructure testing, WPFBot3000, advanced BurntToast notifications, and a walkthrough on the PSLogging class.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 7-September-18</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-09-07-icymi-powershell-week-of-7-september-18/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-09-07-icymi-powershell-week-of-7-september-18/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 07 Sep 2018 15:00:27 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include Azure Stack Infrastructure Backup, SharePoint Online Module Availability in PSGallery, Script for Updating Sysinternals Tools, Understanding While Loops, and the PowerShell Explorer module.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include Azure Stack Infrastructure Backup, SharePoint Online Module Availability in PSGallery, Script for Updating Sysinternals Tools, Understanding While Loops, and the PowerShell Explorer module.</p><p>Special thanks to Mark Roloff, Brett Bunker, and Robin Dadswell for weekly contributions.</p><h2 id="blogs" class="ps-heading">Blogs<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#blogs" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="configure-azure-stack-automatic-infrastructure-backup-with-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180907.md#configure-azure-stack-automatic-infrastructure-backup-with-powershell"/><a href="https://charbelnemnom.com/2018/09/configure-azure-stack-infrastructure-backup-with-powershell-azurestack-azurestackdevkit-asdk/"><em>Configure Azure Stack Automatic Infrastructure Backup With PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#configure-azure-stack-automatic-infrastructure-backup-with-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Charbel Nemnom on September 3rd<br>
For those of you working with Azure Stack, Charbel has released a handy little script that you can use to configure your infrastructue backup settings from PowerShell.</p><h6 id="announcing-availability-of-sharepoint-online-management-shell-from-powershell-gallery" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180907.md#announcing-availability-of-sharepoint-online-management-shell-from-powershell-gallery"/><a href="https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-SharePoint-Blog/Announcing-availability-of-SharePoint-Online-Management-Shell/ba-p/241370#M2644">Announcing availability of SharePoint Online Management Shell from PowerShell Gallery</a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#announcing-availability-of-sharepoint-online-management-shell-from-powershell-gallery" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft) on September 3rd<br>
Announcent, installation instructions and FAQ on SPO Management Shell.</p><h6 id="downlaod-newest-sysinternals-tools" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://powershell.anovelidea.org/powershell/download-newest-sysinternals/"><em>Downlaod Newest Sysinternals Tools</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#downlaod-newest-sysinternals-tools" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Dave Carroll on September 3rd<br>
Need a quick way to download or update the Sysinternals tools? Dave provides a couple of nicely-written functions that will get the job done!</p><h6 id="powershell-while-loops-explained-for-absolute-beginners" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180907.md#powershell-while-loops-explained-for-absolute-beginners"/><a href="https://winsysblog.com/2018/09/powershell-while-loops-explained-for-absolute-beginners.html"><em>PowerShell While loops explained for Absolute Beginners</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-while-loops-explained-for-absolute-beginners" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Dan Franciscus on September 4th<br>
If while loops have ever been a fuzzy area for you, Dan wrote a great article about how they work using slot machines as an analogy.</p><h6 id="managing-files-over-sftp-with-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180907.md#managing-files-over-sftp-with-powershell"/><a href="https://www.business.com/articles/manage-files-over-sftp-powershell/"><em>Managing Files over SFTP with PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#managing-files-over-sftp-with-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Adam Bertran on September 5th<br>
Learn how to use a few of the the SFTP commands from the posh-ssh module.</p><h2 id="forums" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180907.md#forums"/>Forums<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#forums" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180907.md#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post"/>PowerShell.org Challenge - Unanswered Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://powershell.org/forums/topic/lack-or-reporting-in-dsc/"><em>Lack or reporting in DSC</em></a> by Charlie on September 4th<br>
Charlie has a question on the capability of Azure Automation DSC. Can you provide any guidance?</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180907.md#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post"/>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9dlnw8/help_your_users_help_the_helpdesk_introducing/"><em>Help your users help the helpdesk. Introducing Show-Systeminfo.</em></a> by u/premtech on September 6th<br>
The top post of the week covers a tool that the Help Desk can use to diagnose issues and cature important PC information.</p><h2 id="media" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180907.md#media"/>Media<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#media" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="twitter" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180907.md#twitter"/>Twitter<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#twitter" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://twitter.com/adamdriscoll/status/1037531528455020544"><em>PowerShell Explorer</em></a> by Adam Driscoll on September 5th<br>
Check out an interesting tool that shows information about the PowerShell environment on your machine!</p><h6 id="youtube" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180907.md#youtube"/>Youtube<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBzgQ5pVLms&amp;t=2527s"><em>Creating Dynamic Commands with DatabaseReporter PowerShell Module</em></a> by Rohn Edwards on September 5th<br>
Rohn&rsquo;s presentation at the Mississippi PowerShell User Group covers a framework that lets you write advanced PowerShell function to interact with databases.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Getting Feedback on PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit Proposals</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-09-01-getting-feedback-on-powershell-devops-global-summit-proposals/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-09-01-getting-feedback-on-powershell-devops-global-summit-proposals/</guid><pubDate>Sat, 01 Sep 2018 13:46:04 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Hi all!&lt;br&gt;
August is over, and we&amp;rsquo;re about a month out from the close of the &lt;a href="https://www.papercall.io/summit2019"&gt;PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit CFP&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;br&gt;
We have some seriously awesome sessions coming, but we still need more proposals! I&amp;rsquo;ve had a number of questions like &lt;em&gt;what makes a good CFP?&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;would this topic work?&lt;/em&gt;. We&amp;rsquo;re going to try something new to see if we can help with this!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Do you want feedback on your proposal? Are you curious to see if your peers are interested in a topic? Join the #conferences channel in &lt;a href="http://bit.ly/psslack"&gt;powershell.slack.com&lt;/a&gt; and ask away!&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Do you want to help other folks with their proposals? To help encourage folks and different topics? Join the #conferences channel in &lt;a href="http://bit.ly/psslack"&gt;powershell.slack.com&lt;/a&gt; and help out!&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There are two main ways you might get feedback here:&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Hi all!<br>
August is over, and we&rsquo;re about a month out from the close of the<a href="https://www.papercall.io/summit2019">PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit CFP</a>!<br>
We have some seriously awesome sessions coming, but we still need more proposals! I&rsquo;ve had a number of questions like<em>what makes a good CFP?</em> and<em>would this topic work?</em>. We&rsquo;re going to try something new to see if we can help with this!</p><ul><li>Do you want feedback on your proposal? Are you curious to see if your peers are interested in a topic? Join the #conferences channel in<a href="http://bit.ly/psslack">powershell.slack.com</a> and ask away!</li><li>Do you want to help other folks with their proposals? To help encourage folks and different topics? Join the #conferences channel in<a href="http://bit.ly/psslack">powershell.slack.com</a> and help out!</li></ul><p>There are two main ways you might get feedback here:</p><ul><li>In public. Just post your draft proposal or question, and folks will hopefully help!</li><li>In private. Ask the channel if anyone is around for a private discussion. Some folks prefer this, no harm!</li></ul><p>Just keep in mind - if you go the private route, you might end up missing out on feedback from someone with a different and perhaps more helpful perspective.<br>
A number of summit regulars and speakers have offered to help, keep an eye out for them!</p><ul><li>@Brandon Lundt</li><li/></ul><p>@cdhunt</p><ul><li/></ul><p>@devblackops</p><ul><li/></ul><p>@michaeltlombardi</p><ul><li>@glennsarti</li><li>@gtatelive</li><li>@jb.lewis</li><li/></ul><p>@
jeremy.murrah</p><ul><li>@joshcorr</li><li>@pscookiemonster</li><li/></ul><p>@rjpleau</p><ul><li>We&rsquo;ll update this if more folks chime in!</li></ul><p>I’d encourage this as your first step in getting feedback on your proposals.  If you have more logistical questions, or really want to get feedback specifically from Missy and me, you can ping content –at- powershell.org and we’ll try to help out.<br>
Lastly, do consider giving a<a href="https://github.com/PSPowerHour/PSPowerHour">PSPowerHour lightning demo</a> - this is a low pressure way to show off something fun and useful, and gives the folks evaluating summit proposals some insight into your presentation and prep chops! We&rsquo;ll try to fit these all in before the summit CFP closes.<br>
That&rsquo;s about it! Hope to see some fun ideas and proposal discussions in Slack, and your<a href="https://www.papercall.io/summit2019">proposals</a> (and hopefully sessions) at the summit!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 31-August-18</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-31-icymi-week-of-31-august-18/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-31-icymi-week-of-31-august-18/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 31 Aug 2018 15:00:03 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include automating ACLs for O365 public IPs, the Scour module, Module Design w/ Plaster, the ConvertToMarkdown module, and PSPowerHour.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include automating ACLs for O365 public IPs, the Scour module, Module Design w/ Plaster, the ConvertToMarkdown module, and PSPowerHour.</p><p>Special thanks to Mark Roloff, Brett Bunker, and Robin Dadswell for weekly contributions.</p><h2 id="blogs" class="ps-heading">Blogs<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#blogs" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="automate-office-365-endpoint-acl-configurations-using-powershell" class="ps-heading unchanged.rich-diff-level-one"><a href="http://www.powershell.no/exchange/online,office/365,powershell/2018/08/26/automate-office365-ip-address-handling.html"><em>Automate Office 365 Endpoint ACL Configurations Using PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#automate-office-365-endpoint-acl-configurations-using-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Jan Egil Ring on August 26th</p><p>If you&rsquo;re responsible for keeping access control lists up to date for public IPs in Office 365 then read this article to understand how you can automate this process.</p><h6 id="scour-fast-personal-local-content-searches" class="ps-heading unchanged.rich-diff-level-one"><a href="http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/2018/08/28/scour-fast-personal-local-content-searches/"><em>Scour: Fast, Personal, Local Content Searches</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#scour-fast-personal-local-content-searches" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Lee Holmes on August 28th</p><p>Lee Holmes introduces a new PowerShell module, Scour. This module leverages the indexing and search capabilities of Apache Lucene to bring you supercharged speed for, wait for it&hellip; <em>scouring</em> your filesystem. If you&rsquo;ve got tons of content to search through and little time to spare, this might be just the tool for you.</p><h6 id="your-code-doesnt-suck" class="ps-heading unchanged.rich-diff-level-one"><a href="https://blog.netnerds.net/2018/08/your-code-doesnt-suck/"><em>your code doesn’t suck</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#your-code-doesnt-suck" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Chrissy LeMaire on August 28th</p><p>This one really resonated with the group. Probably because none of us entertain illusions of writing award-winning code. But Chrissy cuts through the self-criticical nonsense; reminding us that as long as our code is saving people time and effort, it definitely doesn&rsquo;t suck.</p><h6 id="powershell-script-module-design-plaster-template-for-creating-modules" class="ps-heading unchanged.rich-diff-level-one"><a href="https://mikefrobbins.com/2018/08/30/powershell-script-module-design-plaster-template-for-creating-modules/"><em>PowerShell Script Module Design: Plaster Template for Creating Modules</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-script-module-design-plaster-template-for-creating-modules" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Mike Robbins on August 30th</p><p>Mike&rsquo;s follow-up article on module design walks you through using Plaster to create modules with a custom folder structure.</p><h6 id="powershell-execution-policy" class="ps-heading unchanged.rich-diff-level-one"><a href="https://www.sconstantinou.com/powershell-execution-policy/"><em>PowerShell Execution Policy</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-execution-policy" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Stephanos Constantinou on August 30th</p><p>Check out this nicely-written article that breaks down PowerShell Execution Policy.</p><h2 id="forums" class="ps-heading">Forums<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#forums" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" class="ps-heading unchanged.rich-diff-level-one">PowerShell.org Challenge - Unanswered Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://powershell.org/forums/topic/post-method/"><em>Post Method</em></a> by Majd on August 24th</p><p>Majd&rsquo;s question on using Invoke-WebRequest has gone unanswered for almost a week. Please jump in and assist if you can!</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---top-post-of-the-week" class="ps-heading unchanged.rich-diff-level-one">Reddit /r/PowerShell - Top Post of the Week<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---top-post-of-the-week" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/9b2lbm/can_ps_remove_minecraft_candycrush_and_the_other/"><em>Can PS remove Minecraft, CandyCrush and the other packages that are there but not installed?</em></a> by u/<em>Landmine</em> on August 29th</p><p>If you&rsquo;re customizing Windows images for your company then you&rsquo;ve surely come acrosss this scenario. Read up on the advice others have given to tacklet this issue.</p><h2 id="media" class="ps-heading">Media<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#media" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="twitter" class="ps-heading unchanged.rich-diff-level-one">Twitter<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#twitter" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://twitter.com/dfinke/status/1033088044155514882"><em>ConvertFromMarkdown</em></a> by Doug Finke</p><p>Learn how the ConvertFrom-Markdown module can generate chapters from markdown and compile those chapters into HTML, a Word Doc, or a PDF.</p><h6 id="youtube" class="ps-heading unchanged.rich-diff-level-one">Youtube<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yq4sVWJrWo"><em>PSPowerHour Episode 2</em></a> by PSPowerHour</p><p>The second installment of lightning demos for PowerHour includes the following topics:</p><ul><li><p>Cloning SQL Server databases using PowerShell (Sander Stad),</p></li><li><p>Using getters and setters for classes wtih custom attributes (Ryan Bartram)</p></li><li><p>Using PwSh to gather information from silos (Teresa Clark)</p></li><li><p>Using PowerShell and RegExp to convert code between SQL platforms (Claudio Silva)</p></li><li><p>Getting started with Visual Studio Code (Shawn Melton)</p></li><li><p>Deploying SQL databases using PowerShell (Kirill Kravstov)</p></li><li><p>Learning PowerShell with PSKoans (Joel Sallow)</p></li></ul>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit – Initial OnRamp Scholarship Recipients</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-25-powershell-devops-global-summit-initial-onramp-scholarship-recipients/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-25-powershell-devops-global-summit-initial-onramp-scholarship-recipients/</guid><pubDate>Sat, 25 Aug 2018 15:05:10 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Based upon generous donations to this point, including from the Campers of DSC/DevOps Camp 2018 and the readers of &lt;a href="https://leanpub.com/powershell-conference-book"&gt;The PowerShell Conference Book&lt;/a&gt;, we will be able to offer a greater number of &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/summit/summit-onramp/onramp-scholarship/"&gt;scholarships&lt;/a&gt; that originally anticipated. As a result, we will be awarding some of those immediately.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Based upon generous donations to this point, including from the Campers of DSC/DevOps Camp 2018 and the readers of<a href="https://leanpub.com/powershell-conference-book">The PowerShell Conference Book</a>, we will be able to offer a greater number of<a href="https://powershell.org/summit/summit-onramp/onramp-scholarship/">scholarships</a> that originally anticipated. As a result, we will be awarding some of those immediately.</p><p>We hope this will give those recipients more time to prepare, and it will allow us to front-load some of our administrative tasks related to the scholarship. **We will be contacting recipients on August 25 and 26 to confirm their participation. **Please note that this is <strong>not</strong> the final, full slate of recipients; we will continue to accept<a href="https://powershell.org/summit/summit-onramp/onramp-scholarship/">applications</a> until the original deadline of 1st November 2018. Any applications already received, which are not selected in this first round, remain <strong>very</strong> eligible for our originally planned slots. We are simply not making a decision on those original slots right now, and will do so according to the original schedule.<br>
Again, this is an <strong>increase</strong> to the number of scholarships we are able to award, not a decrease. Our original slots remain available and will be awarded according to the original schedule.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 24-August-18</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-24-icymi-powershell-week-of-24-august-18/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-24-icymi-powershell-week-of-24-august-18/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 24 Aug 2018 15:00:47 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include script module design, PowerShell exploitation, PowerShell Remoting, PowerShell AST, the O365 Data Retriever tool, and the inaugural PSPowerHour.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include script module design, PowerShell exploitation, PowerShell Remoting, PowerShell AST, the O365 Data Retriever tool, and the inaugural PSPowerHour.</p><p>Special thanks to Mark Roloff, Brett Bunker, and Robin Dadswell for contributions this week!</p><h2 id="blogs" class="ps-heading">Blogs<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#blogs" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="powershell-script-module-design-publicprivate-versus-functionsinternal-folders-for-functions" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180824.md#powershell-script-module-design-publicprivate-versus-functionsinternal-folders-for-functions"/><a href="https://mikefrobbins.com/2018/08/17/powershell-script-module-design-public-private-versus-functions-internal-folders-for-functions/"><em>PowerShell Script Module Design: Public/Private versus Functions/Internal Folders for Functions</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-script-module-design-publicprivate-versus-functionsinternal-folders-for-functions" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Mike Robbins on August 17th<br>
Mike provides an interesting take on structuring module directories. Perhaps this type discussion is one better had over beers. I side with Mike on this!</p><h6 id="showmecon-2018---powershell-exploitation" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180824.md#showmecon-2018---powershell-exploitation"/><a href="https://securityboulevard.com/2018/08/showmecon-2018-michael-goughs-powershell-exploitation-powersploit-bloodhound-powershellmafia-obfuscation-powershell-empire-the-empire-has-fallen-you-can-detect-powershell-exploitation/"><em>ShowMeCon 2018 - PowerShell Exploitation</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#showmecon-2018---powershell-exploitation" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>Presentation by Michael Gough on August 18th<br>
While not technically a blog, this article links to a presentation that shows how attackers use PowerShell exploits. Presentation is given by Michael Gough who is a host of the &ldquo;Brakeing Down Incident Response&rdquo; podcast and author of the Windows PowerShell Logging Cheat Sheet.</p><h6 id="powershell-remoting" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180824.md#powershell-remoting"/><a href="https://www.sconstantinou.com/windows-powershell-sessions-pssessions/"><em>PowerShell Remoting</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-remoting" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Stephanos Constantinou on August 21st<br>
Have a look at a few areas of PowerShell Remoting including requirements and some authentication methods that can be used with it.</p><h6 id="finding-default-parameter-values-with-the-ast" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180824.md#finding-default-parameter-values-with-the-ast"/><a href="https://chrislgardner.github.io/powershell/2018/08/22/finding-default-parameter-values.html"><em>Finding Default Parameter Values with the AST</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#finding-default-parameter-values-with-the-ast" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Chris Gardner on August 22nd<br>
Do you want to Pester test your parameters? Do you want to use something other than RegEx when you do that? Well then the PowerShell Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) is your answer.</p><h6 id="how-and-why-i-created-the-o365-data-retriever-tool" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180824.md#how-and-why-i-created-the-o365-data-retriever-tool"/><a href="https://veronicageek.com/powershell/how-and-why-i-created-the-o365-data-retriever-tool/2018/08/"><em>How and Why I created the O365 Data Retriever Tool</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#how-and-why-i-created-the-o365-data-retriever-tool" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Veronique Lengelle on August 23rd<br>
If, like us, you&rsquo;ve been eagerly awaiting the release of the O365 Data Retriever tool, your wait is over. In this blog, Veronica discusses her motivation for working on it, the journey she took getting to it this point, and encourages us to not assume that others know what we know. Therefore, get out there and share it!<br>
And, yes, there&rsquo;s a link to the tool on GitHub. Go check it out!</p><h2 id="forums" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180824.md#forums"/>Forums<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#forums" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="powershellorg---popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180824.md#powershellorg---popular-post"/>PowerShell.org - Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg---popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://powershell.org/forums/topic/new-bulk-aduser/"><em>New Bulk ADUser</em></a> by Jeff Taylor on August 20th<br>
Jeff came into the forums this week looking for advice with creating new user accounts in bulk from a CSV. What followed was a great discussion about splatting and passing values through the pipeline.</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180824.md#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post"/>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/98m06w/powershell_console_scripts_functions_modules/"><em>PowerShell Console, Scripts, Functions, Modules, Cmdlets, Oh My!</em></a> by U/<em>Unas</em> on August 19th<br>
The most upvoted topic of the week belongs to an article by Josh Rickard. Nice work, Josh!</p><h2 id="media" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180824.md#media"/>Media<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#media" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="twitter" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180824.md#twitter"/>Twitter<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#twitter" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://twitter.com/joeyaiello/status/1032432062941163520"><em>We shipped the Release Candidate (RC) for #PowerShell 6.1 today&hellip;</em></a> by Joey Aiello on August 22nd<br>
The latest Release Candidate for PowerShell Core has arrived and the team would love your input before the next stable release. Head over to GitHub and grab it for some new hotness!</p><h6 id="youtube" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180824.md#youtube"/>Youtube<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://youtu.be/fDQvdIEda_c"><em>PowerHour 001: 2018-08-21</em></a> by PSPowerHour on August 21st<br>
The inagural PSPowerHour, covering topics from SQL through to Raspberry Pi&rsquo;s.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Use PnP PowerShell to add ContentType for your SharePoint site</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-21-use-pnp-powershell-to-add-contenttype-for-your-sharepoint-site/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-21-use-pnp-powershell-to-add-contenttype-for-your-sharepoint-site/</guid><pubDate>Tue, 21 Aug 2018 18:16:02 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;You can achieve the task by using SharePoint GUI. However, if your sites collection has tens of hundreds sites and each site has more than one document library, it will become a nightmare for a SharePoint administrator to do the task by using GUI.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Luckily, there is PnP Powershell which can help us achieve the goal.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The steps will be like below:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;#Step1: export your login credential to a secure file on your local machine&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>You can achieve the task by using SharePoint GUI. However, if your sites collection has tens of hundreds sites and each site has more than one document library, it will become a nightmare for a SharePoint administrator to do the task by using GUI.</p><p>Luckily, there is PnP Powershell which can help us achieve the goal.</p><p>The steps will be like below:</p><p>#Step1: export your login credential to a secure file on your local machine</p><p>get-credential|export-clixml -path c:\safe\mycredential.txt</p><p>#Step2: import your credential to Powershell</p><p>$cred=import-clixml -path c:\safe\mycredential.txt</p><p>#Step3: connect PnP online</p><p>connect-pnponline -url &ldquo;your site url here&rdquo; -credentials $cred</p><p>#Step4: get all sub sites of your site collection</p><p>$subsites=get-pnpsubwebs -recurse|select-url</p><p>#Step5: Use for each loop to loop through each subsites and add the content type into document libraries in each sub site.</p><p>foreach ($site in $subsites)
{</p><p>connect-pnponline -url $site.url -credentials $cred</p><p>$docids=get-pnplist|where-object {$_.basetemplate -eq 101 -and $_title -ine &ldquo;Site Assets&rdquo;}|select id</p><p>foreach ($docid in $docids) {</p><pre><code> add-pnpcontenttypetolist -list $docid.id -contenttype "content type name of your choice for default one" -DefaultContentType
add-pnpcontenttypetolist -list $docid.id -contenttype "2nd content type"
}</code></pre><p>}</p><p>To remove the contenttype from your sharepoint libraries, you need to use remove-pnpcontenttypefromlist command.</p><p>See the following code:</p><p>Foreach($site in $subsites) {</p><p>connect-pnponline -url $sites.url -credentials $cred</p><p>$docids=get-pnplist|where-object {$<em>.basetemplate -eq 101 -and $</em>.title -ine &ldquo;Site Assets&rdquo;}|select id</p><p>foreach ($docid in $docids) {</p><p>remove-pnpcontenttypefromlist -list $docid.id -contenttype &ldquo;the name of the content type you want to remove&rdquo;}</p><pre><code> }</code></pre><p>}</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 17-August-2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-17-icymi-powershell-week-of-17-august-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-17-icymi-powershell-week-of-17-august-2018/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 17 Aug 2018 15:00:25 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include PowerBI cmdlets, auditing group changes, exporting module functions, and PowerShell phishing.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include PowerBI cmdlets, auditing group changes, exporting module functions, and PowerShell phishing.</p><h2 id="blogs" class="ps-heading">Blogs<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#blogs" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="test-netconnection-vs-test-connection---testing-a-network-connection-with-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180817.md#test-netconnection-vs-test-connection---testing-a-network-connection-with-powershell"/><a href="https://4sysops.com/archives/test-netconnection-vs-test-connection-testing-a-network-connection-with-powershell/"><em>Test-NetConnection vs. Test-Connection - Testing a Network Connection with PowerShell</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#test-netconnection-vs-test-connection---testing-a-network-connection-with-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Adam Bertram on August 10th<br>
Learn how a single cmdlet, Test-NetConnection cmdlet, can be used in place of common network connection utilities, such as ping, tracert, telnet, and portqry.</p><h6 id="working-with-powershell-in-power-bi" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180817.md#working-with-powershell-in-power-bi"/><a href="https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/working-with-powershell-in-power-bi/"><em>Working with PowerShell in Power BI</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#working-with-powershell-in-power-bi" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Kay Unkroth (Microsoft) on August 13th<br>
A few weeks ago Microsoft released a Power BI PowerShell module for administering Power BI tenants. This article covers the basics of using the new Power BI cmdlets.</p><h6 id="get-group-membership-changes" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180817.md#get-group-membership-changes"/><a href="https://www.sconstantinou.com/get-group-membership-changes/"><em>Get Group Membership Changes</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#get-group-membership-changes" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Stephanos Constantinou on August 13th<br>
Have a need to monitor group changes in Active Directory? Run this script as a scheduled task to receive an email containing details of whose come and gone from AD groups.</p><h6 id="powershell-module-exporting-functions-in-constrained-language" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180817.md#powershell-module-exporting-functions-in-constrained-language"/><a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/08/14/powershell-module-function-export-in-constrained-language/"><em>PowerShell Module Exporting Functions in Constrained Language</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-module-exporting-functions-in-constrained-language" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by Paul Higinbotham (Microsoft) on August 15th<br>
Exporting functions using wildcards in a script module introduces significant performance penalties and carries serious security implications. Understand how PowerShell Constrained Language Mode addresses this problem. Look for a module in PSGallery soon that will help to ensure your modules are in compliance with the guidance in this article.</p><h6 id="phishing---ask-and-ye-shall-receive" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180817.md#phishing---ask-and-ye-shall-receive"/><a href="https://blog.fox-it.com/2018/08/14/phishing-ask-and-ye-shall-receive/"><em>Phishing - Ask and Ye Shall Receive</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#phishing---ask-and-ye-shall-receive" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p>by rindertkramer on August 14th<br>
This eye-opening article demonstrates how bad actors can use PowerShell to steal credentials using fake toast notifications. The intent of this article is to raise security awareness; be paranoid when it comes to processes asking for your credentials!</p><h2 id="forums" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180817.md#forums"/>Forums<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#forums" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="powershellorg---popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180817.md#powershellorg---popular-post"/>PowerShell.org - Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg---popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://powershell.org/groups/teaching-powershell/"><em>Teaching PowerShell Public Group</em></a><br>
Get a feel for the new Groups feature on PowerShell.org and particpate in a discusion hashtables versus PSCustomObjects.</p><h6 id="powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180817.md#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post"/>PowerShell.org Challenge - Unanswered Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://powershell.org/forums/topic/dsc-https-pull-server-an-error-occurred-while-sending-the-request/"><em>DSC HTTPS Pull Server - An Error Occurred While Sending the Request</em></a> by Marc Esteve on August 10th<br>
Marc has been struggling for two weeks on this issue. Please jump in and provide some guidance if you can!</p><h6 id="reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180817.md#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post"/>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/975tdb/powershell_remoting_on_python/"><em>PowerShell Remoting on Python</em></a> by jborean93 on August 14th<br>
Jordan Borean has created PyPSRP, a Python library that works with the PowerShell Remoting Protocol to help facilitate better remote management of Windows servers. Wondering what this has to do with PowerShell? Well, he&rsquo;s blogged about what his library does and it also reveals some really cool details about how PowerShell&rsquo;s remoting works under the hood! It&rsquo;s a long read but if you were the kid that took stuff apart just to see how they worked, this is well worth your time.</p><h2 id="media" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180817.md#media"/>Media<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#media" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h6 id="twitter" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180817.md#twitter"/>Twitter<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#twitter" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://twitter.com/thetommymaynard/status/1029231148453380096?s=19"><em>Show-PSDriveMenu</em></a> by Tommy Maynard on August 14th<br>
