DOWST.DEV

needed to capture the screen output of each VM for documentation and troubleshooting purposes. Long story short, here is a PowerShell script that will capture still images from the screen of each Hyper-V VM

cmdlets, offer any native VM cloning function. But with a bit of creative scripting, it's certainly doable. Here is a script that clones a virtual machine in Hyper-V: Unlike when using Windows Admin Center to manage your Hyper-V VMs, Hyper-V Manager

Machine Manager (SCVMM) custom properties with PowerShell and the Virtual Machine Manager Console.

and utilizing themContinue Reading

export a VM from your development workstation to a Hyper-V host in production? If so, you've come to the right place!...

Checkpoints in Hyper-V using PowerShell. Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) checkpoints are one of the great benefits of virtualization. Before Windows Server 2012 R2, they were known as virtual machine snapshots. VM Checkpoints in Hyper-V allow you to save the system state of a VM to a specific time and then revert back to that state if you need to. This is great if you are testing software and configuration changes, or if you have a demo environment, which you want to reset.

PowerShell. Of course you can use performance counters to manage all sorts of things, but personally, memory is the most critical.

snapshots/checkpoints, and VHD files.

PowerShell Direct. PowerShell Direct lets you remotely connect to a Virtual Machine running on a Hyper-V host, without any network connection inside the Virtual Machine. PowerShell Direct uses the Hyper-V VMBus to connect inside the Virtual Machine. This feature is convenient if you need it for automation and configuration for Virtual Machines or if you for example messed up network configuration inside the virtual machine and you don?t have console access.

great content and easy to follow tuturials.

get started.

to retrieve all Hyper-V VMs with the most important properties and [...]

helpful if you want to bring an overview into your chaos.

developers and IT administrators, but also for students. Using Hyper-V, students can install multiple operating systems and applications on a single physical machine. In a previous blog post, we covered steps to enable Hyper-V in Windows 11 via the Graphic User Interface (GUI). However, as many pointed out, there is a quicker way to accomplish this.

or check things, and you can do this using PowerShell Direct. In this blog post, I will show you how to use PowerShell Direct with a few examples.

on-premises or Azure VMs to the fully-managed PaaS database service Azure SQL Database Managed Instance. In this post you will see how to create PowerShell scripts that automate migration to Managed Instance using Azure PowerShell and DbaTools.

PowerShell. This will require some way to get the information from PowerShell into SQL Server.

building!

how to use this command in this ATA Learning tutorial!

in worksheets. We can import from and export to SQL Excel data using a combination of ImportExcel and dbatools modules.

commands, and how you can run the assessments for your Azure SQL Managed Instances as well as your on-prem SQL Server instances.

possibly leave yourself open to SQL injection attacks. While you may be the only one using your script, it's likely that you're using values you're getting from a database, file, or some other external source. So I finally got around to writing a function that supports parameterised queries, and thought I'd offer it up in case others find it useful.

over 500 commands, this free and open source PowerShell module has the horsepower to automate just about every task you can imagine?and then some! Written by dbatools creator Chrissy LeMaire and dbatools advocate Rob Sewell, Learn dbatools in a Month of Lunches teaches you techniques that will make you more effective?and efficient?than you ever thought possible.

multiple processes in parallel. Everything seemed to work OK for a while, but then everything broke.

out SQL Servers. The chief time consuming task being when I'd have to move the SQL Server's default System Database and Log Files to new, dedicated database and log volumes.

example, maybe a guide or a source of ideas for your own implementation. This is about using publicly available software (like database clients or NuGet packages) and a few lines of PowerShell code to show database administrators how to work with PowerShell.

requested this feature be added to Azure Data Studio and it has become the most popular feature request for Notebooks. (Although, I'm sure it only became the most popular after they added copying from the results grid a few months ago )

via Exchange Web Services (EWS). Apparently there's a "wontfix" bug in Exchange, where a request to fetch email over this interface that can silently fail. The known workaround is to move email between folders in the affected account, which for some reason causes a state change of some kind that suddenly allows email to be handled again.

100,000 records from a table with 97 varchar(320) fields in an Azure SQL HyperScale database. Following, I would like to share my lessons learned here.

errors. The version, startup parameters, memory settings and a ton more. I've been working with SQL Server for over 20 years and I still see messages in the errorlog that I don't remember coming across.

options

restores the database from a .bak file to a differently named database.

more than I wanted to add as an array or hash table in script, or even an external file like an XML document. So I searched for a portable, standalone database that I could distribute with the script and happened across LiteDB, a lightweight, single-file NoSQL database. It seemed the ideal solution as there's a .Net code library for it, and so far I'm pretty impressed.

run Ola's Index Optimize and Statistics Updates on them. All of these have seemed way too complicated probably because I was setting them up once, not again for several more months or a year. Well

of Intune Devices and ActiveDirectory Computer Accounts with PowerShell.

myself), are managing those iOS devices as private BYOD devices enrolled through the Company Portal. As of such, keeping the devices up to date is the end-user's responsibility and something that's often forgotten and neglected. So what if we could send those devices and users a kind reminder automatically, both as a custom notification directly on the device, but also as an e-mail? Microsoft Intune Powershell SDK to the rescue!

maybe my method would just be redundant. After some slight convincing I figured my method does have its merits. One of them being that it uses the secure application model, and thus its easy to apply to all partner tenants for a CSP, the other benefit is that this could run headless as a completely automated solution.

because it becomes fairly simple to give users a nice OOBE. It also makes setup for devices a lot less of a hassle, the only issue that was spoken about during the webinar is that there is still a lot of manual clicking. This is why I took it upon myself to create some automation scripts for AutoPilot.

