Author: Mike F Robbins

Mike F Robbins is a Microsoft MVP on Windows PowerShell and a SAPIEN Technologies MVP. He is a co-author of Windows PowerShell TFM 4th Edition and is a contributing author of a chapter in the PowerShell Deep Dives book. Mike has written guest blog articles for the Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog, PowerShell Magazine, and PowerShell.org. He is the winner of the advanced category in the 2013 PowerShell Scripting Games. Mike is also the leader and co-founder of the Mississippi PowerShell User Group. He blogs at mikefrobbins.com and can be found on twitter @mikefrobbins.

Indentation and Formatting Style for PowerShell Code

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My preferred indentation style when writing PowerShell code is Stroustrup style because I don't like my code to cuddle (there's no cuddled else in Stroustrup style). I occasionally hear from others that they don't like this style because it doesn't work from the PowerShell console. While it doesn't work by default, there's a trick to making that style work from the PowerShell console. Simply press Shift+Enter instead of just Enter at the end of the line before Read more [...]
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PowerShell Script Module Design: Plaster Template for Creating Modules

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I recently began updating my PowerShell script module build process. Updating my Plaster template was one of the first things I needed to do. If you haven't already read my blog article about "Using Plaster to create a PowerShell Script Module template", I'd recommend beginning there as this blog article assumes you already have a basic understanding of how to use Plaster. All of the information from my previous Plaster template is still there with the exception of the required PowerShell version Read more [...]
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The PowerShell Conference Book – It’s a Wrap!

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First, I'd recommend reading my blog article "Announcing the PowerShell Conference Book" if you haven't. In early May of this year (2018), I came up with the idea of what would become "The PowerShell Conference Book". On the evening of May 6th, I sent an email to Don Jones and Jeff Hicks asking what they thought and if they'd be interested in writing a chapter in the book. The next morning, I'd received positive responses from both of them, confirming that they would be interested in participating. Leanpub Read more [...]
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PowerShell Script Module Design: Public/Private versus Functions/Internal folders for Functions

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There's been a lot of debate about script module design as of lately and instead of tweeting something out asking for responses, I thought I would post it here via a blog article. Back when I first started creating PowerShell script modules, I placed all of my functions in the PSM1 file and later started placing each function in a separate PS1 file that was dot-sourced from the PSM1 file. I would simply place the PS1 files in the root folder of the script module. Read more [...]
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Determine the Day of the Week in 11 Days from Now with PowerShell

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A couple of days ago, one of my kids asked me "What day of the week will it be in 11 days from now?". My response was "I'm not sure, but I can tell you how to figure out the answer for yourself". Open up PowerShell, wrap Get-Date in parentheses, place a dot or period afterwards, followed by AddDays,  then 11 in another set of parentheses, and finally another dot or period followed by DayOfWeek. Want to know what the day of the week was 11 days ago instead? Read more [...]
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PowerShell Saturday Chattanooga Post-Mortem

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PowerShell Saturday Chattanooga was this past weekend. I attended the all-day preconference presented by Jeff Hicks on Friday which saw a great turn out of about 50 people or so. I presented two 45-minute sessions as part of the Saturday event. One on "Writing award winning PowerShell functions and script modules" and another on "Recreate MOF based DSC resources as Class based DSC resources". The code and slide decks from both of my presentations can be found in my presentations repo on GitHub. Read more [...]
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Named One of the Top 21 SysAdmin Influencers, Bloggers and Geeks to Follow

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I was recently named as one of the top 21 SysAdmin influencers, bloggers, and geeks to follow on this years' SysAdmin Day by IT Chronicles. I'm humbled and honored to be part of their list. There are also several other Microsoft Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP's for Windows PowerShell on the list. If your interested in PowerShell (and you probably are if you're reading this blog site), I'd recommend taking a look at the original article on the IT Chronicles website. µ Read more [...]
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Determine if a Mailbox is On-Premises or in Office 365 with PowerShell

