DOWST.DEV

March 26, 2021

Announcements!

SecretManagement and SecretStore are Generally Available (devblogs.microsoft.com)
We are excited to announce two modules are now generally available on the PowerShell Gallery
By: PowerShell Team submitted:Jun 16 2022

Blogs, Articles, and Posts

Can you specify powershell 7 for remote sessions? (reddit.com)
A neat little trick on how to use PowerShell 7 from an Azure Automation Hybrid Runbook Worker.
By: u/PartTimeTulsa submitted:Jun 16 2022

Enable Remote Desktop remotely with PowerShell (sid-500.com)
Forgot to enable remote desktop? This is bad. The only solution is to go back to the remote computer

and then enable RD. Not really. In this blog post I will show you how you can enable RD with PowerShell. Let's jump in.

...>more
By: Patrick Gruenauer submitted:Jun 16 2022

Going Deep Converting PowerShell Objects to JSON (jeffbrown.tech)
When working with APIs, you often need to convert between PowerShell objects and JSON. Web APIs

accept requests in JSON notation, and your PowerShell script might have data represented as a PowerShell object. In order to use this data in a web request, you convert it to JSON.

...>more
By: Jeff Brown submitted:Jun 16 2022

How to chain multiple PowerShell commands on one line (thomasmaurer.ch)
PowerShell one-liners sometimes are an easy way to achieve something quickly. There are cases where

you might want to run multiple separated PowerShell commands on one line. This can be handy if you do copy pasting of commands or if you want to make it easy for the end-user when you need to troubleshoot something. In this blog post, we will look at how you can chain and run multiple PowerShell commands on one line using pipelines and chaining commands.

...>more
By: Thomas Maurer submitted:Jun 16 2022

Powershell and Azure Functions – Some experience to Share (reddit.com)
I've had a couple people asking me for details on what I did with azure functions, so I figured that

I'd just detail a little bit real quick for you

...>more
By: u/Szeraax submitted:Jun 16 2022

TIL you can color text without Write-Host (reddit.com)
I don't know how on earth I've gone all this time without knowing this, but this was the only reason

I ever used Write-Host.

...>more
By: u/CohorsMando submitted:Jun 16 2022

What’s One Thing that PowerShell dosen’t do that you wish it did? (reddit.com)
Join the discussion on Reddit for what you would like to see in PowerShell
By: u/PowerShellMichael submitted:Jun 16 2022

Projects, Scripts, and Modules

Bicep 1.4.3 (powershellgallery.com)
Just updated the Flexed biceps Bicep PowerShell module to use the BicepLang v0.3.126 assemblies.
By: Stefan Ivemo submitted:Jun 16 2022

Subnet 1.0.5 (powershellgallery.com)
Quickly find network details from the command line. Sorry, no #IPv6 support yet. :/
By: Richard Hicks submitted:Jun 16 2022

Winfetch 2.0.0 released (github.com)
New segments, better speed, tons of improvements!
By: LPTSTR submitted:Jun 16 2022

Fun

Have they never heard of PowerShell? (twitter.com)
No love, I tell ya
By: Guy Leech submitted:Jun 16 2022

Do you have a suggestion for PowerShell Weekly? Do you know something that should be included? Let me know in the comments below, or on
twitter.

March 19, 2021

Announcements!

Release v7.2.0-preview.4 Release of PowerShell (github.com)
Check out the latest version of PowerShell
By: PowerShell Team submitted:Jun 16 2022

Voice your support for an AWS Lambda container base image for PowerShell (github.com)
I recently discovered that AWS Lambda launched support for container images, and supported every

major language except for PowerShell. If you're interested in publishing AWS Lambda functions, by using a PowerShell container image, add your voice to this GitHub issue report. One of the AWS developers has responded and expressed interest in prioritizing, but we need to show interest / demand for this feature.

...>more
By: Trevor Sullivan submitted:Jun 16 2022

Blogs, Articles, and Posts

Add your IP address as an NSG rule in Azure using Powershell (sean-lloyd.com)
One of the (very minor) downsides of working from home, is that I often need to add my IP address to

many network security groups (NSG) in Azure.

...>more
By: Sean Lloyd submitted:Jun 16 2022

Advanced HTML reporting using PowerShell (evotec.xyz)
I've been using HTML reporting in PowerShell for a while. Initially, I would usually build HTML by

hand, but the time spent trying to figure out what works and what doesn't drive me mad. With the PSWriteHTML module, a lot has changed. With just a few PowerShell lines, I can create feature-rich reports that change how I show data to my Clients. Today I wanted to show you some advanced HTML reporting without actually complicating PowerShell code. In the last few months, I've added many features that create advanced reports without sacrificing readability.