PowerShell module instead of MSGraphFunctions

screen wallpaper without having Enterprise or Education by using a PowerShell script and Intune. Now learn how to configure the Windows accent color to also match your corporate branding.

which URL shortcut appear on user's mobile device either without user consent or as an optional application. The way to create it is fairly simple, you can look at Microsoft's documentation. Recently I had a need to ...

within a few minutes. Before we can configure the tenant with Powershell, we need to make sure we have configured some prereqs.

virtual machines, which are ideal as I can simply dispose of them after. But you also need to cleanup the device records that were created in Azure Active Directory, Intune, the Autopilot registration service, Microsoft Endpoint Manager (if you're using it) and Active Directory in the case of Hybrid-joined devices.

I also see that a lot of MSPs are still struggling with deploying a default autopilot configuration and are kind of avoiding it with the worries that you make a total mess of things.

document which mobile devices exist in a O365 tenant and put them into IT-Glue as configurations. I figured I'd help him real quick and blog about it.

it to Intune and assigns it. But first things first, credits to Nickolaj Andersen and his module who made it all possible.

configurations, Compliance Policies, Exchange Connector, and may more areas. Check out his blog and Github for the complete list.

PowerShell script?

repeatedly.

utilizing for the Intune module, and wanted to share the PowerShell source code for folks who want to adopt the functions into their environment without the GUI application.

and time-consuming. Thankfully, I bring you good news! There is a way to deploy a Win32 app and have it always install the latest version of the app on the computer.

using provisioning technologies like Autopilot, sometimes small things like the computer naming conventions can be overlooked. Autopilot has methods to use to apply computer naming, but what happens if you were to deploy several hundred or thousands of devices and need to change their computers names?

MSIntune PowerShell Autopilot

dove into the technical workings of deploying Windows 10 without any deployment infrastructure. He showed us how Autopilot can be easily configured in OSDCloud, or using AutopilotOOBE for Azure Join. With the OSD Module, WinPE can be customized with PowerShell Gallery support, and full Dell / HP / Lenovo / Surface OS Deployment over the internet ... aka OSDCloud.

again? I blame Gary Block

services." (CVE-2013-1609, CVE-2014-0759, CVE-2014-5455) These might be reported for things like Dell services, and you can fix them manually by editing the Registry on the affected device. But... There is an easier way 🙂 This blog post will show you how to create a Proactive Remediation in Intune for it.

including SCCM, using Powershell & VS Code tasks!

PowerShell and the Intune GraphAPI

of a tenant and also export all settings in JSON format that can also be used for importing settings again in the same tenant or even another. This can be very useful in a scenario where there is a DEV-tenant and then a production tenant to make sure the settings are the same in both.

show you how the additional requirement rules work and how you can use PowerShell for those.

is installed on a system. In the blog post, I will show you how they work and why they are more flexible than file and registry checks. What are detection scripts in Intune?

tool, managing packages with PowerShell, and much more. Create an MSIX package for any Windows app – old or new.

Get-AutopilotDiagnosticsCommunity (and the older Get-AutopilotDiagnostics script too) had events in the wrong order.

on PSCloudScript

is very import that automate what you can. When it comes to application management, there are many ways to do it. Some are more complex than others.

PowerShell SDK (v2), as well as adding paging support to the original two functions. Microsoft recently released a preview capability in Intune to run Remediations (formerly Proactive remediations - stop changing the name of things, Microsoft, really!!) on demand, which is ... Continue reading PowerShell Functions to Invoke an Intune Remediation Script on Demand and View Remediation States ?

machines with Attack Surface Reduction enabled for Macros. (Work-around "Setdefender ASR rule 92e97fa1-2edf-4476-bdd6-9dd0b4dddc7b to audit only unit issue is resolved.") This blog post describes how you can recreate the missing shortcuts and deploy this using Intune or run it manually on the affected system(s).

in the directory, and I'm not that fond of clicking my mouse. So I needed a quicker method to deal with the devices. And as you've probably figured out already, that means PowerShell.

this to be built-in within Microsoft Intune but we are not there yet. Hopefully, this will be an option in the future. We would like to schedule app installs and scripts via Microsoft Intune directly.

to the Company Portal app to Android and iOS devices. If you?re like Timmy (and me) and don?t want to use the Intune Portal more than absoloutly necessary, there is also the option to send notifications using the Intune PowerShell SDK.

series on doing so with Intune.

to your end users during scripted installs. A must read for those using Intune or Chocolatey.

your Intune packaging pipeline

week, however, the focus is more on the process that is in place to make sure that everything around the Intune Management Extension (IME) keeps functioning. The IME contains many important components for installing Win32 apps, for running PowerShell scripts, for running inventories, and more. That makes it important that the IME is running successfully. To make sure that the IME is running successfully, the Intune Management Extension Health Evaluation was introduced. That evaluation is focused on performing checks on the service of the IME. This post will have a closer look at the IME client health check and the actions that it performs.

a jiffy using PowerShell and Configuration Manager I received a few questions whether the PowerShell script can be used with Microsoft Intune instead of Microsoft Configuration Manager. And sure! This post will explain one of many approaches available with Intune.

tenants, but I've transformed this into a module to allow a easy synchronization between your RMM system and M365. There's some prework that'll need to be performed for each supported RMM system. Check out the Github page for the latest and greatest information as the blog can be outdated.

them with PowerShell.

an app will install on a device or not. These are

Windows Sandbox. You can look at this as a throwaway Windows VM, you start and use it, and afterward, there's no trace of it anymore, making it ideal for testing! In this blog post, I will show you how to test PowerShell scripts and Intune packages in Windows Sandbox.

