&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 September 2019 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2019/09/</link><description>Recent content in Articles from September 2019 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!</description><generator>Hugo</generator><language>en-us</language><atom:link href="https://powershell.org/articles/2019/09/index.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 27-September-2019</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-27-icymi-powershell-week-of-27-september-2019/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-27-icymi-powershell-week-of-27-september-2019/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 27 Sep 2019 15:00:29 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include emojis, orchestration, 365 storage, ternary operators, bash and more.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include emojis, orchestration, 365 storage, ternary operators, bash and more.</p><p>Special thanks to Robin Dadswell, Mark Roloff, Prasoon Karunan V, and Kevin Laux.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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://dev.to/omiossec/vm-orchestration-using-powershell-core-and-azure-functions-2faa"><em>VM orchestration using PowerShell Core and Azure Functions</em></a></p><p>by Olivier Miossec on 23rd September</p><p>Imagine a situation where you need to download data from external sources and you need to make complex calculations and aggregations on it. You don&rsquo;t know in advance the amount of data you will have and the schedule of flow during the day, more calculations and aggregations process are mono-thread. Find out how to setup this using PowerShell!</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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://devscopeninjas.azurewebsites.net/2019/09/24/clear-office-365-storage-size-with-versioning/"><em>Clear Office 365 Storage Size with Versioning</em></a></p><p>by Ricardo Calejo on 24th September</p><p>One of the things most people don’t know when creating a Group or a Team with an associated SharePoint Site, or even a new sitecollection, is that out of the box, its document libraries (or similar) have versioning enabled and supporting a maximum of 500 versions. This a cool feature, but can impact your Office365 storage quota and severely decrease its size.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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://toastit.dev/2019/09/25/ternary-operator-powershell-7/"><em>Getting Familiar with the Ternary Operator in PowerShell 7</em></a></p><p>by Josh King on 25th September</p><p>What the heck is a &ldquo;ternary&rdquo; and what&rsquo;s it doing in my PowerShell?!</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/integrate-linux-commands-into-windows-with-powershell-and-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux/"><em>Integrate Linux Commands into Windows with PowerShell and the Windows Subsystem for Linux</em></a></p><p>by Mike Battista on 26th September</p><p>A common question Windows developers have is “why doesn’t Windows have &lsquo;INSERT FAVORITE LINUX COMMAND HERE&rsquo; yet?”. Whether longing for a powerful pager like less or wanting to use familiar commands like grep or sed, Windows developers desire easy access to these commands as part of their core workflow.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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.cloudsecuritea.com/2019/09/generate-an-overview-of-all-microsoft-flows-with-powershell/"><em>Generate an overview of all Microsoft Flows with PowerShell</em></a></p><p>by Maarten Peeters on 26th September</p><p>Users can easily create flows in SharePoint and in their OneDrive so as a company you want to monitor and manage this behaviour. With PowerShell you can generate a list all flows that have been created and who created it. This way you can keep track on who’s building flows, which triggers and actions are users using and the current state of the flow.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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/d8exe0/powershell_is_now_part_of_the_net_core_30/"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Weekly Post</em></a></p><p>.Net Core 3.0 is now released and with it new container images. By popular demand Microsoft is now including PowerShell Core as part of the .Net Core 3.0 SDK container image.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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/lee_ford/status/1177329239806349315"><em>Tweet of the Week</em></a></p><p>PowerShell and Emojis&hellip; say no more!</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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=uq5GfJ3dCxg&amp;"><em>Youtube: PowerShell Module Development</em></a></p><p>Asish Raj Discusses the ins and outs of PowerShell Modules on his PowerShell basics series.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Last Call for Summit 2020 CFP</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-21-last-call-for-summit-2020-cfp/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-21-last-call-for-summit-2020-cfp/</guid><pubDate>Sat, 21 Sep 2019 01:37:43 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;So! &lt;a href="https://www.papercall.io/summit2020"&gt;Proposals&lt;/a&gt; for the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2020 are due in less than two weeks, on October 1st. We have some solid talks lined up, but we&amp;rsquo;re still behind where we were last year, and need more proposals!&lt;br&gt;