Who doesn&rsquo;t like new tools in the toolbox? Tommy gives us a quick look at a new one called Show-PsDriveMenu. True to the name, it shows you all of your available PsDrives and lets you quickly switch between them. He&rsquo;s got his cool little script available on the PowerShell Gallery, so go check it out.</p><h6 id="youtube" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180817.md#youtube"/>Youtube<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNIbm4h2guE"><em>PowerShell Core Community Call</em></a> by The PowerShell Team on August 16th<br>
Check out what&rsquo;s coming down the pipe for PowerShell Core, including target date for the next major release for PowerShell Core. Call notes<a href="https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell-RFC/blob/master/CommunityCall/20180816_Notes.md"><em>here</em></a>.</p><p>Special thanks to Mark Roloff, Robin Dadswell, and Brett Bunker for contributions!</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Help us Run PowerShell.org!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-15-help-us-run-powershell-org/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-15-help-us-run-powershell-org/</guid><pubDate>Wed, 15 Aug 2018 14:54:53 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;We&amp;rsquo;re looking for a few good PowerShellers to help us keep the community on track!&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>We&rsquo;re looking for a few good PowerShellers to help us keep the community on track!</p><p>**POSITION FILLED Forums Moderator. **We&rsquo;re looking for someone who can clear the spam queues 
daily
. In addition, we&rsquo;re looking to move to a model where new site members&rsquo; first posts are held in moderation to prevent spam; our Moderator would be expected to clear those queues twice each weekday (after their first post is approved, most members will be able to post without moderation from that point). We&rsquo;d like two Moderators who can back each other up for vacations and such (there&rsquo;s no harm if you&rsquo;re both checking the queues at the same time).<br>
**POSITION FILLED Forums Cheerleader. **This is a task one of our Moderators can perform, but it&rsquo;s a bit of work so it might be a different person. This person needs to monitor for unanswered forums posts and, after a couple of days, either post an answer or use social media to try and bring someone in to craft an answer. This person doesn&rsquo;t need to be an Expert In All Things, but needs to be willing to try and engage the broader community to try and find an answer. Will also have Moderator permissions to move posts that have been placed in the wrong forum.<br>
**POSITION FILLED Social Media Manager. **We&rsquo;re looking for someone who can manage the @PshOrg and @PshSummit Twitter accounts, and potentially establish other social media accounts. This includes watching for newsworthy items to post, and posting at the direction of other team members. We do not currently use social media management software; this person can also be responsible for recommending and implementing something.<br>
If you&rsquo;re interested, please contact president@ this domain via email. If you have questions, please post those in a comment here so that we can reply publicly.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>The Summit 2019 Call for Topics: Some Ideas</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-14-the-summit-2019-call-for-topics-some-ideas/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-14-the-summit-2019-call-for-topics-some-ideas/</guid><pubDate>Tue, 14 Aug 2018 16:16:15 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;As you hopefully know, we&amp;rsquo;ve opened the &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/2018/08/01/powershell-devops-summit-2019-call-for-speakers/"&gt;Call for Topics for PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2019&lt;/a&gt;. I know sometimes people struggle with ideas, and so I wanted to offer a few.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>As you hopefully know, we&rsquo;ve opened the<a href="https://powershell.org/2018/08/01/powershell-devops-summit-2019-call-for-speakers/">Call for Topics for PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2019</a>. I know sometimes people struggle with ideas, and so I wanted to offer a few.</p><p>First, know that you&rsquo;re <em>more than welcome</em> to submit multiple ideas. In fact, we encourage it, because it gives the Content team a bit more flexibility. You&rsquo;re also welcome to <em>present</em> multiple sessions, although prepping for more than a couple can be pretty intense, so you need to consider it pretty carefully.<br>
One category of sessions we need is Intermediate. We actually use the word _Practitioner, _and we define the audience as someone who&rsquo;s made it through _Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches _**and **_Learn PowerShell Scripting in a Month of Lunches, _who uses PowerShell pretty frequently, but hasn&rsquo;t made it to niche or expert-level topics yet. Many of the topics this audience needs are &ldquo;evergreen&rdquo; in that we probably need to present them each year, although we welcome different speakers and different perspectives. Ideas include:</p><ul><li>Best Patterns and Practices for Advanced Functions</li><li>Best Practices for Module Development and Distribution</li><li>Creating and Managing an On-Premises Module Repository</li><li>Managing PowerShell Security Features (with an emphasis on logging)</li><li>Getting Started with Pester for Automated Unit Testing</li><li>Best Practices for Error Handling in PowerShell Commands</li></ul><p>See, for many people, these aren&rsquo;t &ldquo;sexy&rdquo; or &ldquo;hardcore&rdquo; topics, but they&rsquo;re ones desperately and almost continually _needed. _You only have to look at our own Forums here at PowerShell.org to see how often these ideas come up. For that matter, consider browsing the forums for topic ideas! I mean, based on what I&rsquo;ve seen this month alone, a session on, &ldquo;Querying and Modifying AD Objects Using CSV Files&rdquo; would hit a sweet spot pretty hard!<br>
We&rsquo;re also actively looking to build out DevOps content, which can mean stepping away from PowerShell. We recognize that few attendees actually work in a DevOps environment, so &ldquo;hardcore&rdquo; stuff like Kubernetes, Hashicorp tools, and so on are probably not going to be popular. However, there are DevOps techniques that any PowerSheller can use in their environment, even if their company isn&rsquo;t fully DevOps. CI/CD tooling, for example, can be appropriate for anyone. And that doesn&rsquo;t need to focus just on VSTS - plenty of companies would prefer on-prem solutions like Team City, Jenkins, and the like.<br>
DevOps topics can also include cross-stack admin ideas, like a session on learning Python, which is a great cross-stack scripting language that can complement PowerShell well. Again, sessions <em>that 80% of the world could find applicable in their daily lives</em> is the watchword.<br>
Finally, I&rsquo;ve had some personal thoughts about sessions I&rsquo;d like to see. For example, PowerShell&rsquo;s language was always designed to provide a &ldquo;glide path&rdquo; into C#, but we rarely have a &ldquo;Building Compiled Cmdlets&rdquo; type of session. This could focus on the <em>patterns</em> involved. Say, rebuild the Get-Service command. That&rsquo;s not a difficult command, everyone understands what it already does, and the actual .NET code is pretty minimal. So you could focus on the structure of these, rather than getting into the nitty gritty of .NET. And you could have an &ldquo;Introduction to C# for PowerShell People&rdquo; session, to help someone who&rsquo;s looking to move some of their activity to the next level.<br>
I hope that helps trigger some ideas of your own. Remember, the Call for Topics <strong>is open now</strong> and it&rsquo;s not only a great way to give back to the community, but to get free admission to Summit and a bit of money toward your travel expenses!</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>What You Missed This Week in PowerShell! – August 10th, 2018</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-10-what-you-missed-this-week-in-powershell-5/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-10-what-you-missed-this-week-in-powershell-5/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 10 Aug 2018 15:00:12 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include Module Worst Practices, InjectionHunter, and The PowerShell Standard Library.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include Module Worst Practices, InjectionHunter, and The PowerShell Standard Library.</p><h2 id="blogs" class="ps-heading">Blogs<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#blogs" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="module-worst-practices" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180810.md#module-worst-practices"/><a href="https://chrislgardner.github.io/powershell/2018/08/03/module-worst-practices.html"><em>Module Worst Practices</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#module-worst-practices" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Chris L Gardner on August 3rd<br>
Imagine all the mistakes you would come across if you were to analyze every module in the PowerShell Gallery. Chris has done just that! And he presents solutions to some of the most annoying problems he encountered. This insightful article contains numerous useful tips and references to popular community solutions for designing a superb PowerShell module.</p><h3 id="powershell-injection-hunter-security-auditing-for-powershell-scripts" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180810.md#powershell-injection-hunter-security-auditing-for-powershell-scripts"/><a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/08/03/powershell-injection-hunter-security-auditing-for-powershell-scripts/"><em>PowerShell Injection Hunter: Security Auditing for PowerShell Scripts</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-injection-hunter-security-auditing-for-powershell-scripts" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by The PowerShell Team on August 3rd<br>
Script injection is the most common form of mistake an administrator can make when exposing PowerShell code to an attacker. Learn how to use InjectionHunter with VS Code to help you discover possible code injection risks as you write your scripts.</p><h3 id="powershell-how-to-create-a-standard-library-binary-module" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180810.md#powershell-how-to-create-a-standard-library-binary-module"/><a href="https://kevinmarquette.github.io/2018-08-04-Powershell-Standard-Library-Binary-Module/?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=post"><em>PowerShell: How to Create a Standard Library Binary Module</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-how-to-create-a-standard-library-binary-module" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Kevin Marquette on August 4th<br>
Ever had thoughts of writing a binary cmdlet? Or would you like to understand when it may be useful to do so? Get your toes wet with C# and learn how to produce a binary PowerShell cmdlet that you can include alongside your advanced functions within a PowerShell script module.</p><h3 id="powershell-standard-library-build-single-module-that-works-across-windows-powershell-and-powershell-core" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180810.md#powershell-standard-library-build-single-module-that-works-across-windows-powershell-and-powershell-core"/><a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/08/06/powershell-standard-library-build-single-module-that-works-across-windows-powershell-and-powershell-core/"><em>PowerShell Standard Library: Build Single Module that Works Across Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-standard-library-build-single-module-that-works-across-windows-powershell-and-powershell-core" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by James Truher on August 6th<br>
When you&rsquo;re done reading Kevin&rsquo;s post head over to the PowerShell Team&rsquo;s blog and discover how the new DotNet CLI template makes creating binary modules a cinch!</p><h3 id="copy-files-with-hash-difference-via-powershell" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180810.md#-copy-files-with-hash-difference-via-powershell-"/><a href="http://wragg.io/a-powershell-cmdlet-to-copy-files-based-on-hash-difference/">Copy Files with Hash Difference via PowerShell</a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#copy-files-with-hash-difference-via-powershell" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Mark Wragg on August 8th<br>
Understand the basics of the Get-FileHash cmdlet and learn how to use the HashCopy module to identify changed files within your project. This is useful for Git-based projects as Git changes the modified date of files as it manages them.</p><h2 id="forums" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180810.md#forums"/>Forums<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#forums" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="powershellorg---popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180810.md#powershellorg---popular-post"/>PowerShell.org - Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg---popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://powershell.org/forums/topic/pscustomobject-cycle-through-hashtable/"><em>PSCustomObject - Cycle Through Hashtable?</em></a> by Swatto on August 1st<br>
Here&rsquo;s an interesting thread that covers pulling data from the VirusTotal website and creating a report. This is great example on how the PowerShell community can pull you through when you&rsquo;re stuck!</p><h3 id="reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180810.md#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post"/>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/95kzzn/til_you_can_launch_powershell_from_explorer/"><em>TIL you can launch powershell from explorer</em></a> by u/detenshi12 on August 8th<br>
It&rsquo;s always fun to learn little quality-of-life shortcuts and this one is no exception. In predictable Reddit fashion, other users chime in with additional shortcuts and nice-to-knows. Take a look! You&rsquo;ll probably pick up on a cool little trick.</p><h2 id="media" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180810.md#media"/>Media<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#media" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="twitter" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180810.md#twitter"/>Twitter<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#twitter" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://twitter.com/pewa2303/status/1025780434934882304"><em>I can&rsquo;t promote it enough. Feel the power of PowerShell. Have fun with it!</em></a> by Patrick Gruenauer on August 4th<br>
Patrick showcases a CLI menu that handles a number of common Active Directory tasks. This is a great example of how a handful of simple PowerShell concepts, combined with a little vision, is all it takes to make a great tool. Looks clean and easy to use? Check. Nostalgia points? Check. The code is freely available on his blog? You betcha!</p><h3 id="youtube" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180810.md#youtube"/>Youtube<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ7ufcRayYY"><em>Power BI PowerShell and the Admin API</em></a> by Adam Saxton from Guy in a Cube on August 7th<br>
If you happen to an admin for Power BI users, you&rsquo;ll want to check this out; Adam takes us on a video tour of the Power BI Management module. Use PowerShell to dig into your workspaces, manage access, and grab reports. There are even wrapper functions for the Power BI REST API!</p><p>Special thanks to Mark Roloff for contributions this week!</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Thank You, Richard, and Fare Well!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-08-thank-you-richard-and-fare-well/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-08-thank-you-richard-and-fare-well/</guid><pubDate>Wed, 08 Aug 2018 15:35:03 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Richard Siddaway has decided to step away from PowerShell.org and The DevOps Collective. Most recently, Richard has been known for his management of content at PowerShell Summit North America, PowerShell Summit Europe, and later, PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit. Before that, however, Richard was one of the founders of PowerShell.org way back in 2011-2012, along with myself, Jason Helmick, Kirk Munro, and Jeffrey Hicks. It&amp;rsquo;s quite fair to say that we all needed one another&amp;rsquo;s support and expertise very much in those early days, and Richard was particularly key in helping us put together the two European Summit events. Richard&amp;rsquo;s very much entitled to one of our Community Hero Challenge Coins, which have been awarded to only a small handful of people who have made sustained, long-term community contributions: Jeffrey Snover, Jason Helmick, Angel Calvo, and Kenneth Hansen. Richard&amp;rsquo;s definitely in rarified company, and it&amp;rsquo;s well-earned.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Richard Siddaway has decided to step away from PowerShell.org and The DevOps Collective. Most recently, Richard has been known for his management of content at PowerShell Summit North America, PowerShell Summit Europe, and later, PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit. Before that, however, Richard was one of the founders of PowerShell.org way back in 2011-2012, along with myself, Jason Helmick, Kirk Munro, and Jeffrey Hicks. It&rsquo;s quite fair to say that we all needed one another&rsquo;s support and expertise very much in those early days, and Richard was particularly key in helping us put together the two European Summit events. Richard&rsquo;s very much entitled to one of our Community Hero Challenge Coins, which have been awarded to only a small handful of people who have made sustained, long-term community contributions: Jeffrey Snover, Jason Helmick, Angel Calvo, and Kenneth Hansen. Richard&rsquo;s definitely in rarified company, and it&rsquo;s well-earned.</p><p>For PowerShell + DevOps Summit 2019,<strong><a href="https://twitter.com/pscookiemonster">Warren Frame</a></strong> and<strong><a href="https://twitter.com/thedevopsdiva?lang=en">Missy Januszko</a></strong> will be taking over as co-Directors of Content. They&rsquo;ll be joined by Will Anderson as new CEO of The DevOps Collective, myself as President, James Petty as CFO, Christopher Gannon-Jones as Director of Global Events, and Jeffrey Bernt as Manager of Summit Logistics. Jeffery Hicks will be managing Iron Scripter and related activities both on-site and in advance. Rob Pleau has volunteered to coordinate the new OnRamp Buddy Program for 2019.<br>
While I&rsquo;m sad to see Richard step away, I&rsquo;m proud and excited to see a new generation of community leaders stepping in to ensure the future of both Summit and the entire organization. We&rsquo;re fortunate to have had such a strong founding group, who worked through innumerable rough patches and crises to create a sustainable and repeatable system for our new team to step into, and I very much look forward to seeing where the &ldquo;new blood&rdquo; takes things!<br>
Please<strong><a href="https://twitter.com/rsiddaway">offer your thanks to Richard</a></strong> for his years of hard work, and send your congratulations to our new team members. I hope we&rsquo;ll see many of you at Summit!</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Welcome to the new PowerShell.org</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-07-welcome-to-the-new-powershell-org/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-07-welcome-to-the-new-powershell-org/</guid><pubDate>Tue, 07 Aug 2018 11:26:09 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;I want to introduce you to the new PowerShell.org!&lt;br&gt;
While we&amp;rsquo;re still doing a little test-and-adjust work, I&amp;rsquo;m pretty confident that everything in the new theme is working. I&amp;rsquo;d also like to point out some hopefully useful new things we&amp;rsquo;ve done with the site.&lt;br&gt;
First, we&amp;rsquo;ve still got pretty much everything you&amp;rsquo;ve been used to - our friendly and helpful Q&amp;amp;A forums, our community-authored articles, and more. Incidentally, if you&amp;rsquo;d like to be a writer here at PowerShell.org, we welcome you. Let us help you get some eyes on whatever it is you&amp;rsquo;re creating, whether it&amp;rsquo;s a short tutorial, an article about an open source project you contribute to, or whatever. Drop a line to our webmaster@ email alias and we&amp;rsquo;ll hook you up with authoring rights.&lt;br&gt;
I&amp;rsquo;ll note that our Events Calendar is currently offline; the old plugin was antiquated, and we need to find something more suitable. That&amp;rsquo;s ongoing.&lt;br&gt;
We do have some new stuff, though. You&amp;rsquo;ll find **Groups **right at the top of every page, and that takes you into our new discussion groups. These are designed to foster open-ended, freeform discussion threads, unlike our more problem/solution, issue-oriented Q&amp;amp;A forums.&lt;br&gt;
Click on your avatar at the top of the page, and you&amp;rsquo;ll switch into your new profile (incidentally, if you don&amp;rsquo;t like your avatar, you&amp;rsquo;ll need to register your email address with Gravatar.com - that&amp;rsquo;s who we pull images from). You can leave a quick Twitter- or Facebook-style status update, letting everyone know what you&amp;rsquo;ve been up to in the PowerShell world. We hope it&amp;rsquo;ll be a great way for you to update the community on your activities. Along those lines, you can specifically follow whomever you like in the community, so that their updates will bubble up to your feed. Again, your profile page is the key to accessing all that new functionality.&lt;br&gt;
Once you&amp;rsquo;ve friended someone, we also now have private direct messages. From your profile, click Messages and then Compose to start creating a new message.&lt;br&gt;
It&amp;rsquo;s worth spending some time poking around and see what else is available - there&amp;rsquo;s quite a bit of functionality. For example, from your profile page, choose Settings and then Email - there are quite a few email notification options that you can opt into, if you want to keep up without having to visit the site continually.&lt;br&gt;
I&amp;rsquo;ll note that photo uploading from your profile page is a little touch-and-go - that&amp;rsquo;s one of the things we&amp;rsquo;re still figuring out.&lt;br&gt;
**Let me give you a reason to really populate your profile: **We&amp;rsquo;re working to make this a central location for you to showcase everything you&amp;rsquo;ve accomplished in the community. Kind of like a very specialized LinkedIn profile, your PowerShell.org profile will eventually include recognitions for contributions, achievements, and more. It&amp;rsquo;ll be something you can show to colleagues, hiring managers, and peers to help show the positive impact you&amp;rsquo;re making and the milestones you&amp;rsquo;re reaching. Now&amp;rsquo;s the time to start!&lt;br&gt;
We&amp;rsquo;re working hard to bring more functionality to PowerShell.org that can help you keep up with our fast-moving world, and we hope you&amp;rsquo;ll find it all useful. There&amp;rsquo;s still more to come, and we always welcome your suggestions in the Web Site Feedback forum!&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>I want to introduce you to the new PowerShell.org!<br>
While we&rsquo;re still doing a little test-and-adjust work, I&rsquo;m pretty confident that everything in the new theme is working. I&rsquo;d also like to point out some hopefully useful new things we&rsquo;ve done with the site.<br>
First, we&rsquo;ve still got pretty much everything you&rsquo;ve been used to - our friendly and helpful Q&amp;A forums, our community-authored articles, and more. Incidentally, if you&rsquo;d like to be a writer here at PowerShell.org, we welcome you. Let us help you get some eyes on whatever it is you&rsquo;re creating, whether it&rsquo;s a short tutorial, an article about an open source project you contribute to, or whatever. Drop a line to our webmaster@ email alias and we&rsquo;ll hook you up with authoring rights.<br>
I&rsquo;ll note that our Events Calendar is currently offline; the old plugin was antiquated, and we need to find something more suitable. That&rsquo;s ongoing.<br>
We do have some new stuff, though. You&rsquo;ll find **Groups **right at the top of every page, and that takes you into our new discussion groups. These are designed to foster open-ended, freeform discussion threads, unlike our more problem/solution, issue-oriented Q&amp;A forums.<br>
Click on your avatar at the top of the page, and you&rsquo;ll switch into your new profile (incidentally, if you don&rsquo;t like your avatar, you&rsquo;ll need to register your email address with Gravatar.com - that&rsquo;s who we pull images from). You can leave a quick Twitter- or Facebook-style status update, letting everyone know what you&rsquo;ve been up to in the PowerShell world. We hope it&rsquo;ll be a great way for you to update the community on your activities. Along those lines, you can specifically follow whomever you like in the community, so that their updates will bubble up to your feed. Again, your profile page is the key to accessing all that new functionality.<br>
Once you&rsquo;ve friended someone, we also now have private direct messages. From your profile, click Messages and then Compose to start creating a new message.<br>
It&rsquo;s worth spending some time poking around and see what else is available - there&rsquo;s quite a bit of functionality. For example, from your profile page, choose Settings and then Email - there are quite a few email notification options that you can opt into, if you want to keep up without having to visit the site continually.<br>
I&rsquo;ll note that photo uploading from your profile page is a little touch-and-go - that&rsquo;s one of the things we&rsquo;re still figuring out.<br>
**Let me give you a reason to really populate your profile: **We&rsquo;re working to make this a central location for you to showcase everything you&rsquo;ve accomplished in the community. Kind of like a very specialized LinkedIn profile, your PowerShell.org profile will eventually include recognitions for contributions, achievements, and more. It&rsquo;ll be something you can show to colleagues, hiring managers, and peers to help show the positive impact you&rsquo;re making and the milestones you&rsquo;re reaching. Now&rsquo;s the time to start!<br>
We&rsquo;re working hard to bring more functionality to PowerShell.org that can help you keep up with our fast-moving world, and we hope you&rsquo;ll find it all useful. There&rsquo;s still more to come, and we always welcome your suggestions in the Web Site Feedback forum!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>What You Missed This Week in PowerShell!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-03-what-you-missed-this-week-in-powershell-4/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-03-what-you-missed-this-week-in-powershell-4/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 03 Aug 2018 15:00:44 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;h2 id="blogs" class="ps-heading"&gt;Blogs&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#blogs" 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;h3 id="using-vsts-for-your-company" class="ps-heading"&gt;&lt;a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#using-vsts-for-your-companys-private-powershell-library"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="https://medium.com/@jsrice7391/using-vsts-for-your-companys-private-powershell-library-e333b15d58c8"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Using VSTS for Your Company&amp;rsquo;s Private PowerShell Library&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#using-vsts-for-your-company" 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;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;by Justin Rice on July 28th&lt;br&gt;
Interested in sharing your collection of PowerShell tools for your team to use? First-time blogger Justin Rice walks you through publishing a PowerShell module to an internal PSRepository using VSTS.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id="creating-a-function-or-script-with-powershell-dynamic-parameters" class="ps-heading"&gt;&lt;a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#creating-a-function-or-script-with-powershell-dynamic-parameters"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/undocumentedfeatures/2018/07/30/creating-a-function-or-script-with-powershell-dynamic-parameters/"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Creating a Function or Script with PowerShell Dynamic Parameters&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#creating-a-function-or-script-with-powershell-dynamic-parameters" 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;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;By Aaron Guilmette on July 30th&lt;br&gt;
Learn how to create parameters with validation data that you can tab-complete prior to runtime. In this example Aaron uses a set of Skype numbers as potential values for a parameter to his function.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<h2 id="blogs" class="ps-heading">Blogs<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#blogs" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="using-vsts-for-your-company" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#using-vsts-for-your-companys-private-powershell-library"/><a href="https://medium.com/@jsrice7391/using-vsts-for-your-companys-private-powershell-library-e333b15d58c8"><em>Using VSTS for Your Company&rsquo;s Private PowerShell Library</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#using-vsts-for-your-company" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Justin Rice on July 28th<br>
Interested in sharing your collection of PowerShell tools for your team to use? First-time blogger Justin Rice walks you through publishing a PowerShell module to an internal PSRepository using VSTS.</p><h3 id="creating-a-function-or-script-with-powershell-dynamic-parameters" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#creating-a-function-or-script-with-powershell-dynamic-parameters"/><a href="https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/undocumentedfeatures/2018/07/30/creating-a-function-or-script-with-powershell-dynamic-parameters/"><em>Creating a Function or Script with PowerShell Dynamic Parameters</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#creating-a-function-or-script-with-powershell-dynamic-parameters" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>By Aaron Guilmette on July 30th<br>
Learn how to create parameters with validation data that you can tab-complete prior to runtime. In this example Aaron uses a set of Skype numbers as potential values for a parameter to his function.</p><h3 id="how-to-create-a-file-share-powershell-repository" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#how-to-create-a-file-share-powershell-repository"/><a href="https://4sysops.com/archives/how-to-create-a-file-share-powershell-repository/"><em>How to Create a File Share PowerShell Repository</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#how-to-create-a-file-share-powershell-repository" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Matt McElreath on July 30th<br>
Consider another method for sharing your PowerShell module. This article provides a simple technique for setting up a PowerShell repository from a file share.</p><h3 id="increased-windows-modules-coverage-with-powershell-core-61" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#increased-windows-modules-coverage-with-powershell-core-61"/><a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/07/31/increased-windows-modules-coverage-with-powershell-core-6-1/"><em>Increased Windows Modules Coverage with PowerShell Core 6.1</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#increased-windows-modules-coverage-with-powershell-core-61" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Steve Lee on July 31st<br>
The PowerShell team has a goal to bring 100% parity of the in-box modules to PowerShell Core. Learn about some of the challenges involved and how upcoming versions of Windows will close the gap on feature parity with Windows PowerShell.</p><h2 id="forum-topics" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#forum-topics"/>Forum Topics<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#forum-topics" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="powershellorg---popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#powershellorg---popular-post"/>PowerShell.org - Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg---popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://powershell.org/forums/topic/dont-give-up-you-got-this/"><em>Don&rsquo;t Give Up (You Got This)!</em></a> by Justin King on July 30th<br>
If you&rsquo;re feeling a bit overwhelmed by all there is to learn, or if you just like motivational speeches, Justin offers some great advice about why it&rsquo;s so valuable to keep pushing your PowerShell knowledge further.</p><h3 id="powershellorg---new-community-event" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#powershellorg---new-community-event"/>PowerShell.org - New Community Event<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg---new-community-event" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://powershell.org/2018/07/31/powerhour-community-lightning-demos/"><em>PowerHour: Community Lighting Demos</em></a> by Warren Frame on July 31st<br>
Announcing a new community-driven event for the rapid showcasing of PowerShell-related content! PowerHour will feature multiple speakers presenting in a lightning demo format, which will be streamed on YouTube. If you&rsquo;re interested in presenting but would like to start with something small and focused, or if you&rsquo;d like to get some quick looks at lots different material, then this is worth keeping an eye on!</p><h3 id="reddit---most-popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#reddit---most-popular-post"/>Reddit - Most Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit---most-popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/92vpab/pswindocumentation_documentation_for_active/"><em>PSWinDocumentation - Documentation for Active Directory</em></a> by u/MadBoyEvo on July 30th<br>
Przemysław Kłys releases an early version of his PSWinDocumentation module, used for documenting AD and to showcase his other module, PSWriteWord (think of Doug Finke&rsquo;s ImportExcel, but for Word). These are some very cool and exciting tools, so definitely check them out!</p><h2 id="youtube" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#youtube"/>Youtube<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="powershell-104---building-modules-using-psake" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#powershell-104---building-modules-using-psake"/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrnLJGW9GWY"><em>PowerShell 104 - Building Modules using PSake</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-104---building-modules-using-psake" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by The St. Louis PowerShell User Group on July 24th<br>
Grab a pot of coffee (or a bottle of rice wine) and catch up on a lengthy yet very informative session on controlling versions of your PowerShell modules. Topics include source code organization, running basic PSake builds, build version control, and Pester tests. Presented by Ken Maglio and Michael Lombardi</p><h2 id="twitter" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#twitter"/>Twitter<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#twitter" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="i-hope-to-release-the-first-version-of-my-tool-this-month" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180803.md#i-hope-to-release-the-first-version-of-my-tool-this-month"/><a href="https://twitter.com/veronicageek/status/1024711850628460544"><em>I hope to release the first version of my tool this month!</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#i-hope-to-release-the-first-version-of-my-tool-this-month" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by @veronicageek on August 1st<br>
Catch a sneak peek at this soon-to-be-released PowerShell tool for viewing your O365 tenant data in a clean UI! We can&rsquo;t wait, Veronica!</p><p>Special thanks to Mark Roloff for contributions this week.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PowerShell + DevOps Summit 2019 – Call for Speakers</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-01-powershell-devops-summit-2019-call-for-speakers/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-08-01-powershell-devops-summit-2019-call-for-speakers/</guid><pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 2018 15:08:52 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;The PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit 2019 will be returning to the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, WA from Monday, April 29 to Thursday, May 2, 2019.