- it's pretty boring overall, showing information that isn't really useful (e.g. what does "Preparing for mobile device management" really mean)

Windows Autopilot - sometimes these were simple configuration issues, other times they were self-inflicted pains (e.g. deleting Azure AD device objects associated with a registered Windows Autopilot device). But as we learn more about the types of challenges encountered, we get better at detecting those issues (and eventually we'll try to prevent them from happening). To help with the detection process, I've published a new script called AutopilotHealthCheck.ps1 to the PowerShell Gallery. You can install it using PowerShell quite easily, along with its pre-requisite modules.

problems with manual or manually executed script deployments to servers. The proliferation of public cloud and the perception of unlimited scale and instant availability only calls greater attention to the issues of slow, unreliable deployment. Infrastructure as Code ultimately offers more stable environments at a rapid pace and high scale.

sprints. Depending on the length of your sprints, and the fact that you can bulk add sprints, you probably either end up creating the next sprint during sprint planning or create every sprint manually.

Pipeline for PowerShell modules. I told everyone I?d get a blog post up ?soon? with more information, so here it is; better late than never! I?ll go over the goals for the example PowerShell Module, then break down the Build Pipeline tasks for Azure DevOps.

users give permissions consent to any Azure application that is in the wild. Because it can lead to illicit consent grant attack which seems to be more and more popular among the hackers.

scope levels. To provide this functionality the multiple scopes within Azure Resource Manager are represented (example below) within Git. Using directories and files, templates can be deployed (Push) at various scopes whilst also exporting (Pull) composite templates from ARM and placing them within the repository.

way to leverage Azure Arc is by automating script execution

the steps manually can be easily forgotten and re-signing needs to happen after every script change. Because I like CI/CD topics and have not found a solution on the internet I decided to build a solution based on Azure capabilities. Furthermore, I wanted a solution which does not require to hand out the code signing certificate to the respective script author which can be useful if you have a bunch of people writing PowerShell scripts.

actually start? Especially when you've been writing PowerShell which is often used as automation language, but not actually as programming language?

Changelog 1.0.0 format. The primary feature is automatic updating of changelogs at release time in a CI/CD workflow via Update-Changelog.

Configuration) - a PowerShell Module that represents your entire Microsoft 365 tenant's configuration as code and allows DevOps to monitor and control configuration discrepancies.

this post how to create and pack a basic PowerShell Module, and publish it into Azure Artifact using Azure DevOps YAML Pipelines.

it has. That said, what if you want to retain releases from another environment or you want to set your own retention policy? Learn more in this article.

so on. But what's it to you? A customer recently reminded me that there are little end to end module build and release howto's that assume little and help you get up to speed. In this post, we'll try to cover a lot of ground. None of the topics will be deep-dived into as every topic is documented very well online. Quick warning: I might add some images in the future to break this long post up ever so slightly.

when you finish writing your routine. There's formatting, branches to merge, and builds to create just to name just a few. Many of those tasks are tedious and repetitive, which makes them ripe for automation; but how?

and use your GitHub repository.

Azure environment but also my on-premises environment. I find Azure automation to be a great solution for managing and running your automation, instead of having them run on a server with scheduled tasks.

using Azure DevOps Nuget Feed. After this tutorial, you will be able to upload and download your Powershell modules and scripts from the repository over the internet securely.

I will provide a detailed walk-through and demo of how to use the Azure DevOps REST API with PowerShell.

a PowerShell pipeline? By using the tips and techniques you'll learn in this article, you'll be well on your way to scripting your way to automation greatness.

you though the manual installation process, and configuration of Git.

feed. This way all uploads, updates to version are traceable. The pipeline will download this package during its build, and publish it as an artefact (named patch) for the deployment stages where the software will copied to and installed on the servers For every environment provided in parameters Environments, the software will be attempted to be installed on the servers via PowerShell scripts. Azure DevOps is the orchestrator, but the PoSh script does the heavy lifting.

Azure cloud.

Jan-Hendrik Peters. We learned about what AutomatedLab is used for and how you can benefit from it. We also got to hear about his observations from teaching PowerShell over the years. All this, plus our usual foolishness, is included. We also talk about how tech is always changing.

pipelines. In the EUC environments, PowerShell is the primary scripting language to get these deployments automated. By using Pester the quality of the produced PowerShell code can be increased, which will result in a higher success rate of the DevOps pipeline. This blog post will provide some guidance and pointers how to use Pester in the Azure DevOps pipelines.

playground. But once stuff is getting serious, you might find that projects and repo's have collected in a counterintuitive way and you want to change the project structure. Moving the repos can be done in the portal, but it is a bit of a challenge if there are a lot of them. In this post I will explain how you can migrate Azure DevOps repos with PowerShell.

friend OpenAI Chat GPT 3. OpenAI Chat GPT uses a human-spoken natural language to generate your desired code. So all you need to do is describe what you want your script to do, and...

the tips and techniques you'll learn in this article, you'll be well on your way to scripting your way to automation greatness.

power up those scripts into PuppetBolt Tasks so you can easily automate and share to any Windows environment at scale.

nightly, static, or any other version of PowerShell.

briefly discussed the challenges of working from Home. We learned how Adil got started in the PowerShell community including getting involved in the PowerShell Slack/Discord, attending PowerShell Summit, and even stepping up and helping put on an event: BridgeConf. Adil convinces Jordan to submit to speak at Summit 2023, and Jordan agrees. The crowd goes wild! We tried to capture the code that we ran on this episode in a transcript file, which can be found below.

win_shell and you wish to consume the PowerShell output later on in the playbook. Well, you’re in luck because Jonathan can show you the quick and easy to way how.

