DOWST.DEV

being the command line experience using the Azure CLI or Azure PowerShell. In this blog post we are going to have a look at 6 tips & tricks for managing your Microsoft Azure resources using the command line with Azure

many network security groups (NSG) in Azure.

Application Insights

without requiring sensitive information such as secrets, credentials, and certificates to be handled. Microsoft Entra ID manages these identities, enabling applications to obtain tokens for authentication. In this post, I will provide an example that illustrates how to use system and user-assigned managed identities with PowerShell.

Experienced PowerShell users will find the right cmdlet and parameter to achieve their goal but this can be more complicated for casual users.

management of ReFS snapshots.

support (yet). The Az PowerShell module is now the recommended PowerShell module for interacting with Azure.

deploying the AGIC and I figured this is something folks will need to deploy over and over so it makes sense to make it a little easier to do.

introduced. Since about a month, this new option for PowerShell has gone into public preview and it is really a great new feature, that can help a lot with your template development. In this post, I want to show you how you can use ARM Template what-if deployment, how it can be integrated in a Azure DevOps pipeline and what this means for my PowerShell module ARMHelper.

errors. Use PowerShell to find users with a profile path in your AD!

The author shares a script that automates the creation of Windows 11 machines, installation of the Arc agent, and onboarding to AVD.

machine using Terraform and PowerShell. The author provides a step-by-step guide on how to create a VM, install Windows 11, and deploy the AVD agents, resulting in a fully functional AVD hybrid machine.

script can be used to help provide an automated method which can encrypt your OS and Data disks as well as automatically creating a Key Vault if one does not exist including the Access Policy configuration.

security orchestration automated response (SOAR) solution. Azure Sentinel delivers intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across the enterprise, providing a single solution for alert detection, threat visibility, proactive hunting, and threat response.

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, Windows commands, and Azure management solutions for Windows Server on-premises. At the Windows Server Summit 2024, I had the chance to deliver a session with Ryan Willis Product Manager for Azure Arc and we went through different automation options ...

resources depending on the resource in question and the pricing tier used. A common scenario where you might want to restrict traffic is with an API flow where you may want some of your resources to ... Continue reading Automate Public IP Address Change Notifications for Azure Services ?

whitelisted IP address. While this is generally a good idea, a problem arises when you need an Azure Automation Account to access one of these Storage Accounts.

three part series.

you do that is through tracking resource usage with an Azure usage report. In this article, you?ll learn how to create a PowerShell script to easily query resource usage across all of your Azure resources by date.

monitoring and security, but doing it manually can be time-consuming and error-prone.

keeping Azure organized is managing role assignments. Over time, you might end up with unused or "Unknown" role assignments, which can make management more challenging and potentially introduce security risks.

network setup, NSG rules, and IIS installation.

Managed DNS services. This has caused us to look for a different solution. Of course, I immediately thought of Azure, with an Azure DNS hosted zone.

it creates a dependency on a specific workstation and isn't as secure as you might like. Running Microsoft 365 PowerShell scripts in Azure Automation is a much better idea. It's time to dump the Task Scheduler!

great feature like AI-powered PowerShell module called Az Predictor Module (Azure PowerShell Predictions), which does what the name says, predict PowerShell commands. Now with az next, the team also brought a similar feature to the Azure CLI. The team's goal with az next is to guide users through their scenarios or sequence of jobs-to-be-done in tool, so that they could remain focused and avoid unnecessary external documentation searches.

you to predict your Azure PowerShell command!

administrators.

includes: PowerShell support for Server Migration with Azure Migrate is now generally available, Updates to managing user authentication methods, New recommendations from Azure Advisor are now available, Microsoft announces the redesign of the Microsoft account Security page, QnA Maker introduces deep learning and as always our Microsoft Learn Module of the Week.

Azure. However, there's a secret that not many people know... you can manage your on-prem resources with Azure Arc.

Server. This allows you to onboard your Windows Server through a graphical wizard. With the wizard, you can easily onboard your Windows Server machine to Azure Arc. The wizard takes care of the following steps for you: verifying ...

SCVMM, which is hardening

PowerShell script.

Security License (ESU)

Windows machine and cleaning up all related folders, files, registry keys, other agents, and configuration files using a PowerShell script.

never again have to write a nested or linked template.

developing custom interfaces to trigger automation tasks. Based on the Azure Static Web Apps (SWA) Free plan.

services. However, Microsoft is deprecating Azure Automation Run As accounts in favor of using a managed identity. In this tutorial, you will learn what exactly is a managed identity, how to authenticate to Azure using the managed identity in a PowerShell [...]

with HTML table and CSV attachment. Features include:

configuration with PowerShell DSC.

The rich command set of Azure CLI expands capabilities of runbooks even further, allowing you to reap combined benefits of both, for automating and streamlining management of Azure resources. Azure Automation runbooks target orchestration on a wide array of resources such as Virtual Machines, Arc-enabled Servers, Databases, Storage, Azure Active Directory, and much more, along with complex workflows involving multiple resources.

use of an Azure PowerShell script.

Standard SKU.

This script allows you to verify the status of blobs listed in a given file, determine whether they are in an 'Archive' state, and provides visibility on their rehydration status.

priorities

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.

Azure and Azure DevOps from your pipelines for deploying Terraform configurations. Workload Identity federation To follow along with this tutorial, you will need: To follow along with more code examples, check out this GitHub repository:JeffBrownTech/azure-devops-terraform-oidc-examples What is Workload Identity federation?

how to create HTTP triggered functions written in PowerShell!

Azure Functions

happens at the worst time. The good news is you can catch it early. With Event Grid publishing Key Vault events and Log Analytics giving you KQL visibility, you can track expirations proactively and trigger alerts (or even automation)

workflows to generate and execute Python, JavaScript, C#, and PowerShell in Hyper-V isolated session.

certifications, migration, help to understand basic concepts.) related to Microsoft cloud technologies (Azure, Azure AD, SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Teams, Power Platform and so on)

updates in the Network and EventGrid modules, read more: s://t.co/Jxv01aCglT

documentation but is not available in Cloud Shell?

both? This lesson presents a comprehensive comparison of the two primary scripting languages in the Azure cloud.

along the way. See how to use the resource graph to efficiently get information about your resources in Azure.

of specific cmdlets for those operations or services. This is where the Invoke-AzRestMethod cmdlet comes into play, which allows PowerShell scripts to communicate with Azure services by sending HTTP requests to Azure's REST API. It acts as a bridge between PowerShell and Azure services that still need to be integrated with cmdlets.

is already loaded

Update ManagerContinue Reading

subscriptions that have one or more Azure virtual network service endpoints assigned.

their powershell automation to their teams. And it’s free!

resources, Entra ID, and identity objects (Excel, JSON, Markdown, AsciiDoc)

templates (WIP). It has capabilities to insert appropriate Azure Icons depending upon the type of the Azure Resource you have in your Resource Group, like Virtual Machine, Virtual Network, Subnet etc.

operate in; making a Discord bot is hardT. I've made some scripts for my own usage that integrate with Discord bots, but they've always been for my own use only.