Since 2013, PowerShell and DevOps experts from around the world , will once again collaborate and learn how to maximize PowerShell in the workplace through fast-paced, knowledge-packed presentations. The Global Summit is the place for innovators to explore and further their knowledge of DevOps principles and practices in a Windows environment, make new connections, learn new techniques, and offer something to your peers and colleagues back at the office.
Ready to share your PowerShell or DevOps know-how? This is your official call to submit presentation ideas for selection!
&lt;strong&gt;What we are looking for?&lt;/strong&gt;
The majority of our sessions will now follow a traditional 45-minute format. These sessions cover a wide variety of PowerShell and DevOps expertise. &lt;em&gt;We have &lt;strong&gt;a number of&lt;/strong&gt; agenda slots available for double length sessions&lt;/em&gt;. These sessions delve into the depths of a topic covering areas that need more than 45 minutes.
Your proposed session should fit into one of the following areas:&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>The PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit 2019 will be returning to the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, WA from Monday, April 29 to Thursday, May 2, 2019.
Since 2013, PowerShell and DevOps experts from around the world , will once again collaborate and learn how to maximize PowerShell in the workplace through fast-paced, knowledge-packed presentations. The Global Summit is the place for innovators to explore and further their knowledge of DevOps principles and practices in a Windows environment, make new connections, learn new techniques, and offer something to your peers and colleagues back at the office.
Ready to share your PowerShell or DevOps know-how? This is your official call to submit presentation ideas for selection!<strong>What we are looking for?</strong>
The majority of our sessions will now follow a traditional 45-minute format. These sessions cover a wide variety of PowerShell and DevOps expertise.<em>We have <strong>a number of</strong> agenda slots available for double length sessions</em>. These sessions delve into the depths of a topic covering areas that need more than 45 minutes.
Your proposed session should fit into one of the following areas:</p><pre><code>-
PowerShell Internals (Advanced to Master Content) – A deep-dive into the inner workings of PowerShell and practical solutions that can be built from them.
-
PowerShell Features Deep Dive (Intermediate to Advanced Content) - These presentations are focused on configuring and working with existing PowerShell features and capabilities.
-
DevOps in Practice (Beginner to Intermediate) - A comprehensive look at putting the DevOps principles into practice. These presentations should focus on what you're doing and how you're doing it with DevOps.
Advanced DevOps in Practice sessions will also be considered.</code></pre><p>We are open to presentations across the entire ecosystem that have been built around PowerShell or the various DevOps tools—this includes Microsoft platforms and products that have PowerShell-based management tools or third party products.  New topics will be preferred over the recycling of older topics. However, we are still open to sessions on &lsquo;older&rsquo; topics that address areas of great confusion or uncertainty.
**What kinds of sessions get selected? **
Using previous feedback from our community, we&rsquo;re expanding the scope of our content this year.  While OnRamp will take care of those new to the PowerShell/DevOps world, we&rsquo;re looking to fill the other gaps with intermediate content and progressing all the way to the industry masters.
We look for an abstract that compells us to want to see your session—so spend time writing a great abstract! We want real-world usability combined with &ldquo;Wow, nobody talks about<em>THAT</em>&rdquo; awesomeness. We want to see the code. Don&rsquo;t just talk about it—this is a PowerShell summit, not a PowerPoint summit. If your session isn&rsquo;t predominately demonstrations, it&rsquo;s probably not right for the Summit.
Summit presentations are intense and intimate, often with plenty of audience interaction. You must expect questions and discussions. This is not a &ldquo;lecture to the audience&rdquo; event.<em>We&rsquo;re always happy to discuss proposed sessions. If you have any doubts about the suitability of a particular session, please contact us: summit AT PowerShell DOT org</em>
Please note:</p><pre><code>-
All sessions are to be delivered in English.
-
Presenter will provide all equipment needed to deliver session(s), including a laptop or other computer.
-
Presenter must be able to provide video by means of HDMI, DVI-D, or DisplayPort connectors - VGA is NOT supported.
-
Presenter must be able to manually select an appropriate screen resolution for video output. Typically, 1024x768 or 1280x720 are preferred.
Internet connectivity is available in the conference center but bandwidth is limited. If you rely on connecting to the cloud for your sessions, consider recording any demonstrations as a contingency.</code></pre><p><strong>How do I submit my presentation abstract?</strong></p><pre><code>-
Go to - [https://www.papercall.io/summit2019](https://www.papercall.io/summit2019)
-
Click Speak at PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit 2019 (scroll down to the bottom right and find the big green button).
-
Login using Twitter, Facebook or one of the other options.
-
Complete the form. The name field will show your email address. Please ensure your full name is in the Bio field, this will make communication easier.
-
Click submit.
Please contact summit AT PowerShell DOT org if you have any issues or problems.</code></pre><p>When can I submit?
Enter your presentation submissions immediately! We will start selecting presentations as soon as they arrive, so you don&rsquo;t want to miss out. The last day we will accept presentation submissions will be <strong>Monday, October 1, 2018</strong>. This is a hard deadline - <strong>No</strong>** sessions will be accepted after this date.**** **</p><p><strong>When will I know?</strong>
You will be informed if one or more of your presentations have been selected and notified by Thursday, October 11, 2018. Your notification email will include any further actions you need to take. We will notify all potential speakers by Tuesday, October 23, 2018 if their sessions haven&rsquo;t been accepted.
Speakers with accepted sessions will be given free admission to the event, including attendance at all official Summit activities. Speakers may not bring guests to the day sessions or evening events.
Selected Speakers will receive an honorarium at a valuation of $400 for a 45-minute session and $800 for a double session, to assist with traveling and accommodation expenses.   This will be made in the form of a US-only Prepaid VISA card.  International speakers may be given the option of receiving a cheque or PayPal payment if needed.  You will be contacted in advance of the event as to preference.</p><p>The final agenda will be posted on PowerShell.Org early November 2018.
We look forward to your expertise in making PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit 2019 the most valuable IT/Dev conference of the year!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PowerHour: Community Lightning Demos!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-07-31-powerhour-community-lightning-demos/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-07-31-powerhour-community-lightning-demos/</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Jul 2018 15:58:12 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite events at the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit is the community lightning demos. It&amp;rsquo;s a fun format:&lt;br&gt;
For the audience:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Fast paced (max 10 minutes)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Many speakers&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Topic or speaker not what you&amp;rsquo;re looking for? They&amp;rsquo;ll change in a few minutes&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Demos offer enough material to give you ideas and point out where to learn more&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Content is more likely to have a high signal-to-noise ratio given the time constraints&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For the speakers:&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>One of my favorite events at the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit is the community lightning demos. It&rsquo;s a fun format:<br>
For the audience:</p><ul><li>Fast paced (max 10 minutes)</li><li>Many speakers</li><li>Topic or speaker not what you&rsquo;re looking for? They&rsquo;ll change in a few minutes</li><li>Demos offer enough material to give you ideas and point out where to learn more</li><li>Content is more likely to have a high signal-to-noise ratio given the time constraints</li></ul><p>For the speakers:</p><ul><li>No need to come up with a full length session and the content behind it</li><li>It can be comforting knowing you have a bunch of peers joining you</li><li>You can get enough info to the audience for them to get excited and want to learn more</li><li>You get a platform to share something awesome with the PowerShell community</li></ul><p>So! This isn&rsquo;t about the summit. We&rsquo;re starting a new thing,<em>PowerHour: An Hour of Community Lightning Demos</em>.</p><h3 id="powerhour" class="ps-heading">PowerHour<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powerhour" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><em>PowerHour</em> will be like a virtual PowerShell User Group, with a lightning demo format, and leeway for other topics not directly related to PowerShell.<br>
This adds some more fun:</p><ul><li>No need to stand on stage (yet!), with Jeffrey Snover sitting right in front of you</li><li>Folks reviewing CFPs for the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit will likely see these&hellip; You could give a condensed demo of a CFP topic, or just showcase something cool to give us an idea of how you prepare and present</li><li>More time! We always run short on time at the summit; we&rsquo;ll hold these on a regular basis to give more folks a chance to show something fun!</li><li>Everything is recorded</li></ul><p>So! Where can you go to find out more?</p><ul><li>Proposals, FAQs, materials, links to demos, agendas, and more will be available at the<a href="https://github.com/pspowerhour/pspowerhour">PSPowerHour GitHub repo</a></li><li>Demos and live stream at<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtHKcGei3EjxBNYQCFZ3WNQ">PSPowerHour YouTube channel</a></li></ul><h3 id="when-does-it-start" class="ps-heading">When does it start?<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#when-does-it-start" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>Our first session is scheduled for<strong>Tuesday</strong> <strong>August 21st @ 6:00 PM EST</strong>!</p><ul><li>If you want to propose a demo, just<a href="https://github.com/PSPowerHour/PSPowerHour/issues/new">submit an issue</a>! We&rsquo;ll work on timing for your demo from there</li><li>We need more proposals, but<a href="https://twitter.com/dfinke">Doug Finke</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/cl">Chrissy LeMaire</a>, and<a href="https://twitter.com/GlennSarti">Glenn Sarti</a> (if he can wake up early enough!) will join us for our first session</li></ul><p>We hope you&rsquo;ll join us - feel free to drop by the #powerhour channel in<a href="https://bit.ly/psslack">powershell.slack.com</a>!</p><p>PS: a huge thanks to<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb">Michael Lombardi</a> for his help with the summit community lightning demos, and partnering up to make PowerHour a thing!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>What You Missed This Week in PowerShell!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-07-27-what-you-missed-this-week-in-powershell-3/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-07-27-what-you-missed-this-week-in-powershell-3/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 27 Jul 2018 15:00:19 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;h2 id="blogs" class="ps-heading"&gt;&lt;a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#blogs"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Blogs&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#blogs" 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;h3 id="powershell-core-now-available-as-a-snap-package" class="ps-heading"&gt;&lt;a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#powershell-core-now-available-as-a-snap-package"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/07/20/powershell-core-now-available-as-a-snap-package/"&gt;&lt;em&gt;PowerShell Core Now Available as a Snap Package&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-core-now-available-as-a-snap-package" 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;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;by The PowerShell Team on July 20th&lt;br&gt;
Oh, Snap! Core&amp;rsquo;s support matrix on Linux grows broader with the inclusion of a Snap Package to the line-up. Check out the PS team&amp;rsquo;s blog for details on what this means and how you can try it out.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<h2 id="blogs" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#blogs"/>Blogs<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#blogs" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="powershell-core-now-available-as-a-snap-package" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#powershell-core-now-available-as-a-snap-package"/><a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/07/20/powershell-core-now-available-as-a-snap-package/"><em>PowerShell Core Now Available as a Snap Package</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-core-now-available-as-a-snap-package" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by The PowerShell Team on July 20th<br>
Oh, Snap! Core&rsquo;s support matrix on Linux grows broader with the inclusion of a Snap Package to the line-up. Check out the PS team&rsquo;s blog for details on what this means and how you can try it out.</p><h3 id="powershell-modules-in-azure-functions" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#powershell-modules-in-azure-functions"/><a href="https://agazoth.github.io/blogpost/2018/07/22/Powershell-Modules-in-Azure-Fuctions.html"><em>PowerShell Modules in Azure Functions</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-modules-in-azure-functions" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Axel Bøg Andersen on July 22nd<br>
Hit a snag taking your modules to Azure Functions? Eliminate the hassle of using extra tools and learn how to load your modules directly to Azure Functions.</p><h3 id="using-pester-for-infrastructure-testing" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#using-pester-for-infrastructure-testing"/><a href="http://powershellpr0mpt.com/2018/07/24/using-pester-for-infrastructure-testing/"><em>Using Pester for Infrastructure Testing</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#using-pester-for-infrastructure-testing" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Robert Prüst on July 24th.<br>
If you&rsquo;re looking for interesting use-cases for Pester, this one&rsquo;s for you. Robert gives us a look at using the mocking and testing framework to suss out performance issues in his environment. Hint: It&rsquo;s not DNS.</p><h3 id="powershell-threadjobs" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#powershell-threadjobs"/><a href="https://richardspowershellblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/24/powershell-threadjobs/"><em>PowerShell ThreadJobs</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-threadjobs" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Richard Siddaway on July 24th<br>
There&rsquo;s a new cmdlet in PowerShell Core v6.1 preview 4 that allows you to run jobs on separate threads. This allows you to run more jobs simulatenously as ThreadJobs are lighter in resource consumption than standard jobs.</p><h3 id="displaying-toast-notifications-for-a-different-user-when-powershell-module-updates-are-available" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#displaying-toast-notifications-for-a-different-user-when-powershell-module-updates-are-available"/><a href="https://mikefrobbins.com/2018/07/26/displaying-toast-notifications-for-a-different-user-when-powershell-module-updates-are-available/"><em>Displaying Toast Notifications for a Different User When PowerShell Module Updates are Available</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#displaying-toast-notifications-for-a-different-user-when-powershell-module-updates-are-available" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Mike Robbins on July 26tth<br>
Learn about a number of useful techniques in this article. Use the BuntToast module to display toast notifications in Windows. Use the BetterCredentials module to read credentials from CredentialManager (rather than prompting or reading from a password file). And use the Find-MrModuleUpdate function from MrToolkit module to determine if any updates are availble for your PowerShell modules.</p><h2 id="forums" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#forums"/>Forums<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#forums" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post"/>PowerShell.org Challenge - Unanswered Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://powershell.org/forums/topic/azurehow-to-change-retention-period-of-each-policy-in-recoverservices-vault/"><em>How to Change Retention Period of Each Policy in Azure Recovery Services Vault</em></a> by Avinash on July 22nd<br>
Avinash&rsquo;s question has been out there for a week and he hasn&rsquo;t gotten any help yet. He&rsquo;s on the right track but needs a little guidance. Please jump in if you can help!</p><h3 id="reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post"/>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit-rpowershell---most-popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/92416c/windows_admin_center_formerly_project_honolulu/"><em>&ldquo;Widnows Admin Center (formerly Project Honolulu) Functions on Github&rdquo;</em></a> by ufourierswager on July 26th<br>
This author grabbed all the functions from Windows Admin Center and posted them on GitHub for the rest of the community to use. Fork your own copy and get your hands on a nice set of useful functions!</p><h2 id="media" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#media"/>Media<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#media" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="twitter" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#twitter"/>Twitter<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#twitter" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://twitter.com/SadProcessor/status/1022080105345114112"><em>The Ultimate PowerShell Cheat Sheet</em></a> by @SadProcessor on July 25th<br>
If only every cheat sheet were this simple!</p><h3 id="youtube" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180726.md#youtube"/>Youtube<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#youtube" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eu--5muiLI"><em>PowerShell Core Community Call</em></a> by The PowerShell Team on July 19th<br>
Topics include discussion on two preview releases, the compatibility for the Active Directory module in RSAT with PowerShell Core, and the release cadence of PowerShell Core.<a href="https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell-RFC/blob/master/CommunityCall/20180719_Notes.md">Link to call notes</a></p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>What You Missed This Week in PowerShell!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-07-20-what-you-missed-this-week-in-powershell-2/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-07-20-what-you-missed-this-week-in-powershell-2/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 20 Jul 2018 15:00:41 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;h2 id="blogs" class="ps-heading"&gt;Blogs&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#blogs" 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;h3 id="keeping-powershell-modules-up-to-date" class="ps-heading"&gt;&lt;a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180720.md#keeping-powershell-modules-up-to-date"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="https://tfl09.blogspot.com/2018/07/keeping-powershell-modules-up-to-date.html"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Keeping PowerShell Modules Up To Date&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#keeping-powershell-modules-up-to-date" 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;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;by Thomas Lee on Saturday July 14th, 2018&lt;br&gt;
Learn a simple technique for checking which of your modules from the PowerShell Gallery have an update.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id="when-tls-12-breaks-invoke-webrequest" class="ps-heading"&gt;&lt;a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180720.md#when-tls-12-breaks-invoke-webrequest"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="https://poshsea.blogspot.com/2018/07/when-tls-12-break-invoke-webrequest.html"&gt;&lt;em&gt;When TLS 1.2 Breaks Invoke-WebRequest&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#when-tls-12-breaks-invoke-webrequest" 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;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;by Lawrence Hwang on July 15th, 2018&lt;br&gt;
In Windows PowerShell, there&amp;rsquo;s a limitation with Invoke-WebRequest and sites that only use TLS 1.2. This article covers a workaround for this problem. This issue is not present with Invoke-WebRequest in PowerShell Core.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<h2 id="blogs" class="ps-heading">Blogs<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#blogs" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="keeping-powershell-modules-up-to-date" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180720.md#keeping-powershell-modules-up-to-date"/><a href="https://tfl09.blogspot.com/2018/07/keeping-powershell-modules-up-to-date.html"><em>Keeping PowerShell Modules Up To Date</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#keeping-powershell-modules-up-to-date" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Thomas Lee on Saturday July 14th, 2018<br>
Learn a simple technique for checking which of your modules from the PowerShell Gallery have an update.</p><h3 id="when-tls-12-breaks-invoke-webrequest" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180720.md#when-tls-12-breaks-invoke-webrequest"/><a href="https://poshsea.blogspot.com/2018/07/when-tls-12-break-invoke-webrequest.html"><em>When TLS 1.2 Breaks Invoke-WebRequest</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#when-tls-12-breaks-invoke-webrequest" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Lawrence Hwang on July 15th, 2018<br>
In Windows PowerShell, there&rsquo;s a limitation with Invoke-WebRequest and sites that only use TLS 1.2. This article covers a workaround for this problem. This issue is not present with Invoke-WebRequest in PowerShell Core.</p><h3 id="start-job-like-a-boss" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180720.md#start-job-like-a-boss"/><a href="https://mkellerman.github.io/Start-Job_like_a_boss/"><em>Start-Job Like a Boss</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#start-job-like-a-boss" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Marc Kellerman on July 16th, 2018<br>
Load your user session functions and invoke them as jobs on remote systems using throttling and timeout controls.</p><h3 id="parse-html-and-pass-to-cognitive-services-text-to-speech" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180720.md#parse-html-and-pass-to-cognitive-services-text-to-speech"/><a href="https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2018/07/16/parse-html-and-pass-to-cognitive-services-text-to-speech/"><em>Parse HTML and Pass to Cognitive Services Text-to-Speech</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#parse-html-and-pass-to-cognitive-services-text-to-speech" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Sean Kearney, Premier Field Engineer, Microsoft on July 16th<br>
Use Text-to-Speech in Azure to read a web page outloud in Windows 10.</p><h3 id="powershell-by-mistake" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180720.md#powershell-by-mistake"/><a href="https://leanpub.com/powershell-by-mistake"><em>PowerShell By Mistake</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-by-mistake" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Don Jones on July 18th, 2018<br>
Don started a new book on Leanpub which helps you learn PowerShell by reviewing &ldquo;broken code&rdquo; and discovering the answers.</p><h2 id="forum-topics" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180720.md#forum-topics"/>Forum Topics<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#forum-topics" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180720.md#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post"/>PowerShell.org Challenge - Unanswered Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://powershell.org/forums/topic/configuration-manager-new-cmprogram/"><em>Configuration Manager New CMProgram</em></a><br>
Amir Atary needs guidance with usage on a ConfigMgr cmdlet. Please assist if you can help.</p><h3 id="powershellorg---most-popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180720.md#powershellorg---most-popular-post"/>PowerShell.org - Most Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg---most-popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://powershell.org/forums/topic/find-commands-with-parameter-names/"><em>&ldquo;Find Commands with Parameter Names&rdquo;</em></a><br>
The response by postanote contains a useful list of commands for newcomers.</p><h3 id="reddit---most-popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180720.md#reddit---most-popular-post"/>Reddit - Most Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit---most-popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/8z6t3h/captureit_a_powershell_module_to_generate_gifs_of/"><em>&ldquo;CaptureIT: A PowerShell Module to generate GIFs of the actively selected window or your entire desktop screen</em></a> by u/_Unas on July 16th, 2018<br>
Create gifs of an active window or your desktop with one easy command.</p><h2 id="media" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180720.md#media"/>Media<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#media" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="sliding-windows-audiocast--" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/20180720.md#sliding-windows-audiocast---automation-with-jeffrey-snover"/><a href="https://www.slidingwindows.de/slw10/"><em>Sliding Windows Audiocast - &ldquo;Automation with Jeffrey Snover&rdquo;</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#sliding-windows-audiocast--" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Thorsten Butz on July 11th, 2018<br>
