Articles

PowerShell articles, tutorials, and guides from community experts.

Feb 2, 2016 • Steve Parankewich

DevOps

Connect to all Office 365 Services with PowerShell

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 There is a mix of outdated information on what you actually need to install and execute in order to connect to all of the Office 365 services.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

Feb 2, 2016 • Don Jones

PowerShell Summit

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

OK, here’s a quick update of where we’re at with registration for PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2016. We’d originally scheduled 150 seats for the April event, inclusive of speakers. Yesterday (1st Feb) we opened 3-day sales (previously, only 4-day seats had been available), and are now at 126 total attendees. So we’ve got 24 seats of our original space remaining. The venue assures us that we can accommodate at least another 25 people, possible as many as 50 more.

Jan 29, 2016 • timpringle

Using PowerShell to make Azure Automation Graphical Runbooks – Part 1

Microsoft recently released another extension for Azure Automation developers, this time in the form of the Microsoft Azure Automation Graphical Authoring SDK. This SDK allows developers to make and edit graphic runbooks for using in Azure Automation. Although the examples given are in C#, it’s possible to apply the same methodologies to develop them in PowerShell with the accompanying SDK mentioned above. You can read the first article of this series on creating these Graphical Runbooks at powershell.

Jan 28, 2016 • Don Jones

PowerShell Summit

PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2016 Registration Status

A quick status update on Summit: We’re currently past our 50% registration point. Right now, only 4-day registrations are available. Register at https://eventloom.com/event/home/PSNA16. In just a few days, on February 1st, we’ll open all remaining seats for both 3- and 4-day registrations (same registration URL). Registration ends during the first week of March. At that time, we’ll review the situation, and may be able to open additional seats. However, the price will go up a bit.

Jan 28, 2016 • Matthew Hodgkins

DevOps

Using PowerShell to enable ChatOps on Windows

ChatOps is a term used to describe bringing development or operations work that is already happening in the background into a common chat room. It involves having everyone in the team in a single chat room, then bringing tools into the room so everyone can automate, collaborate and see how automation is used to solve problems. In doing so, you are unifying the communication about what work gets done and have a history of it happening.

Jan 22, 2016 • Steve Parankewich

DevOps

Create Windows Shortcuts or Favorites With PowerShell

Creating windows shortcuts are usually done through the New Shortcut Wizard, MSI files, Group Policy Objects, or even a simple file copy. Shortcut files are .lnk files that Microsoft Windows uses for shortcuts to local files while .url is used for destinations such as web sites. As we all are aware, the .lnk filename extension is hidden in Windows Explorer even when “Hide extensions for known file types” is unchecked in File Type options.

Jan 18, 2016 • timpringle

PowerShell for Admins

Using Local Functions in a Scriptblock with Existing Code

When you are wanting to run code remotely, it’s common to do this via the use of Invoke-Command (though other options exist, such as through Start-Job for example). The biggest downfall to date i’ve found with remoting is the lack of an option to combine the use of your local functions within a ScriptBlock that has other code in it. As an example, the following is not possible: function Add ($param1, $param2) { $param1 + $param2 } function Multiply($param1,$param2) { $param1 * $param2 } Invoke-Command -ComputerName $env:COMPUTERNAME -ScriptBlock { $addResult = Add $args[0] $args[1] $multiplyResult = Multiply $args[0] $args[1] Write-Output "The result of the addition was : $addResult" Write-Output "The result of the multiplication was : $multiplyResult" } -ArgumentList 3, 2 However, there is a way to achieve this type of operation, and make as many local functions as you want available to be used and combined with other code in your ScriptBlock.

Jan 14, 2016 • Steve Parankewich

DevOps

Improve Delivery of PowerShell Tools or Version Controlled Files

I am back this week with a quick how-to article on delivering, installing, or launching version controlled files. In the past I ran into problems when having administrators launch my PowerShell tools from a network share. The performance was slow when launching it across the WAN, and the file would often be locked when I tried to replace it with a newer version. I came up with a solution to the problem by using none other than PowerShell.

Jan 11, 2016 • Stephen Owen

Atlanta PowerShell User's Group Meeting – January 19th 'Let's win the scripting games!'

Kicking off in our new venue, we’ll be tackling this month’s PowerShell.org monthly scripting games challenge! Prizes are given to the group with the best answers over the year, so let’s try our best! Have an idea or want to cover a topic? Let us know my messaging Mark Schill or myself (Stephen Owen) Here’s the link to the puzzle for this month. I would recommend that you look it over, and begin thinking of how you might approach it.

Jan 11, 2016 • Steve Parankewich

Announcements

New Boston PowerShell User Group

Its a new year with new goals and I hope to provide even more assistance and value to the PowerShell community in 2016. I have created a new Boston based PowerShell user group and will be working hard on creating sessions as frequently and regularly as possible. If you are in the greater Boston or New England area please join the user group. If we have any Microsoft employees or PowerShell MVPs visiting the Boston area in the future, we would love to have you deliver a session.

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