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One of the companies that I support is currently in the process of migrating from an on-premises Exchange Server environment to Office 365. They're currently running in hybrid mode. While it seems like wanting to know what mailboxes still exist onsite versus which ones are in the cloud would be an all too common task, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to get that information with PowerShell. You would think that you'd be able to run a PowerShell command and it would return the results. Well, not Read more [...]
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Displaying Toast Notifications for a Different User when PowerShell Module Updates are Available

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A couple of months ago, Josh King presented a session on “Using BurntToast to Display Timely Notifications” for our June 2018 Mississippi PowerShell User Group virtual meeting. I was previously planning to write something to display balloon notifications in Windows and I learned that they're now called toast notifications. I also learned that Josh had created a module named BurntToast which performs most of the heavy lifting so I could simply take advantage of it instead of writing my own code. Note: Read more [...]
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Use PowerShell to Determine What Your System is Talking to

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Recently, while troubleshooting a problem with a newly installed application, I wanted to see what it was communicating with. My only requirement was that I wanted to use PowerShell if at all possible. I couldn't remember if there was a PowerShell command for accomplishing this task or not, but I remembered seeing something about it in Patrick Gruenauer's chapter (PowerShell as an Enterprise Network Tool) in The PowerShell Conference Book. Note: This blog article is written using Windows 10 version Read more [...]
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The PowerShell Conference Book is the Featured Book and the Number 1 Best Seller on Leanpub

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By now, I'm sure you've heard about The PowerShell Conference Book. If not, see my previous blog article. The PowerShell Conference Book is currently the featured book on Leanpub. It's also the number one best seller on Leanpub. And the top book on Leanpub. The book was published last Friday, July 6th with nine of the thirty-three chapters and we've added an additional six chapters since then. I would like to thank everyone who has purchased the book so far. If you have a Read more [...]
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Announcing the PowerShell Conference Book

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A couple of months ago, I saw a tweet from Don Jones about how much it costs to sponsor one person for the OnRamp Scholarship Program. I replied wanting to know if the DevOps Collective had considered becoming part of the "Leanpub for Causes" program so that portions of an author's royalties could be donated to the program. My initial thought was that I could donate a portion of the royalties from my PowerShell 101 book to the program. A few days later Don copied me in a tweet saying he had Read more [...]
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Renewed as a Microsoft Cloud & Datacenter Management MVP

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I’m honored and humbled to be renewed as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for a fifth consecutive year. I received notification this past weekend confirming that I’ve been renewed for another year. The first two Microsoft MVP awards that I received were for PowerShell and due to changes to Microsoft’s MVP award program, the latest three have been for Cloud and Datacenter Management, although my focus is still PowerShell. You can find more information about Microsoft's MVP Read more [...]
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Update a Severely Out of Date GitHub Repository Fork

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Recently, I received notification from Planet PowerShell that they will be removing blogs that do not support HTTPS as of August 1st. I had forked their repo on GitHub over a year ago, added my blog, and submitted a pull request. I hadn't touched my fork of their repo since then. It was severely out of date and in an unknown state. Taking a look at it on my system showed my local copy only had one remote which was my fork on GitHub. I could see that one of Read more [...]
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Use PowerShell to Install Windows Features and Reboot

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Recently, I installed the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) feature on my Windows 10 computer. Microsoft has an installation guide that walks you through the entire process, but I thought I'd share a few PowerShell tricks when it comes to installing Windows features. The system used throughout this blog article runs Windows 10 version 1803 which ships with Windows PowerShell version 5.1. Your mileage may vary if you're using a different version of Windows and/or PowerShell. Run Windows PowerShell Read more [...]
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TechSnips is Looking for Content and Recruiting Contributors

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This blog article is the first guest post ever on this site. When I'm approached by someone who wants to write a guest blog article, I suggest that they should start their own blog. If they're simply not interested in that, I put them in contact with PowerShell.org because it seems like a more appropriate place to publish community blog articles. The majority of the posts on this site are simply the steps of how I've done something in a real-world production environment. I document the process here Read more [...]
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