We&amp;rsquo;ve heard a lot of questions - &lt;em&gt;What topics are you looking for?&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;I don&amp;rsquo;t know what to propose!&lt;/em&gt; and so on. Let&amp;rsquo;s cover some ways to find topics and hopefully spark some ideas!&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>So!<a href="https://www.papercall.io/summit2020">Proposals</a> for the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2020 are due in less than two weeks, on October 1st. We have some solid talks lined up, but we&rsquo;re still behind where we were last year, and need more proposals!<br>
We&rsquo;ve heard a lot of questions -<em>What topics are you looking for?</em>,<em>I don&rsquo;t know what to propose!</em> and so on. Let&rsquo;s cover some ways to find topics and hopefully spark some ideas!</p><h2 id="add-some-spice" class="ps-heading">Add some spice<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#add-some-spice" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>First things first: We&rsquo;re not going to come up with your topic!<a href="https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-get-a-technical-talk-accepted-at-a-conference-or-event-8ba291d11c62/">This bit</a> has some solid advice on mixing things up:</p><ul><li><p>I saw a talk with X format and decided to apply it to Y subject.</p></li><li><p>While working on a project, I thought, “Wow! I wish I knew X, Y, and Z before I started!”</p></li><li><p>A conversation with coworkers about X led me to see the potential for a talk on it.</p></li></ul><p>The key here is that there are plenty of ways to add variety to a topic - these certainly aren&rsquo;t comprehensive, just a few ideas.</p><h3 id="spice-up-pester" class="ps-heading">Spice up Pester<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#spice-up-pester" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>As an example, if we asked for<em>Pester</em> sessions, there are plenty of ways to come up with a unique Pester talk.</p><ul><li>Can you use Pester for security things (compliance, CI/CD, vulnerability assessments, etc.)?</li><li>Can you use Pester for data validation of some sort (e.g. AD, SQL)?</li><li>Have you used Pester for Infrastructure testing?</li><li>Might you use Pester for Monitoring? (even if this might not be the optimal way to monitor things)</li></ul><p>At the end of the day, PowerShell can be used across a variety of fields, and general purpose tools like Pester can be used in each of those, in unique ways.</p><h3 id="other-spices" class="ps-heading">Other spices<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#other-spices" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>So! We used a few specific-ish variations of Pester as an example.  Take a step back and consider PowerShell itself:</p><ul><li>How do you use PowerShell in different fields (keeping in mind that each field has it&rsquo;s own set of sub-fields)? Bonus points if the concepts / ideas / code you include are applicable in a variety of fields.</li><li>How do you use PowerShell outside of work, or for general productivity (side note: running this CFP would be a<em>paaaaain</em> without PowerShell!).</li><li>What lessons can we take from other fields, ecosystems, or projects? For example, while these may seem new-ish to some of us, we borrowed and applied testing, CI/CD, and other ideas that have long been integrated in the ecosystems of other languages.</li></ul><p>All this said, please don&rsquo;t think you need something super unique and never-before-seen!</p><h2 id="tried-and-true" class="ps-heading">Tried and true<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#tried-and-true" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>Every day, new folks enter the field, or start learning about PowerShell, automation, DevOps, etc. Yes, people have talked about testing and other topics in the past&hellip; but guess what? Chances are we&rsquo;ll still accept some solid talks on important concepts.<br>
So! What are some of these evergreen topics?</p><ul><li>Release pipelines, including the individual components you might find:<ul><li>Source control</li><li>Build systems and frameworks</li><li>Pester and testing</li><li>Deployment</li></ul></li><li>PowerShell modules or advanced functions<ul><li>How to write them</li><li>Best practices</li><li>How to distribute and maintain them</li><li>etc.</li></ul></li><li>Using common tools/practices with PowerShell<ul><li>VSCode and extensions</li><li>Windows Subsystem for Linux</li><li>Debugging</li><li>etc.</li></ul></li></ul><p>There&rsquo;s plenty more. You can probably think about other core topics that folks will always need to learn, re-learn, or catch up on new ideas for.</p><h2 id="2020-specifics" class="ps-heading">2020 specifics<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#2020-specifics" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h2><p>So!  