PowerShell commands necessary for Azure administrators as well as required to pass the Azure Administrator certification exams from Microsoft AZ-104

and scripts that use Cmdlets from these modules should be updated to use Microsoft Graph Cmdlets. In this blog post, I will show you a script to scan for them and also which replacement Cmdlets you should use instead.

solutions for cloud operations for Windows Server through Azure Arc.

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.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Edge Essentials. In this blog post we are going to have a look at how you can connect this AKS Edge Essentials cluster to Microsoft Azure using Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes, and how ...

Stop or Restart an Azure VM.

lower cost than earlier versions. You can convert existing disks to Premium SSD v2 using PowerShell. However, it's crucial to understand the specific limitations and requirements beforehand.

have written an extensive blog post about this subject before, which I encourage you to read if you have never created this connection before. I want to focus on how you can create a secure GitHub webhook to trigger an Azure PowerShell Function. We will make use of a secret that we will store in Azure Key vault.

using PowerShell? Check out this post by Aresh Sarakari on how you can do just that.

clusters, you want to use service principals for automated authentication during the onboarding process for Azure Arc resources. Microsoft provides you with an option in the Azure portal to create that service principal. When you use this, you can set .

in a specified subscription.

types (block blobs, page blobs, and append blobs) available on Azure storage accounts. Storage accounts on Azure support three types of blobs, each of which is used for a different purpose. Therefore, it's important to determine the type of blob you need when you create it, as it is not possible to change the type once the blob is created. The supported blob types are as follows.

Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022, for testing purposes with Azure PowerShell.

at companies, the resource type is mentioned in the name of the resource. To save space, an abbreviation is used.

flexible is an Azure Automation account.

a pipeline build.

service, including Microsoft. With Microsoft's Azure Functions, you can create function apps that support many languages, including Azure PowerShell.

execute a planned failover of your Azure Storage account. This guide demonstrates how to perform this using PowerShell.

enterprise PowerShell modules, including automated CI/CD publishing and secure module distribution.

protect Key Vault items when deleted by accident. When deleted you are able to restore that item through the portal or PowerShell. But what if someone has deleted the Key Vault itself with all the items and softdeleted items included. There is no option to restore a Key Vault. In this article I will describe a way how to backup and restore a Key Vault when deleted.

transfer data (data migration) from and to Azure storage. It is designed for high performance transfers and can be deployed on both Windows (32-bit and 64-bit) and Linux systems, but also on macOS.

a free download from Microsoft (version 5.6.2019) and includes icons for almost all Azure services and Microsoft cloud related technologies currently available.

with PowerShell/RestAPI. Same can be done with Python using a link like this. Yes, I know my SAS ID is in the code, but its not valid anymore

running? I will show you three ways to do that in this blog post.

Prior to this date you will need to migrate all your agent-based hybrid workers to the extension-bas...

specific recommendations which may not be relevant to you. By navigating to the ASC's default initiative in the Azure Policy blade, you can disable a recommendation:

cmdlet output to display the physical location for paired regions in Azure. This information isn't available by default but can help you understand the resiliency and redundancy of your Azure resources like geo-redundant storage (GRS) and other Azure services that rely on Azure Storage for replication.

show an approach to targeting updating specific Azure resources, allowing you to more safely modify resources en masse, such as by environment, with PowerShell and the Az PowerShell module. There are other ways to do this as well; this is just one workflow I often use.

- Find-AutomationRunAsAccounts.ps1

I found there wasn't a whole lot out there, and what was there wasn't quite what fit our needs. So I created my own function, Get-AzWebJobStatus,

alone. Whether you're deploying resources or updating...

alone. Whether you're deploying resources or updating...

for a customer. For me these scenario's always go into scripting or templates. That means for every change I want to be redeploy the environment and see if everything is still working. For that I need random names. You could pick a name, add a number and up the number for every new deployment but, where's the fun in that?

remediated in all your Azure subscriptions with PowerShell.

authentication necessary.

Azure Portal shows

all of your Azure subscriptions to optimize cost...

covering the introduction to Azure Automation, creating automation runbooks, dealing with assets, testing and publishing runbooks.

Power Automate to integrated PowerShell into your Flows and never leave the Microsoft Cloud!

PowerShell. This is using the PowerShell SDK running on a machine that's not in Azure.

subscriptions for further analysis and display, and I wanted to make sure that my output included as much information as possible. The list of recommendations is readily available via the API, and based on the example output I thought - perfect! This should have all of the information I could need!

I even went so far as to ask an Azure Product Manager but still didn't receive a clear answer. What I did find out is that Microsoft maintains an Azure services directory on their Azure products website. I figured that was a good place to start looking and while the website is informative, it didn't provide a count of the service offerings. Manually counting them wouldn't be an efficient or accurate way of accomplishing the task of determining how many services are offered so I decided to use PowerShell for the task.

script.

device login methods, verifying sessions, and managing multiple subscriptions.

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.

Azure PowerShell. These cmdlets, introduced in the Az PowerShell module version 9, are used to configure your global settings for Azure PowerShell.

IoT Hub is used to connect, manage, and monitor billions of IoT devices. It securely connects the devices to develop IoT applications. IoT Hub is a flexible cloud platform service that supports multiple protocols and open-source SDKs.

Azure CLI. This step-by-step guide walks through setting up an Automation account, creating a runbook, and executing it in Azure.

there can be one or more data centers. Azure Availability Zone is made out of one or more datacentres in the same Azure region, which have independent power, hardware, networking, and cooling. All Zone redundant service will replicate data and application across Availability Zone for high resilience. Each Azure region contains a minimum of three Azure Availability Zones.

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.

Microsoft Docs, the Azure Mobile App or shell.azure.com

PowerShell.

handy this feature is to manage Azure virtual machines (VMs). In this blog post, we are going to have a look at how you can run scripts against multiple Azure virtual machines (VMs) by using PowerShell and the Invoke-AzVMRunCommand feature.

developing scripts in Azure to send emails, know that there is no native email service available to you.

cases we've been asked to record our presentations. Storage has quickly become an issue and so I have been investigating ways to transfer the recorded presentations to the cloud. Now the transfer can take place via GUI however automating the transfer might be needed in future. Luckily uploading files to Azure Storage via PowerShell is an option.