Take 45 minutes and listen to this excellent podcast with Jeffrey Snover. Recorded during the PowerShell Conference Europe in April, Jeffrey provides insight to a number of thoughtful questions that cover a wide range of topics, including the history of PowerShell, how certain decisions came to be, some regrets, and the future of PowerShell.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>What You Missed This Week in PowerShell!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-07-13-what-you-missed-this-week-in-powershell/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-07-13-what-you-missed-this-week-in-powershell/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 13 Jul 2018 15:00:19 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This week we&amp;rsquo;re starting a new series of blog posts called (obviously) &amp;lsquo;What You Missed This Week in PowerShell!&amp;rsquo;.  Our team of volunteers is scouring the web to find interesting articles, and forum posts related to our favourite topic!  In the meantime, I want to give a &amp;rsquo;thank you&amp;rsquo; to everyone that pulled together to make this possible.  Many thanks to Greg Tate, Evgeny Fedorov, Patrick Singletary, Brett Bunker, Mark Roloff, and Robin Dadswell for your hard work on getting this started!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;em&gt;-Will&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p><em>This week we&rsquo;re starting a new series of blog posts called (obviously) &lsquo;What You Missed This Week in PowerShell!&rsquo;.  Our team of volunteers is scouring the web to find interesting articles, and forum posts related to our favourite topic!  In the meantime, I want to give a &rsquo;thank you&rsquo; to everyone that pulled together to make this possible.  Many thanks to Greg Tate, Evgeny Fedorov, Patrick Singletary, Brett Bunker, Mark Roloff, and Robin Dadswell for your hard work on getting this started!</em><br><em>-Will</em></p><h2 id="blogs" class="ps-heading">Blogs<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#blogs" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="cross-platform-powershell-unit-testing-and-automatic-variables" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/12July2018.md#cross-platform-powershell-unit-testing-and-automatic-variables"/><a href="https://andrewpearce.io/powershell/2018/07/10/cross-platform-pester-gotcha/"><em>Cross-Platform PowerShell, Unit Testing and Automatic Variables</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#cross-platform-powershell-unit-testing-and-automatic-variables" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Andrew Pearce on July 10th, 2018<br>
Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core are two different products. When using continuous integration tooling to write unit tests you will likely encounter an issue when testing for platform-specific logic paths. Understand a limitation with the $PSEdition automatic variable and how to work around this limitation so that you can achieve bliss when writing unit tests for modules that support both Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core.</p><h3 id="generating-random-data-with-nameit" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/12July2018.md#generating-random-data-with-nameit"/><a href="https://kevinmarquette.github.io/2018-07-09-Powershell-NameIt-generate-random-data/?utm_source=rss&amp;utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_content=rss"><em>Generating Random Data with NameIT</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#generating-random-data-with-nameit" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Kevin Marquette on July 10th, 2018<br>
Generate random data for testing and presentations with the NameIT PowerShell module. Scenarios include generating random user names, random computer names, and even random objects with - gasp - random property values! This module was written by Doug Finke and is available in the PowerShell Gallery. Refer to Kevin&rsquo;s article for a number of useful scenarios.</p><h3 id="returning-rich-objects-from-functions-part-2" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/12July2018.md#returning-rich-objects-from-functions-part-2"/><a href="http://community.idera.com/powershell/powertips/b/tips/posts/returning-rich-objects-from-functions-part-2"><em>Returning Rich Objects From Functions (Part 2)</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#returning-rich-objects-from-functions-part-2" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Idera on July 9th<br>
Control the output of objects so that preferred properties, i.e. first-class citizens, appear at the top of a property list. This is must read for those of you who live in the camp of using PSCustomObject!</p><h3 id="announcing-the-powershell-conference-book" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/12July2018.md#announcing-the-powershell-conference-book"/><a href="https://mikefrobbins.com/2018/07/06/announcing-the-powershell-conference-book/"><em>Announcing the PowerShell Conference Book</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#announcing-the-powershell-conference-book" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Mike Robbins on July 6th, 2018<br>
Now available on LeanPub, the &ldquo;PowerShell Conference Book&rdquo; presents a series of advanced PowerShell topics where each chapter embodies a session at a PowerShell conference. Targets intermediate and advanced PowerShell users.</p><h3 id="the-scriptstoprocess-and-requiredmodules-order" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/12July2018.md#the-scriptstoprocess-and-requiredmodules-order"/><a href="https://tommymaynard.com/the-scriptstoprocess-and-requiredmodules-order-2018/"><em>The ScriptsToProcess and RequiredModules Order</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#the-scriptstoprocess-and-requiredmodules-order" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Tommy Maynard on July 2nd, 2018<br>
Control the order of sections in the module manifest file. By default the &ldquo;RequiredModules&rdquo; section runs before the &ldquo;ScriptsToProcess&rdquo; section, and this may not be ideal. By switching this order you gain the ability to properly set up your environment prior to validating module dependencies.</p><h2 id="forum-topics" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/12July2018.md#forum-topics"/>Forum Topics<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#forum-topics" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/12July2018.md#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post"/>PowerShell.org Challenge - Unanswered Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg-challenge---unanswered-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://powershell.org/forums/topic/testing-for-srv-records-need-help-pulling-data-out-of-hashtable/"><em>Testing for SRV records - need help pulling data out of a hashtable</em></a> by Mike Kanakos<br>
Mike needs your help! Please visit the forums and respond to his question on hash table usage.</p><h3 id="powershellorg---most-popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/12July2018.md#powershellorg---most-popular-post"/>PowerShell.org - Most Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershellorg---most-popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://powershell.org/forums/topic/securing-powershell-on-your-domain/"><em>&ldquo;Securing PowerShell On Your Domain&rdquo;</em></a> by Allan Williams<br>
For you folks in the security space, a reply on this post contains numerous useful links related to Windows PowerShell and security.</p><h3 id="reddit---most-popular-post" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/12July2018.md#reddit---most-popular-post"/>Reddit - Most Popular Post<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#reddit---most-popular-post" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/8xyfx2/powershell_koans/"><em>&ldquo;PowerShell Koans&rdquo;</em></a> by u/Ta11ow on July 12th, 2018<br>
Check out a simple, fun, and interactive way to learn the PowerShell language through Pester unit testing.</p><h2 id="media" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/12July2018.md#media"/>Media<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#media" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><h3 id="devops-enterprise-summit---digitial-transformation---thriving-through-the-transition" class="ps-heading"><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/WhatYouMissedThisWeek/blob/master/12July2018.md#devops-enterprise-summit---digitial-transformation---thriving-through-the-transition"/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKyF8fzed0w"><em>DevOps Enterprise Summit - Digitial Transformation - Thriving Through the Transition</em></a><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#devops-enterprise-summit---digitial-transformation---thriving-through-the-transition" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>by Jeffrey Snover on July 3rd, 2018<br>
Catch Jeff&rsquo;s session on how digitial transformation provides an opportunity to supercharge your career!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Help Us Improve our Ebooks – Your Chance to Contribute!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-07-11-help-us-improve-our-ebooks-your-chance-to-contribute/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-07-11-help-us-improve-our-ebooks-your-chance-to-contribute/</guid><pubDate>Wed, 11 Jul 2018 14:33:56 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;We recently re-launched all of our free ebooks at &lt;a href="https://leanpub.com/u/devopscollective"&gt;https://leanpub.com/u/devopscollective&lt;/a&gt;. These books have all been authored by a variety of people, myself included, and most were originally authors in Word. As we translated them into Markdown (which is what Leanpub uses for its source), a few snafus tend to come up here and there.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>We recently re-launched all of our free ebooks at <a href="https://leanpub.com/u/devopscollective">https://leanpub.com/u/devopscollective</a>. These books have all been authored by a variety of people, myself included, and most were originally authors in Word. As we translated them into Markdown (which is what Leanpub uses for its source), a few snafus tend to come up here and there.</p><p>Note that these books create no profit for anyone: all authors donated them to The DevOps Collective. When someone chooses to pay for an ebook during checkout (they&rsquo;re priced at $0.00, but you can pay anything you like), those funds go to help The DevOps Collective&rsquo;s programs, including our operational costs, OnRamp Scholarship, and more. So the books are entirely a volunteer effort, owned and maintained by the community at large.<br>
For example, in the table of contents for <a href="https://leanpub.com/thebigbookofpowershellgotchas/read">https://leanpub.com/thebigbookofpowershellgotchas/read,</a> you&rsquo;ll see a lot of &ldquo;I&rdquo;™" type nonsense, which typically comes from Word&rsquo;s &ldquo;smart quotes&rdquo; feature when those get translated into plain ASCII. You&rsquo;ll also find the odd formatting issue, like backslashes at the end of code lines, which are meant to represent line breaks, or missing backslashes in paths, because backslashes need to be doubled in order to prevent them from being seen as an escape character.<br>
Anyway - they&rsquo;re all minor snafus, but it&rsquo;s difficult for me to carve off time to go through all the books and fix every little one.<br>
Which is where you can help!<br>
These books are all open source, and hosted at <a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc">https://github.com/devops-collective-inc</a>. Anyone can use GitHub to clone the book repo, make whatever changes they want, commit those changes to their local repo, and then submit a pull request back to the main online repo. I review those PRs weekly.<br>
So this is a <em>great</em> chance for you to contribute to the community. If these ebooks have ever helped you, then you can &ldquo;give back&rdquo; a bit by helping us fine-tune them.<br>
And here&rsquo;s a tip: if you make a change, please also clone the Spanish version of the ebook and make the same change. That way we can keep the Spanish versions updated as well. Thanks again to community contributor Alvaro Tatis Torres for creating those Spanish versions entirely on his own time!<br>
You&rsquo;re also welcome to make more substantive contributions. For example, <em>Secrets of PowerShell Remoting</em> could use a chapter on setting up Remoting-over-SSH for both Windows and Linux/macOS. Once more folks start contributing, I&rsquo;ll be updating the credits on the book to reflect the broader, community-based authorship of each.<br>
Please help spread the word - even if you can&rsquo;t carve off the time to help, maybe someone you know could proofread a chapter or two. Scanning the online reader or the PDF version will reveal most of the oddities, and you can then dive into the source on GitHub to make corrections.<br>
THANK YOU!</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>The Re-Launch of the PowerShell.org Free eBooks (now in Spanish, too!)</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-07-04-the-re-launch-of-the-powershell-org-free-ebooks-now-in-spanish-too/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-07-04-the-re-launch-of-the-powershell-org-free-ebooks-now-in-spanish-too/</guid><pubDate>Wed, 04 Jul 2018 18:31:49 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;We&amp;rsquo;re pleased to announce the re-launch of our &lt;a href="https://leanpub.com/u/devopscollective"&gt;Free eBook Store&lt;/a&gt;, now hosted exclusively on Leanpub. This re-launch includes 7 titles translated into Spanish by community contributor Alvaro Torres.&lt;br&gt;
All eBooks are free, although you can also choose to pay any amount of $5 or more, which becomes a donation to The DevOps Collective, Inc. Leanpub offers a web-based reader and, if you &amp;ldquo;buy&amp;rdquo; the book, options to download in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats.&lt;br&gt;
We used to dual-publish on Leanpub and GitBook; GitBook no longer supports ebook downloading (they&amp;rsquo;re online-only, now) and Leanpub now offers a free online reader mode, so we&amp;rsquo;re moving exclusively to Leanpub. Leanpub does offer a smartphone app as well, which you can use to manage your entire Leanpub library.&lt;br&gt;
Don&amp;rsquo;t forget that all of the books&amp;rsquo; &amp;ldquo;source&amp;rdquo; is &lt;a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc"&gt;hosted at GitHub&lt;/a&gt; in public open-source repositories. You&amp;rsquo;re welcome to fork the repos, submit pull requests, and so on. Note that we don&amp;rsquo;t provide technical support for the books at GitHub; please use the &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/forums"&gt;Forums&lt;/a&gt; for that. Further, while everyone appreciates suggestions for improving the books, what we &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; appreciate are community members who can fork the repo, implement their suggestions, and submit a pull request!&lt;br&gt;
Please help us spread the word so more people can use these great, entirely-free resources!&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>We&rsquo;re pleased to announce the re-launch of our<a href="https://leanpub.com/u/devopscollective">Free eBook Store</a>, now hosted exclusively on Leanpub. This re-launch includes 7 titles translated into Spanish by community contributor Alvaro Torres.<br>
All eBooks are free, although you can also choose to pay any amount of $5 or more, which becomes a donation to The DevOps Collective, Inc. Leanpub offers a web-based reader and, if you &ldquo;buy&rdquo; the book, options to download in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats.<br>
We used to dual-publish on Leanpub and GitBook; GitBook no longer supports ebook downloading (they&rsquo;re online-only, now) and Leanpub now offers a free online reader mode, so we&rsquo;re moving exclusively to Leanpub. Leanpub does offer a smartphone app as well, which you can use to manage your entire Leanpub library.<br>
Don&rsquo;t forget that all of the books&rsquo; &ldquo;source&rdquo; is<a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc">hosted at GitHub</a> in public open-source repositories. You&rsquo;re welcome to fork the repos, submit pull requests, and so on. Note that we don&rsquo;t provide technical support for the books at GitHub; please use the<a href="https://powershell.org/forums">Forums</a> for that. Further, while everyone appreciates suggestions for improving the books, what we <em>really</em> appreciate are community members who can fork the repo, implement their suggestions, and submit a pull request!<br>
Please help us spread the word so more people can use these great, entirely-free resources!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>OnRamp Scholarship open to non-US Applicants</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-06-27-onramp-scholarship-open-to-non-us-applicants/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-06-27-onramp-scholarship-open-to-non-us-applicants/</guid><pubDate>Wed, 27 Jun 2018 19:41:02 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;I have managed to clear the regulatory hurdles and our &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/summit/summit-onramp/onramp-scholarship/"&gt;OnRamp Scholarship&lt;/a&gt; is now open to applicants from outside the US. We will update the application materials and web pages as soon as possible, but there’s no need to wait to submit an application.&lt;br&gt;
There are two caveats:&lt;br&gt;
first, the option to request a laptop as part of your application is not applicable to international applicants at this time.&lt;br&gt;
Second, our airfare limit is $600 USD. We cannot directly book airfare costing more. Unfortunately, we also cannot provide a partial cash reimbursement at this time. That means your air must be under $600 total (which I realize is difficult), or you need to be responsible for the entire airfare yourself. This is a bit of accounting oddness that we should be able to address in the future.&lt;br&gt;
Full information and applications are at the link above.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>I have managed to clear the regulatory hurdles and our<a href="https://powershell.org/summit/summit-onramp/onramp-scholarship/">OnRamp Scholarship</a> is now open to applicants from outside the US. We will update the application materials and web pages as soon as possible, but there’s no need to wait to submit an application.<br>
There are two caveats:<br>
first, the option to request a laptop as part of your application is not applicable to international applicants at this time.<br>
Second, our airfare limit is $600 USD. We cannot directly book airfare costing more. Unfortunately, we also cannot provide a partial cash reimbursement at this time. That means your air must be under $600 total (which I realize is difficult), or you need to be responsible for the entire airfare yourself. This is a bit of accounting oddness that we should be able to address in the future.<br>
Full information and applications are at the link above.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Looking for a PowerShell.org Contributor</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-06-22-looking-for-a-powershell-org-contributor/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-06-22-looking-for-a-powershell-org-contributor/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 22 Jun 2018 15:24:43 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;We&amp;rsquo;re looking for someone who can publish a regular &amp;ldquo;What You Missed This Week&amp;rdquo; blog post on PowerShell.org each Friday (excepting the odd week off for vacations, of course).&lt;br&gt;
This is meant just as a roundup of interesting posts from around the web; we know tons of people are blogging in their own spaces, and we&amp;rsquo;d like to call attention to some of the more noteworthy ones.&lt;br&gt;
This isn&amp;rsquo;t any more complex than a brief blurb for each:&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>We&rsquo;re looking for someone who can publish a regular &ldquo;What You Missed This Week&rdquo; blog post on PowerShell.org each Friday (excepting the odd week off for vacations, of course).<br>
This is meant just as a roundup of interesting posts from around the web; we know tons of people are blogging in their own spaces, and we&rsquo;d like to call attention to some of the more noteworthy ones.<br>
This isn&rsquo;t any more complex than a brief blurb for each:</p><blockquote><p>Don Jones shares the beginnings of PowerShell Summit: <a href="https://powershell.org/2018/06/21/how-powershell-devops-global-summit-began/">How PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit Began</a><br>
PowerShell.org&rsquo;s OnRamp Scholarship needs your help spreading the word: <a href="https://powershell.org/2018/06/03/we-need-your-help/">We Need Your Help.</a></p></blockquote><p>There&rsquo;s no minimum or maximum each week, although I personally suspect more than a couple of dozen posts will overwhelm people. The idea is to curate what&rsquo;s out there, introduce folks who are getting their blogs going (and encourage them to keep going), and give the community some variety in its PowerShell diet.<br>
If you&rsquo;re interested, drop a line to<a href="mailto:webmaster@powershell.org">webmaster@powershell.org</a> to get hooked up with blogging rights here. As you do so, indicate if you&rsquo;re up for every week (preferred) or every-other (in which case we&rsquo;ll try and find two of you and get you to split even- and odd-numbered weeks). You can also volunteer to be an &ldquo;aggregator,&rdquo; feeding noteworthy articles to our main round-up-person each week to help <em>them</em> out.<br>
If you&rsquo;ve been longing to contribute but haven&rsquo;t thought of a way, this could be a high-impact, low-workload way to jump in and help out!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>How PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit Began</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-06-21-how-powershell-devops-global-summit-began/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-06-21-how-powershell-devops-global-summit-began/</guid><pubDate>Thu, 21 Jun 2018 23:37:07 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Back in&amp;hellip; gosh, 2009, 2010 or so, an Arizona company named NetPro hosted PowerShell Deep Dive, part of their The Experts Conference event (the first was held in Las Vegas for just 50 people). After hosting two years (I think) though, NetPro was purchased by Quest Software, which moved to close down TEC. I may have those years slightly off, but that&amp;rsquo;s the general sequence.&lt;br&gt;
In 2012, myself, Jeff Hicks, Richard Siddaway, Jason Helmick, and Kirk Munro had formed PowerShell.org, attempting to make good on the basically-defunct PowerShellCommunity.org that I&amp;rsquo;d started and that Quest now basically owned (and was shutting down).&lt;br&gt;
In August 2012 Jason and I were out in Redmond for a TechMentor conference, and&amp;hellip;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IMG_0465.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IMG_0465-225x300.jpg" alt=""&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Erin Chapple and Kenneth Hansen, who were running the PowerShell team at the time, asked us over to building 43 for lunch one day. They told us that community engagement was huge for them&amp;ndash;they needed to know how people were using their product, and what they needed to focus on. They got plenty of engagement at TechEd events, they said, but it was largely beginners; they needed the Deep Dive, or something like it, to stay in touch with hardcore users.&lt;br&gt;
In April 2013, the first PowerShell Summit was held.&lt;br&gt;
&amp;ldquo;We can&amp;rsquo;t give you any money, though,&amp;rdquo; Kenneth said. And for good reason: they wanted an event that could sustain itself, so that when Microsoft inevitably reorganized and got distracted, the event wouldn&amp;rsquo;t die. To help, they volunteered to get us space on-campus, so our first event was in conference rooms, and they helped guarantee the food deposits. That helped give us a tiny financial pad and some experience, so in 2014 when we moved to Meydenbauer Center, we weren&amp;rsquo;t a brand-new event with an inexperienced team.&lt;br&gt;
Today, Summit is formally owned by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and venue and food deposits no longer have to go on my personal Amex ;). We&amp;rsquo;ve built enough operating margin that Summit can pay its own deposits until registrations start rolling in, and the event is essentially self-sustaining&amp;ndash;we don&amp;rsquo;t even rely on corporate sponsors, although we&amp;rsquo;re very happy to have them when we can. We&amp;rsquo;ve held six events in the US, and two in Europe, which led to the launch of PSConf.eu a few years back.&lt;br&gt;
Jason ran across this page in his journal last night and sent the photo, and with his permission I thought it would be a fun piece of community history to share.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Back in&hellip; gosh, 2009, 2010 or so, an Arizona company named NetPro hosted PowerShell Deep Dive, part of their The Experts Conference event (the first was held in Las Vegas for just 50 people). After hosting two years (I think) though, NetPro was purchased by Quest Software, which moved to close down TEC. I may have those years slightly off, but that&rsquo;s the general sequence.<br>
In 2012, myself, Jeff Hicks, Richard Siddaway, Jason Helmick, and Kirk Munro had formed PowerShell.org, attempting to make good on the basically-defunct PowerShellCommunity.org that I&rsquo;d started and that Quest now basically owned (and was shutting down).<br>
In August 2012 Jason and I were out in Redmond for a TechMentor conference, and&hellip;<br><a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IMG_0465.jpg"><img src="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IMG_0465-225x300.jpg" alt=""/><br>
Erin Chapple and Kenneth Hansen, who were running the PowerShell team at the time, asked us over to building 43 for lunch one day. They told us that community engagement was huge for them&ndash;they needed to know how people were using their product, and what they needed to focus on. They got plenty of engagement at TechEd events, they said, but it was largely beginners; they needed the Deep Dive, or something like it, to stay in touch with hardcore users.<br>
In April 2013, the first PowerShell Summit was held.<br>
&ldquo;We can&rsquo;t give you any money, though,&rdquo; Kenneth said. And for good reason: they wanted an event that could sustain itself, so that when Microsoft inevitably reorganized and got distracted, the event wouldn&rsquo;t die. To help, they volunteered to get us space on-campus, so our first event was in conference rooms, and they helped guarantee the food deposits. That helped give us a tiny financial pad and some experience, so in 2014 when we moved to Meydenbauer Center, we weren&rsquo;t a brand-new event with an inexperienced team.<br>
Today, Summit is formally owned by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and venue and food deposits no longer have to go on my personal Amex ;). We&rsquo;ve built enough operating margin that Summit can pay its own deposits until registrations start rolling in, and the event is essentially self-sustaining&ndash;we don&rsquo;t even rely on corporate sponsors, although we&rsquo;re very happy to have them when we can. We&rsquo;ve held six events in the US, and two in Europe, which led to the launch of PSConf.eu a few years back.<br>
Jason ran across this page in his journal last night and sent the photo, and with his permission I thought it would be a fun piece of community history to share.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>We Need Your Help.</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-06-03-we-need-your-help/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-06-03-we-need-your-help/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 03 Jun 2018 19:23:52 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;We need your help.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As you may have heard, we’re launching a new “OnRamp” track at PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2019. Limited to 40 students, this will be a hands-on class designed to bootstrap someone into the technology and our community.
 &lt;a href="https://indd.adobe.com/view/7c87735a-8914-4536-b668-857242085785"&gt;There&amp;rsquo;s a whole brochure about it!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We’re also offering a number of free-ride scholarships designed to cover admission, air, and hotel, to help increase the diversity of our field and community right at the top of the funnel. Half of our scholarships will be awarded to individuals from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in IT, and that’s where we need your help.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We need to get the word out to potential applicants so that they know to apply!&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>We need your help.</p><p>As you may have heard, we’re launching a new “OnRamp” track at PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2019. Limited to 40 students, this will be a hands-on class designed to bootstrap someone into the technology and our community.