What about the 2020 summit?  A few notes on our current state:</p><h3 id="topics-were-looking-for" class="ps-heading">Topics we&rsquo;re looking for<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#topics-were-looking-for" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>Keep in mind everything we&rsquo;ve said so far. Don&rsquo;t overthink it. Show us something<em>you</em> are interested in or working on. That being said, we haven&rsquo;t seen many submissions on:</p><ul><li>Monitoring</li><li>Testing and Pester</li><li>DSC, or wrapping DSC (a la dsc_lite)</li><li>Functions</li><li>Modules</li></ul><h3 id="topics-that-will-have-competition" class="ps-heading">Topics that will have competition<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#topics-that-will-have-competition" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h3><p>Every year, we have some topics that have a bit of competition. This year is no different. If you have something to share on these topics<em>don&rsquo;t let this scare you off</em>, just know there will be a little competition.</p><ul><li>Kubernetes</li><li>Working with web APIs</li><li>Contributing to open source</li><li>Azure (granted, I<em>much</em> prefer attendee talks to vendor happy-path talks, for what it&rsquo;s worth)</li></ul><p>That&rsquo;s about it! We have less than two weeks and need more proposals, now is a good time to start writing them!  We&rsquo;ll close with a few handy links:</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.papercall.io/summit2020">2020 PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit CFP</a> - closing October 1st</li><li><a href="https://powershell.org/2018/08/the-summit-2019-call-for-topics-some-ideas/">2019 CFP ideas</a> - still applicable, although many of DevOps tools considered<em>esoteric</em> might be worth a proposal</li><li><a href="https://powershell.org/2019/09/be-a-speaker-at-powershell-and-devops-global-summit-2020/">2020 CFP ideas</a></li><li>#Conferences in the<a href="http://bit.ly/PSSlack">PowerShell Slack team</a> - plenty of folks willing to chat about or review your proposals in there.  You can also ping<a href="mailto:content@powershell.org">content@powershell.org</a>, but the Slack route is faster, and has more eyes on it</li></ul>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 20-September-2019</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-20-icymi-powershell-week-of-20-september-2019/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-20-icymi-powershell-week-of-20-september-2019/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 20 Sep 2019 15:00:15 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include Active Directory, Azure Labs, Ansible, PowerShell 7 Preview 4 and more.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include Active Directory, Azure Labs, Ansible, PowerShell 7 Preview 4 and more.</p><p>Special thanks to Robin Dadswell, Mark Roloff, Prasoon Karunan V, and Kevin Laux.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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.petri.com/most-useful-powershell-cmdlets-for-managing-and-securing-active-directory"><em>Most Useful PowerShell Cmdlets for Managing and Securing Active Directory</em></a></p><p>by Russell Smith on 16th September</p><p>Examples of some useful Active Directory PowerShell commands and how to use them.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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://mcpmag.com/articles/2019/09/17/azure-devtest-labs-with-powershell.aspx"><em>Building Azure DevTest Labs with PowerShell</em></a></p><p>by Adam Bertram on 17th September</p><p>Learn how to use a freely available PowerShell module called PSAzDevTestLabs to build Azure DevTest Labs, add VMs to them and more.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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.jonathanmedd.net/2019/09/ansible-windows-and-powershell-the-basics-introduction.html"><em>Ansible, Windows and PowerShell: the Basics – Introduction</em></a></p><p>by Jonathan Medd on 18th September</p><p>A follow up to the a recent session at PowerShell Southampton on using both Ansible and PowerShell together.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/powershell-7-preview-4/"><em>PowerShell 7 Preview 4</em></a></p><p>by Steve Lee on 19th September</p><p>Announcement around PowerShell 7 Preview 4, touching on some of the changes.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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://demiliani.com/2019/09/20/creating-an-azure-sql-database-backup-via-powershell/"><em>Creating an Azure SQL Database backup via Powershell</em></a></p><p>by Stefano Demiliani on 20th September</p><p>Find yourself needing to backup Azure SQL databases and download that backup? Here&rsquo;s a neat way to automate the process!</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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/richardhicks/status/1173568514080292864"><em>Tweet of the Week</em></a></p><p>Richard Hicks puts his Windows 10 Always on VPN and Direct Access scripts on GitHub!