RunAs account because it doesn't require certificate/secret renewal. Therefore it is maintenance-free.

CLI. Two of the most popular ways to automate Azure workloads are always presented separately. Why? Azure CLI and PowerShell work well together right out of the box for all Azure services. How can we bring the two automation tools together?

cumbersome to install the Microsoft.Graph PowerShell module in an Automation account.

declarative automation of some of the tasks required to install and configure the Azure File Sync agent on Windows Server.

Variable-Length Subnet Masking (VLSM) consists of segregating subnets into smaller segments, allowing network engineers to divide an IP address space into a hierarchy of subnets of different sizes, making it possible to create very different host subnets without account. waste a large number of addresses. This in turn can be a pretty annoying task, especially when it needs to be done several times, so I decided to do a powershell module to just tell you how many hosts I need in a given segment and it will tell me what the addressing is.

your team before 90-day deadlines become 9-day emergencies.

backwards: My journey into PowerShell, alongside Azure.

Azure costs by automating the runtime of your Azure Bastion host(s) with Azure Automation.

module will now be released on the first Tuesday of each month. We are releasing an AzPreview PowerShell module that includes all Azure PowerShell modules available and supported by Microsoft.

single-sign-on, a search fix, and some additional "proxy" cmdlets that can be used as examples for making more "friendly" ones.

across any of your AzureContinue Reading

PowerShell global settings using the PowerShell cmdlets Get-AzConfig, Update-AzConfig, Export-AzConfig, Import-AzConfig, and Clear-AzConfig.

ExchangeOnline and Graph in this practical powershell example where we'll discuss how to connect, how to add permissions to a service principal and also a little bonus tip on how to get an access token for graph using Az and managed identity with the Get-AzAccessToken cmdlet.

a controlled, unified workflow, Azure administrators can define, deploy, enforce, and maintain standardized Azure environments.

aims to fix the problem in the next version to make it possible for the SDK to work with Azure Automation runbooks again and address many of the obvious problems that should never have appeared outside Microsoft. It will take time for customer confidence to be restored.

Scripts written for the AzureRM cmdlets won’t automatically work with the new module. To make the transition easier, Az offers tools to allow you to run your existing scripts using AzureRM. No migration to a new command set is ever convenient, but this article will help you get started on transitioning to the new module.

difficult to stop, and before you know it you could be selling your grandmother just to afford one more month of that delicious compute. Hopefully your circumstances never get that dire, but I've seen plenty of companies entrench themselves into the highly addictive world of automated, scalable infrastructure, but then struggle to understand the often-astronomical monthly bill.

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.

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.

different resource group or subscription. To do this, you can use the Azure PowerShell module and the Move-AzResource cmdlet. You can find more about the Move-AzResource cmdlet on Microsoft Learn. The Move-AzResource cmdlet moves existing resources to a ...

the management logging and getting the added benefit of Source control for your scripts.

Az.ContainerRegistry Azure PowerShell module wasn't fully featured. Sometimes, PowerShell users had to take advantage of the Az CLI. We want to allow PowerShell user to be able to fully manage container images. Starting with Az.ContainerRegistry version 2.2.1, we will gradually be rolling out new cmdlets and new parameters. In this release, you can now fully manage (Get-, Remove-, Update-) repositories, manifests, and tags with increased performance.

subscription in Microsoft Defender

erase all the secrets, keys, and certificates in it.

and automate deployments across Windows, Mac, and Linux.

restriction policy using PowerShell. Effective resource tagging helps you organise and manage your Azure environment, while location restriction policies ensure compliance with regional regulations.

more.

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 )

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

workflows, now supports PowerShell. Common scenarios made possible by Durable Functions include orchestrating the management of complex Azure Resource deployments involving sequential and parallel steps. Long-running workflows are supported, and Durable Functions provides built-in HTTP endpoints for monitoring their progress.

reliable and resilient. More, Blob can be used as a trigger for Azure Functions when you add a file and you can play with different pricing tiers.

information. Why? It brings comfort while giving up security. It's your choice. In this blog post I will show you a walkthrough how to connect to Azure with stored credentials. The credentials are encryptet with a certificate. Let's move on.

generate resource names, fret not! I've been there, and...

updates across hybrid environments. Azure Automation focuses on an infrastructure perspective and allows you to build/deploy resources, handling updates and configuring all type of resources (not only in Azure but also on premise).

Virtual Machines.

runbooks directly from Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio Code is a light weight source code editor which runs on your desktop and is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

for a while without enforced consistency of your Role Based Access Control, you might want to explore your existing RBAC assignments at scale or query the permissions for a specific user.

In this way, you can create backups, and you can restore files and folders easily whenever needed. In this post, we will be looking at configuring Recovery Services vaults on Azure file shares and restoring deleted files from a backup using PowerShell.

Commands within your VMs using the Azure Portal or the Azure PowerShell or Azure CLI modules....

You can also use those tools in a local container and connect to it using the command line or Visual Studio Code. In this blog post, I will show you how to install everything and connect and use it locally.

Eamon O'Reilly, who's leading the efforts at Microsoft for serverless automation, shows you how to get started.

by configuring a data lifecycle management.

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.

hard disks. It falls under physical data security and it prevents data breaches from stolen hard disks (physical & virtual). If it is a Windows machine, we can simply use BitLocker for disk encryption. Also, there are other third-party vendors such as Thales e-Security which provides disk encryption solutions for organizations.

then retrieve them from PowerShell.

specialists get small digestible bites about new technologies, complex scripts, and solutions you could be implementing in your MSP today. I'm fairly anti-tool culture where MSPs get a different tool for each minor inconvenience and focus just on that tool, so I'll be focussed on modern technologies in the Microsoft stack, but also will cover other external tools if they make a big enough difference.

a shared printer via Universal Print

With examples for Azure DevOps pipelines and Github Actions

and GitHub Actions. I mentioned one way to test ARM templates in a pipeline there (the WhatIf module). But there are other options available. And how about testing locally? In this post we will look at different tools that can help you with testing ARM templates.

years. One problem that has brought with it is the high probability of being somewhere with no cell phone data service or poor cell phone data. Couple with my incredibly poor memory, I have often forgotten to turn off servers to save on cost in my dev or test environment until I'm out in the woods. Also, I wanted the ability to use Google Voice as well as Siri in my car or even at home, to turn off, turn on, or check the status of my servers in my Azure tenants. This has even come in handy when I didn't have my phone on me and had to use the wife's phone to turn on or off some servers in my tenant. (I set it to only accept messages from my phone number as well as my wife's so if someone happened to figure out the phone number, they couldn't give any commands anyways - we will get into this later).

on the prerequisite skills and technologies needed to succeed with Azure DevOps as the preferred method for deploying applications into Azure, and is all self-paced.

issues during an Azure command.