 <a href="https://indd.adobe.com/view/7c87735a-8914-4536-b668-857242085785">There&rsquo;s a whole brochure about it!</a></p><p>We’re also offering a number of free-ride scholarships designed to cover admission, air, and hotel, to help increase the diversity of our field and community right at the top of the funnel. Half of our scholarships will be awarded to individuals from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in IT, and that’s where we need your help.</p><p>We need to get the word out to potential applicants so that they know to apply!</p><p>You can help by directing people to our<a href="https://powershell.org/summit/summit-onramp/onramp-scholarship/">Scholarship Page</a> or to the brochure URL. Who should you send?</p><ul><li>The computer science teachers at your local high school, technical college, and community college.</li><li>Your local library’s educational outreach team.</li><li>IT interns in your own company.</li><li>Anyone in touch with individuals just coming out of high school or a technical program!</li></ul><p>Yes, it’ll mean some legwork to find them and call or otherwise contact them - but we’re a team of less than eight unpaid volunteers, so we can’t do it all ourselves.</p><p>You can also reach out to local television news teams and ask them for help - many already run community outreach programs and can help spread the word.</p><p>Also tell your peers and colleagues via social media, word of mouth, whatever works. Get them to help, too, so that we can reach as many local communities as possible with this offer.</p><p>We appreciate your efforts - we’re trying to do as much as we can to strengthen and diversify our community, but it can’t happen without your active involvement.</p><p>Thank you.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Executing LINQ Queries in PowerShell – Part 2</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-05-28-executing-linq-queries-in-powershell-part-2/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-05-28-executing-linq-queries-in-powershell-part-2/</guid><pubDate>Mon, 28 May 2018 12:31:00 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;And we&amp;rsquo;re back!&lt;br&gt;
Ok, so in the last blog we began a conversation about delegates and using LINQ in PowerShell. In today&amp;rsquo;s post, I&amp;rsquo;m going to give an example of how it can be incredibly useful. Let&amp;rsquo;s talk about Joins.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id="joins" class="ps-heading"&gt;Joins&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#joins" 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;In my line of work, I&amp;rsquo;m constantly running into the need to combine datasets from multiple sources that relate to each other and pull out some specific properties. Say you have two internal services, one which is used to track production status and another which is used to monitor whether machines are online. To demonstrate this, let&amp;rsquo;s initialize some mock data once again.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>And we&rsquo;re back!<br>
Ok, so in the last blog we began a conversation about delegates and using LINQ in PowerShell. In today&rsquo;s post, I&rsquo;m going to give an example of how it can be incredibly useful. Let&rsquo;s talk about Joins.</p><h2 id="joins" class="ps-heading">Joins<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#joins" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>In my line of work, I&rsquo;m constantly running into the need to combine datasets from multiple sources that relate to each other and pull out some specific properties. Say you have two internal services, one which is used to track production status and another which is used to monitor whether machines are online. To demonstrate this, let&rsquo;s initialize some mock data once again.</p><p><code>#Create empty arrays $DatasetA = @() $DatasetB = @() #Initialize "status" arrays to pull random values from $ProductionStatusArray = @('In Production','Retired') $PowerStatusArray = @('Online','Offline') #Loop 1000 times to populate our separate datasets 1..1000 | Foreach-Object { #Create one object with the current iteration attached to the name property #and a random power status $PropA = @{ Name = "Server$_" PowerStatus = $PowerStatusArray[(Get-Random -Minimum 0 -Maximum 2)] } $DatasetA += New-Object -Type PSObject -Property $PropA #Create a second object with the same name and a random production status $PropB = @{ Name = "Server$_" ProductionStatus = $ProductionStatusArray[(Get-Random -Minimum 0 -Maximum 2)] } $DatasetB += New-Object -Type PSObject -Property $PropB }</code>Now we have two datasets with the same server names, one showing production status and the other showing power status. Our goal is to join that data together. In traditional PowerShell, we would likely iterate through one of the sets while doing a filter on the second set and then either add property members to the first set or create all new objects with a combination of properties from both sets. Something like this:</p><p><code>$JoinedData = @() foreach($ServerA in $DatasetA) { $ServerB = $DatasetB | Where-Object Name -eq $ServerA.Name $Props = @{ Name = $ServerA.Name PowerStatus = $ServerA.PowerStatus ProductionStatus = $ServerB.ProductionStatus } $JoinedData += New-Object -Type PSObject -Property $Props }</code>This works fine. If I wrap it in a Measure-Command it takes right around 8.82 seconds to complete. Not awful, but at enterprise level where you&rsquo;re dealing with ten times that amount of data, you can see how that run time could get out of control. Now let&rsquo;s do the same with LINQ:</p><p><code>$LinqJoinedData = [System.Linq.Enumerable]::Join( $DatasetA, $DatasetB, [System.Func[Object,string]] {param ($x);$x.Name}, [System.Func[Object,string]]{param ($y);$y.Name}, [System.Func[Object,Object,Object]]{ param ($x,$y); New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property @{ Name = $x.Name; PowerStatus = $x.PowerStatus; ProductionStatus = $y.ProductionStatus} } ) $OutputArray = [System.Linq.Enumerable]::ToArray($LinqJoinedData)</code>This completed for me in just over 0.4 seconds! Hopefully after last week this syntax doesn&rsquo;t look too daunting, but let&rsquo;s walk through what we just did. We&rsquo;re calling the<a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb534675(v=vs.110).aspx">Join method</a> on<a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.linq.enumerable_methods(v=vs.110).aspx">System.Linq.Enumerable</a> and then passing it five parameters.</p><ol><li>The first dataset we&rsquo;re going to join</li><li>The second dataset to join</li><li>The delegate which defines the key to compare against on the first dataset</li><li>The delegate which defines the key to compare against on the second dataset</li><li>Finally, we pass in the delegate which defines what the output should look like</li></ol><p>So it looks complicated, but once you use it a few times, it&rsquo;s really not too bad. Now you&rsquo;re probably wondering why I added that final line where I called &ldquo;[System.Linq.Enumerable]::ToArray($LinqJoinedData).&rdquo; For that we need to talk about &ldquo;Deferred Execution vs. Immediate Execution.&rdquo; When you call the Join method, it&rsquo;s not actually joining the data at that time, rather it&rsquo;s building an expression tree which defines the relational algebra needed to perform the join. This defers the execution point to when the data is actually operated against. So in the above example, I called &ldquo;ToArray()&rdquo; merely to provide an accurate timespan for how long the join actually takes as opposed to the more traditional PowerShell approach we used before it. If this were production code and I wanted to see  machines with an offline status that are listed as in production, rather than that &ldquo;ToArray()&rdquo; line I could simply run this:</p><p><code>$LinqJoinedData.Where({($_.PowerStatus -eq "Offline") -and ($_.ProductionStatus -eq "In Production")})</code>The Join query would execute at that time and then &ldquo;Where()&rdquo; would filter down to just the objects I requested.<br>
And there you have it! If you found this interesting, I encourage you to check out these modules:</p><ul><li><a href="https://github.com/ili101/Join-Object">ili101&rsquo;s PowerShell Module on the gallery, &ldquo;Join-Object.&rdquo;</a></li><li><a href="https://github.com/SeeminglyScience/PSLambda">SeeminglyScience&rsquo;s Module, &lsquo;PSLambda&rsquo; which is doing really fun things with delegates and threading</a></li></ul><p>Feel free to reach out to me on<a href="https://twitter.com/eshess">Twitter</a> or check out my<a href="http://elihess.com">personal site</a> from time to time for other content. If you&rsquo;ve seen<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLalnXXwQeI">my recent talk at PowerShell Summit</a>, I&rsquo;ll be posting the blog I referenced there soon about turning my dog into a tea kettle.  (it&rsquo;s not PowerShell related, thus it will be landing somewhere other than here)<br>
Happy tinkering!<br>
-Eli</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Executing LINQ Queries in PowerShell – Part 1</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-05-19-100887-2/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-05-19-100887-2/</guid><pubDate>Sat, 19 May 2018 16:10:35 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Greetings PowerShellers!&lt;br&gt;
Lately, I&amp;rsquo;ve been itching to write something up on Microsoft’s Language-Integrated Query (LINQ). You&amp;rsquo;ve likely encountered it if you&amp;rsquo;ve done any development in C#. LINQ is an incredibly powerful querying tool for performing look-ups, joins, ordering, and other common tasks on large data sets. We have a few similar cmdlets built into PowerShell, but other than the &amp;lsquo;.Where()&amp;rsquo; method on collection objects nothing that comes close to the speed at which LINQ operates.&lt;br&gt;
To dig into this topic, we&amp;rsquo;re going to have to do a quick high level overview of a couple of other .NET staples often encountered in the C# world. You see, unlike most .NET methods which accept object types like integers, strings, and the like, LINQ uses static extension methods which only accept delegate object types.&lt;br&gt;
What are delegates? In application development, there is an occasional need for objects within memory to communicate with each other for things such as &amp;ldquo;button click events.&amp;rdquo; To address this, the Windows API uses function pointers to create callback functions which then report back to other functions in your applications. Within the .Net Framework, these are called delegates.&lt;br&gt;
Delegates are objects that point to another method, or possibly many methods, by storing three key pieces of information: the address of the method on which it makes calls, the parameters (if any) of this method, and the return type (if any) of this method. With this information, a delegate object is able to invoke these methods dynamically at runtime, either synchronously or asynchronously. With this information, a delegate object is able to invoke these methods dynamically at runtime, either synchronously or asynchronously.&lt;br&gt;
A simple example of this in C# looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Greetings PowerShellers!<br>
Lately, I&rsquo;ve been itching to write something up on Microsoft’s Language-Integrated Query (LINQ). You&rsquo;ve likely encountered it if you&rsquo;ve done any development in C#. LINQ is an incredibly powerful querying tool for performing look-ups, joins, ordering, and other common tasks on large data sets. We have a few similar cmdlets built into PowerShell, but other than the &lsquo;.Where()&rsquo; method on collection objects nothing that comes close to the speed at which LINQ operates.<br>
To dig into this topic, we&rsquo;re going to have to do a quick high level overview of a couple of other .NET staples often encountered in the C# world. You see, unlike most .NET methods which accept object types like integers, strings, and the like, LINQ uses static extension methods which only accept delegate object types.<br>
What are delegates? In application development, there is an occasional need for objects within memory to communicate with each other for things such as &ldquo;button click events.&rdquo; To address this, the Windows API uses function pointers to create callback functions which then report back to other functions in your applications. Within the .Net Framework, these are called delegates.<br>
Delegates are objects that point to another method, or possibly many methods, by storing three key pieces of information: the address of the method on which it makes calls, the parameters (if any) of this method, and the return type (if any) of this method. With this information, a delegate object is able to invoke these methods dynamically at runtime, either synchronously or asynchronously. With this information, a delegate object is able to invoke these methods dynamically at runtime, either synchronously or asynchronously.<br>
A simple example of this in C# looks like this:</p><p><code>using System; namespace SimpleDelegate { //Delegate declaration public delegate void PrintMessage(string msg); // Create a class with the method to bind to the delegate public class MessagePrinter { public static void PrintLine(string msg) { Console.WriteLine(msg); } } class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { // Create a PrintMessage delegate object that // "points to" MessagePrinter.PrintLine(). PrintMessage p = new PrintMessage(MessagePrinter.PrintLine); p("Hi Animatronio!"); Console.ReadLine(); } } }</code>Clearly, in this example the use of delegates is not necessary. I&rsquo;m just trying to frame up how they would be declared and subsequently called. To simplify all of the above, Microsoft has created two generic delegate definitions. For delegates with no output, we can use Action&lt;&gt; and for delegates with output, we can use Func&lt;&gt;. These two beauties are what give us PowerShellers access to LINQ. Today we&rsquo;re going to use Func&lt;&gt; because we want output. The syntax for doing so looks like this:</p><p><code>[Func[int,int]]$Delegate = { param($i); return $i + 1 }</code>Let&rsquo;s break this down left to right:</p><ol><li>Declare Func&lt;&gt;</li><li>Tell it the type of parameter(s) to expect. In this case we&rsquo;re passing a single integer parameter.</li><li>Tell it the type of output to produce, again an integer will be returned.</li><li>Name the delegate variable.</li><li>Define the delegate with a scriptblock. We&rsquo;re just doing a very simple addition step on the parameter and returning the output.</li></ol><p>And now we&rsquo;ve finally arrived at the meat of this article. Let&rsquo;s initialize a mock dataset with ~2 million objects to play with:</p><p><code>$Dataset = @() 0..1000 | Foreach-Object { $Dataset += (Get-Verb)[(Get-Random -Maximum 98)] } 0..10 | ForEach-Object {$Dataset += $Dataset}</code>Next we&rsquo;ll measure how long it takes to filter down to only the objects which equal &ldquo;Get&rdquo; using Where-Object on three different Windows Server OS&rsquo;s running on the same Azure compute instances:</p><p>`Measure-Command { ($Dataset | Where-Object Verb -eq &ldquo;Use&rdquo;) }</p><h1 id="2008-r2-totalseconds--233399981" class="ps-heading">2008 R2: TotalSeconds : 23.3399981<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#2008-r2-totalseconds--233399981" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h1><h1 id="2012-r2-totalseconds--617634027" class="ps-heading">2012 R2: TotalSeconds : 61.7634027<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#2012-r2-totalseconds--617634027" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h1><h1 id="2016----totalseconds--180190367" class="ps-heading">2016 : TotalSeconds : 18.0190367<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#2016----totalseconds--180190367" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h1><p>`Now let&rsquo;s do the same query using LINQ:</p><p>`[Func[object,bool]] $Delegate = { param($v); return $v.verb -eq &ldquo;Use&rdquo; }
Measure-Command { [Linq.Enumerable]::Where($Dataset,$Delegate) }</p><h1 id="2008-r2-totalseconds--113967464" class="ps-heading">2008 R2: TotalSeconds : 11.3967464<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#2008-r2-totalseconds--113967464" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h1><h1 id="2012-r2-totalseconds--256511816" class="ps-heading">2012 R2: TotalSeconds : 25.6511816<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#2012-r2-totalseconds--256511816" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h1><h1 id="2016----totalseconds--128999417" class="ps-heading">2016 : TotalSeconds : 12.8999417<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#2016----totalseconds--128999417" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h1><p>`As you can see, in the older operating systems, LINQ is over twice as fast (also, what&rsquo;s the deal with 2012 R2??). In 2016, it&rsquo;s only about 50% faster. But of course, calling &lsquo;.Where()&rsquo; directly on the object is still by far the fastest way to filter on a dataset:</p><p>`Measure-Command { $Dataset.Where( {$_.Verb -eq &ldquo;Use&rdquo;}) }</p><h1 id="2008-r2-totalseconds--55102392" class="ps-heading">2008 R2: TotalSeconds : 5.5102392<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#2008-r2-totalseconds--55102392" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h1><h1 id="2012-r2-totalseconds--175893828" class="ps-heading">2012 R2: TotalSeconds : 17.5893828<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#2012-r2-totalseconds--175893828" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h1><h1 id="2016----totalseconds--61834444" class="ps-heading">2016 : TotalSeconds : 6.1834444<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#2016----totalseconds--61834444" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h1><p>`Initially I had suspected it was translating the scriptblock as an anonymous function and tapping into the LINQ extension method behind the scenes, but Bruce Payette set me straight. According to Bruce, It&rsquo;s using a very low level API to invoke the scriptblock.<a href="https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/src/System.Management.Automation/engine/runtime/Operations/MiscOps.cs#L2425">Source code is here</a>.<br>
So if &lsquo;.Where()&rsquo; is so much faster, why did I bother writing this? I wanted to open with a familiar concept. The true power in LINQ comes from its SQL-like ability to aggregate and manipulate data. In the next blog, we&rsquo;ll take a look at grouping data, using joins, and why that&rsquo;s awesome.<br>
Until then, happy tinkering!<br>
-Eli</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>A Summit 2018 Post-Mortem</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-04-16-a-summit-2018-post-mortem/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-04-16-a-summit-2018-post-mortem/</guid><pubDate>Mon, 16 Apr 2018 00:36:31 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;We&amp;rsquo;ve been conducting a survey of Summit 2018, now that it&amp;rsquo;s in the past, and wanted to share some of our immediate take-aways. The survey is still open for Summiteers until end of April 2018; you should have the URL in a follow-up email and can inquire in the Slack team if you need it.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>We&rsquo;ve been conducting a survey of Summit 2018, now that it&rsquo;s in the past, and wanted to share some of our immediate take-aways. The survey is still open for Summiteers until end of April 2018; you should have the URL in a follow-up email and can inquire in the Slack team if you need it.</p><p>The week kicked off with a huge hiccup, as the mail-merge used to produce the event badges dropped nearly a third of them, and we (I, really) didn&rsquo;t notice until far too late. Huge apologies, personally, for that massive screw-up on Monday.<br>
Monday&rsquo;s breakfast was a little touch-and-go as well, as our first 200 arrivals consumed more than 500 breakfast sandwiches, leaving many Summiteers with nothing. I&rsquo;d stopped making the &ldquo;don&rsquo;t pile your plate&rdquo; announcement last year, which may need to be reinstated. We&rsquo;re working on ways to deal with that on arrival day, when folks are coming in unevenly and announcements are difficult to make with consistency. We may move to a plated breakfast model on Monday, versus a buffet, although those are a great deal more expensive and make it harder to accommodate special dietary needs.<br>
One comment I specifically want to address, because it&rsquo;s important to me:</p><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote><pre><code> If it was by choice that's one thing, but if there was any ounce of pressure to get the women into those costumes... that seems a bit... not cool? It was awkward. I know it wasn't to the level of 'booth babes,' but still had a similar feeling to it.</code></pre></blockquote><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote/><pre><code> This is referring to [@TheDevOpsDiva](http://twitter.com/thedevopsdiva) and [@MSFTJenny,](https://twitter.com/msftjenny) who appeared costumed as the [PowerShell character](https://www.redbubble.com/people/migreene/works/28212186-powershell-hero?p=sticker). I want to be absolutely clear that these women are members of our community; Missy is an MVP Award recipient and Jenny is a Program Manager on the PowerShell team. Both created their costumes and appeared entirely of their own volition because they thought it'd be fun. I'd *never* permit an event I worked at to pressure anyone, female or otherwise, into appearing in a costume (unless we hired an actor specifically for that purpose, which wouldn't be something Summit would do). I entirely appreciate and respect the concern here; I'm not trying to attack the commenter. I just want to make it crystal clear that the women had the idea in the first place on this one.</code></pre><p>Monday otherwise went off well, although some folks did feel that the Team Lightning Demos were overly Azure-heavy. Given Microsoft&rsquo;s extreme cloud focus these days, that&rsquo;s less than surprising, I suppose, but it&rsquo;s well-noted for the future. We know not every Summiteer is an Azure customer. We&rsquo;d actually deeply love some engagement from other cloud providers, and are hopeful we&rsquo;ll see that in the future.
Actually, we did have one more snafu on Monday: our first attempt at lunchtime vendor sessions fell almost entirely flat, and we won&rsquo;t be using that as a sponsorship opportunity again. More on that toward the end of this article.
One of our breakfast selections, a French toast bar, didn&rsquo;t get a lot of love - and honestly, our logistics folks were a bit saddened by it as well. Most Meydenbauer hot breakfasts always include some sausage or eggs or bacon for those inclined, but the French toast &ldquo;package&rdquo; was just that, and nothing more. We&rsquo;ve notes to watch for that in the future. We know folks prefer a more well-rounded breakfast. Sorry for that one.
Overall, I personally felt the food was great as usual, although food reviews are always a mixed bag. We know some of you would just prefer pizza all week, or &ldquo;simple foods,&rdquo; but we&rsquo;re trying to accommodate a huge range of backgrounds and preferences on a budget, so we do the best we can. We heard a lot of &ldquo;low carb&rdquo; requests, but know that each meal was planned by a professional chef and a registered dietician to meet current nutritional recommendations; we obviously can&rsquo;t accommodate every possible dietary preference, and so we try to aim the middle ground of following basic guidelines for meal composition. We&rsquo;ll continue that going forward, and hope everyone can appreciate the rather impossible situation you get into when trying to feed 400 people on $78 per person per day (conference venue food isn&rsquo;t cheap, folks, and our venue is actually the best deal in town).
Finally, Thursday wrapped with Iron Scripter, which was our first competition of this kind. We&rsquo;ll do it again, and we&rsquo;ve already taken numerous notes to improve and work out kinks. Strongly noted is the need to provide more specific detail of the competition in advance, so that people can figure out how they&rsquo;ll participate. Huge thanks to everyone who participated - we hope you had some fun on the last afternoon.
Some of what&rsquo;s on tap for next year: We&rsquo;re going to launch an OnRamp track, which will be a separate ticket at the same price. Those folks will participate in our Monday General Sessions, meals, and evening events, but they&rsquo;ll have their own hands-on class content otherwise. We&rsquo;ll have some of the industry greats teaching, with the idea of bringing new blood into our community each year. And, we&rsquo;ll be partnering with sponsors and Tech Impact&rsquo;s IT Works program to provide OnRamp scholarships to young people, often from disadvantaged situations or underrepresented groups. They&rsquo;ll all have completed a basic IT Operations education, including A+ and Cisco certifications. Our only sponsorship packages in 2019 will each include at least one scholarship, and we hope this can eventually help increase the diversity of our community in many ways.
Speaking of diversity, this is a common thread. I want to include one particularly well-written comment from our survey, but this wasn&rsquo;t the only one with this general theme:</p><pre><code> &gt;</code></pre><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote><p>On diversity:</p></blockquote><ul><li>Acknowledgement by leadership that this is a problem might help</li><li>Some orgs can help include speakers, attendees from underserved communities</li><li>More active pursuit, but<em>not</em> solely for diversity might help. There are some fantastic folks out there&hellip; This might be tough to do</li></ul><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote/><pre><code> Let me address this a wee bit. First, because many folks don't realize it, Summit has no paid employees. We're all doing this on a volunteer basis, in our spare time, and it already consumes a lot of that spare time. While I 100% agree with the above, and absolutely acknowledge the problem the IT industry has, in general, with diversity; we simply don't have the human-power to actively pursue particular presenters or attendees. We just don't. Adding one $60k salary to our (currently non-existent) payroll to handle this would add almost $350 to each ticket we sell, once you factor in payroll taxes, worker's compensation, and other overhead. That moves us to a $1950 ticket, which is more than anyone has indicated they're willing to pay for. What I'd love is for someone to volunteer to take on this task for us, as volunteers currently take on every other task we have to perform. I suppose, if I'm being snarky, I'd say it's all well and good to tell us what we could do better, but it's a lot more valuable to jump in and actually help us do it.</code></pre><p>We&rsquo;ve also seen comments like:</p><pre><code> &gt;</code></pre><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote><p>it would be great if we could offer some financial assistance to get some more diversity to the conference.</p></blockquote><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote/><pre><code> As noted above, we're going to try very hard to do that. Bear in mind that *we're a nonprofit; *we don't really have "extra money." Financial assistance without sponsors means raising the ticket price, and then we have to actually find those needing our assistance (which we're hoping to rely on Tech Impact for, since they're already working with them). Money and human-hours are this particular organization's main constraint; anyone willing to help solve that with a large donation or by contributing *their* time to help solve the problem will be welcomed with open arms, I promise. Drop me a line at donj@ (that's my email alias; you can likely figure out the domain name since you're on the website).</code></pre><p>And bear in mind that we don&rsquo;t get huge sponsorships. If we got 4 (a record), that&rsquo;d be 4 scholarships. If we bumped everyone&rsquo;s ticket price $20, we&rsquo;d get 1 more. Five folks is about 1% of our attendance. I&rsquo;m not saying we don&rsquo;t do it because it&rsquo;s not big; I&rsquo;m saying that, even if we&rsquo;re hugely successful, it&rsquo;s not going to be hugely visible. I don&rsquo;t care about the visibility; we&rsquo;re going to try and make this happen because it&rsquo;s the right thing. Just know that it&rsquo;s not going to be an overnight turnaround for an industry with epically poor diversity.
On another topic: Booze. This also comes up in our survey, such as when we asked attendees what one thing we could drop from Summit:</p><pre><code> &gt;</code></pre><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote><p>Alcohol, but have no illusions that I will ever attend the summit and not be drinking with friends and peers. ?</p></blockquote><blockquote/><blockquote/><blockquote/><pre><code> I get it. I drink myself; I've had others tell me they don't mind being around people who are drinking (in moderation), and others tell me they won't be in an event where alcohol is served. All perfectly fine perspectives. Our goal is to try and make Summit *inclusive, *which means not making anyone feel like they *have* to be left out. Many, many people enjoy an alcoholic beverage during social events, and we'd like to accommodate them. We'd like to do that in a way that doesn't make non-drinkers feel they aren't welcome. Going forward, we're going to make sure that soft drinks are always complimentary when possible, or when we're paying on consumption that non-drinking attendees get the same number of complimentary beverages as those who are drinking (that's always been our intent, but it didn't get correctly implemented this year). We're absolutely looking to build events that do not *focus* on alcohol as a centerpiece; we want our attendees to be that centerpiece. But we also don't want to go further down the path of dividing our community when we're supposed to be helping bring it together; separate "drinking" and "non drinking" events just feels like we're building walls, not bridges. I'm deeply open to suggestions; drop a line to me (donj@ is my email alias, and if you're here, you can likely figure out the domain name) if you've any ideas. One thing to bear in mind is that, one reason we offer *complimentary *beverages (which should include non-alcoholic) is to help level the playing field for folks who may be on a tight budget, so that they can participate as fully as they want.</code></pre><p>Recognize, too, that there&rsquo;s literally no possible way to have a &ldquo;quiet dinner out with everyone&rdquo; when &ldquo;everyone&rdquo; is 400 people , which we did have folks suggest. We do try to leave Tuesday and Thursday for folks to form their own smaller, quieter groups and head out together.
