Mike F Robbins

Convert Scientific Notation to Decimal with PowerShell

Mike F Robbins June 7, 2018June 7, 2018 0

Have you ever run into a problem where the results from a PowerShell command are returned in scientific notation? I've recently been working with performance counters in PowerShell and I've run into several scenarios where this occurs such as the one shown in the following example.

(Get-Counter -Counter '\PhysicalDisk(*c:)\Avg. Disk sec/Read' -OutVariable Results).CounterSamples

1	(Get-Counter -Counter '\PhysicalDisk(*c:)\Avg. Disk sec/Read' -OutVariable Results).CounterSamples

In addition to returning the results in the previous example, they were also stored in a variable so the same value could be used throughout this blog article. Windows PowerShell Read more [...]

Categories PowerShell Tags PowerShell

Configuring “Send As” Permission in Office 365 using PowerShell

Mike F Robbins May 31, 2018May 30, 2018 0

You're the administrator of an on-premises Exchange Server 2010 environment that's in Hybrid mode. After migrating a few users to Office 365, you start receiving complaints that they're no longer able to send emails as their departments group. First, follow the instructions in one of my previous blog articles to "Connect to Office 365 using PowerShell". The following command grants John Doe the ability to send as the Facility Services group in Office 365.

Add-RecipientPermission -Identity facilityservices@mspsug.com -AccessRights SendAs -Trustee jdoe@mspsug.com -Con
firm:$false

1 2	Add-RecipientPermission -Identity facilityservices@mspsug.com -AccessRights SendAs -Trustee jdoe@mspsug.com -Con firm:$false

It's Read more [...]

Categories Office 365, PowerShell Tags Office 365, PowerShell

Assign a License to an Office 365 User with PowerShell

Mike F Robbins May 24, 2018May 23, 2018 9

There are several scenarios where you might need to assign an Office 365 license to a user. The specific scenario in this blog article is that you're migrating an Exchange Server 2010 on-premises environment to Office 365. The Exchange Server is already in hybrid mode. Users have been automatically created in Office 365 by synchronizing them from your on-premises Active Directory environment using Azure AD Connect. Users who haven't already had their mailbox moved to Office 365 will first need an Read more [...]

Categories Office 365, PowerShell Tags Office 365, PowerShell

Connect to Office 365 with PowerShell

Mike F Robbins May 17, 2018May 17, 2018 0

I've recently been working on a project to migrate an Exchange Server 2010 environment to Office 365. As with Exchange, there are several things that simply can't be done from the GUI in Office 365. This means that if you're the Office 365 administrator for your company, you'll need a certain level of proficiency with PowerShell to effectively do your job . While not requirements, this blog article is written using Windows 10 Enterprise Edition version 1803 and PowerShell Core version 6.0.2. All Read more [...]

Categories Office 365, PowerShell Tags Office 365, PowerShell

Video: Recreate MOF based DSC resources as Class based DSC resources

Mike F Robbins May 10, 2018May 9, 2018 0

Last month I presented a session on how to Recreate MOF based DSC resources as Class based DSC resources at the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit in Seattle, Washington. The session seemed to be well received by the audience based on the feedback that I received from the attendees. The video from this presentation is now available. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeO_9KDB958&feature=youtu.be&a= The code and slides used during the demonstration can be found in my presentations repository Read more [...]

Categories Desired State Configuration, PowerShell, PowerShell Summit Tags DSC, PowerShell, Video

Video: Writing Award Winning PowerShell Functions and Script Modules

Mike F Robbins May 4, 2018May 4, 2018 0

Last month I presented a session on Writing Award Winning PowerShell Functions and Script Modules at the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit in Seattle, Washington. The session seemed to be well received by the audience based on the feedback that I received from the attendees. The session was also completely full. I'm glad it was recorded so anyone who was unable to attend can watch it. The video from this presentation is now available. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5x0Di52QZA The Read more [...]

Categories PowerShell, PowerShell Summit Tags PowerShell, Video

PowerShell Core 6: ValidatePattern Custom Error Messages

Mike F Robbins May 3, 2018May 2, 2018 0

Last week, I received a comment on my previous blog article from fellow Microsoft MVP Joel Bennett which referenced using an ErrorMessage parameter similar to how ValidatePattern works in PowerShell Core version 6. I knew I'd seen some discussion about this on GitHub, but I wasn't aware that it had made it into the production release. Joel's message is shown in the following image. I had to figure out how to use custom error messages with ValidatePattern. After all, that was the whole Read more [...]