They're easy to build and allow you get started without needing a degree in programming.... Our speaker, Jeremy Brown, will walk through the basics of serverless apps, build a simple app AND put it online in 45 minutes!

allows for passwords and secrets to be shared among users via Azure AD authentication and policies with the relatively inexpensive Azure Key Vault resource. While communications are always encrypted and stored securely when working with the Azure Key Vault, further security can be utilized to independantly encrypting the passwords before they are transmitted to Azure.

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

Azure Blog Storage using Connection String. Recently I was given Connection String, Container name and had to download some files from Azur Blog Storage. After some research and trying Connect-AzAccount, I found that the proper way to go is thru New-AzStorageContext.

Blob storage account using Power Automate Desktop. Power Automate Desktop is a great tool to build automation on your desktop. You can create flows,?interact with everyday tools such as email and excel and work with modern and legacy applications.

Microsoft.Resources/deploymentScripts, users can execute deployment scripts in template deployments and review execution results. These scripts can be used for performing custom steps such as:

many API connections which might be never used later. Those orphan resources could make your resource group a great mess and hard to choose the right API connection in the logic app. So, I wrote the PowerShell Script to help manage API connections in the resource group.

Management module is an alternative, and it's best for shared credentials.

Directory (Azure AD) managed identity (MSI) to authenticate in Azure PowerShell on your on-premises Linux and Windows Server machines. The moment you want to run some automation directly on your servers, you often .

administrator passwords configured on Windows Servers. Before we get started, let us have a quick overview of what Azure Key Vault is.

change the network, change the disk name, etc

can use to organize and control access to your packages. In other words it is a place for storing and sharing packages with controlled access through Azure Dev Ops.

we explore how to leverage App Control to secure your Windows Server and manage it at scale using Microsoft Azure Arc.

infrastructure visualizations by just typing a PowerShell cmdlet and passing the name of one or more Azure Resource Groups.

been in PowerShell a bit more frequently as of late.

Protocol) addresses has been around for years; most Azure resources support it, a Storage account is no different.

exclusively using the Azure portal/dashboard. And since I could do pretty much everything I needed to do directly on the portal, I never bothered with Azure PowerShell or any of the other methods of communicating with Azure.

Following our release cadence, this is the second breaking change release for 2021. Because this release includes updates related to security and the switch to MS Graph, we recommend that you review the release notes before upgrading.

PowerShell.

streamline Excel report creation using his widely popular PowerShell module, ImportExcel, with over 11 million downloads. Doug shares straightforward methods for automating Excel tasks-from formatting and filtering data, to generating conditional formats, pivot tables, and charts-saving you valuable time and effort. You'll also get practical examples for combining data from multiple sources, quickly reorganizing spreadsheets, and troubleshooting common Excel automation challenges.

Microsoft Intune Remediations. The script handles both HKCU and HKLM, supports all registry types, and works on Microsoft Entra ID and hybrid joined devices.

outstanding work to do. We used PowerShell to scan for incomplete tasks for people who are members of a group, perform some analysis on the data, and create and send email. Despite some deficiencies in the Planner Graph API, the code is pretty straightforward.

excel file. I never really got a response with a solution. I finally figured it out and wanted to share.

it was obfuscated. How can I properly make powershell display the contents of a word document without downloading anything?

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.

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

PowerShell script. Outlook MAPI allows you to directly access the mailbox, list...

and Install-Module -Name ImportExcel.

some headaches as well. The below updates .doc to .docx .xls to .xlsx and .ppt to .pptx, optionally deletes the old files if you un-comment the remove-item lines

O2016 and upgrading to O365 and created an interactive .ps1 script to auto uninstall O2016. Here she is:

files. You don't even need Excel installed. It's super cool!

user, and if the OST size is nearing it's maximum size, as a bonus I'm also giving you the option of alerting on active PST files. The offline mode is just a handy gizmo to notify users that they might've misclicked - It still happens to our users from time to time.

emails need action, some are regular emails, and some are notifications I want to know about as soon as they happen. I feel like a normal person would make an Outlook rule to...

example of how PowerShell can automate Word. Because sometimes scripting around the problem is easier than solving it manually.

notifications on the taskbar. I got some positive comments and decided to make a module for the taskbar handling part so that anyone can quickly make their tools.

on your system. No need to bother with the cumbersome Excel COM-object. Creating Tables, Pivot Tables, Charts and much more has just become a lot easier. It has recently been updated to run much faster.

pass through the SMTP perimeter scanning and email authentication, but still end up in Outlook's junk folder. The internal workings of Outlook's built-in message filters aren't fully documented anywhere that I know of. This can lead to some perplexing situations.

and instead shows the following error message "Cannot Start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook Window. The set of folders cannot be opened. The attempt to log on to Microsoft Exchange has failed"

asked how to disable the add-in for some mailboxes. Here's how to do the job using PowerShell to find a set of target mailboxes and then turn off Send to Teams for each mailbox.

personal preference is to always share the slides. Often, especially when I was working for an employer, I'd share a PDF of the file rather than the slides. Some decks had had a LOT of effort put in (some by inhouse graphics guys) and giving those animations away was sub-optimal for IP reasons.

provide credentials....

(downloaded over 8 million times), for an exclusive dive into Excel automation. Learn from the creator himself and discover how to turn tedious Excel tasks into seamless PowerShell solutions, gaining insider insights directly from the source.

and set the Office theme using PowerShell as well.

the trace, and apply a data bar

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.

shells that are installed on your system, like the shell for Ubuntu or PowerShell Core 7. Unfortunately, it doesn't detect the Developer Command Prompt and Developer PowerShell for Visual Studio. Luckily, you can add them yourself!

to debug in the console, debug job, background runspaces, and remote processes. We also used some of the advanced debugging features of Visual Studio Code.

For example, you want to convert the following command for

don't see any way to get your good old experience back. However, hidden behind that plain white on blue shell, there is actually a wide range of customization options that help make your life less painful. See below for the most commonly appreciated options.

when I quickly commented and uncommented lines in my PowerShell script in VS Code. This is very easy to do with the built in keyboard shortcuts.

and system administrators. You can use VS Code to edit your PowerShell scripts, configuration...