...>more
By: Przemyslaw Klys submitted:Jun 16 2022

Better Active Directory Reporting with PowerShell (jdhitsolutions.com)
During the course of conversations with my friend and AD admin, Gladys Kravitz, I realized I needed

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.

...>more
By: Jeff Hicks submitted:Jun 16 2022

Dynamic PowerShell Version in Windows Terminal Tabs (tommymaynard.com)
I find myself inside the Window Terminal's JSON Settings file each time I update the version of

PowerShell on my system. That includes non-preview and preview versions of PowerShell. Well, as of today, that's changed. Previously I would install an updated version, jump into the JSON Settings file, and modify the Name and TabTitle properties of the corresponding profile. I've long wanted the version number on the Tab and so I was hard coding the values. No longer.

...>more
By: Tommy Maynard submitted:Jun 16 2022

Just found out you can “Copy as PowerShell” a web request in Microsoft Edge : PowerShell (reddit.com)
Well now me too!
By: u/solarplex submitted:Jun 16 2022

Using PowerShell WhatIf So You Don’t Break Stuff (jeffbrown.tech)
PowerShell is a powerful scripting language and automation tool. You make changes for one thing or

hundreds of things using the same script or function. One amazing feature to add to your functions is the PowerShell -WhatIf parameter. This parameter tells you what the function is going to do before you execute it for real.

...>more
By: Jeff Brown submitted:Jun 16 2022

Projects, Scripts, and Modules

A new version of the psframework PowerShell (psframework.org)
Among other things it now provides awesome new ways to author configuration files to import (e.g.

during CI/CD pipelines).

...>more
By: Friedrich Weinmann submitted:Jun 16 2022

Get MigrationWiz Project Statistics and Error Reports Automatically (bittitan.com)
One of the biggest advantages to working with BitTitan is leveraging PowerShell scripting for

project management. While MigrationWiz has numerous capabilities built directly into the tool itself, using scripts to help manage users, adjust project settings, and monitor status is an easy way to step outside the UI and automate additional components of your project.

...>more
By: Pablo Galan submitted:Jun 16 2022

jumpfs (github.com)
Jumpfs is a simple utility and set of scripts that allow you bookmark locations and refer to them

from PowerShell, Bash, or CMD. It can translate between WSL and Windows paths so you can access locations from your preferred shell.

...>more
By: Neil MacMullen submitted:Jun 16 2022

SecretStore Release Candidate 3 (devblogs.microsoft.com)
The SecretStore release candidate 3 (RC3) module is now available on the PowerShell Gallery. This

contains an exciting new feature which allows users to non-interactively create, and configure a SecretStore. This feature was added to support CI systems and other automated scenarios.

...>more
By: PowerShell Team submitted:Jun 16 2022

WindTerm 2.0 (github.com)
A Free Cross-Platform PowerShell/SSH/SFTP/Telnet/Serial Client
By: kingToolbox submitted:Jun 16 2022

Books, Media, and Learning Resources

Azure Cloud Shell in the Windows Terminal (YouTube) (youtube.com)
Azure Cloud Shell is a great tool to manage your Azure environment. In this video, we are going to

have a look at how you can run your Azure Cloud Shell in the Windows Terminal. Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive, authenticated, browser-accessible shell for managing Azure resources. It provides the flexibility of choosing the shell experience that best suits the way you work, either Bash or PowerShell.

...>more
By: Thomas Maurer submitted:Jun 16 2022

Fun

A PowerShell IP Challenge (ironscripter.us)
The Chairman has returned with a new challenge that will test not only your PowerShell skills but

your networking knowledge as well. The challenge has been graded for Intermediate and Advanced levels, but don't let that stop you.

...>more
By: Iron Scripter submitted:Jun 16 2022

Do you have a suggestion for PowerShell Weekly? Do you know something that should be included? Let me know in the comments below, or on
twitter.

March 12, 2021

Announcements!

Announcing Az Predictor preview 2 (techcommunity.microsoft.com)
Last November, we announced the first preview of Az Predictor, a PowerShell module for Azure that

brings to your fingertips the entire knowledge of the Azure documentation customized to your current session.

...>more
By: PowerShell Team submitted:Jun 16 2022

Release v7.1.3 Release of PowerShell (github.com)
Come and get it while it's still hot!
By: PowerShell Team submitted:Jun 16 2022

Blogs, Articles, and Posts

Documenting with PowerShell: Documenting admin actions (cyberdrain.com)
So with all this exchange news going around, I figured there's enough people writing about that so I

won't bother; there's lots a smart scripts flying about that can be used to find the webshells, etc. Instead I'm focussing on M365 admin actions.

...>more
By: Kelvin Tegelaar submitted:Jun 16 2022

How to add pictures to Excel with PowerShell? (bronowski.it)
Spreadsheets' main purpose is data: storing, manipulating and analyzing them. We can add some

colours or charts to make the data more friendly, but sometimes we may want to add something else - like a logo or picture and all that can be achieved with PowerShell.