Linux and Windows.

environment. Today I'll explain how to allow only one instance of a script at a time.

written by Kent Beck. However I've added a twist, as I will be attempting to do the examples using Powershell.

level and automate everything!

grown over the years and is a great resource to connect with the community and have your questions answered. Cory and Jordan find common ground in their experiences with Toastmasters. Cory also talks to us about Git, how to get started using Git for PowerShell projects, an awesome PowerShell module to enhance your Git console experience, and more.

discussed the importance of psychological safety in the workplace, transitioning to DevOps, and learning Python as a PowerShell user. Dave also shared some great advice from Jeffrey Snover: "Do things in small patches and don't be a jerk." Tune in to hear all the great advice and tips from Dave!

more for Mastodon links in their name, bio or pinned tweet. Once found, their info is exported to a CSV file that can be imported into Mastodon.

to facilitate Linux system analysis for PowerShell users. With its standardized noun-verb commands and object-based output, this module leverages the benefits of PowerShell to streamline analysis and information gathering on a Linux system.

purpose is Secure Copy (SCP), and with the porting of PowerShell to Linux, it is suitable for this task, too. The connection runs over SSH in both cases, ensuring that files are transferred encrypted.

is a rolling release Linux distribution based on Arch Linux.

doesn't have to be that way! If you are struggling with SSL certificates for your webpages and servers, keep reading.

Ubuntu (other Linux distributions are similar), how to run commands, and even install some modules.

Linux and macOS. This new cross-platform approach allows users to take advantage of some pretty cool features. In this blog post, I am quickly going to show you, how you can use PowerShell Remoting to copy files from Windows to Linux systems.

automation. It is also often paired with other technologies like CI/CD platforms, making it possible to build solutions without much effort quickly! No matter what kind of input you are looking at, whether it's text or object data, PowerShell will return .NET objects when executed; this means there is no need whatsoever to parse out information from output messages since all values are already inside them.

versions of PowerShell. That way, you can use a standard command line interface to manage a variety of system types. This article explains how to install PowerShell on a Linux virtual machine as well as the differences between PowerShell and PowerShell Core.

last time we installed the latest PowerShell 7 on a container, sometimes we don't want just a plain environment with PowerShell, sometimes we want a to add other tools, change system configurations or use different Linux Distros.

distributions, ArcoLinux uses pacman for its package manager.

in Gentoo I delved into packaging a from-source build of PowerShell for Gentoo using the dotnet-pkg eclass. Packaging `pwsh` was a little tricky but I got...

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.

comfortable with it in the upcoming months, to work with Azure). With that warning, I purchased the Month of Lunches book, and proceeded to get to it.

production servers and not feel guilty! There are many possibilities for using PowerShell on non-Windows platforms now and today my mind was pondering how to use it to join Linux servers to Active Directory. So, I created a small little function that automates some of this called Join-LinuxToAD. Keep in mind I tested this only on CentOS 7.

for SSH authentication.

macOS, Linux, and Windows.

stuck somewhere

PowerShell-centric experience.

learning all the PowerShell commands as a Linux admin was difficult. PowerShell was built to make it easier for Linux admins to transition to it. In this blog post, I will show you how aliases work and how they help Linux Admins get started with basic PowerShell tasks.

Virtual Machines.

supplied in traditional Unix shells to complete native utility parameters in PowerShell.

also can encrypt Azure Linux VM by using Azure Key Vault & dm-crypt. In this post, I am going to demonstrate how we can encrypt Azure Linux VM.

Sysmon for Linux. This is a brief intro to the module and how it can be leverage for working with the logs and easier Sysmon configuration rule creation.

finds itself relegated to the background when it comes to shell languages on non-Windows platforms. Mocked as a lackluster corporate attempt at mimicking a genuine shell scripting language, it rarely receives the attention it deserves. However, after leveraging PowerShell across various operating systems I've come to recognize its value.

perfect solution without any license requirement. But yeah... I also wanted to use PowerShell on that, this blog post will show you how to install and use PowerShell on chromeOS Flex.

on those too. In this blog post, I will show you two ways in which you can install PowerShell on your Linux machine and yes, I know... There are different Linux Operating Systems with different package managers, in my case I used Ubuntu 22.04 🙂

PowerShell on Linux. He also details Microsoft's open source efforts, the obstacles he's encountered, and how he overcame them - such as with his PSSudo project. Additionally, we discuss the Windows Subsystem for Linux, Pode, Raspberry Pi's, SSH, and more!

advantage!

runbook, it must have the permission to act as an administrator. In this article, we cover how to assign the necessary role to a service principal.

organizations. As team owners can add or remove members from MS Teams, it is important for admins to track membership changes to ensure authorized individuals have access

infrastructure has been the development of Teams. Teams is amazing tool on it's own but there is a risk regarding governance and training, but also explosive growth of teams and the way these are implemented. Especially because Teams makes self-services super easy.

Business Online via PowerShell via two methods.

it was possible to create a team from the membership of a dynamic distribution list. The answer is that the steps are straightforward to create a static Microsoft 365 group. Things get more complicated if you contemplate using a dynamic Microsoft 365 group.

API's clone URL. The cloning isn't as robust as it could be, both avenues miss key components that an administrator may want to clone, like but not limited to private channels. This script not only copies the group's public channels, but its private channels, and private channel members including their correct roles. It's also been my experience while the Teams client will copy guest Teams members, using clone from the Graph API doesn't. This script, however, will.

Using a concept called Adaptive Cards, Teams allows you to create and customize various cards in Teams via JSON. You could create them by typing up some JSON but it's much more fun to create them with incoming Teams webhooks and a little PowerShell!

Skype for Business Online PowerShell. To connect to this service, you need to download and install the latest SkypeOnlineConnector module and create a remote PowerShell session to the service.