2022. It was a pre-recorded presentation, so I was able to do final edits to the video before sending it to the conference organizers.

native PowerShell debugger.

for Visual Studio. You can download PowerShell Tools for Visual Studio from the Visual Studio Marketplace.

scripts. We'll look at how to run scripts, set breakpoints and view variables during debugging. We'll also go through the various ways to step through scripts and evaluate variables and expressions with the watch window. Next, we'll learn about advanced breakpoints and how to configure launch.json to configure how to launch scripts.

eight-time Microsoft MVP for Exchange Server, and happy generalist, joins Andrew for a wide-ranging conversation about her tech journey and what it actually looks like to grow from deep hands-on work into technology leadership. They kick things off with a topic near and dear to a lot of PowerShell folks: the ISE-to-VS Code migration. Paula was terrified of it, put it off for as long as she could, and now uses VS Code every single day.

faster and better, then this video is for you.

simultaneously on several servers from several script panes. However, when I write scripts, functions or modules I use VSCode. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, in VSCode there is no builtin feature, nor extension to assist us in signing PowerShell code

extension for VScode.

several year I used to develop PowerShell script into PowerShell ISE. It worked very well, but it looked like "old". Since many years, almost four, I started using Visual Studio Code to edit every kind of files, including PowerShell files. The reason is really simple: Visual Studio Code is more powerful than PowerShell IDE. I show you the reason why.

with getting an editor installed, and no I'm not talking about Notepad++ I'm talking about that amazing tool VSCode.

Services, intending to create a more reliable and stable user experience.

point out this itty-bitty, teensy-weensy, teeny-tiny little feature in VS Code. I think it's more of a feature in the PowerShell extension than VS Code itself, but maybe not. It kind of ties into "code folding", sort of, kind of, but anyway, I'll hum a few notes...

Microsoft has some excellent features that will make your scripts more readable and consistent formatting-wise. In this blog post, I will show you my configuration and the options I use.

couple of weeks ago. I already blogged about how you can customize your Windows Terminal settings and shared my settings.json file. Many people asked me about the different Windows Terminal Color Schemes I use. So I thought a blog post would be a good way of sharing my Windows Terminal Schemes.

instead of ISE? It is a simple reg update...

extensions and settings, and now is your turn to learn from my experience! Here are some examples of items we will cover:

Code) specifically for PowerShell development. He begins by establishing the importance of VS Code as the recommended editor for PowerShell, having evolved from a basic text editor to a powerful tool that supports a variety of programming languages and capabilities. The lecture aims to provide a structured approach for setting up VS Code for PowerShell users, whether they are new to the environment or seasoned developers looking to refine their setup.

scripts. In this blog post, I will show you how it works and how to set it up.

is now available on the extension marketplace.

Code is now available on the extension marketplace.

available on the extension marketplace.

Code. (sssh, nobody tell them it's December 🙂 )

the ones that are out of date.

helps?

improvement I developed, you should see stepping through code work *much* faster. Please try to break this feature before release!

a great way to handle working with multiple terminal applications in one space, and the ability to customize the environment to suit your needs (both aesthetic and functional) make it a perfect tool for anyone who lives in a shell environment for hours on end.

I commented out the color names to align with PowerShell tokens so you can use it as a base to create your own theme.

quick edits on code is while a personal choice a bit of a problem as there are not many out there.

excited to share the first preview of the new Visual Studio terminal. This new preview experience is part of Visual Studio version 16.3 Preview 3.

Studio Code for PowerShell development work. It doesn't matter if you're using Linux, Mac, or Windows, you can be productive as a PowerShell developer on any development platform!

guide. You'll learn how to install VS Code, configure the PowerShell extension, set up the integrated terminal, and explore key features to enhance your PowerShell scripting experience.

PowerShell programmatically for Online and On-Prem 2019.

needs with a collection of several useful modules which I occasionally still extend. Although all IDEs I regularly use feature an integrated terminal which opens in repository root by default, I rarely used them because they didn't match my configuration. So I decided to check if there was a way to make them use my default PowerShell profile.

us that you would prefer to have a PowerShell version of the tool. We are happy to share that in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2, we added a new Developer PowerShell!

but wish it was in the ISE? I got something better for you! VSCode + PowerShell Extension + Enable ISE Mode.

to demonstrate the capabilities of the Polyglot extension, explain its functionality, which is easier compared to the original method of creating Jupyter notebooks, which I covered in 2022.

me about, and why the extensions have been useful so far from a PowerShell perspective.

Visual Studio Code. This release contains months of architectural work that first shipped in our PowerShell Preview extension in November of 2019, along with incremental bug fixes in the intervening months. If you are new to Visual Studio Code this article is helpful for getting started. If you already use Visual Studio Code with the PowerShell extension, read on to find out what is new.

website annoying since I've been working in GitBook at 2Pint Software.

you stay up-to-date with PowerShell releases

search, download, install, and uninstall VS Code extensions entirely from the command line. - stevi...

When you work with code every day, you must have a go-to code editor. For many developers out there, Visual Studio (VS) Code is their editor of choice. Stick around for this Visual Studio Code tutorial.

PowerShell scripts and modules. That tool is called the PowerShell Integrated Scripting Editor (ISE), which was originally included out-of-box with Windows 7 and PowerShell version 2.0. Over the years, PowerShell developers have used tools like Quest PowerGUI and Visual Studio with the PowerShell Tools Extension to write, test, and debug their PowerShell code. In fact, not all that long ago, I wrote about moving from PowerGUI over to Visual Studio for your PowerShell development work. Since then, the momentum in the software field has gotten more and more agile, requiring developers to invest more and more time learning, and less time focusing on their business logic.

Languages, and more.

the Windows Terminal. You're going to get a full rundown of nearly all features of Windows Terminal and learn how it can help you get things on Windows at the command line.

Visual Studio Codespaces allows you to do cloud-hosted development for wherever you're working. While the new services support many different programming and scripting languages, it also supports PowerShell. In this blog post, I am going to show you how you can write PowerShell code online in a web browser using Visual Studio Codespaces.

Visual Studio Codespaces allows you to do cloud-hosted development for wherever you're working. While the new services support many different programming and scripting languages, it also supports PowerShell. In this blog post, I am going to show you how you can write PowerShell code online in a web browser using Visual Studio Codespaces.

technologies, Azure and of course a deep dive into PowerShell. We have made the decision to host this event virtually for the first time, and we are excited to be able to open up our local user group to the global stage for the first time! We have an evening with diverse and advanced topics prepared for you presented by experienced speakers. Registration through Eventbrite is optional, with the benefit that you'll receive an email notification with the streaming link and a calendar invite.

supported after March 30, 2025. So looks like this will be our last year to give them a Valentine's day card for all the times they've been there for us in!

whether it's necessary for your Intune automation needs if you're already using the Microsoft.Graph.Authentication module, part of the Microsoft Graph SDK, to handle your tokens.