...>more
By: Mikey Bronowski submitted:Jun 16 2022

How to backup all of your keys, certs and secrets included in all your Azure Key Vaults (scriptinglibrary.com)
After my previous article on the basic Powershell cmdlets for Azure Key Vault, I thought it would be

interesting to provide to all users, who are already familiar with it, a method to export all keys, certs and secrets stored in it once via Powershell.

...>more
By: Paolo Frigo submitted:Jun 16 2022

How to Use the Get-FileHash PowerShell Cmdlet (adamtheautomator.com)
Do you need to compare two files or make sure a file has not changed? The PowerShell cmdlet

Get-FileHash generates hash values both for files or streams of data. A hash is simply a function that converts one value into another. Sometimes the hash value may be smaller to save on space, or the hash value may be a checksum used to validate a file.

...>more
By: Devin Rich submitted:Jun 16 2022

Passing each element of an array into a function with Powershell (sean-lloyd.com)
Let's say you have a collection of objects, and you wish to perform the same action over each object

in that collection.

...>more
By: Sean Lloyd submitted:Jun 16 2022

Reviewing PowerShell’s Role in the Exchange Hack (reddit.com)
A good discussion on Reddit about the recent Exchange exploit..
By: u/PowerShellMichael submitted:Jun 16 2022

The De Facto Guide for Converting a PS1 to EXE (7 Ways) (adamtheautomator.com)
You can invoke PowerShell scripts in many different ways, but they all have one downfall, you can't

simply run them like a standard Windows program (EXE). Perhaps you'd like to prevent editing the code in a script or perhaps make it easier for your users to run scripts. It's time to learn how to convert a PS1 to an EXE.

...>more
By: Arman Castillote submitted:Jun 16 2022

Projects, Scripts, and Modules

posh-git (github.com)
A PowerShell environment for Git
By: Keith Dahlby submitted:Jun 16 2022

PSWriteHTML (github.com)
PSWriteHTML is PowerShell Module to generate beautiful HTML reports, pages, emails without any

knowledge of HTML, CSS or JavaScript. To get started basics PowerShell knowledge is required.

...>more
By: Evotec submitted:Jun 16 2022

Test ARM templates with What-If in a pipeline (4bes.nl)
Find out how to test all templates in your repo in one task with PowerShell and the What-If module.

With examples for Azure DevOps pipelines and Github Actions

...>more
By: Barbara 4bes submitted:Jun 16 2022

Books, Media, and Learning Resources

How to Run SQL Assessment Checks in Azure SQL MI (YouTube) (youtube.com)
In this episode with Aaron Nelson, we'll show you the basics of the SQL Assessment PowerShell

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

...>more
By: Aaron Nelson and Anna Hoffman submitted:Jun 16 2022

Unattended Authentication to Azure (YouTube) (youtube.com)
A walkthrough of options for unattended authentication to Azure for automations. Covers managed

identity and service principals. Lots of demos including service principals with secrets and certificates with PowerShell. Concepts apply to AZ CLI as well.

...>more
By: John Savill submitted:Jun 16 2022

Fun

Because why not (twitter.com)
There are 3 PowerShell script examples in this Microsoft Doc and each one uses a different brace

style

...>more
By: Mark Wragg submitted:Jun 16 2022

SnuePape (github.com)
Sets your desktop's wallpaper to today's top upvoted Reddit wallpaper
By: Nikola submitted:Jun 16 2022

Do you have a suggestion for PowerShell Weekly? Do you know something that should be included? Let me know in the comments below, or on
twitter.

March 5, 2021

Announcements!

Call for Editors/ Authors for PowerShell Community Textbook (reddit.com)
I'm pleased to announce the Call for Editors and Call for Authors for the "Modern IT Automation with

PowerShell" book.

...>more
By: Michael Zanatta submitted:Jun 16 2022

Migrate Azure PowerShell scripts from AzureRM to Az (docs.microsoft.com)
Don't wait until the last minute.
By: PowerShell Team submitted:Jun 16 2022

PowerShell Team 2021 Investments (devblogs.microsoft.com)
The PowerShell Team plans engineering work per semester (6 months at a time). However, PowerShell

itself follows the .NET schedule of release every year. In this blog post, we'll cover the year long plan for PowerShell 7.2 as well as tooling and modules work we have planned for the next semester.

...>more
By: PowerShell Team submitted:Jun 16 2022

SecretManagement and SecretStore Release Candidate 2 (devblogs.microsoft.com)
The SecretManagement and SecretStore release candidate 2 (RC2) modules are now available on the

PowerShell Gallery. These releases contain an exciting new feature which allows users to provide non-sensitive metadata for secrets (note: this feature may not be available for all extension vaults).