2016 (not all the time). Some recent Graph hiccups meant that I had to apply some fixes and workarounds. At the same time, some users hit the infamous 'not recognized as a valid datetime' problem, so another update was needed. All good, clean fun.

policy change or simply troubleshoot an issue. The challenge here is that the cache for Microsoft Teams is in multiple directories. This can be done manually but would result in a slow and tedious process. Again, we turn to PowerShell to automate this process and this time it's a one-liner that addresses this opportunity.

conversations using PowerShell.

content from wiki to OneNote. That's great, but you need to know what channels include the wiki tab before you can decide what material should be migrated. This article explains how to use PowerShell to create a report of Teams channel tabs for wikis.

are not. If you want to hide all the groups used by Teams, here's how to do the job with PowerShell

are using the communications tool to stay connected with its employees and customers alike. The increase of use has also resulted in an increase of demand of system administrator's time to manage Microsoft Teams. Everything from adding users and groups to managing policies of said users and groups can be managed via PowerShell. This post will highlight the foundations to get started and provide links to continue your automation through script writing journey.

Dashboard module created by Adam Driscoll (PowerShell MVP), in order to monitor Microsoft Teams Cloud call queues.

performing a particular action for some integration scripts.

automated to cater to the requirements of the business, as well as IT. In this article, Sean McAvinue goes over keep your Teams tidy through some useful tips and PowerShell code.

PowerShell Gallery. Welcome as any update is, the publication was unaccompanied by any announcement or notification, and Microsoft didn't up date the release notes for the module until late on May 3. Even with the release notes, we don't know exactly what V2.3.0 contains, so it's time for inspired interpre...

supported now. All earlier versions are fully retired since June 15, 2022 & will stop working (Message center post for reference - MC350371).

generating reports on Microsoft Teams on daily basis. Most admins and executives want to prepare reports on the number of meetings between users, meeting participants, call times, and more. But Microsoft is yet to provide the cmdlets or API to extract those data from Office 365.

end-users to get started with when they are onboarded to Microsoft Teams?

federation configuration again to improve how a script works. Instead of taking all the domains guest accounts came from and adding them to the configuration, I created a function to check if the tenant uses Microsoft 365. If it does, we add the tenant to the allow list in the tenant federation configuration. If not, we ignore the domain.

PowerShell with the unified audit log to deliver a solution. The idea is that you can check audit log entries to see when specific user accounts join the membership of Teams. Once you've found that data, it's a simple matter of creating email to share the results. All done with a few lines of PowerShell...

'C:Users\AppDataRoamingMicrosoftTeams', Clear this registry entry 'HKCU:SoftwareMicrosoftOfficeTeamsPreventInstallationFromMsi', download Teams installer to c:temp as teams.exe, execute teams.exe --silent

Global - AllowEngagementReport "Enabled"

properties in the?Export-MailboxDiagnosticLogs?cmdlet. The properties record different kinds of mailbox activity and I included a script to generate a report based on the properties. The output is a CSV file that can be opened in Excel or imported in Power BI. All is well.

always will be ad free. It's just a cheat sheet that I thought was worth sharing.

channels. Fortunately, it's relatively easy to create a report with PowerShell and just a little Graph magic.

compose and send Teams urgent messages to a set of recipients using Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK cmdlets. The conversation with each recipient is a one-to-one chat that Teams either creates from scratch or reuses (if a suitable one-on-one chat exists).

extensive use of classes introduced in PowerShell 5.0. PowerShell modules are loaded into PoshBot and instantly become available as bot commands.

released. Yes I know there is a overview in Teams Admin Center, but I thought it would be nice to do this and some kind more via PowerShell Module. So I picked up the script and build it again with the organic PowerShell Module for Teams.

Teams. But there's one problem, when you migrate a Teams meeting event from Exchange to a new tenant, the URLs and other information still points to the old tenant. If you then disable all the users in the old tenant, those meetings would be useless even if guests are auto accepted to join, as they would not exist anymore. There would be various other problems also trying to join a meeting in the old tenant.

about it! So this will be an entire series on Teams PowerShell - including interlocking aspects like Skype, Azure AD and Exchange PowerShell.

private channels). Support for PowerShell access to private channels is not yet available in the publicly available version of the Teams PowerShell module. Instead, if you want to work with private channels through PowerShell, you must install the latest version of the Teams module from the PowerShell test gallery. You need to run version 1.0.18 or better to manage private channels.

Exchange Online PowerShell modules. Now its code uses only cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. It's an example of the kind of update that many organizations are going through due to the upcoming deprecation of the Azure AD and MSOL modules.

name implies, the cmdlet returns details of all channels in a team (regular, private, and shared). To see what it does, we wrote a script to report all the channels in teams in a tenant.

by a scope, writing them back to onpremises Active Directory, including group memberships.

can show Who has what on which object.

Securing Active Directory is a massive part of the overall organization security, configuration, and permission and Access Control List (ACL).

maintaining a secure environment and heading off bad actors early. Thankfully, AD offers the information necessary to track these changes, despite being difficult to parse and understand at times. LAPS is a great example of this.

how well does it scale? Not very well.

Ensuring its health is pivotal for the seamless operation of various services. Today, I decided to look at Microsoft Entra Connect Health (Azure AD Connect Health) service, which allows monitoring Azure AD Connect, ADFS, and Active Directory. This means that under a single umbrella, you can have an overview of three services health. But is it worth it?

about computers in our Active Directory domain. Then, we will update our dashboard and take advantage of the charting capabilities of Universal Dashboard to show the information in an easy to digest manner.

overview of their environment I always check a lot of things before writing a report and a recommendation about which steps we need to take. In this blog post, I will show you a script that gathers information about the Active Directory Domain which saves a lot of command-line checking and starting up Management Consoles 😉

of directory information across all domain controllers in a domain. Monitoring this process is important as it helps identify any issues that may arise and resolve them quickly. One way to monitor Active Directory replication is by using the Repadmin command-line tool. Repadmin provides a wealth of information about the replication status and health of a domain. However, manually checking the Repadmin output can be time-consuming and tedious, and running it manually every 30 minutes just to check if everything is great doesn't seem like a great idea. While PowerShell has its own commands around replication I've not found something as fast and reliable as repadmin /replsummary.