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

Identity Management (PIM) using the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. However recently we secured these role activations to require a conditional access authentication context with MFA. This basically requires me to MFA when I activate a role with PIM. Problem is, by ... Continue reading Activating PIM Roles that require MFA or Conditional Access Authentication Context with PowerShell ?

Graph module) comes in two versions. The general availability version is intended for production while the preview version (AzureADPreview) contains the cmdlets from the general availability version plus some new cmdlets under development group. The current version of the AzureADPreview module is 2.0.2.105, released in July.

encourage you to try the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. The Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK is where all our current and future investments are being made.

aspect of maintaining robust security and ensuring uninterrupted service. When application secrets expire without timely renewal, it can disrupt business operations by causing application failures. Proactive management of application secret expirations helps enterprises avoid last-minute issues, enabling a more secure and efficient operational environment.

documentation with a new option to also document Azure AD Conditional Access policies.

to download. The eBook is now over 300 pages long and includes extensive coverage of using PowerShell to interact with Exchange Online, Teams, Planner, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business data using workload modules or the Graph APIs (and Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK).

expiration. In other words, the default lifetime of tokens issued by Azure AD is too short to allow the script to complete before the token expires. Two solutions exist. Use a token lifetime policy to prolong access token lifetimes or check in code for potential expiration and renew when necessary.

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.

B2C configuration settings to local .json files.

deprecation of the Azure AD and MS Online modules.

by the Azure Active Directory Product Group in conjunction with the Microsoft Detection and Response Team (DART), to assist in compromise response.

including a look at the old and a focus on the new!

lot. If you want to restrict the number of devices then you came to the right place.

helper functions to gather configuration information of your tenant e.g. logs and reports of licenses, apps (incl. expired secrets).

a hierarchy that is then created in a visual org chart using a program called GraphViz

Conditional access policies. This can give you some nice options to backup, document and restore Conditional access policies. In my opinion, the PowerShell cmdlets aren't all that intuitive, which is the reason I want to show in this post how to backup and restore Conditional Access Policies with PowerShell.

available or not. I also had to challenge this scenario while scripting for a customer. After this I thought this is something many people may need. So here is my solution with some explanation to use it in your own script.

users in AzureAD that have enabled passwordless sign-in with the Microsoft Authenticator app. Previously I usually made use of the Script for Azure MFA authentication method analysis but that script uses the MSOnline PowerShell mode where the Get-Msoluser cmdlet doesn't expose the information about these newer Authentication Methods.

all flawed because they make decisions based on the last sign in. That's a shortsighted method because it doesn't take guest activity into account. This article explains how to combine audit data with sign-in data to create an enhanced view of guest account activity so that intelligent decisions can be made to keep or retain the accounts.

done through PowerShell and the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK because the feature isn't currently available in the Entra admin center. We've even included a fully functional example script to show you how the process works. Feel free to fix or enhance our code in GitHub!

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.

images, the logos, or even help with localization. To check out all the options I suggest grabbing the documentation by Microsoft here. Remember that you need a P1 subscription or higher for branded portals.

Sign-in allows you to sign in using your M365 credentials and multifactor authentication token, or using a Azure AD Temporary Access Pass. Web-Sign in is pretty cool as users get presented with a modern authentication pop-up dialog when signing in, the same one they are used to seeing when logging into the Office suite applications.

Conditional Access policies with report-only validation.

presented with a lack of visibility of the connectors. Especially if you've previously used Microsoft / Forefront Identity Manager.

Access (GSA) client as an Intune Win32 app, allowing administrators to easily and securely deploy the client.

action against user accounts. The new property is available through the Graph beta endpoint. Quite a difference can exist between the last successful sign in and the last sign in, as explored in this article.

PowerShell Module I authored named AzureADTenantID. Its sole purpose was to take a domain name (e.g., darrenjrobinson.com) and lookup return any associated Azure AD (now Entra ID) TenantID.... keep reading

a Principal Product Manager on Microsoft's Entra team. Our discussion unveiled an in-depth look at Microsoft Entra, providing listeners with tips and tricks. Merill generously shared his journey in becoming a PM, emphasizing the pivotal role of learning and sharing knowledge within our tech community. We also delved into the emerging importance of transitioning from the AzureAD module towards a more streamlined approach using Graph. Not to miss, Merill spotlighted his widely acclaimed tools such as [akasearch.net](http://akasearch.net), idPowerToys, and entra. news, and more, opening up an array of exciting possibilities for our listeners. Join us as we explore these topics and a whole lot more in yet another riveting session of the PowerShell Podcast.

modern Identity & Access Management solutions. I'm still writing connectors that integrate the Microsoft Entra outbound provisioning service with SaaS and legacy on‑premises apps using ECMA connectors.... keep reading

module that does it for you. So now you will be able to find which FIDO2 keys are attestation compatible with Entra right from your terminal. In the very near future I will have individual functions

which ones are still active, and which are relics from past projects. As an admin, you know that applications use certificates and secrets for app registrations to securely authenticate-but many of these credentials persist

plays a crucial role in effectively managing user accounts, optimizing licenses, enhancing security, and meeting compliance requirements. So, let's see how to check inactive users

2025. The AzureAD module will then retire in the 3rd quarter. It's way past time to upgrade PowerShell scripts. The question is whether to use the Entra module or the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. I know which option is best and say why in this article.

how to use PowerShell find accounts that have an Office365 Admin role that don’t use MFA.

After a few years, the proliferation of 'Guest' accounts usually becomes a focus, especially for larger tenants. As Azure AD has matured the meta data associated with accounts, along with Microsoft Graph improvements is making it easier to define and locate stale Azure AD B2B Guest Accounts. In this post I investigate Azure AD with Microsoft Graph API's to find stale Azure AD B2B Guest Accounts.

diving deep into productivity with hotkeys and key bindings, EntraAuth, C# integration, and community reflections from PowerShell Conference EU. Fred shares practical advice for improving your daily workflow, how to extend PowerShell with C#, and why participation in the community-whether through conferences or contributing modules-can be a game-changer for your career.

properly authenticate. Accounts with username and password might have Active Directory alert you when your password expires, however, what can we use...

automating. Knowing how to automate is truly one of the most versatile skills you can have as a Systems Engineer and today I'm going to share a script I wrote to be able to get azure conditional access policy changes using Powershell.

authentication methods, something very similar to this Get MFA Methods using Graph API script I wrote a while back. However, I haven't really seen a script to show me what their per-user MFA status is.

will fully be decommissioned on June 30, 2022.

access capabilities for app service. More organizations are now harnessing the security capabilities of Azure AD into the apps they create for an additional layer of authentication. This post will cover how to register an app to Azure AD via PowerShell to take advantage of this.

managing Azure resources like virtual machines.

directory. A PowerShell script does the job, even if some constraints in how Entra ID processes membership rules means that the rules can't be quite as precise as I would like them to be.

many years of working with Conditional Access deployments, baselines, and automation tools, I wanted to package all that knowledge, experience, and best-practices, in a singel fully automated PowerShell tool.

