This is the list of proposed sessions for 2013. It is subject to change depending on circumstances.
All sessions are delivered by Live Meeting on Tuesdays at 7:30 UK time
29 January – PowerShell and Active Directory
26 February – PowerShell Advanced Functions
26 March – PowerShell cmdlets for Hyper-V
30 April – Notes from the PowerShell summit (may be changed)
21 May – Powershell Web Access
25 June – guest speaker PowerShell MVP Max Trinidad
The Windows Management Framework 3.0 has been released as a Windows update.
However there are some compatibility issues as documented on the PowerShell team blog. if you haven"™t see the post it here
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2012/12/20/windows-management-framework-3-0-compatibility-update.aspx
I was asked about searching a user name for a string and replacing it so that the object is renamed.
This is a three stage activity. First get the user. Two modify the name. Three rename the object. In active directory the name attribute has the LDAP name of cn but the Microsoft AD cmdlets treta it as name. So we end up with this code:
`$user
=
Get-ADUser
-Filter
My company has been contracted by Microsoft to design and author Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) course 10961A, Automating Administration with Windows PowerShell v3. While there is no announced release date I can share, I did want to share some of the experience.
As I write this, 10961A’s proposed outline is going through several review cycles. In the meantime, I wanted to sit down and start doing some detail-level design on some of the more complex labs in the course - the most complex of which is a proposed Module 10, consisting of little more than a big, 2-hour lab where you write a script to provision a newly installed Server Core computer.
PowerShell Deep Dives is a book put together by the PowerShell community. I"™m editing one of the sections and have contributed some of the chapters. Manning have just started releasing it on their MEAP program. The full book will hopefully be ready in the spring.
Best of all the royalties are being donated to worthwhile cause.
Check it out – http://manning.com/hicks/
John Mello gave a presentation entitled “Intro to PowerShell’s Pipeline, Part 1”. A copy of his slide deck and code examples are available here.
Script Club :
John R. Nahrgang and [Lido Paglia](http://paglia.org/)Â presented a work in progress script that returns all the members of the Local Administrators Group on a filtered list of Active Directory PCs. A copy of the script is available [here](https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/PhillyPosh_2012-12-05_ScriptClub.zip). Various other information worth mentioning.
As I write this, we’re down to one ticket for the PowerShell Summit North America 2013. So what do you do if you really wanted to go, but miss that last, golden ticket?
Cry a Little Let’s face it, this was totally avoidable. It’s probably your boss’ fault for not approving the expense, and so some subtle retribution may be in order. Burn the coffee for a week. Reboot domain controllers randomly.
I’ve written previously about my frustration with reporting in PowerShell - how I see admins struggle with ugly, low-level COM code to manipulate Excel spreadsheets, just so they can get nice-looking reports with a degree of automation.
Enough.
The right thing to do is put your data in SQL Server, and use SQL Server Reporting Services to generate awesome looking reports, complete with charts and graphs. With the right setup, you can completely automate data collection, report generation, and delivery.
So, as you may know, I have an ongoing hobby project called _Creating HTML Reports in PowerShell. _I’m working on an update for next year, and one of the things I’ve been looking at are embedded charts within the report.
Problem is, I don’t know what people would actually chart. Now… I’m going to ask you for ideas, but you need to read this whole post before you go popping a comment in.
A long time ago… about a year, in fact… Jason Helmick and I started talking about a community-owned PowerShell “certification.” It went nowhere. Well, not very far. Some background on exams: Microsoft, in my opinion, will never do a PowerShell cert. I say this having been part owner of a company that did outsourced exam development for the company. The deal is that Microsoft tries to certify _job tasks, _not _tools. _Nobody (well, maybe me) wakes up thinking, “gonna do me some PowerShell today.” No, PowerShell is the means to an end: “gonna automate me some user creation today” is more likely. And Microsoft tries to certify that end. PowerShell’s an important tool, and it already shows up on certification exams here and there. For the most part, I agree with Microsoft’s reasoning, there. The argument can be summarized as saying “bosses don’t hire IT pros based on their ability to operate a low-level tool, they hire them to perform job tasks, which encompasses the tool.” Except that, in the case of PowerShell, I think it’d be tremendously useful for an employer to use PowerShell expertise as a discriminating factor in hiring. I mean, “someone who can automate stuff” is more valuable than “someone who can only do stuff manually,” in any situation. So “PowerShell Verified” was intended to be a way for someone to prove - at least to themselves - that they’ve taken their PowerShell skills _to the minimum level necessary to be an effective automator. _Not a guru. Not an expert. Not Poshoholic. _Minimally effective, _who could then grow from there with experience. So that’s what I’m going to put together. I want to explain why I’m not using the word “Certification,” though. In my mind, certifications come from, mainly, first-parties like Microsoft. Microsoft has to jump through a lot of hoops to make sure their exam content is accurate, legally defensible, blah blah blah. They worry about security, brain dumps, and other stuff that diminishes the value of the certification. I don’t have that kind of bandwidth or their resources, so in many ways my little program will be less effective than a “real” certification. Plus, few bosses will give a rat’s patooty what that Don Jones guy said about your skillz (I can’t even convince bosses to buy you guys 12-core 64GB workstations for your desk). So my “Verified” program is going to be _low stakes, _meaning you take it to prove something to _
yourself
_. Here’s how this is going to go.