...>more
By: PowerShell Team submitted:Jun 16 2022

Blogs, Articles, and Posts

[PSA] Do not use [DateTime]$var to cast a String to a DateTime object, use Get-Date instead (reddit.com)
Looks like casting via [DateTime] doesn't respect the culture (d/MM/yyyy in my case), but Get-Date

does.

...>more
By: u/dextersgenius submitted:Jun 16 2022

A Beginner’s Guide to Visual Studio Code and Git (adamtheautomator.com)
Those new to Visual Studio (VS) Code might just see a code editor. The true power of VS Code lies in

it's extensions, integrated terminal and other features. In this hands-on tutorial, you're going to learn how to use Visual Studio Code by working with a Git repo.

...>more
By: Adam Bertram submitted:Jun 16 2022

Azure AD Authentication Methods Summary Reports using Microsoft Graph and PowerShell (blog.darrenjrobinson.com)
Recently I wrote about reporting on individual Azure AD Users Authentication Methods using Microsoft

Graph and PowerShell. Whilst this is great at a user level, Azure AD Authentication Methods Summary Reports at an organization level are often requested by IT Management. And whilst they can be obtained from the Azure Portal (Azure Active Directory > Security > Authentication Methods > Activity) how can we get them programmatically? In this post l will show how to extract Azure AD Authentication Methods Summary Reports using Microsoft Graph and PowerShell.

...>more
By: Darren Robinson submitted:Jun 16 2022

Connecting to Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Online via PowerShell using the new Teams Module (ucit.blog)
his guide will cover the command blocks that are needed to connect to Microsoft Teams and Skype for

Business Online via PowerShell via two methods.

...>more
By: Eric Marsi submitted:Jun 16 2022

How to import/export data between SQL Server and Excel using PowerShell? (bronowski.it)
ImportExcel is a powerful tool to manage MS Excel, however, the user is not limited to data stored

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

...>more
By: Mikey Bronowski submitted:Jun 16 2022

How to use Powershell to create a virus for testing your AV (scriptinglibrary.com)
In this article, I will use a PowerShell one-liner script to generate a test file to test if the

Anti-Virus runtime solution installed is working as expected.

...>more
By: Paolo Frigo submitted:Jun 16 2022

Loaner Laptop Checkout/Checkin Powershell Script (smarthomepursuits.com)
If you work in the IT department, chances are that you loan out laptops to your users every once in

a while. They may need something temporary to use when giving a presentation, if their work computer breaks, or simply for testing something. In our case, we had to loan out a lot of laptops during the Work From Home shift so our users can VPN into the office from home.

...>more
By: Danny submitted:Jun 16 2022

Logit Blog – Increase the success rate of Azure DevOps pipelines using Pester (logitblog.com)
With the increase in Azure DevOps usage, more and more EUC environments are being deployed using

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.

...>more
By: Ryan Ververs-Bijkerk submitted:Jun 16 2022

Projects, Scripts, and Modules

Export Office 365 admins report (reddit.com)
The admins in the tenant are responsible for all the users, devices, applications, etc. Many

different admin roles for each administration purpose will help the company to track, monitor, and support the people and resources that belong to the company.

...>more
By: u/Kathy_Cooper1012 submitted:Jun 16 2022

Invoke-RestMethod with a SOAP API (tommymaynard.com)
In the past, I have absolutely written PowerShell to interact with REST (REpresentational State

Transfer) APIs. What I haven't done until now, is interact with SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) APIs. The below example is a mostly full-featured PowerShell function.

...>more
By: Tommy Maynard submitted:Jun 16 2022

Monitoring with PowerShell: Monitoring Windows Server Backup (cyberdrain.com)
Some MSPs are using Windows Server Backup as a 'last resort' type of backup, if online backups fail,

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

...>more
By: Kelvin Tegelaar submitted:Jun 16 2022

PSModuleBuilder (github.com)
This will allow you to quickly create your own custom Powershell Module's Just select a Source Path

were you saved all your functions in separate .ps1 files and select an output filePath.

...>more
By: Jackldam submitted:Jun 16 2022

Books, Media, and Learning Resources

Power BI, PowerShell and Azure Functions Deep Dive – YouTube (youtube.com)
This video shows you how to use Power BI's PowerShell commandlets and call those in an Azure

Function to allow you to run them fully automated.

...>more
By: Steve Winward submitted:Jun 16 2022

Fun

Under the Wire. PowerShell Training for the People (underthewire.tech)
Under the Wire trains experienced, developing, and novice Information Technologists to use Windows

PowerShell in a variety of situations through innovative and fun wargames.

...>more
By: Under the Wire submitted:Jun 16 2022

Do you have a suggestion for PowerShell Weekly? Do you know something that should be included? Let me know in the comments below, or on
twitter.

PowerShell Weekly – Your weekly round up of all things PowerShell

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