Active Directory scripts using VBScript and PowerShell for over a decade. Here's a big sample of Active Directory PowerShell scripts to do all kinds of stuff!

units don't refer to the site where the users work.

against a Windows Active-Directory domain.

Active Directory. The code used PowerShell and CIM events to notify you, for example, when a new user account is created. This can be helpful when you need alerting. But perhaps you only need reporting. What has changed in Active Directory since a given date and time, such as in the last 24 hours? And wouldn't it be nice to have a pretty report? Let me help. Here's how I approached the prob lem using PowerShell and the ActiveDirectory module.

user?

different. By downloading a freely available PowerShell module, an IT admin can manage every facet of AD and build powerful scripts to save time on all kinds of tasks. The best part is that knowledge of LDAP, ADSI and other typically developer-focused terms is not necessary. The PowerShell cmdlets take care of that stuff for you.

to build a solid reporting tool around Active Directory. I had a library of scripts and functions I have written over the years, including a few that I've written about here recently. Thus was born ADReportingTools.

with the Backup-GPO cmdlet of the Group Policy module. With my function, it will be much easier to identify the correct Group Policy Object (GPO) in case you have to restore Group Policy settings.

users can't login, they probably can't browse the web, machines can't communicate and finance won't be able to generate their latest report. Be sure you keep AD in tip top shape with an Active Directory health check script!

objects. Also it logs in EventLog and as a file on disk in csv format.

so you may need also cleanup disabled users from groups. Sometimes you don't want to delete users but only removing them from AD groups is required (often for licensing issues etc.)

policies to users and computers. A policy is some computer setting you wish to enforce, such as which screen saver to use, what desktop background to use, or what the default execution policy should be.

when you by accident fat finger it, and you have to redo it? Or even, you have multiple people in ...

virtual machines, which are ideal as I can simply dispose of them after. But you also need to cleanup the device records that were created in Azure Active Directory, Intune, the Autopilot registration service, Microsoft Endpoint Manager (if you're using it) and Active Directory in the case of Hybrid-joined devices.

Administration Tools. That sucks! We want it as simple as executing a script.

off-hand remark about parsing out organizational unit names from a distinguished name. On one hand, this is a pretty simple task, assuming a proper distinguished name from the Active Directory cmdlets. All you really need to do is split the string.

important to document them. In this blog post I am going to show you two PowerShell commands [...]

either completely public cloud using AAD or they have hosted servers in our private cloud. For these clients I've made the following script to document their Active Directory server settings. I always I want to be in complete control of my clients environment. That means having up to date documentation at the ready.

including password resets, SID history injection, group membership changes, and enabling/disabling accounts.

basic user attributes in Active Directory. Like anyone else, I presented the idea of using RSAT to let them modify users in ADUC or ADAC. This was not an ideal solution because ADUC can become overwhelming to someone that isn't technical. They wanted something that was extremely basic, easy to follow and work in without any guidance or instructions, and did not show the user anything else that they could not modify or needed to see.

group writeback v2 to on-premises using MS Graph PowerShell

maintain a proper lifecycle around Active Directory groups. Many organizations love creating groups however, some (most?), don't really like to do cleanup

Group Policy. With rsop.msc, a graphical tool is available for this purpose. However, it is generally more efficient to generate a report using gpresult.exe and evaluate it with PowerShell.

may no longer be in use. Let's go.

main problem admins tend to face is identifying the source computer or service that is causing the account to lock out in the first place.

that tracks and prevent duplicate SPN's

includes the cmdlet Get-ADGroupMember for finding group members, but it cannot be used to query groups with over 5000 members. The cmdlet also suffers from performance bottlenecks. I'd like to share with you a tool I built that solves both those problems.

disable insecure LDAP Bindings, which is going to break a lot of your systems (hopefully not). But this was already communicated, and you know all about it, right? If not, you should read those two articles that can help you with understanding what is happening and when.

Directory. A good use case is if a director or VP wants to send an email to all of their direct reports, and the direct reports of those direct reports. Another use case would be if you were doing an audit comparing your HR system to what is in Active Directory. What ever the reason might be, you can use this script to get direct reports in active directory using Powershell. Pretty neat!!

come to the right place! In this article, you will learn how to create custom reports of user accounts in your AD environment using the Get-ADObject cmdlet.

migrations, backup & restore.

Enter, will I be prompted for MyAdmin password? I saw a few examples but they don't seem to be quite what I'm looking for. I would be performing this on an individual station, therefore I don't think I would need to specify a computer name.

Directory. Well wonder no longer with this tutorial from Windows OS Hub showing you every step of the process, from enabling logging, to how to search the logs with PowerShell.

environment.

PowerShell is the optimal choice when you need to make large-scale changes. But there are caveats to consider before you can reap the automation benefits.

If so, you may have run across a frustrating problem - an on-prem AD user has expired but that user can still access resources protected with Azure AD.

production servers and not feel guilty! There are many possibilities for using PowerShell on non-Windows platforms now and today my mind was pondering how to use it to join Linux servers to Active Directory. So, I created a small little function that automates some of this called Join-LinuxToAD. Keep in mind I tested this only on CentOS 7.

