ICYMI: PowerShell Weeks of X-mas & 4-January-2019
Topics include checking SCCM patch compliance, a little regex, some more AoC, a deep dive into $null, and PowerShell…streaming?… You betcha!
Content pulled together by Brett Bunker, Robin Dadswell, and Mark Roloff
From all of us, we hope you enjoyed your holidays! Our sabbatical is over and things have been understandably quiet the last couple of weeks, so we’re adding a little more this week to help make it up to you.
PowerShell: Everything you wanted to know about $null
by Kevin Marquette on December 23rd
Kevin’s deep dives deserve their own special place in your bookmarks. Carve out some free time and read on to become a $null expert.
Advent of PowerShell 2018, pt I
by Mathias R. Jessen on December 25th
Here’s another take on the first two AoC challenges, with some really nice explanations for why you should avoid the += operator in favor of more performant alternatives.
Identifying and Installing SCCM Client Software Updates Remotely with PowerShell and trigger a VMware Snapshot before Remediation – Part 1 of 3
by Ben Whitmore on December 28th
In charge of managing patching in your environment? Ben has a great post that dives into using PowerShell to audit patch compliance on SCCM clients.
Teams module or Graph API?
by Alexander Holmeset on December 29th
As the Teams module moves along through development, you may wonder when it’s appropriate to use the module vs using the Graph API. Alex does a quick comparison to help you see how and where they line up.
PowerShell Basics: Detecting if a String Ends with a Certain Character
by Anthony Bartolo on January 2nd
Regex is an elusive beast that plenty of us are probably less acquianted with than we should be. We can correct that by just a little with these examples of using it to check the first or last characters in a string.
Adding caching to your PowerShell scripts
by Tim Addison on December 24th
Suppose you’ve got an expensive function thats needs to be called multiple times. Tim has a clever method for allowing a function to cache its results, thus allowing you to call it repeatedly without going through the initial workload again.
Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Post
The applications for PowerShell in a professional environment are legion. But what about at home? And for meal planning? /u/n3rden wrote a script for just that.
Reddit /r/PowerShell - Announcement
Worth mentioning… If the thought of watching livestreams of PowerShell coding is appealing, look no further. A handful of figures in the community are now on Twitch, which can be a good glimple into the thought-process behind their projects. Also be sure to follow the channel on Twitter @PowerShellLive
Tweet of the Week(s)
From @devblackops, here’s a brief sample of using GitHub Actions to run PSScriptAnalyzer on a pull request. This could be useful as a quick litmus test for public or group projects.
Youtube: PSDay.UK 2018
PSDay.UK happened back in October but videos from the event are up on YouTube now. This playlist has a ton of great content that’s well worth your time!
Related Articles
PowerShell Escape Room
PowerShell Escape Room by Michiel Hamers
by Michiel Hamers
https://about.me/michielhamers/
Why on earth you want to create an Escape Room with PowerShell as backend?
I’ve always been a fan of escape rooms, so I decided to create my own for my kids. I wanted to make it something that would be challenging and fun for them, but also educational. I decided to use PowerShell as the backend for the escape room, as I’m a PowerShell developer and I thought it would be a great way to learn more about the language.
The first step was to design the rooms. I wanted to make sure that there were a variety of puzzles and challenges that my kids would have to solve. I also wanted to make sure that the rooms were visually appealing and engaging. Once I had the rooms designed, I started building them.
I used a variety of materials to build the rooms, including wood, cardboard, and fabric. I also used a few electronic components, such as a USB extension cable with a switch and a 3-button keyboard. The USB extension cable with a switch was used to create a physical button that my kids could press to solve one of the puzzles. The 3-button keyboard was used to enter the code that my kids had to find to solve another puzzle.
I also used a few websites to create rebus puzzles that my kids had to solve. I printed out the rebus puzzles and placed them around the rooms. Once my kids had solved all of the puzzles, they were able to enter the code on a single screen to escape the room.
In this blog post, we’ll delve into the process of creating an engaging PowerShell escape room for the global PowerShell community. We’ll emphasize the significance of storytelling and provide a detailed breakdown of the PowerShell structure used for the escape room.
Microsoft Graph PowerShell Module: Getting Started Guide
Microsoft Graph PowerShell Module: Getting Started Guide
by Jeff Brown
Microsoft is retiring the Azure AD Graph API sometime after June 30, 2023 (announcement). This retirement includes the Azure AD PowerShell module. In its place, Microsoft has released the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module. The Microsoft Graph PowerShell module is the next-generation way of managing Microsoft cloud services using PowerShell. If you have used MSOnline or Azure AD PowerShell in the past, you’ll need to read on to learn about this new module.
ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 08-October-2021
Topics include VMWare, Windows 11, Web Reports and more…
Special thanks to Robin Dadswell, Prasoon Karunan V, Kiran Patnayakuni and Kevin Laux
How to gather your vCenter inventory data with this VMware PowerShell script
by Scott Matteson on 7th October
Inventory reports are a common request when administering a VMware vCenter environment. Learn how this VMware PowerShell script can make such requests quick and easy
Building a Web Report in PowerShell, use the -Force Luke
by Chris Noring on 8th October