Anyway - that&rsquo;s just some of our early take-aways, and some of what we&rsquo;re planning for next year. We&rsquo;re <em>always</em> open to suggestions. Seriously. Anything polite and constructive is welcome, and you can email me directly (I&rsquo;ve referenced my address twice in the above), if you like, or comment right here.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>A Changing of the Guard</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-04-11-a-changing-of-the-guard/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-04-11-a-changing-of-the-guard/</guid><pubDate>Wed, 11 Apr 2018 20:04:28 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;This week at PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2018, we announced a change in leadership for The DevOps Collective, the nonprofit organization that runs Summit, PowerShell.org, and other programs.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Stepping in as CEO will be former Director of Online Services Will Anderson (@gamerlivingwill on Twitter). As CEO, Will takes on day to day responsibility for running Summit, managing the website, and keeping our other programs on track. He will be assembling a team, including our new CFO James Petty, to help him with those tasks. Many of our current crew, including Richard Siddaway and Jeff Hicks, will continue their major contributions to Summit and other activities, and Will is already speaking with other community members who will be joining our team for the first time. Jeffrey Bernt will take on additional responsibilities for Summit logistics, backed by our long-time logistics expert Christopher Gannon. This is all part of what has always been our plan to involve more community members in the organization’s operation, and to help to ensure the long term success and survival of all our programs.&lt;br&gt;
I will remain the organization’s President. This enables me to stay on the advise Will and his team, help document how we do things, and focus on the organization’s future. Will’s move to CEO will free up space for me to work on new projects that further the organization’s mission, and to grow the organization to better serve our community. I’ve some fun things in mind that you’ll hopefully get to see someday soon.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>This week at PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2018, we announced a change in leadership for The DevOps Collective, the nonprofit organization that runs Summit, PowerShell.org, and other programs.</p><p>Stepping in as CEO will be former Director of Online Services Will Anderson (@gamerlivingwill on Twitter). As CEO, Will takes on day to day responsibility for running Summit, managing the website, and keeping our other programs on track. He will be assembling a team, including our new CFO James Petty, to help him with those tasks. Many of our current crew, including Richard Siddaway and Jeff Hicks, will continue their major contributions to Summit and other activities, and Will is already speaking with other community members who will be joining our team for the first time. Jeffrey Bernt will take on additional responsibilities for Summit logistics, backed by our long-time logistics expert Christopher Gannon. This is all part of what has always been our plan to involve more community members in the organization’s operation, and to help to ensure the long term success and survival of all our programs.<br>
I will remain the organization’s President. This enables me to stay on the advise Will and his team, help document how we do things, and focus on the organization’s future. Will’s move to CEO will free up space for me to work on new projects that further the organization’s mission, and to grow the organization to better serve our community. I’ve some fun things in mind that you’ll hopefully get to see someday soon.</p><p>Jason Helmick, our former CFO, is stepping aside. He will still be involved with Summit and remains a close friend and advisor to me, and I thank him deeply for helping not only bring James into the family, but creating such a smooth transition for his role.</p><p>Please join me in congratulating Will and James!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter prequels: Puzzle 10 – A commentary</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-04-01-iron-scripter-prequels-puzzle-10-a-commentary/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-04-01-iron-scripter-prequels-puzzle-10-a-commentary/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:01:32 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;This is the commentary on the last Iron Scripter prequel puzzle: &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-10-A-commentary.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 10 - A commentary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Next weekend will mark the start of summit and you can work on the Iron Scripter preludes - 4 daily puzzles as a lead in to the main event on Thursday 12 April 2018. If you haven&amp;rsquo;t chosen your faction yet you need to hurry&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>This is the commentary on the last Iron Scripter prequel puzzle: <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-10-A-commentary.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 10 - A commentary</a><br>
Next weekend will mark the start of summit and you can work on the Iron Scripter preludes - 4 daily puzzles as a lead in to the main event on Thursday 12 April 2018. If you haven&rsquo;t chosen your faction yet you need to hurry</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter Prequels: Puzzle 9 – A commentary</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-28-iron-scripter-prequels-puzzle-9-a-commentary/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-28-iron-scripter-prequels-puzzle-9-a-commentary/</guid><pubDate>Wed, 28 Mar 2018 15:07:56 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;rsquo;s my commentary for puzzle 9: &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-9-A-commentary.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 9 - A commentary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
In this puzzle you were cleaning up the TEMP folder and the recycle bin plus working with scheduled tasks and/or scheduled jobs.&lt;br&gt;
One more commentary to come - probably early next week rather than Sunday and then we&amp;rsquo;re into the Summit and the main event.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Here&rsquo;s my commentary for puzzle 9: <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-9-A-commentary.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 9 - A commentary</a><br>
In this puzzle you were cleaning up the TEMP folder and the recycle bin plus working with scheduled tasks and/or scheduled jobs.<br>
One more commentary to come - probably early next week rather than Sunday and then we&rsquo;re into the Summit and the main event.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter Preludes and Main Event: Rules and Info</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-18-iron-scripter-preludes-and-main-event-rules-and-info/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-18-iron-scripter-preludes-and-main-event-rules-and-info/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 18 Mar 2018 20:00:36 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Information is &lt;a href="http://ironscripter.us/iron-scripter-us-2018/"&gt;now available at IronScripter.us&lt;/a&gt; for the at-Summit events, and participants are advised to refresh themselves on the &lt;a href="http://ironscripter.us/rules/"&gt;Rules&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;
Participants attending Summit should begin choosing their faction and getting to know their teammates in the faction-specific channels of the DevOps-Summit Slack team (open only to attendees and alumni).&lt;br&gt;
Participants hoping to participate remotely may wish to start choosing a faction and finding a way to get in touch with them. The &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/forums/forum/iron-scripter/faction-discussion/"&gt;Faction Discussion&lt;/a&gt; may be a good way to do that.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Information is<a href="http://ironscripter.us/iron-scripter-us-2018/">now available at IronScripter.us</a> for the at-Summit events, and participants are advised to refresh themselves on the<a href="http://ironscripter.us/rules/">Rules</a>.<br>
Participants attending Summit should begin choosing their faction and getting to know their teammates in the faction-specific channels of the DevOps-Summit Slack team (open only to attendees and alumni).<br>
Participants hoping to participate remotely may wish to start choosing a faction and finding a way to get in touch with them. The<a href="https://powershell.org/forums/forum/iron-scripter/faction-discussion/">Faction Discussion</a> may be a good way to do that.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter prequel: Puzzle 10</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-18-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-10/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-18-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-10/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 18 Mar 2018 00:01:59 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Activity on the Iron Scripter forum and Slack channels has reduced for the last few puzzles leading me to believe that I&amp;rsquo;ve been giving out too many challenges. I&amp;rsquo;ve decided that this will be the last prequel puzzle: &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-10.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 10&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
There won&amp;rsquo;t be a puzzle 11.&lt;br&gt;
Next week I&amp;rsquo;ll publish the commentary for puzzle 9 and the week after that for puzzle 10 meaning you get 2 weeks for these last 2 puzzles.&lt;br&gt;
Next year, if we repeat Iron Scripter and the prequels, we&amp;rsquo;ll space the prequels out a bit more so that we don&amp;rsquo;t overload you.&lt;br&gt;
Details on the iron Scripter challenge itself will be published soon - until then enjoy this last prequel puzzle.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Activity on the Iron Scripter forum and Slack channels has reduced for the last few puzzles leading me to believe that I&rsquo;ve been giving out too many challenges. I&rsquo;ve decided that this will be the last prequel puzzle: <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-10.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 10</a><br>
There won&rsquo;t be a puzzle 11.<br>
Next week I&rsquo;ll publish the commentary for puzzle 9 and the week after that for puzzle 10 meaning you get 2 weeks for these last 2 puzzles.<br>
Next year, if we repeat Iron Scripter and the prequels, we&rsquo;ll space the prequels out a bit more so that we don&rsquo;t overload you.<br>
Details on the iron Scripter challenge itself will be published soon - until then enjoy this last prequel puzzle.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter prequel: Puzzle 8 – A commentary</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-11-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-8-a-commentary/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-11-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-8-a-commentary/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 11 Mar 2018 00:03:17 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;In puzzle 8 you&amp;rsquo;re asked to create some local users, folders and a file. Then set permissions on the file. I&amp;rsquo;ve provided a commentary on the puzzle: &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-8-A-commentary.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 8 - A commentary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
I&amp;rsquo;ve not presented full faction specific solutions as usual - view the forums and Slack channels to see how the factions are solving this puzzle.&lt;br&gt;
Puzzle 9 will be available around the time you read this.&lt;br&gt;
Enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>In puzzle 8 you&rsquo;re asked to create some local users, folders and a file. Then set permissions on the file. I&rsquo;ve provided a commentary on the puzzle:<a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-8-A-commentary.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 8 - A commentary</a><br>
I&rsquo;ve not presented full faction specific solutions as usual - view the forums and Slack channels to see how the factions are solving this puzzle.<br>
Puzzle 9 will be available around the time you read this.<br>
Enjoy.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter prequel: Puzzle 9</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-11-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-9/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-11-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-9/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 11 Mar 2018 00:01:15 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;You&amp;rsquo;re approaching the end of the prequels - soon it will be time for Iron Scripter. This week&amp;rsquo;s challenge involves the file system and the scheduling system - &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-9.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 9&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In all things remember the goals of your faction.&lt;br&gt;
Please remember that we&amp;rsquo;re NOT grading the submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter prequel forums or on the Summit Slack channel.&lt;br&gt;
If anyone is really stuck or doesn&amp;rsquo;t understand something in the puzzle leave a comment here or on the Slack channel. I&amp;rsquo;ll try and answer but can&amp;rsquo;t guarantee timeframes.&lt;br&gt;
If there is sufficient interest I&amp;rsquo;ll run a Q&amp;amp;A side session on the prequel puzzles at Summit. Let me know either here or on the Slack channel if you&amp;rsquo;re interested.&lt;br&gt;
Good luck&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>You&rsquo;re approaching the end of the prequels - soon it will be time for Iron Scripter. This week&rsquo;s challenge involves the file system and the scheduling system -<a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-9.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 9</a></p><p>In all things remember the goals of your faction.<br>
Please remember that we&rsquo;re NOT grading the submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter prequel forums or on the Summit Slack channel.<br>
If anyone is really stuck or doesn&rsquo;t understand something in the puzzle leave a comment here or on the Slack channel. I&rsquo;ll try and answer but can&rsquo;t guarantee timeframes.<br>
If there is sufficient interest I&rsquo;ll run a Q&amp;A side session on the prequel puzzles at Summit. Let me know either here or on the Slack channel if you&rsquo;re interested.<br>
Good luck</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>2018 Community Lightning Demos – Sign Up Now!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-10-2018-community-lightning-demos-sign-up-now/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-10-2018-community-lightning-demos-sign-up-now/</guid><pubDate>Sat, 10 Mar 2018 02:41:33 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;rsquo;ve been to a PowerShell Summit, chances are you&amp;rsquo;ve seen the awesome lightning demos put on by the PowerShell team members. It&amp;rsquo;s a fun format - each team member gives a quick 5-10 minute demo of something they&amp;rsquo;re working on, one after the other.&lt;br&gt;
In a few weeks, the PowerShell + Devops Global Summit will kick off, with a Community Lightning Demo session scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. We&amp;rsquo;re looking for community members like you to &lt;a href="https://www.papercall.io/cfps/988/submissions/new"&gt;sign up&lt;/a&gt; and present! Demo something cool that you&amp;rsquo;ve written or used - a module, function, tip, trick, etc. - just keep it under 10 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>If you&rsquo;ve been to a PowerShell Summit, chances are you&rsquo;ve seen the awesome lightning demos put on by the PowerShell team members. It&rsquo;s a fun format - each team member gives a quick 5-10 minute demo of something they&rsquo;re working on, one after the other.<br>
In a few weeks, the PowerShell + Devops Global Summit will kick off, with a Community Lightning Demo session scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. We&rsquo;re looking for community members like you to<a href="https://www.papercall.io/cfps/988/submissions/new">sign up</a> and present! Demo something cool that you&rsquo;ve written or used - a module, function, tip, trick, etc. - just keep it under 10 minutes.</p><p><a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/docs.jpg"><img src="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/docs-300x169.jpg" alt=""/></p><pre><code>Michael Lombardi presenting a demo, credit to Trevor Sullivan</code></pre><p>Here are some links with more info:</p><ul><li><a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/summit-materials#community-lightning-demos">A list of demos from 2017</a></li><li><a href="http://ramblingcookiemonster.github.io/Summit-Lightning-Demos/">A longer bit on community lightning demos</a></li><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50Z6vEHVgDg">An example demo recording</a></li><li><a href="https://powershell.org/2018/02/04/2018-community-lightning-demos/">Announcement with pictures from last year</a></li></ul><p>Sound interesting? Want to jump on stage for a few minutes and show us something fun?<a href="https://www.papercall.io/cfps/988/submissions/new">Sign up now</a>!<br>
We&rsquo;ll be looking forward to some awesome demos; hope to see you there!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter Prequel: Puzzle 7 – A commentary</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-04-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-7-a-commentary/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-04-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-7-a-commentary/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 04 Mar 2018 00:03:25 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Puzzle 7 introduces a touch of class - PowerShell classes to be precise. The way I approached the puzzle is available: &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-7-A-commentary.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 7 - A commentary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
I&amp;rsquo;ve not presented full faction specific solutions as usual - view the forums and Slack channels to see how the factions are solving this puzzle.&lt;br&gt;
Puzzle 8 will be available around the time you read this.&lt;br&gt;
Enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Puzzle 7 introduces a touch of class - PowerShell classes to be precise. The way I approached the puzzle is available: <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-7-A-commentary.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 7 - A commentary</a><br>
I&rsquo;ve not presented full faction specific solutions as usual - view the forums and Slack channels to see how the factions are solving this puzzle.<br>
Puzzle 8 will be available around the time you read this.<br>
Enjoy.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter Prequel: Puzzle 8</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-04-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-8/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-03-04-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-8/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 04 Mar 2018 00:01:39 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Iron Scripter is rapidly approaching. This is one of your last few training opportunities.&lt;br&gt;
This challenge &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-8.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 8&lt;/a&gt; revolves around setting permissions on files.&lt;br&gt;
In all things remember the goals of your faction.&lt;br&gt;
Please remember that we&amp;rsquo;re NOT grading the submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter prequel forums or on the Summit Slack channel.&lt;br&gt;
If anyone is really stuck or doesn&amp;rsquo;t understand something in the puzzle leave a comment here or on the Slack channel. I&amp;rsquo;ll try and answer but can&amp;rsquo;t guarantee timeframes.&lt;br&gt;
If there is sufficient interest I&amp;rsquo;ll run a Q&amp;amp;A side session on the prequel puzzles at Summit. Let me know either here or on the Slack channel if you&amp;rsquo;re interested.&lt;br&gt;
Good luck&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Iron Scripter is rapidly approaching. This is one of your last few training opportunities.<br>
This challenge <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-8.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 8</a> revolves around setting permissions on files.<br>
In all things remember the goals of your faction.<br>
Please remember that we&rsquo;re NOT grading the submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter prequel forums or on the Summit Slack channel.<br>
If anyone is really stuck or doesn&rsquo;t understand something in the puzzle leave a comment here or on the Slack channel. I&rsquo;ll try and answer but can&rsquo;t guarantee timeframes.<br>
If there is sufficient interest I&rsquo;ll run a Q&amp;A side session on the prequel puzzles at Summit. Let me know either here or on the Slack channel if you&rsquo;re interested.<br>
Good luck</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter Prequel: Puzzle 6 commentary</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-25-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-6-commentary/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-25-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-6-commentary/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 25 Feb 2018 00:03:29 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Puzzle 6 has some interesting aspects when you dig into determining system up time: &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-6-A-commentary.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 6 - A commentary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
I&amp;rsquo;ve not presented full faction specific solutions as usual - view the forums and Slack channels to see how the factions are solving this puzzle.&lt;br&gt;
Puzzle 7 will be available around the time you read this.&lt;br&gt;
Enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Puzzle 6 has some interesting aspects when you dig into determining system up time: <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-6-A-commentary.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 6 - A commentary</a><br>
I&rsquo;ve not presented full faction specific solutions as usual - view the forums and Slack channels to see how the factions are solving this puzzle.<br>
Puzzle 7 will be available around the time you read this.<br>
Enjoy.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter Prequels: puzzle 7</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-25-iron-scripter-prequels-puzzle-7/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-25-iron-scripter-prequels-puzzle-7/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 25 Feb 2018 00:01:07 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;You&amp;rsquo;re past half way on journey to iron Scripter. Only a few more training opportunities will be available to you before the ultimate competition.&lt;br&gt;
In this week&amp;rsquo;s challenge  &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-7.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 7&lt;/a&gt; you&amp;rsquo;ll be working with PowerShell classes.&lt;br&gt;
In all things remember the goals of  your faction.&lt;br&gt;
Please remember that we&amp;rsquo;re NOT grading the submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter prequel forums or on the Summit Slack channel.&lt;br&gt;
If anyone is really stuck or doesn&amp;rsquo;t understand something in the puzzle leave a comment here or on the Slack channel. I&amp;rsquo;ll try and answer but can&amp;rsquo;t guarantee timeframes.&lt;br&gt;
If there is sufficient interest I&amp;rsquo;ll run a Q&amp;amp;A side session on the prequel puzzles at Summit. Let me know either here or on the Slack channel if you&amp;rsquo;re interested.&lt;br&gt;
Good luck&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>You&rsquo;re past half way on journey to iron Scripter. Only a few more training opportunities will be available to you before the ultimate competition.<br>
In this week&rsquo;s challenge <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-7.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 7</a> you&rsquo;ll be working with PowerShell classes.<br>
In all things remember the goals of  your faction.<br>
Please remember that we&rsquo;re NOT grading the submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter prequel forums or on the Summit Slack channel.<br>
If anyone is really stuck or doesn&rsquo;t understand something in the puzzle leave a comment here or on the Slack channel. I&rsquo;ll try and answer but can&rsquo;t guarantee timeframes.<br>
If there is sufficient interest I&rsquo;ll run a Q&amp;A side session on the prequel puzzles at Summit. Let me know either here or on the Slack channel if you&rsquo;re interested.<br>
Good luck</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter 2018 prequel: Puzzle 5 – a commentary</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-18-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-5-a-commentary/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-18-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-5-a-commentary/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 18 Feb 2018 00:03:27 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Puzzle 5 involves working with performance counters. My notes and commentary are available: &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-5-A-commentary.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 5 - A commentary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
As with previous commentaries I&amp;rsquo;ve not presented the faction specific solutions - view the forums and Slack channels to see what the factions are doing and join with your faction.&lt;br&gt;
Puzzle 6 will be available around the time you read this.&lt;br&gt;
Enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Puzzle 5 involves working with performance counters. My notes and commentary are available: <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-5-A-commentary.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 5 - A commentary</a><br>
As with previous commentaries I&rsquo;ve not presented the faction specific solutions - view the forums and Slack channels to see what the factions are doing and join with your faction.<br>
Puzzle 6 will be available around the time you read this.<br>
Enjoy.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter Prequels: Puzzle 6</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-18-iron-scripter-prequels-puzzle-6/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-18-iron-scripter-prequels-puzzle-6/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 18 Feb 2018 00:01:13 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;This is your half way challenge. This week your challenge involves discovering the time a system has been running - &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-6.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In all things remember the goals of your faction.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Please remember that we&amp;rsquo;re NOT grading submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter Prequel forums or on the Summit Slack channel.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If anyone is really stuck or doesn&amp;rsquo;t understand something in the puzzle leave a comment here or on the Slack channel. I&amp;rsquo;ll try to answer but no guarantees about timeframe as I&amp;rsquo;m finishing off work on Summit 2018 and starting Summit 2019!&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>This is your half way challenge. This week your challenge involves discovering the time a system has been running -<a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-6.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 6</a></p><p>In all things remember the goals of your faction.</p><p>Please remember that we&rsquo;re NOT grading submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter Prequel forums or on the Summit Slack channel.</p><p>If anyone is really stuck or doesn&rsquo;t understand something in the puzzle leave a comment here or on the Slack channel. I&rsquo;ll try to answer but no guarantees about timeframe as I&rsquo;m finishing off work on Summit 2018 and starting Summit 2019!</p><p>Good luck.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter 2018 prequel: Puzzle 4 – a commentary</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-11-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-4-a-commentary/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-11-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-4-a-commentary/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 11 Feb 2018 00:03:04 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Puzzle 4 is all about working with legacy utilities. My notes and commentary are now available: &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-4-A-commentary.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 4 - A commentary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
As with previous commentaries I&amp;rsquo;ve not presented the faction specific solutions - view the forums and Slack channels to see what the factions are doing and join with your faction.&lt;br&gt;
Puzzle 5 will be available around the time you read this.&lt;br&gt;
Enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Puzzle 4 is all about working with legacy utilities. My notes and commentary are now available: <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-4-A-commentary.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 4 - A commentary</a><br>
As with previous commentaries I&rsquo;ve not presented the faction specific solutions - view the forums and Slack channels to see what the factions are doing and join with your faction.<br>
Puzzle 5 will be available around the time you read this.<br>
Enjoy.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter 2018 prequel: Puzzle 5</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-11-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-5/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-11-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-5/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 11 Feb 2018 00:01:37 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;You&amp;rsquo;re approaching the half way point on your journey to Iron Scripter. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, involves performance counters and multiple ways of presenting data. The details are here: &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-5.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
In all things remember the goals of your faction.&lt;br&gt;
Please remember that we&amp;rsquo;re NOT grading submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter Prequel forums or on the Summit Slack channel&lt;br&gt;
If anyone is really stuck or doesn&amp;rsquo;t understand something in the puzzle leave a comment here or on the Slack channel. I&amp;rsquo;ll try to answer but no guarantees about timeframe as I&amp;rsquo;m finishing off work on Summit 2018 and starting Summit 2019!&lt;br&gt;
Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>You&rsquo;re approaching the half way point on your journey to Iron Scripter. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, involves performance counters and multiple ways of presenting data. The details are here: <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-5.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 5</a><br>
In all things remember the goals of your faction.<br>
Please remember that we&rsquo;re NOT grading submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter Prequel forums or on the Summit Slack channel<br>
If anyone is really stuck or doesn&rsquo;t understand something in the puzzle leave a comment here or on the Slack channel. I&rsquo;ll try to answer but no guarantees about timeframe as I&rsquo;m finishing off work on Summit 2018 and starting Summit 2019!<br>
Good luck.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Updated Summit Pre-Arrival InfoDump</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-08-updated-summit-pre-arrival-infodump/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-08-updated-summit-pre-arrival-infodump/</guid><pubDate>Thu, 08 Feb 2018 19:26:20 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;We sent out a big email blast to everyone this morning (noon Eastern time), and if you didn&amp;rsquo;t get it it&amp;rsquo;s because (probably) your corporate email is block-block-blocking us. You&amp;rsquo;re welcome to sign up a personal email address at &lt;a href="http://eepurl.com/cEcNlT"&gt;http://eepurl.com/cEcNlT&lt;/a&gt;, if you&amp;rsquo;d like. We&amp;rsquo;ll also continue to post communications in the #summit-events channel in the Slack team. A PDF of this morning&amp;rsquo;s email is here, although this&amp;rsquo;ll be the last one we post publicly.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Important-Pre-Summit-Information.pdf"&gt;Important Pre-Summit Information&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
That mailing list and our Slack team are going to be our best way to communicate with Summiteers, so make sure one of them is working for you.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>We sent out a big email blast to everyone this morning (noon Eastern time), and if you didn&rsquo;t get it it&rsquo;s because (probably) your corporate email is block-block-blocking us. You&rsquo;re welcome to sign up a personal email address at <a href="http://eepurl.com/cEcNlT">http://eepurl.com/cEcNlT</a>, if you&rsquo;d like. We&rsquo;ll also continue to post communications in the #summit-events channel in the Slack team. A PDF of this morning&rsquo;s email is here, although this&rsquo;ll be the last one we post publicly.<br><a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Important-Pre-Summit-Information.pdf">Important Pre-Summit Information</a><br>
That mailing list and our Slack team are going to be our best way to communicate with Summiteers, so make sure one of them is working for you.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2018 Registration Status</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-06-powershell-devops-global-summit-2018-registration-status/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-06-powershell-devops-global-summit-2018-registration-status/</guid><pubDate>Tue, 06 Feb 2018 22:21:11 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;As I write this, we’ve sold out. Here’s what happens next:&lt;br&gt;
We need to finish reconciling our speaker slots and PowerShell team seats, which will take about a week. That may result in a free seat or two, which we will place on sale. Watch @PSHSummit on Twitter for that announcement.&lt;br&gt;
A WAITLIST IS AVAILABLE ON THE REGISTRATION PAGE. Sign up if you’d like first notice of released inventory and a 24h window to claim a seat&lt;br&gt;
Beyond that, monitor the Summit discussion forum here. We often have last minute cancellations, and while we don’t permit refunds, we do permit ticket holders to transfer their tickets. We will advise them to post in the forum to solicit transferees. Financial arrangements for such transfers are private; we cannot facilitate those&lt;br&gt;
That will do it for registration - aside from a possible small handful of seats coming out of our final reconciliation, and the opportunity of purchasing a ticket from a cancellation, there won’t be additional inventory. We’re not looking to increase attendance for 2019, either; we will be sticking at the current attendee count for the foreseeable future.&lt;br&gt;
Big thanks to our returning and new Summiteers! We are looking forward to seeing you in April!&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>As I write this, we’ve sold out. Here’s what happens next:<br>
We need to finish reconciling our speaker slots and PowerShell team seats, which will take about a week. That may result in a free seat or two, which we will place on sale. Watch @PSHSummit on Twitter for that announcement.<br>
A WAITLIST IS AVAILABLE ON THE REGISTRATION PAGE. Sign up if you’d like first notice of released inventory and a 24h window to claim a seat<br>
Beyond that, monitor the Summit discussion forum here. We often have last minute cancellations, and while we don’t permit refunds, we do permit ticket holders to transfer their tickets. We will advise them to post in the forum to solicit transferees. Financial arrangements for such transfers are private; we cannot facilitate those<br>
That will do it for registration - aside from a possible small handful of seats coming out of our final reconciliation, and the opportunity of purchasing a ticket from a cancellation, there won’t be additional inventory. We’re not looking to increase attendance for 2019, either; we will be sticking at the current attendee count for the foreseeable future.<br>