Directory to avoid serious problems. PowerShell can make quick edits to keep order.

how it fits in with Identity Management. This is a new podcast presented by Semperis and hosted by 15 time MVP Sean Deuby. The podcast is off to a fantastic start with wide range of experts in the field of Identity Management. It's a great listen because of the topics but also because the episodes are only 15-20 minutes in length.

on your Active Directory, whether to view key indicators or to perform advanced searches in a simple way.

so you don't have to. It is not a replacement for tools already in place such as DCDiag. Instead, this toolkit comprises tools that my co-writers and I have found nowhere else. The goal of this module is to enable you to know when the core pieces of Active Directory aren't working as expected so you can take action.

are logged in the Event Viewer. In this article I will cover how to monitor all logon events with PowerShell. Let's dive in.

Access Management tool that will be living in your Azure environment, mostly designed for MSPs. If you want to see how AzPam looks or contribute, check out the Github page about it here. I should be pretty close to releasing an alpha version soon!

supported, due to COVID we had some extra time to prepare our clients for this change as its been postponed to July of 2021. We've helped all of our clients move to modern authentication last year but I understood there is still a bit of a struggle for other MSPs to achieve this.

and generates nicely viewable reports in HTML format by highlighting the spots that require attention. The script manipulates user data using facts collected with benchmark values.

person. Most who have tried granting permissions outside of adding users to groups in Active Directory would probably agree that, access delegation can be a daunting task.

to get started building your own PowerShell toolkit.

changes in a safe manner, Advanced Group Policy Management or AGPM, is an amazing tool.

supported. You can totally run the ActiveDirectory module, natively, without using the WindowsCompatibility module! This is one of the most under-reported facts of PowerShell 7, even going as far back as 6.1

security concerns. Delegation & Revocation of privileges. Configuring monitoring of active directory object changes. Analysis of security relevant AD configuration settings/state.

the functions are designed to work with eachother. Functions that gather information on users or computers can be piped into functions that take an action. For instance, you can pipe a function that returns computers that have not logged onto the network for 30 days into a function that disables computer accounts. In a single line of code, you can disable all the inactive computers in active directory. There are a wide variety of functions that perform other tasks like sending magic packets for wake on lan, measuring directory and sub-directory sizes, gathering large files, and other tasks. Every function is fully documented and works with the Get-Help function.

permissions. One of the replies I got about that was: How about the Container permissions, those are important too 🙂 And that's correct, they are! In this blog post, I will show you how to create a report on those (Script is based on the OU report)

Role Based Access and delegating permissions on Organizational Units (OU's). But one of the first questions was. What are the current permissions and what should we remove and where? In this blogpost I will show you a way to report on the current permissions so that you can remove them where they shouldn't be granted

companion tool to the Group Policy backup tool he shared earlier this year.

objects in AD.

combines that data into a prettified report. If you have ever used DSInternals, you know that while very powerful, it comes with raw data that is hard to process and requires some skills to get it into a state that can be shown to management or security.

redundant and scalable file shares. And yet anyone who has used it, knows that monitoring it can be difficult at the best of times.

Directory? Check out Anthony Howell’s walkthrough of a PowerShell function to easily do just that.

copied from Support Tool for WS2003) console tools to monitor and control Active Directory replication. In Windows Server 2012, Microsoft added a number of PowerShell cmdlets to manage and check replication status in the Active Directory forest. In this article we'll look at the main useful PoSh cmdlets that an AD administrator can use to control replication between domain controllers.

of an AD object - the time and date when the password for that object was last changed. This attribute is used to enforce password policies and track when a password was last changed. This quick post helps you understand these...

Directory. This applies, for example, to the expiration date of passwords or to Kerberos delegation. An AD audit should check this attribute regularly. This can be done using PowerShell, and there is a cmdlet for changing flags.

Create a local user or administrator account in Windows using PowerShell. It's a bit overcomplicated, but the goal was it should work for Windows 7 and up, and that means supporting PowerShell 2.0. As part of that exercise, I've been using Win32_UserAccount WMI based query to find local users and manage them to an extent. While Get-LocalUser exists, it's not suitable for the PowerShell 2.0 scenario. I also use the same query in GPO for WMI filtering. You can say it's been a good friend of mine - until today! Let's take a look at this basic WMI query:

group membership. Those are Get-ADGroup and Get-ADGroupMember. The first command contains property Members, which gives you DistinguishedName of all members, and Get-ADGroupMember can provide you either direct members or with Recursive switch all members recursively (skipping groups). Till a few weeks ago, I was a happy user of those commands until I noticed two things. Member property for Get-ADGroup sometimes misses elements for whatever reason.

check out the following command.

ldap signing. See LINK. This affects every supported version of Windows Server (from 2008R2 till 2019). There is another LINK ADV190023 with detailed explanation.

of Windows in your domain. It will also break down the versions of Windows 10.

make it easier to modify (Or more succinctly a Settings Page). This was a bit of work to think through. I am hoping someone might know of a more robust way to do what I am doing. This way I felt I could do with a bit of work. So I came up with two ways of implementing the same settings script.

web site. The challenges are designed for individuals to do on their own to build up their PowerShell scripting skills. A few weeks ago, a challenge was posted to create a network monitoring tool using PowerShell and the Write-Progress cmdlet. I thought I'd share my notes on the challenge and some of the code I came up with.

can make your life better as an IT professional. I have a friend - let's call her Gladys Kravitz. Gladys and I were chatting and she mentioned how tricky it is to pull information out of Windows event logs. If I recall, she was looking at 4625 events in the Security log which represents failed logon attempts.

third-party, but Microsoft signed are safe(r). In this blog post, I will show you how you can scan your system for non-Microsoft signed Windows Services and create a report on those.

mentioned in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) to include DHCP scope information, and IIS-based website information.