</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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=DhzR7mbFE9I"><em>Youtube: Customize Your PowerShell Prompt with Nerd Fonts &amp; ANSI Escape Sequences</em></a></p><p>You can spice up your PowerShell prompt by using a variety of techniques. In this video, we&rsquo;ll take a look at using ANSI escape sequences to colorize various components of your prompt, using Nerd Fonts to add glyphs (icons) to your prompt, and how you can write content anywhere on the terminal using coordinates.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 13-September-2019</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-13-icymi-powershell-week-of-13-september-2019/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-13-icymi-powershell-week-of-13-september-2019/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 13 Sep 2019 15:00:24 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include Active Directory, SCCM, Security and More.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include Active Directory, SCCM, Security and More.</p><p>Special thanks to Robin Dadswell, Mark Roloff, Prasoon Karunan V, and Kevin Laux.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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://evotec.xyz/what-do-we-say-to-health-checking-active-directory/"><em>What do we say to health checking Active Directory?</em></a></p><p>by Przemyslaw Klys on 8th September</p><p>There are plenty of tools out there to check the health of AD, but Przemyslaw shares the tools he&rsquo;s created with the community.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"/></a></h6><p><a href="http://www.obvus.be/2019/09/08/cleaning-up-badmin-accounts-in-configmgr/"><em>CLEANING UP (B)ADMIN ACCOUNTS IN CONFIGMGR</em></a></p><p>by Merlijn Van Waeyenberghe on 8th September</p><p>Find out an easy way to change accounts within SCCM - especially useful when you have that one admin account that is everywhere.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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://medium.com/@Bank_Security/how-to-running-powershell-commands-without-powershell-exe-a6a19595f628"><em>Run PowerShell without Powershell.exe — Best tools &amp; techniques</em></a></p><p>by Bank Security on 9th September</p><p>During last months, observing how the attackers and consequently the antivirus are moving, I thought of writing this article for all the pen testers and red teamers who are looking for the best technique to use their PowerShell scripts or command lines during post exploitation phase without running PowerShell.exe and thus avoiding being caught by the Next-Gen Antivirus, EDR or from the Blue Team or Threat Hunting team.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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.powershellmagazine.com/2019/09/09/weekly-module-spotlight-importexcel/"><em>Weekly Module Spotlight: ImportExcel</em></a></p><p>by Ravikanth Chaganti on 9th September</p><p>Ravikanth looks at his module of the week ImportExcel giving a good overview of what is happening.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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://toastit.dev/2019/09/10/powershell7-foreach-parallel/"><em>Can Parallel For Each Loops in PowerShell 7 Tear Me Away from PoshRSJob?</em></a></p><p>by Josh King on 10th September</p><p>PoshRSJob has been my go to module for Parallelization for years&hellip; let&rsquo;s see if a head to head test with the new PowerShell 7 feature will change that.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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/d3byf0/powershell_all_the_things/"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Weekly Post</em></a></p><p>Of course the most popular Reddit post is a meme. Dig into the comments on this post and find some great information on randomness and using Get-Random with an array.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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/AndySvints/status/1171405216350126080"><em>Tweet of the Week</em></a></p><p>Ever wanted to manage Zoom with PowerShell, well now there is a module for that!</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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/efRnjlZKCGw"><em>Youtube: Define Cross-Platform System Configuration Requirements with PowerShell</em></a></p><p>Trevor Sullivan looks at how you create PowerShell &ldquo;Requirements&rdquo; on a Mac OS system using the PowerShell module called &ldquo;Requirements&rdquo;.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>The Ternary Cometh</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-12-the-ternary-cometh/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-12-the-ternary-cometh/</guid><pubDate>Thu, 12 Sep 2019 21:35:34 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Developers are likely to be familiar with ternary conditional operators as they&amp;rsquo;re legal in many languages (Ruby, Python, C++, etc).  They&amp;rsquo;re also often used in coding interviews to test an applicant as they can be a familiar source of code errors.  While some developers couldn&amp;rsquo;t care less about ternary operators, there&amp;rsquo;s been a cult following waiting for them to show up in Powershell.  That day is &lt;a href="https://powershell.visualstudio.com/PowerShell/_build/results?buildId=31915"&gt;almost upon us.