Microsoft 365 licenses due to come into effect from 1 July 2026, it's time to find and remove unused licenses from inactive user accounts. We discuss two approaches by using the Microsoft 365 Licensing Report or a PowerShell script that assesses inactivity based on sign-in dates and refresh token baselines.

reject any additions that met specific criteria. Easy, we said, so we set to creating a script to interrogate the unified audit log to find new member events. Once that was done, it's a matter of analyzing the events to find if we should reject the addition of any of the added members.

documentation is challenging, but it's easy to understand what kind of insights Microsoft wants to deliver. Looking behind the scenes, we find the Graph endpoint for Group insights and can extract the data. That allows us to combine insights with other information to make them more interesting. All done with PowerShell.

expire over time, so it's good to review app credential expiration dates periodically. This article explains how to use the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK to generate a report about app credential expiration dates to allow tenant administrators to manage registered apps a little better...

invites the guest to the tenant. It's data that can be used for different purposes, such as having someone to justify the continued presence of a guest account in a Microsoft 365 tenant. This article explains how to report guest accounts and their sponsors with some straightforward PowerShell.

you may have run across a frustrating problem: An on-premises AD user license has expired but that user can still access resources on Azure AD. As long as you're on a Windows 10 computer with the Remote Server Administration Tools and the Azure PowerShell module installed, you can remedy this security risk by finding all expired AD accounts and revoking them.

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.

update elements through the admin center or PowerShell. This article explains how to use the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK to customize the sign-in text and background image for the sign-in screen.

RunAs account because it doesn't require certificate/secret renewal. Therefore it is maintenance-free.

Keeping an eye on app permissions is important. From a PowerShell perspective, it is reasonably straightforward to retrieve details of app permissions using the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. Several methods are available to do the job.

Blizzard. This article reviews how to use PowerShell to help identify privileged applications, their permissions, as well as client Secrets.

Credentials and Certificate based authentication. Also with Delegated Permissions and Device Code flow authentication. The one I haven't written a post on is performing interactive authentication to Microsoft Graph using MSAL with PowerShell and Delegated Permissions. I have for Python so this post will complete the examples for both Python and PowerShell.

product family.

user owns in Microsoft Entra.

native admin centers. To address this, we've developed a custom PowerShell script that performs 15+ management actions, including both single and bulk operations. This blog explores how to use the script efficiently to simplify Microsoft 365 group management.

profile, you can update an account's password and force actions like force the user to change their password on the next sign-in or force the user to enable multifactor authentication for the account. All done with cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK.

Entra PowerShell module.

designed to streamline management and automation for the Microsoft Entra product family, which includes the services formerly known as Azure Active Directory.

This blog post will highlight the installation, changes, and features.

production-ready support for Agent Identity Blueprints, enhanced application configuration parameters, and modernized invitation APIs. This update consolidates Agent Identity functionality into the main module and delivers new cmdlets for automated identity management across Microsoft Entra ID environments.

group. Yes, the new UI in the AAD portal helps, but doesn't provide all the information. On the other side there are a ton of PowerShell modules e.g.: MSOL, AzureAD or AzureADPreview.

to March 30, 2024. The nine-month extension is there to help customers convert scripts to use the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK or Graph API requests. On the upside, the extra time is good as it creates space to migrate scripts. On the downside, there's still some challenges in converting from the old Azure AD modules.

provide SMS one-time codes or voice calls for MFA challenges after February 1, 2027. Tenants can continue to use telephony-based authentication methods after that date, but only by purchasing a service from a telecom provider. This is arguably the biggest change in Entra ID authentication since mandatory MFA for administrative interfaces - and we have a PowerShell script to help identify the affected accounts.

now, but always in separate functions.

cloud management easy and simple. But the end for these two modules is nearby, and the direction is the Graph API. So why not start now and learn what you need to know to migrate your PowerShell [.]

are curious on changes that come with the new module version. In the world of continuous change, it is hard to keep track of these changes as new cmdlets or parameters get added to support new features, and some get removed as they become obsolete. So, how to discover what those changes are after updating to the latest module?

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.

should always assume breach. The attack will come and it can strike from any direction - the Internet, on-prem, BYOD, etc. The first thing an organisation experiences after the fact is often confusion, fear, and panic. Not the best mix of feelings to have while trying to sort things out! Most organisations don't have a clear plan of what to do next.

something I've found usefull at work, so I've improved it a little bit now.

your IT Org has N different resource groups where you want to activate every day. It would be time consuming to activate them one by one. Instead, you can build a custom app using PowerShell or UI so that you can activate to all of these resource groups in one shot.

ID Connect, including login failures and synchronization delays.

your Microsoft 365 cloud with PowerShell. It only takes a few commands-super simple.

synchronize accounts from their local Active

automation of Microsoft Entra resources.

explicitly assigned. The net result is that a tenant can end up with many ownerless apps. In this article, we explain how to find ownerless apps, and how to use audit data to find suitable owners for those apps. All done with PowerShell, of course.

Protection, we dive into the basics of inactive account blocking and share some PowerShell scripts to help automate this process.

Azure. See how you can query log data using Powershell.

Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. Although options exist in the Microsoft 365 admin center and Azure AD admin center to restore deleted groups, it's nice to have the option to do the same with PowerShell.

with PowerShell using Azure Rest API.

Sounds good, but the same can be done with PowerShell if you want to avoid the cost of Entra ID Governance licenses or want to create a bespoke workflow that's better suited to the business needs of the organization. Azure Automation would be a good way to process this workflow.

center. PowerShell does the trick, once you know how. The key thing is to find the right cmdlet to use. Once you know that, the rest is pretty easy as we explain in this article.

now available and many Purview solutions support administrative units. In this article, we explain how to use Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK cmdlets to create a report about administrative units, role assignments for their management, and their membership.

registration occurs. Although this information changes over time and isn't updated by Azure AD, it might be of some interest and use to tenant administrators, so we show how to report it here. If you want accurate information, you'll need to use Intune.

isn't particularly difficult, if you know where to look. Our script uses the Graph SDK to check service principals, filters out the apps to check, and extracts the user and group assignments before reporting what it finds.

either using Microsoft Graph Explorer or a new cmdlet in the ECMA2HostTools PowerShell Module (coming soon).