Elasticsearch.

only on a 'custom' script. Considering how many variables are involved: requirements, environments, the overall experience of the team that will manage that piece of software, and all efforts to develop, test, and support the solution over time.

how to create a multiple fragment body and why it's needed for more complex reports.

Module to display performance metrics.

and/or your team know PowerShell and, perhaps, already have some PowerShell scripts to manage web services, using PowerShell to monitor uptime may be a good option.

in a lot of the communities I frequent but a worry popped up by someone recently; how am I sure that the Azure Application Proxy is always completely functional at my clients? You can monitor the service of course, but that does not mean that the entire connection to Azure is functional.

production. A friend of mine is using my PSexec monitoring script. He just has a couple of issue with that; he's running an application that actively uses psexec to create some elevation. That's quite...

how to literally monitor anything! All you need to get started is our PowerShell MP, plus some APIs and custom discoveries - happy monitoring!

for a while. He told me that he loved having the ability to measure the users experience but he had some clients with in-house applications that would write errors to the system log constantly, or he had other clients with crashing services that could not be prevented.

actually released it on the blog so I figured it's a good way to get back into blogging.

clients don't notice downtime when a failover or load balancing action occurs. It makes everything smooth and fluent for clients and users of our systems. The only problem with this is that sometimes a failover occurs and you don't notice. Great for users, not so great for administrators; if a server crashes in the woods, did it really crash at all? To make sure we always get notified about these situations we use the following script via our RMM system.

and ports being in use. The use case is that users have a Autocad type application installed that launches a server on a specific port; the users also run a remote control application that at times steals the port.

little more difficult . Microsoft allows per-user MFA, Security Defaults, and Conditional Access all to be used concurrently. I've created this monitoring script that returns which users seem to fall out of any Multi-factor authentication scope, and also reports what type of authentication is currently active on the tenant. Using the normal PowerShell methods you can only find if a user has per-user MFA enabled, if a user uses Conditional Access or Security Defaults it shows the per-user MFA state as disabled, which is a little annoying.

or the backup software does not work, they still have an image based backup for those huge emergencies.

needed an easy way to manage virtual desktops over many regions. This deployment actually got me thinking about how monitoring the WVD environment should be done.

small analysis on stuff like disk space can make a huge difference in how you respond to incidents but I rarely see this integrated into RMM systems - Often there are some reports on which you could extrapolate this data manually but that means you'll only do it on demand and it will require your time.

demonstrated during the conference. The presenters showed a method of checking if your O365 domain was being Typosquated. The tool can be found here. The presenters made a Python tool, and I figured to create an alternative in PowerShell.

iPerf with the help of PowerShell.

from provided input inside Excel CSV using PowerShell script.

live CPU and network usage. It also demonstrates how to use themes to custom the backcolor, text color and font family.

generally down for everyone else, too. PowerShell can ask a web service to check web site availability for you. Here is a simple wrapper function.

issues. With its wide range of built-in cmdlets and flexibility, PowerShell enables you to investigate issues, monitor performance, and manage services and processes. In this article, we will explore how to use PowerShell for troubleshooting, covering event logs, performance counters, services, and processes

is... I read the NPS logs, and they were DTS Compliant formatted, a bit of a pain to read and search ?? So, I used PowerShell to create a nice log for me in either a GridView or ... Continue reading Use PowerShell to create report of a DTS Compliant NPS log

resolution, potentially enabling you to quickly establish an area to concentrate on for the issue. However, if you try to run Pester in a .NET Notebook you will receive an error. Now let Rob show you how to fix it.

automatically send the results to the service codecov.io, which in turn will present the results so that we can see change over time.

modules keep on running correctly. Some substantial changes in Pester add new features, changing some things, but that also means all the tests that you have defined most likely will need a small push to get it up and running again on Pester V5. Starting this blog post, I wanted to mention that I am by no means an expert on Pester, but I do use it for some time now for most of my projects. I am using basic functionality, but even that basic functionality stops working once you upgrade from PesterV4 to PesterV5, so I thought I would save you some time and give you a small overview of how you can quickly fix it. It works for me, but you may have to find your way to fix things.

lead maintainer of Pester and a software engineer at Microsoft. The talk circled around the history, growth, and importance of Pester, Jakub's role in the organization and delivery of PSConfEU this year, as well as Profiler, a beneficial PowerShell project for unraveling performance hurdles. The episode concluded on a personal note, discussing Jakub's journey within the PowerShell community and his ascension to his current position at Microsoft.

comfortable with Pester 5 and as my tests grow in complexity I am embracing the use of tags. You can add tags to different Pester test elements.

the PluralSight course, Infrastructure Testing with Pester, where Adam covers how to use Pester and PowerShell to create in-depth infrastructure tests.

administering Linux and macOS systems using Microsoft PowerShell. Adapted by PowerShell team members Travis Plunk and Tyler Leonhardt from the bestselling Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches by community legends Don Jones and Jeffrey Hicks, it features Linux-based examples covering core language features and admin tasks. Designed for busy IT professionals, this innovative guide will take you from the basics to PowerShell proficiency through 25 tutorials you can do in your lunch break.

validating that your infrastructure is operating how you expect.

a parameter may have a value of null why does the attribute need to be written [AllowNull()] with an empty () ?

maybe about some scripts and sometime more. PowerShell is more than that. It's not only a sequential programming language it's also a functional language. You can create functions and modules, but not only you can use it as configuration management with DSC and other tools, you can use it in serverless platforms like AWS Lambda or Azure Functions, you can build cloud solutions either on Azure or AWS. You can build complete solutions with PowerShell.

introduction to Pester.