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Any Powershell developer can easily be forgiven for scratching their heads and wondering what a ternary is.  In the most basic sense a ternary evaluates an expression to a binary result and carries out one of two possible outcomes.  Lets start by looking at some code examples:&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Developers are likely to be familiar with ternary conditional operators as they&rsquo;re legal in many languages (Ruby, Python, C++, etc).  They&rsquo;re also often used in coding interviews to test an applicant as they can be a familiar source of code errors.  While some developers couldn&rsquo;t care less about ternary operators, there&rsquo;s been a cult following waiting for them to show up in Powershell.  That day is<a href="https://powershell.visualstudio.com/PowerShell/_build/results?buildId=31915">almost upon us.</a><br>
Any Powershell developer can easily be forgiven for scratching their heads and wondering what a ternary is.  In the most basic sense a ternary evaluates an expression to a binary result and carries out one of two possible outcomes.  Lets start by looking at some code examples:</p><p><code>puts (if 1 then 2 else 3 end) 2</code>PS &gt; 1 ? 2 : 3
PS &gt; 2
`The above is the same conditional expressed first in Ruby, then in Powershell, and both examples have a return of 2.  First off, let&rsquo;s get around the obvious confusion in the Powershell example.  The alias for Where-Object is &lsquo;?&rsquo;, and that is not what the &lsquo;?&rsquo; represents in the powershell ternary operation.  The likely reason for implementing &lsquo;?&rsquo; instead of another character is for inter-language operability and reducing the level of effort for migrating code from other languages to Powershell.<br>
The best way to explain how to read the ternary example above is to express it in a more familiar context.  That is to say, let&rsquo;s turn it into an If/Then/Else statement:</p><p><code>if(1){2}else{3}</code>Right off we can see one of the benefits of a ternary is that it makes code more succinct.  It should also make more sense why we refer to the ternary as a conditional operator.  It&rsquo;s intended as an optional replacement for If/Than/Else in much the same way that Select/Case is for organizing multiple conditional statements.  Wondering if there&rsquo;s a performance enhancement?<br><img src="https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/wl/t1.15752-0/s480x480/70352759_377454299851433_6857271860543881216_n.png?_nc_cat=105&amp;_nc_log=1&amp;_nc_oc=AQmAjykQ4CuOWI8SBA_aHRSBjOdpHV-OrzlMs9iI9J6egJ2w6vNGr5AuYIRZkJNQJiQ4JH7ENVdcNKNy-UGUyGb-&amp;_nc_ht=scontent.xx&amp;oh=4db9b829b678c0e87ec610471f7054b5&amp;oe=5DF6EE21" alt=""><br>
Nope.  So the ternary is intended to boost readability but does that happen in reality?  Some engineers, who shall remain nameless, misuse its purpose into statements you&rsquo;ll wish you could unsee or will make your eyes bleed.  For example:</p><p><code>Bool c1, c2,c3; // Assign some values to c1, c2 and c3. int x = c1?c2?1:2:c3?3:4;</code>Who wants to code review that?  Or decipher it while trying to resolve a problem that&rsquo;s affecting your critical operations?<br>
There&rsquo;s a definite place for ternary operators in Powershell.  They have the potential to enhance the programing experience while simplifying readability.  Some will look upon the ternary as a way to show off their elite skills and create code only they can read.  The great engineers will leverage the best syntax for the correct reason at just the right moment in their code.  If you want to experiment with Powershell ternary operators early, grab the build linked above (or any later build) and run '
Enable</p><ul><li/></ul><p>ExperimentalFeature</p><p>PSTernaryOperator&rsquo;.</p><p>Please, enjoy ternary operators responsibly.<br>
Remembering<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Vaughan">Dorothy Vaughan</a> on this anniversary of JFK&rsquo;s &ldquo;We choose to go to the Moon&rdquo; speech.</p>
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>ICYMI: PowerShell Week of 6-September-2019</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-06-icymi-powershell-week-of-6-september-2019/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-06-icymi-powershell-week-of-6-september-2019/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 06 Sep 2019 15:00:20 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;Topics include PowerShell meetups, Network Connections, PowerShell on Android, Regex and more.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>Topics include PowerShell meetups, Network Connections, PowerShell on Android, Regex and more.</p><p>Special thanks to Robin Dadswell, Mark Roloff, Prasoon Karunan V, and Kevin Laux.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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.networkadm.in/rtpsug-powershell-saturday/">POWERSHELL SATURDAY: RALEIGH 2019</a></p><p>by Mike Kanakos on 1st of September</p><p>Research Triangle PowerShell Users Group is hosting a PowerShell Saturday. Get Mike&rsquo;s insight on what a PowerShell Saturday is and details about how the event will be set up in Raleigh, NC.