I’ve written a new, short, totally free eBook that explains how to build multi-sectional HTML reports in Windows PowerShell. This is something I’ll be building on in the future, as I have time, to add additional formatting capabilities, and even interactivity. But what’s there now should be a great start! Check it out and let me know what you think. It’s on the free ebook list at https://powershell.org/ebooks.
I’ve finished updating a new revision of _Secrets of PowerShell Remoting; _you’ll find PDF and EPUB versions attached to this post in a ZIP file. Note that these are “check builds,” meaning I’m putting these out there in the hopes folks can run through them on their computers and e-readers to let me know if anything looks weird. You can just drop a comment right here if you find anything. [The book is now live on http://PowerShellBooks.com.]
Voting is open! As you know, the PowerShell Summit North America 2013 is coming in April 2013, and we’re relying on you to tell us what sessions you’d like to see there. We’ve already accepted dozens of proposed sessions, and we’re ready for you to vote. Go ahead and take the survey now. (opens in a new window/tab) While voting, you can technically choose as many sessions as you want - but remember that we can’t present them all, so try to pick no more than 20 sessions as your “favorites.” Also note that the Summit will include additional, to-be-announced sessions presented by Microsoft employees and PowerShell product team members. You can read the session proposals’ descriptions in our forums; we suggest having that open in another window right next to the survey itself. That way, you can read through the abstracts, decide if you like a session, and vote on it in the survey. Sorry for having the information in two places - we’re gonna work on something cleaner for 2014 ;). **You have until midnight October 28th, 2012, to vote. **And if you’re asking, “midnight in what time zone,” then we suggest you stop procrastinating and vote already!!!
That’s right, for just $400 you can guarantee yourself a seat at the PowerShell Summit North America 2013, to be held at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, WA. Just 10 tickets will be made available at this low-low-low price, which is $150 off the normal registration rate. Why so low? Why are they called “I’m Feeling Lucky” tickets? Because while we’re committed to an April 2013 date, we haven’t actually locked in dates with Microsoft, yet. So to purchase these, you’ve got to be feeling flexible… or lucky! But it’s not a marriage. The tickets are completely refundable, up to 30 days prior to the event. So if we manage to lock in the three dates you can’t attend, we’ll give you your money back. You can also transfer the ticket to someone else, at any time (although they’ll be paying you directly for the ticket, and we won’t get involved in that transaction). Once these sell out, or we lock in our dates, we’ll commence the Early Bird period, with a rate of $475 and just 30 tickets available. That rate will be good through the end of December, unless we sell out. Full rate of $550 kicks in after that, when we’ll sell the remaining tickets to fill our roughly 100-person venue. Thinking about presenting? Start submitting topics in the Forums! You can get all the other juicy details on the Summit’s dedicated site, and catch the Summit’s Twitter feed for ongoing announcements.
Microsoft recently posted the online help for PowerShell v3 Workflow (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj134242), and I wanted to take an opportunity to explore some of what the help says - and perhaps offer an outsider’s perspective.
What is Workflow?
Workflow is a set of technologies included with PowerShell v3, and is available on any computer running v3 (which can include Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2012). A workflow is a special kind of PowerShell script that looks a lot like a function. When run, however, PowerShell translates the workflow to Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) code, and hands it off to WWF to execute. That means the contents of a workflow are a bit different than the contents of a script.
This is a free e-book that covers PowerShell Remoting. There’s a brief overview and tutorial of actually using Remoting, but that part isn’t in-depth. What this e-book provides, that you won’t find elsewhere, is step-by-step, screenshot-based instructions for configuring Remoting for any imaginable scenario. You’ll also find troubleshooting tutorials and examples, and even information on how to explain Remoting to your corporate IT security team. It’s all the stuff that isn’t documented in PowerShell’s own help - and it’s completely free. You don’t even need to register to download the file!