Big thanks to our returning and new Summiteers! We are looking forward to seeing you in April!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PowerShell Summit Pre-Arrival Information Dump</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-05-powershell-summit-pre-arrival-information-dump/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-05-powershell-summit-pre-arrival-information-dump/</guid><pubDate>Mon, 05 Feb 2018 17:49:05 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;This is a bit of a long post, but we promise - it&amp;rsquo;s important, and it&amp;rsquo;s worth it.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Refunds &amp;amp; Transfers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Because this is the time of year when it starts to come up, remember that we don&amp;rsquo;t offer registration refunds. You&amp;rsquo;re welcome to transfer your membership, however, at no fee. Just log into EventBrite (if someone else registered you, they&amp;rsquo;ll need to do this) and change the attendee information. Voila!&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Pre-Arrival&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
For the love of all that is good and just in the world, make sure you have your EventBrite ticket. That can be printed, in the EventBrite phone app, in an email on your phone, or whatever - we just need the barcode. If you don&amp;rsquo;t have this, there will be a Sad Summiteer line for you to stand in, where we can look you up by name or order number.&lt;br&gt;
Speakers! You&amp;rsquo;re not in EventBrite yet, but you will be. Right before Summit, we&amp;rsquo;ll be registering you, so be sure to watch your email. If you haven&amp;rsquo;t provided Richard with a good email address (we STRONGLY suggest a personal one to avoid corporate spam-traps), please do so NOW.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Registration Process&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
When you get to the Meydenbauer Center, go DOWNSTAIRS to Center Hall A and B. This is not where we&amp;rsquo;ve been in the past. Do not go upstairs.&lt;br&gt;
Step 1 will be to get your EventBrite ticket scanned. Don&amp;rsquo;t have yours? Sad panda, you&amp;rsquo;ll need to stand in Sad Summiteer line for a manual name lookup. Then&amp;hellip;&lt;br&gt;
Step 2, find your badge (organized by last name), and insert it into a badge holder. Then, on to&amp;hellip;&lt;br&gt;
Step 3 is T-Shirt pickup. This must be done right then - we won&amp;rsquo;t have this set up later, and leftovers will be donated to a local charity. If you&amp;rsquo;re skipping Monday for some reason, you will not get your shirt. We will have tables set up for each shirt size. Go to the table corresponding to your pre-selected choice in EventBrite, where your name will be checked against a list. You shirt size is also printed on your name badge for your convenience.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;em&gt;This is a good time to double-check your EventBrite shirt size selection&lt;/em&gt;. You can change it until March 5th or so (if someone else registered you, they will need to make the change for you as well). You cannot change your mind later because we&amp;rsquo;re ordering the exact quantities indicated in EventBrite. Speakers! We collected your shirt size during the Call for Topics; check with Richard Siddaway on your shirt size, if you need to. Do this RIGHT NOW if you&amp;rsquo;re not certain.&lt;br&gt;
Step 4 is breakfast. Enjoy. And wear your badge at all times, please.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Venue Layout&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Monday, we&amp;rsquo;ll be downstairs in Center Hall A and B all day. All day! Tuesday-Thursday, we&amp;rsquo;re back in our traditional space upstairs (rooms 401-409) for all sessions; meals will remain downstairs in Center Hall. During meal times, all escalators will run in the direction of food; about halfway through meal breaks, we&amp;rsquo;ll run them all back int he direction of sessions. If you want to go the opposite direction for some weird reason, take the elevators. Do not run wrong-ways on the escalators.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;GET THE SCHEDULE APP!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
If you hustle to the schedule website (linked from PowerShellSummit.org), we suggest you bookmark it. Then, get our iPhone or Android app for your phones. If you need a Windows Phone app, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. The app is where ALL schedule changes will be reflected. Install it. Examine it. Love it.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;CHOOSE YOUR FACTION!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
If you haven&amp;rsquo;t already been participating in Iron Scripter Prequel on PowerShell.org, jump in. And use the #faction- channels in our Slack team to find the faction whose style fits you best. Locate members of your faction all week, and get to be friends - because you&amp;rsquo;ll need each other for the epic, annual IRON SCRIPTER tournament Thursday afternoon! (And we may have some faction-logo rubber stamps wandering around, if you&amp;rsquo;d like to indicate your faction loyalty on your name badge!)&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Open Spaces / Side Sessions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Tuesday-Thursday, rooms 407 and 408 will be available for ad-hoc &amp;ldquo;Side Sessions.&amp;rdquo; We do not provide A/V in these rooms, but you can suggest a session anytime you like. Email your suggestions to &lt;a href="mailto:sidesessions@powershell.org"&gt;sidesessions@powershell.org&lt;/a&gt;. If you have a time slot request, or a time you don&amp;rsquo;t want your session to be, just mention it. We&amp;rsquo;ll do our best to accommodate, reply to you, and add you to the schedule. We&amp;rsquo;ll announce sessions each morning, so try to schedule at least by the day before.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Session Reviews&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
THESE ARE IMPORTANT. DO THEM. You can do so right from within our app, or the Sched.com website. Reviews end on Thursday afternoon, so you can&amp;rsquo;t save these up and do them a week later, sorry.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Power Cord Policy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Do not under any circumstances WHATSOEVER drag a power cord across any walkway. Do not leave your electronics leaning against the wall in an attempt to avoid running a cord across the walkway. This is serious, Fire Marshal business. Do not poke the Fire Marshall - his office is literally across the street.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Slack&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
People often use the Slack team to coordinate dinners and more; we recommend getting their mobile app and logging into the DevOps-Summit workspace.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Hug Jason&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Hugs are an important part of Jason Helmick&amp;rsquo;s personal economy, and as this is his last year serving as our CFO, please take a moment to thank the big bald goofball for his service.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Spouse / Guest Passes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Please bear in mind that only paid attendees are permitted to any and all Summit activities - this is as much about insurance requirements as it is our costs. We did offer Spouse/Guest passes on the main registration site - those provide access to our Monday and Wednesday evening events only. Please ensure your guest brings their EventBrite ticket (barcode) with them to each event. We cannot accommodate early admission for guests.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>This is a bit of a long post, but we promise - it&rsquo;s important, and it&rsquo;s worth it.<br><strong>Refunds &amp; Transfers</strong><br>
Because this is the time of year when it starts to come up, remember that we don&rsquo;t offer registration refunds. You&rsquo;re welcome to transfer your membership, however, at no fee. Just log into EventBrite (if someone else registered you, they&rsquo;ll need to do this) and change the attendee information. Voila!<br><strong>Pre-Arrival</strong><br>
For the love of all that is good and just in the world, make sure you have your EventBrite ticket. That can be printed, in the EventBrite phone app, in an email on your phone, or whatever - we just need the barcode. If you don&rsquo;t have this, there will be a Sad Summiteer line for you to stand in, where we can look you up by name or order number.<br>
Speakers! You&rsquo;re not in EventBrite yet, but you will be. Right before Summit, we&rsquo;ll be registering you, so be sure to watch your email. If you haven&rsquo;t provided Richard with a good email address (we STRONGLY suggest a personal one to avoid corporate spam-traps), please do so NOW.<br><strong>Registration Process</strong><br>
When you get to the Meydenbauer Center, go DOWNSTAIRS to Center Hall A and B. This is not where we&rsquo;ve been in the past. Do not go upstairs.<br>
Step 1 will be to get your EventBrite ticket scanned. Don&rsquo;t have yours? Sad panda, you&rsquo;ll need to stand in Sad Summiteer line for a manual name lookup. Then&hellip;<br>
Step 2, find your badge (organized by last name), and insert it into a badge holder. Then, on to&hellip;<br>
Step 3 is T-Shirt pickup. This must be done right then - we won&rsquo;t have this set up later, and leftovers will be donated to a local charity. If you&rsquo;re skipping Monday for some reason, you will not get your shirt. We will have tables set up for each shirt size. Go to the table corresponding to your pre-selected choice in EventBrite, where your name will be checked against a list. You shirt size is also printed on your name badge for your convenience.<br><em>This is a good time to double-check your EventBrite shirt size selection</em>. You can change it until March 5th or so (if someone else registered you, they will need to make the change for you as well). You cannot change your mind later because we&rsquo;re ordering the exact quantities indicated in EventBrite. Speakers! We collected your shirt size during the Call for Topics; check with Richard Siddaway on your shirt size, if you need to. Do this RIGHT NOW if you&rsquo;re not certain.<br>
Step 4 is breakfast. Enjoy. And wear your badge at all times, please.<br><strong>Venue Layout</strong><br>
Monday, we&rsquo;ll be downstairs in Center Hall A and B all day. All day! Tuesday-Thursday, we&rsquo;re back in our traditional space upstairs (rooms 401-409) for all sessions; meals will remain downstairs in Center Hall. During meal times, all escalators will run in the direction of food; about halfway through meal breaks, we&rsquo;ll run them all back int he direction of sessions. If you want to go the opposite direction for some weird reason, take the elevators. Do not run wrong-ways on the escalators.<br><strong>GET THE SCHEDULE APP!</strong><br>
If you hustle to the schedule website (linked from PowerShellSummit.org), we suggest you bookmark it. Then, get our iPhone or Android app for your phones. If you need a Windows Phone app, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. The app is where ALL schedule changes will be reflected. Install it. Examine it. Love it.<br><strong>CHOOSE YOUR FACTION!</strong><br>
If you haven&rsquo;t already been participating in Iron Scripter Prequel on PowerShell.org, jump in. And use the #faction- channels in our Slack team to find the faction whose style fits you best. Locate members of your faction all week, and get to be friends - because you&rsquo;ll need each other for the epic, annual IRON SCRIPTER tournament Thursday afternoon! (And we may have some faction-logo rubber stamps wandering around, if you&rsquo;d like to indicate your faction loyalty on your name badge!)<br><strong>Open Spaces / Side Sessions</strong><br>
Tuesday-Thursday, rooms 407 and 408 will be available for ad-hoc &ldquo;Side Sessions.&rdquo; We do not provide A/V in these rooms, but you can suggest a session anytime you like. Email your suggestions to<a href="mailto:sidesessions@powershell.org">sidesessions@powershell.org</a>. If you have a time slot request, or a time you don&rsquo;t want your session to be, just mention it. We&rsquo;ll do our best to accommodate, reply to you, and add you to the schedule. We&rsquo;ll announce sessions each morning, so try to schedule at least by the day before.<br><strong>Session Reviews</strong><br>
THESE ARE IMPORTANT. DO THEM. You can do so right from within our app, or the Sched.com website. Reviews end on Thursday afternoon, so you can&rsquo;t save these up and do them a week later, sorry.<br><strong>Power Cord Policy</strong><br>
Do not under any circumstances WHATSOEVER drag a power cord across any walkway. Do not leave your electronics leaning against the wall in an attempt to avoid running a cord across the walkway. This is serious, Fire Marshal business. Do not poke the Fire Marshall - his office is literally across the street.<br><strong>Slack</strong><br>
People often use the Slack team to coordinate dinners and more; we recommend getting their mobile app and logging into the DevOps-Summit workspace.<br><strong>Hug Jason</strong><br>
Hugs are an important part of Jason Helmick&rsquo;s personal economy, and as this is his last year serving as our CFO, please take a moment to thank the big bald goofball for his service.<br><strong>Spouse / Guest Passes</strong><br>
Please bear in mind that only paid attendees are permitted to any and all Summit activities - this is as much about insurance requirements as it is our costs. We did offer Spouse/Guest passes on the main registration site - those provide access to our Monday and Wednesday evening events only. Please ensure your guest brings their EventBrite ticket (barcode) with them to each event. We cannot accommodate early admission for guests.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>2018 Community Lightning Demos</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-04-2018-community-lightning-demos/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-04-2018-community-lightning-demos/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 04 Feb 2018 02:45:42 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;h4 id="rambling" class="ps-heading"&gt;Rambling&lt;a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#rambling" 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;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Last year&amp;rsquo;s &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/summit/"&gt;PowerShell + Devops Global Summit&lt;/a&gt; was a roller coaster.&lt;br&gt;
On one hand, I spoke for the first time - it was terrifying. Getting up in front of a local user group had helped, but it&amp;rsquo;s not quite the same as a room full of PowerShell-ers, including MVPs and PowerShell team members - eek!&lt;br&gt;
On the other hand, I was lucky enough to host the Community Lightning Demos. We managed to give 22 folks the chance to get up in front of the PowerShell community and give a quick, low-pressure ~10 minute demo.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<h4 id="rambling" class="ps-heading">Rambling<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#rambling" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h4><p>Last year&rsquo;s<a href="https://powershell.org/summit/">PowerShell + Devops Global Summit</a> was a roller coaster.<br>
On one hand, I spoke for the first time - it was terrifying. Getting up in front of a local user group had helped, but it&rsquo;s not quite the same as a room full of PowerShell-ers, including MVPs and PowerShell team members - eek!<br>
On the other hand, I was lucky enough to host the Community Lightning Demos. We managed to give 22 folks the chance to get up in front of the PowerShell community and give a quick, low-pressure ~10 minute demo.</p><h4 id="how-did-it-go" class="ps-heading">How did it go?<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#how-did-it-go" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h4><p>Presumably it was a success! We got to see a variety awesome demos, folks got a taste of speaking in front of a summit crowd, and almost 10 lightning demo speakers are presenting full sessions this year.  Here&rsquo;s a glance from<a href="https://twitter.com/pcgeek86">Trevor</a>:<br><a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/docs.jpg"><img src="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/docs-300x169.jpg" alt=""/><br>
The demos are back again this year, with a few changes thanks to your feedback and the help of<a href="https://twitter.com/concentrateddon">Don</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/RSiddaway">Richard</a>, and others:</p><ul><li>The official Community Lightning Demos will be 120 minutes</li><li>We&rsquo;ll have more room for attendees, and no competing breakout sessions</li><li>A non-invasive green-yellow-red time tracker will help keep speakers on track</li><li>The demos are in the middle of the summit this year, leaving two days to follow up with speakers</li></ul><h4 id="whats-the-plan" class="ps-heading">What&rsquo;s the plan?<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#whats-the-plan" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h4><ul><li>We&rsquo;ll open a call-for-demos March 1st</li><li>We have 12 slots for official Community Lightning Demos</li><li>Given that we have fewer slots, we may not get to all submissions. We&rsquo;ll likely prefer:<ul><li>New speakers over breakout session speakers and 2017 demo speakers</li><li>New ideas or interesting variations</li></ul></li><li>If we get enough submissions, we&rsquo;ll try to allocate more time (e.g. via side sessions)</li></ul><p>So! Start thinking about what you want to demo. The specifics will change, but the gist of<a href="http://ramblingcookiemonster.github.io/Summit-Lightning-Demos/">this bit</a> on the 2017 Community Lightning Demos may help, including an example demo on PSDepend.</p><h4 id="what-if-i-dont-get-picked" class="ps-heading">What if I don&rsquo;t get picked?<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#what-if-i-dont-get-picked" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h4><p>Seriously, don&rsquo;t worry about this! We&rsquo;ll try to work things out. Worst case scenario?</p><ul><li>We might end up with space in a side session</li><li>Maybe we look into a post-summit unofficial online thing for community lightning demos</li><li>You might give someone an idea to run with based on your proposal alone!<a href="https://twitter.com/GlennSarti">Glenn</a> didn&rsquo;t get to chat about Neo4j, but his proposal lead to<a href="https://github.com/RamblingCookieMonster/PSNeo4j">PSNeo4j</a> and<a href="https://powershelldevopsglobalsummit2018.sched.com/event/Cpp3/connecting-the-dots-with-powershell">a session</a> at the summit this year</li></ul><p>Before we go, here&rsquo;s a quick taste of the 2017 lightning demos, documented by Michael:<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852253752849334272">1</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852256350490865664">2</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852260034213928960">3</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852262428783943680">4</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852264366095204352">5</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852269633042239488">6</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852271188248109056">7</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852273584785444864">8</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852276513911132160">9</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852278418477416454">10</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852280648307949569">11</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852286740643500032">12</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852290218623291392">13</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852291897196335104">14</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852294532582391808">15</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852297244619317248">16</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852299748610457600">17</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/daviwil/status/852267784201314304">18</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852302084422590464">19</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852303459382476800">20</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852305871795245056">21</a>,<a href="https://twitter.com/barbariankb/status/852307309959106560">22</a>.  Some of their material<a href="https://github.com/devops-collective-inc/summit-materials#community-lightning-demos">is available here</a><br>
Hope to see you on the stage - cheers!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter 2018 Prequel: Puzzle 3 – a commentary</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-04-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-3-a-commentary/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-04-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-3-a-commentary/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 04 Feb 2018 00:05:39 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;My notes and commentary on puzzle 3 - working with a web feed - are now available: &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-3-A-commentary.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 3 - A commentary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
As with previous commentaries I&amp;rsquo;ve not presented the faction specific solutions - view the forums and Slack channel to see what your faction and maybe more importantly what other factions have done.&lt;br&gt;
Puzzle 4 will be available around the time you read this.&lt;br&gt;
Enjoy&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>My notes and commentary on puzzle 3 - working with a web feed - are now available: <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-3-A-commentary.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 3 - A commentary</a><br>
As with previous commentaries I&rsquo;ve not presented the faction specific solutions - view the forums and Slack channel to see what your faction and maybe more importantly what other factions have done.<br>
Puzzle 4 will be available around the time you read this.<br>
Enjoy</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter 2018 prequel: Puzzle 4</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-04-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-4/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-04-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-4/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 04 Feb 2018 00:02:06 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;You&amp;rsquo;re a quarter of the way to Iron Scripter. In this challenge - &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-4.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 4&lt;/a&gt; - 
you&amp;rsquo;ll be asked to find a way to make legacy command line tools work with the PowerShell pipeline
.&lt;br&gt;
In all things remember the goal of your faction.&lt;br&gt;
Please remember that we&amp;rsquo;re not grading submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter Prequel forum.&lt;br&gt;
If anyone is really stuck or doesn&amp;rsquo;t understand something in the puzzle leave a comment here and I&amp;rsquo;ll try to answer. No guarantees on timeframe though.&lt;br&gt;
Good luck&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>You&rsquo;re a quarter of the way to Iron Scripter. In this challenge -<a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-4.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 4</a> - 
you&rsquo;ll be asked to find a way to make legacy command line tools work with the PowerShell pipeline
.<br>
In all things remember the goal of your faction.<br>
Please remember that we&rsquo;re not grading submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter Prequel forum.<br>
If anyone is really stuck or doesn&rsquo;t understand something in the puzzle leave a comment here and I&rsquo;ll try to answer. No guarantees on timeframe though.<br>
Good luck</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Summit 2018 registration status</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-03-summit-2018-registration-status/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-03-summit-2018-registration-status/</guid><pubDate>Sat, 03 Feb 2018 10:07:42 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;The speed at which places at Summit are being purchased has been amazing. We&amp;rsquo;re down to our LAST 25 places.&lt;br&gt;
At present rates I expect those to be gone by this time next week.&lt;br&gt;
If you want a place at Summit 2018 - BUY NOW.&lt;br&gt;
If you know of anyone who wants a place at Summit 2018 - tell them to BUY NOW&lt;br&gt;
Last year we managed to add about 30 places after selling our initial number. We&amp;rsquo;ll NOT be able to do that this year. We&amp;rsquo;re getting much better at working out how many places are, and can be, available.&lt;br&gt;
This is the LAST CALL for registrations for Summit 2018.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>The speed at which places at Summit are being purchased has been amazing. We&rsquo;re down to our LAST 25 places.<br>
At present rates I expect those to be gone by this time next week.<br>
If you want a place at Summit 2018 - BUY NOW.<br>
If you know of anyone who wants a place at Summit 2018 - tell them to BUY NOW<br>
Last year we managed to add about 30 places after selling our initial number. We&rsquo;ll NOT be able to do that this year. We&rsquo;re getting much better at working out how many places are, and can be, available.<br>
This is the LAST CALL for registrations for Summit 2018.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Help us Recognize Amazing PowerShell Contributors!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-01-help-us-recognize-amazing-powershell-contributors/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-02-01-help-us-recognize-amazing-powershell-contributors/</guid><pubDate>Thu, 01 Feb 2018 16:36:07 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;First: Please share this as widely as possible in your social media channels, so we can get the most number of suggestions possible!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;
We&amp;rsquo;re working with the PowerShell team at Microsoft to identify individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the PowerShell community. Perhaps they&amp;rsquo;ve written blog posts that really helped you conquer a PowerShell challenge, or maybe they&amp;rsquo;ve contributed code (on GitHub or elsewhere) that you rely on. Maybe they&amp;rsquo;re an amazing teacher, or perhaps they&amp;rsquo;re an awesome coder. Whatever their contribution, if it&amp;rsquo;s been notable and helpful to you, we&amp;rsquo;d like to hear from you.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p><em>First: Please share this as widely as possible in your social media channels, so we can get the most number of suggestions possible!</em><br>
We&rsquo;re working with the PowerShell team at Microsoft to identify individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the PowerShell community. Perhaps they&rsquo;ve written blog posts that really helped you conquer a PowerShell challenge, or maybe they&rsquo;ve contributed code (on GitHub or elsewhere) that you rely on. Maybe they&rsquo;re an amazing teacher, or perhaps they&rsquo;re an awesome coder. Whatever their contribution, if it&rsquo;s been notable and helpful to you, we&rsquo;d like to hear from you.</p><p><a href="https://674004.polldaddy.com/s/powershell-heroes">Go here to take the survey</a>. This will remain open through February 2018, and you&rsquo;re more than welcome to complete it multiple times if there are multiple people you want to recognize. We&rsquo;re relying on correct spelling of people&rsquo;s names to correlate the results, so please double-check that. We&rsquo;ll also need some means of contacting them, such as a Twitter handle or GitHub ID, or even a personal website, so have that handy before you take the survey.<br>
We look forward to hearing from you!</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Distilling Microsoft's DSC Update (Jan 2018)</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-29-distilling-microsofts-dsc-update-jan-2018/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-29-distilling-microsofts-dsc-update-jan-2018/</guid><pubDate>Mon, 29 Jan 2018 16:11:10 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;This past Friday, Microsoft &lt;a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/01/26/dsc-planning-update-january-2018/"&gt;posted a DSC Update&lt;/a&gt; that&amp;rsquo;s worth your attention - and some commentary.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>This past Friday, Microsoft<a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/01/26/dsc-planning-update-january-2018/">posted a DSC Update</a> that&rsquo;s worth your attention - and some commentary.</p><p>This follows up on a previous announcement about &ldquo;DSC Core,&rdquo; a term which the company has wisely stopped using. I do think the original use of &ldquo;DSC Core&rdquo; was well-intentioned: &ldquo;Core&rdquo; had come to represent the company&rsquo;s cross-platform efforts, a la .NET Core and PowerShell Core. But the &ldquo;new DSC&rdquo; has nothing to do with either of those, and so the use of &ldquo;Core&rdquo; was confusing.</p><p>The &ldquo;new DSC&rdquo; does mean that &ldquo;old DSC&rdquo; is going away. But, as this most recent update reveals, very little of your existing work or knowledge investment will go to waste.<br>
The &ldquo;new DSC&rdquo; will consist of a rewritten Local Configuration Manager, or LCM. This should still duplicate much of the functionality of the existing LCM, but will be written in C++, enabling it to be compiled for any operating system. So, gone are the days of a .NET-based LCM for Windows and a distinct one written for Unix/Linux - we&rsquo;ll have one code base.<br>
The big announcement, for me, was that the LCM will rely on a &ldquo;provider model&rdquo; for running DSC resources. While the word <em>provider</em> is a little overused in PowerShell, this is a huge and positive step forward. The announcement indicates that the first provider will allow the new, C++ based LCM to run DSC resources written for PowerShell - e.g., almost everything currently out there today. A future provider will enable resources written in cross-platform PowerShell Core (which,<a href="https://powershell.org/2018/01/15/can-we-talk-about-powershell-core-6-0/">as discussed previously here</a>, is a distinct product from Windows PowerShell), and other future providers will support resources written in C++ and Python. This is a _huge deal, _as it offers the potential for a much wider array of community-based resources.<br>
I was also impressed with the humility in Microsoft&rsquo;s open source direction for the LCM. I think the company has learned from its open sourcing of PowerShell Core that &ldquo;open source&rdquo; means a great deal more than just publishing your code in GitHub. You&rsquo;ve got to be responsive to issue posts, responsive to pull requests, and more. So the team is taking a more gradual approach to open sourcing the new LCM, which should help ensure they do it right.<br>
The announcement mentions that, &ldquo;[the new LCM] will need to be installed on systems where the current DSC platform exists today, and we will need to offer conflict detection&hellip;&rdquo; and I find that notable. It means the company is still thinking about the best ways to deploy this new LCM, and they&rsquo;re working through the math on, &ldquo;what if you have the old one and new one installed - is it going to be raccoons in a bag clawing at each other, or no?&rdquo; We&rsquo;ll have to see what they come up with, but I&rsquo;d personally be just fine if the new LCM just disabled itself if the old, original LCM was working. That would make it easy to pre-stage the new LCM without fear, and &ldquo;flip it on&rdquo; one day by disabling the old LCM.<br>
I think by the time the new LCM is formally released as &ldquo;General Availability&rdquo; (as opposed to the inevitable beta releases), we&rsquo;ll be looking at feature parity with the old LCM. That means I think we can expect to see it support both pull and push modes. Given that the LCM pretty much <em>is</em> DSC - that is, the LCM has all the brains of the technology - that should make the transition pretty easy and seamless. I think it&rsquo;s important to follow the beta builds, so that if you&rsquo;re seeing feature parity go awry, you can provide Microsoft with the feedback they&rsquo;ll need to course-correct in time. Don&rsquo;t wait until GA to bitch and moan; get in there and play with this new thing the moment you can.<br>
There are, of course, questions not answered in this post, but I&rsquo;ll hazard my own guesses. There&rsquo;s no mention of Pull Server. Now that the team has enabled SQL Server for the &ldquo;native&rdquo; Pull Server, I honestly think we can expect to see them stop investing in that product. Their direction, as with much of Microsoft, is Azure; the pricing for running DSC in Azure Automation is so low that many organizations can, and should, simply do that. Those companies whose servers must run in a totally disconnected environment should plan to look outside of Microsoft - such as<a href="https://github.com/PowerShellOrg/tug">Tug</a>, an open-source pull server replacement that&rsquo;s got a ton more flexibility. Today&rsquo;s Microsoft can&rsquo;t be all things to all people, and if you have edge-case working conditions - like no Internet for your servers - then you&rsquo;re going to find yourself a bit more on your own. And, if I&rsquo;m being honest, for some of those edge cases (and even for some more mainstream cases), a full configuration management platform like Chef or Puppet may be your best bet.<br>
The real upshot here, though, is that _everything you know about DSC is still valid. _Microsoft is going to be doing some heavy lifting, programming-wise, to broaden the applicability of your DSC knowledge across platforms, but I suspect you&rsquo;re not going to have to do much work to &ldquo;keep up&rdquo; for this first phase. We&rsquo;ll doubtless see some asked-for new features creep in along the way, which will be great, and hopefully we&rsquo;ll see some of the minor architectural improvements that the community has been asking for for a few years, now.<br>
Overall, I think this is a bright and positive announcement for DSC fans, and I&rsquo;m looking forward to seeing where the company goes next!</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PowerShell Story Continued Becoming a Craftsman</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-28-powershell-story-continued-becoming-a-craftsman/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-28-powershell-story-continued-becoming-a-craftsman/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 28 Jan 2018 10:46:03 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;My journey started off by figuring out how to automate a daily disk space report on the mailserver, which ran most of the company, and emailing the report to my boss at the time. After PowerShell sent that first email, something clicked. I sat back in my chair and thought to myself, “Wow, I don’t have to do this anymore”. I can still feel how exciting and relieving that thought was. Fast forward a few years and I had made automation about 80% of my job. I had moved into a few new roles - Tier 2 Support to Systems Engineer, to Senior Systems Engineer. My last post left off when I left my role as a Senior Systems Engineer and landed a gig as a DevOps Engineer. At the time I thought this was the end of the road. I thought, “I’ll pick up a few new tricks and further improve my PowerShell skills”. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This post picks up at the beginning of my transition into the world of DevOps, where I learned no matter how much you know, you know nothing. Continue reading to hear the rest of the story…&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="http://duffney.io/PowerShell-Story-Continued-BecomingACraftsman"&gt;http://duffney.io/PowerShell-Story-Continued-BecomingACraftsman&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>My journey started off by figuring out how to automate a daily disk space report on the mailserver, which ran most of the company, and emailing the report to my boss at the time. After PowerShell sent that first email, something clicked. I sat back in my chair and thought to myself, “Wow, I don’t have to do this anymore”. I can still feel how exciting and relieving that thought was. Fast forward a few years and I had made automation about 80% of my job. I had moved into a few new roles - Tier 2 Support to Systems Engineer, to Senior Systems Engineer. My last post left off when I left my role as a Senior Systems Engineer and landed a gig as a DevOps Engineer. At the time I thought this was the end of the road. I thought, “I’ll pick up a few new tricks and further improve my PowerShell skills”. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This post picks up at the beginning of my transition into the world of DevOps, where I learned no matter how much you know, you know nothing. Continue reading to hear the rest of the story…<br><a href="http://duffney.io/PowerShell-Story-Continued-BecomingACraftsman">http://duffney.io/PowerShell-Story-Continued-BecomingACraftsman</a></p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter Prequel: Puzzle 2 – a commentary</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-28-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-2-a-commentary/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-28-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-2-a-commentary/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 28 Jan 2018 00:02:37 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;A discussion and possible solution to puzzle 1 is now available at  &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-2-A-commentary.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 2 - A commentary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Remember this isn&amp;rsquo;t presented as a definitive solution. It&amp;rsquo;s my view of the solution.&lt;br&gt;