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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://deploymentresearch.com/detecting-wired-wireless-and-vpn-connections-using-powershell/">Detecting Wired, Wireless, and VPN Connections using PowerShell</a></p><p>by Johan Arwidmark on 2nd of September</p><p>Johan was having trouble detecting network connection type across 50k machines in his environment. In his blog post he shares some details about a script he used to check if a system was using wired/wireless/VPN.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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://dev.to/thementor/i-run-powershell-on-android-and-so-can-you-458k">I run PowerShell on Android and so can you !!</a></p><p>by TheMentor on 3rd of September</p><p>Step by Step guide detailing the process of installing PowerShell on an Android device.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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.powershellmagazine.com/2019/09/03/weekly-module-spotlight-polaris/"><em>Weekly Module Spotlight: Polaris</em></a></p><p>by Ravikanth Chaganti on September 3rd</p><p>Polaris is a cross-platform, minimalist web framework for PowerShell that is quick and easy to use.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/powershell-foreach-object-parallel-feature/"><em>PowerShell ForEach-Object Parallel Feature</em></a></p><p>by Paul Higinbotham on September 4th</p><p>PowerShell 7.0 Preview 3 is now available with a new ForEach-Object Parallel Experimental feature. This feature is a great new tool for parallelizing work, but like any tool, it has its uses and drawbacks. This article describes this new feature, how it works, when to use it and when not to.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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/d0fovu/speaker_opportunities_for_powershell_southampton/"><em>Reddit /r/PowerShell - Most Popular Weekly Post</em></a></p><p>Speaker Opportunities for PowerShell Southampton User Group</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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/BrettMiller_IT/status/1169226147315539968"><em>Tweet of the Week</em></a></p><p>Brett asks about using git with PowerShell.</p><h6 id="" class="ps-heading"><a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#" 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=GUUF8TIL6Pg"><em>Youtube: Detecting Text Patterns with PowerShell Regular Expressions</em></a></p><p>When you want to extract some text from a string, regular expressions come to the rescue. There are a few different ways of using regular expressions in PowerShell, but the -match operator is arguably the easiest. We&rsquo;ll take a look at how to use the -match operator to evaluate regular expressions against singleton and array string values. We&rsquo;ll also explore the built-in $matches variable, which gets populated when you have a positive match against a singleton string value, using the -match operator.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Be a Speaker at PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit 2020!</title><link>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-03-be-a-speaker-at-powershell-and-devops-global-summit-2020/</link><guid>https://powershell.org/articles/2019-09-03-be-a-speaker-at-powershell-and-devops-global-summit-2020/</guid><pubDate>Tue, 03 Sep 2019 17:42:35 +0000</pubDate><description>&lt;p&gt;We are so excited for the 2020 PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit! We’re about halfway through the CFP season and are still looking for your awesome submissions. If you are hesitating, please don’t&amp;hellip; think seriously about submitting a topic or two. To help you, we’d like to give you some ideas about what makes a submission stand out (and what doesn’t).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Something Unique…&lt;/strong&gt; We’re looking for a new spin or twist on an old (or new) topic. If something similar has been done at a previous Summit, think about how you’re doing something different from what’s previously been presented. DevOps topics are always popular, but what new thing are you doing with your source control, your testing, or your build pipeline?&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Failures&amp;hellip;&lt;/strong&gt; Alternatively, is there something you started out to do and at some point, figured out that you it wasn’t going to work the way it was planned? If you’ve had some good lessons learned that you think would benefit others, we’d love to hear about it.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Broad scope vs. deep scope&amp;hellip;&lt;/strong&gt; If you’ve done a snack “bake-off” and could talk about chips, cookies, and crackers, this session would be attended by folks who prefer chips or cookies or crackers. However, a session that is only about cookies might only be of interest to Rambling Cookie Monsters. If you’re a subject matter expert on chips, though, and can show how to use chips to build a house, that would have that uniqueness factor we’re also looking for.