Graph PowerShell.

administrators to update configurations manually before August 24, 2026.

integrating third-party services, enabling Single Sign-On (SSO), or automating business processes. To ensure these applications function smoothly, they require credentials like client secrets or certificates, which are used to obtain access tokens and access organizational resources.

PowerShell for Graph module. It provides you everything you need to know to get started, quickly and easily.

it turns out, Microsoft would prefer if developers use the Revoke-MgUserSignInSession cmdlet instead of Invoke-MgInvalidateUserRefreshToken, but who would have known if we hadn't asked the question?

of years. Now the time has come when things happen. Cmdlets that set licenses for Azure AD accounts are now retired and will stop working on or before June 30, 2023. If you haven't already upgraded scripts, it's time to do so.

privileges like accessing sensitive data to acting on behalf of users. But these permissions aren't static. Once an app is registered, its configuration can evolve over time through various operational changes.

batch file.

data from workloads like Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Teams. Some of this data is available via PowerShell cmdlets like Get-ExoMailboxStatistics and Get-SPOSite, but using the Graph is usually faster.

purposes. In this article, we explore how to use the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK to update extension attributes for registered devices, and even better, access the content in the extension attributes afterward.

people using specific terms in their passwords. The idea is to prevent easily-guessed terms being used in passwords. You could also block words deemed to be objectionable. In any case, this article explains how to maintain the custom blocked password list with a PowerShell script.

a Daily Microsoft Entra Risk Report.

Directory App Service Principals. Really nothing spectacular but I didn't want to keep it from you.

Risky Users in your Azure Active Directory. I will also show you how to use PowerShell to connect directly to the Microsoft Graph and query the data from there. Being able to query for riskDetections, risky users, and sign-ins, allows you to automate alerts or actions whenever a user gets flagged in your risk policy.

processing, which is how the app filter for conditional access policies works. It's nice to be able to interact with data through PowerShell and the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK cmdlets support setting, updating, and retrieval of Azure AD custom security attributes. Everything works, but it's a pity that it's a little clunky.

EntraExporter from Merill Fernando 🙂 In this blog post, I will show you how it works.

awards and certifications held by users. Usually this would be done through a Copilot connector, but it's possible to add awards and certifications using Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK cmdlets. All explained in great detail with working examples here.

management PowerShell module, in that article, I also explained how to use Graph API queries in a PowerShell script executed in a runbook.

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.

blog really. The great thing is that all of the stuff I normally blog about is pretty easy to integrate into CIPP

retention settings might use file created dates to remove items. No doubt basing retention on creation dates made perfect sense at the time, but experience shows that maybe basing retention on the last modified date can be better. All explored here together with a script to update retention labels in OneDrive.

app

folders/files in advance, Veronique lays out the entire process using PowerShell PnP in this blog post.

receives a few hundred pages views per week. Something like that, at least. I wrote something at work today that brought me over here, as it may help others. I guess I still do care enough

deletion of OneDrive documents found in the searches. While you can remove email using a content search action, Office 365 doesn't includ e a method to cleanup OneDrive documents found by content searches....

First, let's connect to SharePoint Online.

Whiteboards, requiring migration by August 22. Non-migrated boards will be deleted on September 5, 2026.

on disk.

you to redirect common (well-known) folders from your PC to OneDrive so that anything created in Documents, Pictures, and the desktop is automatically saved in your OneDrive for Business account. Generally, everything works well, and I have been very happy. Except until the time came to update the Azure Active Directory preview module from 2.0.2.77 to 2.0.2.89.

Business sync client through the SharePoint Online admin center, PowerShell, or GPO. A change in the client now exposes the excluded file types to user view for the first time. Meantime, the OneDrive Personal client also gains support for file type exclusions.

which simply allows you to redirect any local folder (including variable paths!) to any location in a user's Onedrive folder.

can always get it back. I use it for almost everything. Even for my PowerShell projects, which are committed to GitHub, so in theory, I shouldn't need that. But every once in a while, I make some stupid mistake and delete a file that has yet not been committed to GitHub, and that's where the OneDrive comes in handy. Quick restore, and we're back. Unfortunately, sometimes things aren't as I would expect them to work. For example, let's have a look at this nice list of markdown files that are documentation for my module called GPOZaurr.

the cmdlets from the SharePoint Online management module. But accessing OneDrive usage data via the Graph is much faster. And you can include information from other sources, such as user properties, to build out the report. All explained here.

usually involved some gyrations. Then Microsoft updated the Get-SPOSite cmdlet with the IncludePersonalSite switch and things became easier. For instance, a reader asked if it was possible to generate a report listing all the OneDrive for Business sites in a tenant with the storage allocated and used for each site. No problem, we thought, as we scanned the internet to see if people had already solved the problem. As it happens, several example scripts are available, but we ended up writing our own because it was possible to simplify the code . We also store the output in a CSV file as it's a very flexible format for reporting or further analysis (like importing into Power BI).

right-click to download everything. The only downside was that the site collection contained around 250 GB of content.

workforce. For Always On VPN administrators, PowerShell is an indispensable tool for achieving this goal. Not only can PowerShell be used to automate the installation and configuration of Windows Server Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) server

the Secure Boot boot certificate information from all domain computers and checks whether they contain the CA

copy-and-paste commands.

it easier to manage. In this article, I'll cover a few of the ones I've found most useful over the years when it comes to managing Windows Server.

Windows.

example-based approach to help inspire you to learn the skills you need to wrangle files.

use PowerShell to check if a file exists, along with other file examples, stay tuned.

Get-WinEvent cmdlet can retrieve classic Windows event logs like the System and Application logs, logs generated by Windows Event Log technology, and even Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) logs!

history of BDD, now known as MDT. Eighteen years later, I can now complete that story and expand on some of the items in more detail. (I will refrain from getting too carried away, hence the abridged part of the title, because you probably don't care to read a small novel.)

powershell based healthcheck and / Or documentation dashboard. Customers may use this to perform their day to day checks before start of business to ensure the WVD availability. and at the same time be able to keep track of their inventory on WVD.

encryption. Similarly, it doesn't create the configured protectors that are necessary for activating BitLocker. Manage-bde, PowerShell, or the WMI class Win32_EncryptableVolume serve this purpose.

Directory domain to get a nice list in the output.

module in PowerShell, you can add .msu updates, apps, and drivers to a Windows image offline without the need to boot it up.

show you now how to do that and how to access HKCC with PowerShell. Let's get started.

remote network access for Windows clients. However, Always On VPN is provisioned to the user, not the machine as it is with DirectAccess. This presents a challenge for deployment scenarios that require the VPN connection to be established before the user logs on.

(RRAS) for Always On VPN.