I&amp;rsquo;ve not provided faction specific code but rather a list of points the factions need to consider to be truly worthy of their faction.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>A discussion and possible solution to puzzle 1 is now available at  <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-2-A-commentary.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 2 - A commentary</a><br>
Remember this isn&rsquo;t presented as a definitive solution. It&rsquo;s my view of the solution.<br>
I&rsquo;ve not provided faction specific code but rather a list of points the factions need to consider to be truly worthy of their faction.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter 2018 Prequel: Puzzle 3</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-28-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-3/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-28-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-3/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 28 Jan 2018 00:01:38 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;You have overcome 2 challenges so far both involving code from the archives. In this challenge you&amp;rsquo;ll be called upon to create your own code. You&amp;rsquo;ll be presented with a task to perform in &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-3.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
How you approach this challenge is up to you but remember the goals of your faction.&lt;br&gt;
Please remember that we&amp;rsquo;re not grading submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter Prequel forum&lt;br&gt;
Good luck&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>You have overcome 2 challenges so far both involving code from the archives. In this challenge you&rsquo;ll be called upon to create your own code. You&rsquo;ll be presented with a task to perform in <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-3.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 3</a><br>
How you approach this challenge is up to you but remember the goals of your faction.<br>
Please remember that we&rsquo;re not grading submissions for these puzzles. You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the Iron Scripter Prequel forum<br>
Good luck</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Summit 2018 registration update</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-26-summit-2018-registration-update/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-26-summit-2018-registration-update/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 26 Jan 2018 16:55:41 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;As an update to the registrations for Summit 2018 - we&amp;rsquo;ve sold 75% of the available places.&lt;br&gt;
As Don explained we won&amp;rsquo;t be able to add further places like we did last year.&lt;br&gt;
This is our biggest (and hopefully best) Summit yet with more sessions and nearly double the number of speakers.&lt;br&gt;
If you want a place I recommend not waiting. Last year we sold our last place on 24 February. If sales carry on as they currently are we&amp;rsquo;ll sell out for 2018 well before then.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>As an update to the registrations for Summit 2018 - we&rsquo;ve sold 75% of the available places.<br>
As Don explained we won&rsquo;t be able to add further places like we did last year.<br>
This is our biggest (and hopefully best) Summit yet with more sessions and nearly double the number of speakers.<br>
If you want a place I recommend not waiting. Last year we sold our last place on 24 February. If sales carry on as they currently are we&rsquo;ll sell out for 2018 well before then.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PowerShell Summit Registration Status</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-23-powershell-summit-registration-status/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-23-powershell-summit-registration-status/</guid><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jan 2018 20:30:12 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;A quick update - all numbers as of 23-January-2018, 12:23pm Pacific time.&lt;br&gt;
91 seats remaining. We are on track to sell out in approximately 45 days. Unlike previous years where we&amp;rsquo;ve scrounged some spare seats at the last minute, **please don&amp;rsquo;t expect that this year, **as I think I&amp;rsquo;ve gotten better at math and have not been rounding as much.&lt;br&gt;
Hotel situation:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Marriott, we have 6 rooms left. This is our &amp;ldquo;official&amp;rdquo; hotel, with the largest number of Summiteers on site.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Courtyard, we have 9 rooms left. This is a quick walk to the Meydenbauer, with about half as many Summiteers as the Marriott.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Hotel 116, we have 34 rooms left. This also has about half as many Summiteers as the Marriott, and is our lowest price point hotel. This is still a quick walk to the Meydenbauer.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;After the rooms above are exhausted, you&amp;rsquo;re on to &amp;ldquo;rack rate,&amp;rdquo; which, sadly, can be ridonkulous as it&amp;rsquo;s a popular time of year to be in Bellevue and they&amp;rsquo;ve gotten used to our crowd coming in. &lt;strong&gt;We do ask that you choose one of the above hotels if humanly possible&lt;/strong&gt; so that we&amp;rsquo;re not stuck paying for this reserved space regardless. If we have to do so, prices for Summit will assuredly rise in 2019.&lt;br&gt;
Can&amp;rsquo;t make it? We&amp;rsquo;re often asked about session recordings. We&amp;rsquo;re not prepared to commit to anything for 2018, although we&amp;rsquo;re working hard with a partner to try and make something happen. There&amp;rsquo;s no need whatsoever to &amp;ldquo;+1&amp;rdquo; this; we&amp;rsquo;re well aware that everyone asks for recordings (despite fairly low actual view numbers for them), and we&amp;rsquo;re working on it. Last year&amp;rsquo;s attempt was massively disruptful and unsuccessful, so we can&amp;rsquo;t have &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; again.&lt;br&gt;
That&amp;rsquo;s it! Hit us up on Twitter @PSHSummit if you have questions!&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>A quick update - all numbers as of 23-January-2018, 12:23pm Pacific time.<br>
91 seats remaining. We are on track to sell out in approximately 45 days. Unlike previous years where we&rsquo;ve scrounged some spare seats at the last minute, **please don&rsquo;t expect that this year, **as I think I&rsquo;ve gotten better at math and have not been rounding as much.<br>
Hotel situation:</p><ul><li>Marriott, we have 6 rooms left. This is our &ldquo;official&rdquo; hotel, with the largest number of Summiteers on site.</li><li>Courtyard, we have 9 rooms left. This is a quick walk to the Meydenbauer, with about half as many Summiteers as the Marriott.</li><li>Hotel 116, we have 34 rooms left. This also has about half as many Summiteers as the Marriott, and is our lowest price point hotel. This is still a quick walk to the Meydenbauer.</li></ul><p>After the rooms above are exhausted, you&rsquo;re on to &ldquo;rack rate,&rdquo; which, sadly, can be ridonkulous as it&rsquo;s a popular time of year to be in Bellevue and they&rsquo;ve gotten used to our crowd coming in. <strong>We do ask that you choose one of the above hotels if humanly possible</strong> so that we&rsquo;re not stuck paying for this reserved space regardless. If we have to do so, prices for Summit will assuredly rise in 2019.<br>
Can&rsquo;t make it? We&rsquo;re often asked about session recordings. We&rsquo;re not prepared to commit to anything for 2018, although we&rsquo;re working hard with a partner to try and make something happen. There&rsquo;s no need whatsoever to &ldquo;+1&rdquo; this; we&rsquo;re well aware that everyone asks for recordings (despite fairly low actual view numbers for them), and we&rsquo;re working on it. Last year&rsquo;s attempt was massively disruptful and unsuccessful, so we can&rsquo;t have <em>that</em> again.<br>
That&rsquo;s it! Hit us up on Twitter @PSHSummit if you have questions!</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter Prequel: Puzzle 1 – a solution</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-21-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-1-a-solution/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-21-iron-scripter-prequel-puzzle-1-a-solution/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 21 Jan 2018 00:05:19 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;A discussion and possible solution to puzzle 1 is now available at &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-1-A-solution.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 1 - A solution&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Remember this isn&amp;rsquo;t presented as a definitive solution. It&amp;rsquo;s my view of the solution. Please also note that the faction specific parts are indicative and not prescriptive - they are my view of how the different factions would approach solving the puzzle.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>A discussion and possible solution to puzzle 1 is now available at <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-1-A-solution.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 1 - A solution</a><br>
Remember this isn&rsquo;t presented as a definitive solution. It&rsquo;s my view of the solution. Please also note that the faction specific parts are indicative and not prescriptive - they are my view of how the different factions would approach solving the puzzle.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter 2018 Prequel: Puzzle 2</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-21-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-2/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-21-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-2/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 21 Jan 2018 00:01:10 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;You&amp;rsquo;ve survived the first challenge. A new challenge in the shape of &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-2.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 2&lt;/a&gt; is now available.&lt;br&gt;
Take note of the faction based instructions.&lt;br&gt;
Please remember that we&amp;rsquo;re not grading submissions for these puzzles.&lt;br&gt;
You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/forums/forum/iron-scripter/iron-scripter-prequel/"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel forum &lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Stay true to your faction and victory will be yours.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>You&rsquo;ve survived the first challenge. A new challenge in the shape of<a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-2.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 2</a> is now available.<br>
Take note of the faction based instructions.<br>
Please remember that we&rsquo;re not grading submissions for these puzzles.<br>
You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the<a href="https://powershell.org/forums/forum/iron-scripter/iron-scripter-prequel/">Iron Scripter Prequel forum </a><br>
Stay true to your faction and victory will be yours.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Can We Talk About PowerShell Core 6.0?</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-15-can-we-talk-about-powershell-core-6-0/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-15-can-we-talk-about-powershell-core-6-0/</guid><pubDate>Mon, 15 Jan 2018 16:36:18 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Microsoft recently &lt;a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/01/10/powershell-core-6-0-generally-available-ga-and-supported/"&gt;announced the General Availability&lt;/a&gt; (that is, a non-beta release) of PowerShell Core 6.0. A &lt;a href="https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/docs/BREAKINGCHANGES.md"&gt;companion document detailing breaking changes&lt;/a&gt;, along with some of the language in the announcement, has led to more than a few inquiries in my mailbox. Most take the tone of, &amp;ldquo;have I been wasting my time learning PowerShell?!?!?&amp;rdquo; because, at first glance, PowerShell Core looks deeply less functional than its predecessor. Let me tell you what I think.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Microsoft recently<a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/01/10/powershell-core-6-0-generally-available-ga-and-supported/">announced the General Availability</a> (that is, a non-beta release) of PowerShell Core 6.0. A<a href="https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/docs/BREAKINGCHANGES.md">companion document detailing breaking changes</a>, along with some of the language in the announcement, has led to more than a few inquiries in my mailbox. Most take the tone of, &ldquo;have I been wasting my time learning PowerShell?!?!?&rdquo; because, at first glance, PowerShell Core looks deeply less functional than its predecessor. Let me tell you what I think.</p><p>First, I need to stress that this isn&rsquo;t an official Microsoft position - it&rsquo;s my opinion. I&rsquo;ve been working with this product since before it launched, I&rsquo;ve lived through its successes and missteps, and I&rsquo;ve gotten pretty good at figuring out what the company is up to - but this article isn&rsquo;t based on any official conversations or info.</p><h2 id="there-are-two-powershells-now" class="ps-heading">There are Two PowerShells Now<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#there-are-two-powershells-now" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>Understand that <strong>Windows PowerShell</strong>, currently v5.1, isn&rsquo;t going away. People are a little freaked out by phrasing like, &ldquo;Windows PowerShell won&rsquo;t be developed any further,&rdquo; but if you&rsquo;re feeling panicked over that, sip your whiskey and chill. Microsoft regards Windows PowerShell as **finished. **Honestly, from my perspective, it contains every bit of functionality I think an admin could conceivably need to do their job. Sure, maybe it lacks some deeper developer-focused features, but PowerShell was never supposed to be C#.<br>
5.x remains officially supported and officially available. You can run it side-by-side on the same system with PowerShell Core. If your job is administering Windows then, as the name implies, <em>Windows</em> PowerShell is going to be your go-to for a long time. It won&rsquo;t pick up any breaking changes going forward, it&rsquo;s not going to break existing functionality when a new version comes out, etc. It&rsquo;s _stable. _<br><strong>PowerShell Core</strong> (or just, &ldquo;PowerShell,&rdquo; sans the &ldquo;Windows&rdquo;) is a _new product. _It is not the &ldquo;successor&rdquo; of Windows PowerShell; it is a new thing based on Windows PowerShell. It is designed for cross-platform management, when you need to do something on Windows <em>and</em> Linux <em>and</em> macOS. As such, its functionality focuses on stuff that is available on _all of those platforms. _It doesn&rsquo;t do Windows Management Instrumentation, because &ldquo;Windows.&rdquo; It doesn&rsquo;t manage Active Directory. It doesn&rsquo;t query Windows Performance Counters. It&rsquo;s not, in other words, specialized for Windows.</p><h2 id="powershell-has-never-been-windows" class="ps-heading">PowerShell Has Never Been &ldquo;Windows&rdquo;<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#powershell-has-never-been-windows" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>Windows and Windows PowerShell _are separate things. _People have an incredibly tough time grasping this, to the point where<a href="https://devops-collective-inc.gitbooks.io/the-big-book-of-powershell-gotchas/content/manuscript/where-is-the-____-command.html">it&rsquo;s a significant &ldquo;gotcha&rdquo; for newbies</a>. Windows PowerShell has <em>always</em> consisted of a set of core functionality that actually had little to do, for the most part, with the Windows operating system. PowerShell Core continues that tradition, consisting of a base functional foundation. PowerShell&rsquo;s &ldquo;power&rdquo; came from add-ins - modules - that &ldquo;connected&rdquo; PowerShell to other technologies. Those add-ins run <em>inside</em> PowerShell, but they are <em>distinct</em> from it. The ActiveDirectory module comes from the Active Directory team, and ships _as a feature of the Windows Operating System. _If you could install Windows PowerShell 5.1 on Windows XP (you can&rsquo;t, but imagine), you wouldn&rsquo;t suddenly get a bunch of awesome functionality for administration, because Windows XP _doesn&rsquo;t ship with any awesome functionality. _Much of what we do in Windows PowerShell comes from the operating system; you should <em>expect</em> that functionality to be missing when you&rsquo;re on, say, Linux.<br>
Now, sure - if you install PowerShell Core on Windows, you <em>still</em> won&rsquo;t have all of your favorite modules, because lots of when can&rsquo;t run on .NET Core. That&rsquo;s why Windows PowerShell is still a thing. Just as it took several years for Windows PowerShell to gain a large stable of add-in modules, it&rsquo;ll likely take some time for useful functionality to join up with PowerShell Core. The fact that some module doesn&rsquo;t run on Core <em>today</em> doesn&rsquo;t mean the world has ended.</p><h2 id="sins-of-the-past" class="ps-heading">Sins of the Past<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#sins-of-the-past" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>A lot of the breaking changes in PowerShell Core are, from my perspective, more than welcome. Because Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs) are pretty much Windows-specific, almost every command that used RPCs for remote requests has lost the ability to perform remote requests. Instead, you use PowerShell Remoting (Invoke-Command) to &ldquo;send&rdquo; the command to the machine you want to query, let that machine execute the command locally, and then you get the results back. _This is the way I&rsquo;ve been telling people to do things for eight years. _RPCs are a Root Cause of Evil in the universe. Companies who don&rsquo;t want to allow Remoting (either over WS-MAN or SSH, both of which are supported in PowerShell Core) but who <em>will</em> allow RPCs, are stupid companies who need to wake up and educate themselves. Msrpc.dll is probably the most-hacked, most-patched file on the system.<br>
A lot of the Web-based commands - Invoke-WebRequest and friends - have changed, too. This is mainly so that they&rsquo;ll work with the refactored underlying .NET Core. Why was .NET Core refactored? _So it would quit using old Internet Explorer code. _Nobody in a physics-based universe should see that as anything but a long-overdue blessing.<br>
PowerShell Workflows aren&rsquo;t supported in Core, because .NET Core doesn&rsquo;t support Windows Workflow Foundation, which as near as I can tell has been deprecated for half a decade anyway. Jeffrey Snover and I have had a long-running, and very cordial, disagreement over PowerShell Workflow, because I think it was a Horrible Idea from day one. Not having it in Core will simply keep people from straying into that horrible, confusing, deeply broken realm.<br>
Snap-ins aren&rsquo;t supported in Core. Good. Snap-ins stopped being the right thing to do in PowerShell 2.0, which came out in, like, 2008 or something. Repackage your code and move on. Anyone still shipping you a snap-in doesn&rsquo;t care about you, your job, your family, or your values. It is, for the most part, the work of a few seconds to repackage a snap-in into a proper binary module.</p><h2 id="its-60-not-6done" class="ps-heading">It&rsquo;s 6.0, Not 6.Done.<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#its-60-not-6done" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>One of the PowerShell Core release notes indicates that it doesn&rsquo;t run DSC resources. This has caused about half of the incredulous emails I&rsquo;ve gotten this past week. <em>Is Microsoft abandoning DSC? Why doesn&rsquo;t DSC run on PowerShell Core?</em><br>
Desired State Configuration has always <em>mainly</em> targeted Windows. The Linux-compatible Local Configuration Manager (LCM) wasn&rsquo;t even written by the PowerShell team, it was written by Microsoft&rsquo;s Unix team, who also wrote the entire library of Linux-compatible resources. Today, there&rsquo;s zero need for PowerShell Core to execute DSC resources; Windows PowerShell or the Linux LCM will handle it for you.<br>
But this is why<a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2017/09/12/dsc-future-direction-update/">DSC Core</a> is going to be a thing. And that&rsquo;s the thing to remember, here. Despite the patterns of the past year or so, we&rsquo;re all still used to Microsoft taking 3-5 years to produce a product, which we then have to live with for 3-5 years until the next version comes out. The PowerShell team, at least, has been releasing at a much faster cadence. So just because Core doesn&rsquo;t do something <em>today</em> doesn&rsquo;t represent an existential threat; if it makes sense for Core&rsquo;s audience and intent, then it&rsquo;ll likely do it before too long.<br>
Incidentally, I have some very specific thoughts on DSC Core, including several, &ldquo;I told you you&rsquo;d eventually do it that way&rdquo; moments, but we can do that in a separate article.</p><h2 id="why-the-hell-is-core-even-needed-though" class="ps-heading">Why the Hell is Core Even Needed, Though?<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#why-the-hell-is-core-even-needed-though" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>Microsoft sells Windows. Windows PowerShell manages Windows. So why was Core even needed?<br>
There are two reasons here. Both are probably true; one is perhaps more pragmatic and the other is perhaps more noble, depending on your opinion.<br>
The pragmatic one is that Microsoft is moving toward being a business that sells you compute time, whether that compute runs in their cloud or in your datacenter; this is the essence of what Azure Stack is, and if you think that model isn&rsquo;t eventually going to be their <em>only</em> model, then you&rsquo;re deluding yourself. As a company that sells compute, Microsoft mainly wants you to run all your compute workloads on their compute services, of course. They don&rsquo;t care if you&rsquo;re running Linux or Windows; the compute is what they want you to pay for. Not caring about the OS means you need a rich set of tools that can be used consistently across all operating systems. Thus, PowerShell Core.<br>
That kind of segues into the possibly-noble reason, and we can start by simply asking, &ldquo;fine, why not just use Bash on every OS,&rdquo; as one person messaged me on Twitter. The reason is that Bash is a terrible shell for Windows. Arguably, Bash isn&rsquo;t even a great shell for Linux, although if you&rsquo;re used to it then you can be extremely productive with it. If you actually sat down and made a list of what you needed a shell to actually do, you&rsquo;d never come up with Bash, and you&rsquo;d likely have never come up with MS-DOS, either. Most shells today happened by accident and evolution, not by design, and they&rsquo;re about as well-suited to their job tasks as human knees are to running. You can do it, but it&rsquo;s not really a great idea. Bash - and most shells, if we&rsquo;re being fair - has a ridiculously high learning curve, and it forces you to work through the ugly details of unstructured data. That is, Bash, and most other shells, are designed mainly to parse and manipulate the text output of various operating system commands. They&rsquo;re a hack between a bunch of tools that were never meant to work together. The literal point of PowerShell, when you really tear it down to its smallest roots, is to parse all of that crap for you, and let you work with consistently structured data. You can focus less on what command output looks like and focus more on whatever the heck it is you&rsquo;re trying to do.<a href="https://twitter.com/nocentino">Linux fans who take a minute to really understand PowerShell</a> tend to like it. Naysayers who focus on the aesthetics of the syntax or whatever haven&rsquo;t taken that minute, or just have a religious objection to Microsoft playing in their sandbox. So Microsoft&rsquo;s decision to make PowerShell run on Linux is possibly a noble one, and I feel they&rsquo;ve done so in a way that&rsquo;s pretty respectful of the Linux OS&rsquo; roots, history, and patterns.</p><h2 id="what-if-i-dont-admin-on-linux" class="ps-heading">What if I Don&rsquo;t Admin on Linux?<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#what-if-i-dont-admin-on-linux" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>Then just use Windows PowerShell and stop sweating it. I mean, you&rsquo;re absolutely limiting your career, because as<a href="https://donjones.com/2017/12/14/has-the-death-of-the-os-already-begun/">I&rsquo;ve noted elsewhere</a> the concept of &ldquo;OS&rdquo; is changing drastically, and anchoring your career to a single OS is probably a dumb move right now. But, if that&rsquo;s your decision, then just stick with Windows PowerShell and ignore Core.</p><h2 id="so-is-windows-powershell-really-done" class="ps-heading">So is Windows PowerShell Really &ldquo;Done?&rdquo;<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#so-is-windows-powershell-really-done" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>Who knows? Probably mostly. I suppose we could see a 5.1.1 if there&rsquo;s a really egregious bug or a security problem someone finds, or a 5.2 if Windows itself would benefit tremendously from something specific that wouldn&rsquo;t work in Core. But I wouldn&rsquo;t count on anything major happening to it.</p><h2 id="lets-review" class="ps-heading">Let&rsquo;s Review<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#lets-review" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>So here&rsquo;s what we know:</p><ul><li>PowerShell Core doesn&rsquo;t mean Windows PowerShell is dead.</li><li>You haven&rsquo;t been wasting your time learning Windows PowerShell.</li><li>You can probably ignore PowerShell Core for a good long while if you don&rsquo;t need cross-platform functionality.</li><li>Your personal job priorities may not align with Microsoft&rsquo;s corporate priorities, which means the company may do stuff that doesn&rsquo;t make sense to you, or that you don&rsquo;t need.</li><li>PowerShell Core isn&rsquo;t a drop-in replacement for Windows PowerShell because Core has a different audience and intent.</li><li>The more Windows-specific your task, the less likely Core is going to be the right tool for the job.</li></ul><p>That&rsquo;s my take on all this; you&rsquo;re more than welcome to share yours (be polite!) in the comments!</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter 2018 Prequel: Puzzle 1</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-14-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-1/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-14-iron-scripter-2018-prequel-puzzle-1/</guid><pubDate>Sun, 14 Jan 2018 00:01:08 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Greetings Iron Scripters&lt;br&gt;
The first puzzle in the Iron Scripter 2018 Prequel series is available:&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-1.pdf"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Take note of the faction based instructions.&lt;br&gt;
Please remember that we&amp;rsquo;re not grading submissions for these puzzles.&lt;br&gt;
You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/forums/forum/iron-scripter/iron-scripter-prequel/"&gt;Iron Scripter Prequel forum &lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Stay true to your faction and victory will be yours.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Greetings Iron Scripters<br>
The first puzzle in the Iron Scripter 2018 Prequel series is available:<br><a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Iron-Scripter-Prequel-Puzzle-1.pdf">Iron Scripter Prequel Puzzle 1</a><br>
Take note of the faction based instructions.<br>
Please remember that we&rsquo;re not grading submissions for these puzzles.<br>
You can comment, and discuss the puzzle on the<a href="https://powershell.org/forums/forum/iron-scripter/iron-scripter-prequel/">Iron Scripter Prequel forum </a><br>
Stay true to your faction and victory will be yours.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>PSCore 6 – Jeffrey Snover and the PowerShell Team hosting AMA on 11th Jan 9am PT</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-09-pscore-6-jeffrey-snover-and-the-powershell-team-hosting-ama-on-11th-jan-9am-pt/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-09-pscore-6-jeffrey-snover-and-the-powershell-team-hosting-ama-on-11th-jan-9am-pt/</guid><pubDate>Tue, 09 Jan 2018 13:20:04 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;PowerShell Core 6 is scheduled for General Availability release tomorrow (10th January). As such Jeffrey Snover and the PowerShell Team are hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) event on the 11th January from 9am - 10am PT.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;ldquo;This is going to be a historical week for PowerShell Core 6 🙂 &amp;hellip;Join the PowerShell team and &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/jsnover"&gt;@&lt;strong&gt;jsnover&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;{.twitter-atreply.pretty-link.js-nav} this Thursday for the PowerShell AMA&amp;rdquo;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;img src="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/PowerShell-AMA-300x160.jpg" alt=""&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Add it to your calendar &lt;a href="https://aka.ms/PowerShellAMA/invite"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;
Due to the timing I expect that the team are mostly hoping for questions related to the release of PS Core, although in the spirit of an AMA anything goes :).&lt;br&gt;
If you haven&amp;rsquo;t yet checked out PowerShell Core 6, you can &lt;a href="https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell"&gt;grab the RC release today&lt;/a&gt; and install it side-by-side with Windows PowerShell.&lt;br&gt;
I have also written &lt;a href="http://wragg.io/powershell-core/"&gt;a blog post that explains what PowerShell Core is, why it exists and how it compares&lt;/a&gt; which I hope you find informative.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>PowerShell Core 6 is scheduled for General Availability release tomorrow (10th January). As such Jeffrey Snover and the PowerShell Team are hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) event on the 11th January from 9am - 10am PT.</p><blockquote><p>&ldquo;This is going to be a historical week for PowerShell Core 6 🙂 &hellip;Join the PowerShell team and<a href="https://twitter.com/jsnover">@<strong>jsnover</strong></a>{.twitter-atreply.pretty-link.js-nav} this Thursday for the PowerShell AMA&rdquo;<br><img src="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/PowerShell-AMA-300x160.jpg" alt=""/></blockquote><p>Add it to your calendar<a href="https://aka.ms/PowerShellAMA/invite">here</a>.<br>
Due to the timing I expect that the team are mostly hoping for questions related to the release of PS Core, although in the spirit of an AMA anything goes :).<br>
If you haven&rsquo;t yet checked out PowerShell Core 6, you can<a href="https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell">grab the RC release today</a> and install it side-by-side with Windows PowerShell.<br>
I have also written<a href="http://wragg.io/powershell-core/">a blog post that explains what PowerShell Core is, why it exists and how it compares</a> which I hope you find informative.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Iron Scripter prequel</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-04-iron-scripter-prequel/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2018-01-04-iron-scripter-prequel/</guid><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jan 2018 18:00:24 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Registrations are going very quickly. We&amp;rsquo;ve sold nearly half the available places. Historically, registrations accelerate in the first half of January so don&amp;rsquo;t wait too long before booking or you may be disappointed.&lt;br&gt;
Another tranche of alumni discount places were made available at the beginning of January but there are only 25 of them so if you want one book your place very soon.&lt;br&gt;
One new feature of Summit for 2018 is Iron Scripter - &lt;a href="http://ironscripter.us/"&gt;http://ironscripter.us/&lt;/a&gt;. Three factions will battle it out on Thursday 12 April 2018 for the title of Iron Scripter. If you haven&amp;rsquo;t chosen your faction it&amp;rsquo;s time to start thinking about it:&lt;br&gt;
Daybreak Faction - beautiful code&lt;br&gt;
Flawless Faction - flawless code&lt;br&gt;
Battle Faction - good enough to get the job done&lt;br&gt;
Choose your faction based on your approach to coding.&lt;br&gt;
The run up to Iron Scripter starts soon.&lt;br&gt;
We&amp;rsquo;ll be running a series of prequel events - think of them as the successor to the &amp;ldquo;Scripting Games&amp;rdquo; of the past. We&amp;rsquo;ll publish a puzzle on powershell.org every week on this schedule:&lt;br&gt;
January 14 puzzle 1&lt;br&gt;
January 21 puzzle 2&lt;br&gt;
January 28 puzzle 3&lt;br&gt;
February 4 puzzle 4&lt;br&gt;
February 11 puzzle 5&lt;br&gt;
February 18 puzzle 6&lt;br&gt;
February 25 puzzle 7&lt;br&gt;
March 4 puzzle 8&lt;br&gt;
March 11 puzzle 9&lt;br&gt;
March 18 puzzle 10&lt;br&gt;
March 25 puzzle 11&lt;br&gt;
A solution will be published the following week. The puzzle for March 25 will have a solution posted on 1 April.&lt;br&gt;
Notice we say &amp;ldquo;a solution&amp;rdquo;. Depending on your faction you may have a different view of how the puzzle should be solved. A forum will be available on PowerShell.org - &lt;a href="https://powershell.org/forums/forum/iron-scripter/iron-scripter-prequel/"&gt;https://powershell.org/forums/forum/iron-scripter/iron-scripter-prequel/&lt;/a&gt; - for you to present and discuss possible solutions. Give your faction&amp;rsquo;s view of how to solve the puzzle. Use the forums and the answers posted there to identify potential members of your faction. You can use non-attendees during the main Iron Scripter event so this is your chance to identify potential remote collaborators.&lt;br&gt;
We &lt;strong&gt;MUST&lt;/strong&gt; stress a couple of things:&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Registrations are going very quickly. We&rsquo;ve sold nearly half the available places. Historically, registrations accelerate in the first half of January so don&rsquo;t wait too long before booking or you may be disappointed.<br>
Another tranche of alumni discount places were made available at the beginning of January but there are only 25 of them so if you want one book your place very soon.<br>
One new feature of Summit for 2018 is Iron Scripter -<a href="http://ironscripter.us/">http://ironscripter.us/</a>. Three factions will battle it out on Thursday 12 April 2018 for the title of Iron Scripter. If you haven&rsquo;t chosen your faction it&rsquo;s time to start thinking about it:<br>
Daybreak Faction - beautiful code<br>
Flawless Faction - flawless code<br>
Battle Faction - good enough to get the job done<br>
Choose your faction based on your approach to coding.<br>
The run up to Iron Scripter starts soon.<br>
We&rsquo;ll be running a series of prequel events - think of them as the successor to the &ldquo;Scripting Games&rdquo; of the past. We&rsquo;ll publish a puzzle on powershell.org every week on this schedule:<br>
January 14 puzzle 1<br>
January 21 puzzle 2<br>
January 28 puzzle 3<br>
February 4 puzzle 4<br>
February 11 puzzle 5<br>
February 18 puzzle 6<br>
February 25 puzzle 7<br>
March 4 puzzle 8<br>
March 11 puzzle 9<br>
March 18 puzzle 10<br>
March 25 puzzle 11<br>
A solution will be published the following week. The puzzle for March 25 will have a solution posted on 1 April.<br>
Notice we say &ldquo;a solution&rdquo;. Depending on your faction you may have a different view of how the puzzle should be solved. A forum will be available on PowerShell.org -<a href="https://powershell.org/forums/forum/iron-scripter/iron-scripter-prequel/">https://powershell.org/forums/forum/iron-scripter/iron-scripter-prequel/</a> - for you to present and discuss possible solutions. Give your faction&rsquo;s view of how to solve the puzzle. Use the forums and the answers posted there to identify potential members of your faction. You can use non-attendees during the main Iron Scripter event so this is your chance to identify potential remote collaborators.<br>
We<strong>MUST</strong> stress a couple of things:</p><ul><li>Your solutions<strong>WILL NOT</strong><strong>be graded</strong> by anyone! You may get feedback from other people but there will be no official grading of answers. In previous Scripting Games we&rsquo;ve spent literally months grading scripts and its just not logistically feasible to grade and comment on every entry.</li><li>There is no &ldquo;correct&rdquo; answer. Your faction dictates what the solution should look like.<br>
There will be another series of puzzles as a direct lead in to the Iron Scripter competition. These will be published on April 8,9,10 and 11 on powershell.org.<strong>We will NOT post solutions online</strong>. We will also not accept/review submissions however you may find clues or example solutions around the Summit venue. We&rsquo;ll publish more information on these lead in events, and Iron Scripter itself closer to the event.</li></ul>
]]></content:encoded></item></channel></rss>