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Multiple submissions&amp;hellip;&lt;/strong&gt; Multiple submissions on different topics help us select a wide variety of topics. It’s hard to say from year to year what topics will be popular. For example, we had a lot of Git and Pester submissions last year&amp;hellip; not so many this year. We’re looking for variety so submit as many ideas as you have.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Something that wasn’t selected last year&amp;hellip;&lt;/strong&gt; We may have really liked your submission last year and it may have simply been on the bubble. You’re only up against the submissions that we’ve seen for this year, so if you had a submission from last year that you feel passionate about and is still a hot topic, please submit it!&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“Post OnRamp” submissions are welcome&amp;hellip;&lt;/strong&gt; We have a graduated class of OnRamp students from last year who we want to continue learning. Therefore, we’ll be looking for a small number of sessions at this level.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Some additional things we’d like to add:&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;![CDATA[<p>We are so excited for the 2020 PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit! We’re about halfway through the CFP season and are still looking for your awesome submissions. If you are hesitating, please don’t&hellip; think seriously about submitting a topic or two. To help you, we’d like to give you some ideas about what makes a submission stand out (and what doesn’t).</p><ul><li><strong>Something Unique…</strong> We’re looking for a new spin or twist on an old (or new) topic. If something similar has been done at a previous Summit, think about how you’re doing something different from what’s previously been presented. DevOps topics are always popular, but what new thing are you doing with your source control, your testing, or your build pipeline?</li><li><strong>Failures&hellip;</strong> Alternatively, is there something you started out to do and at some point, figured out that you it wasn’t going to work the way it was planned? If you’ve had some good lessons learned that you think would benefit others, we’d love to hear about it.</li><li><strong>Broad scope vs. deep scope&hellip;</strong> If you’ve done a snack “bake-off” and could talk about chips, cookies, and crackers, this session would be attended by folks who prefer chips or cookies or crackers. However, a session that is only about cookies might only be of interest to Rambling Cookie Monsters. If you’re a subject matter expert on chips, though, and can show how to use chips to build a house, that would have that uniqueness factor we’re also looking for.</li><li><strong>Multiple submissions&hellip;</strong> Multiple submissions on different topics help us select a wide variety of topics. It’s hard to say from year to year what topics will be popular. For example, we had a lot of Git and Pester submissions last year&hellip; not so many this year. We’re looking for variety so submit as many ideas as you have.</li><li><strong>Something that wasn’t selected last year&hellip;</strong> We may have really liked your submission last year and it may have simply been on the bubble. You’re only up against the submissions that we’ve seen for this year, so if you had a submission from last year that you feel passionate about and is still a hot topic, please submit it!</li><li><strong>“Post OnRamp” submissions are welcome&hellip;</strong> We have a graduated class of OnRamp students from last year who we want to continue learning. Therefore, we’ll be looking for a small number of sessions at this level.</li></ul><p>Some additional things we’d like to add:</p><ul><li><strong>We don’t care who you are&hellip;</strong> If you’re concerned about not being an MVP, haven’t spoken before, or are simply suffering from imposter syndrome, don’t. Every speaker has been a first-time speaker, and we’re specifically looking to introduce some new speakers to the community every year.</li><li><strong>Don’t procrastinate&hellip;</strong> The CFP closes October 1st, no exceptions. It’s open for two months, which is plenty of time.</li><li><strong>Repeats are iffy&hellip;</strong> If you have a talk that’s been done at multiple conferences already, or a talk that’s been recorded and is available on YouTube, it probably won’t be selected. We’re looking for new content. However, if you have a talk you’ve given at a user group meeting that was well-received? Please submit it.</li><li><strong>Talk to us&hellip;</strong> If you’re on the fence about submitting or have a topic you’re thinking about but want to know if there are a bunch of similar topics, please reach out to us at “content [at] powershell [dot] org” and ask. We won’t tell you that we have 17.5 submissions on write-host, but we will say “yeah that’s a really popular topic this year”. (As of today, there aren’t really any topics that are heavily populated, so keep that in mind. And there aren’t any submissions on write-host yet.)</li></ul><p>In case you&rsquo;ve forgotten, here&rsquo;s a link to the CFP: <a href="https://www.papercall.io/summit2020">https://www.papercall.io/summit2020</a><br>
Let’s keep the submissions coming and we are looking forward to an AWESOME Summit in 2020!</p>
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