Categories PowerShell, PowerShell Core Tags PowerShell, PowerShell Core

Simplifying Parameter Validation in PowerShell with Private Functions

Mike F Robbins April 26, 2018April 25, 2018 3

In my previous blog article, I described how to move code from ValidateScript to a private function for parameter validation in PowerShell. This all came about from a question I received in one of my sessions at the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit a couple of weeks ago. I enjoy following up with attendees of my presentations when they have questions so I sent a message and a link to my previous blog article to the person who asked if that was possible. They responded by asking if it was possible Read more [...]

Categories PowerShell Tags PowerShell

Moving Parameter Validation in PowerShell to Private Functions

Mike F Robbins April 19, 2018April 18, 2018 3

While presenting one of my presentations at the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit last week, I demonstrated why you wouldn't want to use ValidatePattern for parameter validation because of the useless error message that it returns when the input doesn't match the regular expression that's being used for validation.

function Test-ValidatePattern {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param (
        [ValidatePattern('^(?!^(PRN|AUX|CLOCK\$|NUL|CON|COM\d|LPT\d|\..*)(\..+)?$)[^\x00-\x1f\\?*:\"";|/]+$')]
        [string]$FileName
    )
    Write-Output $FileName
}

function Test-ValidatePattern {

[CmdletBinding()]

param (

[ValidatePattern('^(?!^(PRN|AUX|CLOCK\$|NUL|CON|COM\d|LPT\d|\..*)(\..+)?$)[^\x00-\x1f\\?*:\"";|/]+$')]

[string]$FileName

)

Write-Output $FileName

}

I then demonstrated how ValidateScript could be used to build a better ValidatePattern. I have an older blog article that details this process if Read more [...]

Categories PowerShell Tags PowerShell

Remotely Uninstall ESET Antivirus with PowerShell

Mike F Robbins March 1, 2018March 1, 2018 0

Recently, one of the companies that I provide support for switched from using ESET to a new antivirus vendor. The problem is that all of their servers had both ESET File Security and the ESET Remote Administrator Agent installed which needed to be uninstalled before installing the new antivirus agent. I determined that the following commands could be used to uninstall the applications.

#Uninstall Eset Remote Administrator Agent
sc.exe delete eraagentsvc
msiexec.exe /qn /x {41F12F70-5FA9-43F5-94F4-53B54EB4EEC4}
#Uninstall Eset File Security
msiexec.exe /qn /x {22ED011A-E075-4D3D-AE41-E00F4372470A}

#Uninstall Eset Remote Administrator Agent

sc.exe delete eraagentsvc

msiexec.exe /qn /x {41F12F70-5FA9-43F5-94F4-53B54EB4EEC4}

#Uninstall Eset File Security

msiexec.exe /qn /x {22ED011A-E075-4D3D-AE41-E00F4372470A}

Running msiexec.exe /? shows the available options. Based on this information, Read more [...]

Categories PowerShell Tags PowerShell

Adding Multiple Parameter Sets to a PowerShell Function

Mike F Robbins February 22, 2018February 22, 2018 3

Sometimes you need to add more than one parameter set to a function you're creating. If that's not something you're familiar with, it can be a little confusing at first. In the following example, I want to either specify the Name or Module parameter, but not both at the same time. I also want the Path parameter to be available when using either of the parameter sets.

function Test-MrMultiParamSet {
    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParameterSetName='Name')]
    param (
        [Parameter(Mandatory,
                   ParameterSetName='Name')]
        [string[]]$Name,
        [Parameter(Mandatory,
                   ParameterSetName='Module')]
        [string[]]$Module,
        [string]$Path
    )
    $PSCmdlet.ParameterSetName
}

function Test-MrMultiParamSet {

[CmdletBinding(DefaultParameterSetName='Name')]

param (

[Parameter(Mandatory,

ParameterSetName='Name')]

[string[]]$Name,

[Parameter(Mandatory,

ParameterSetName='Module')]

[string[]]$Module,

[string]$Path

)

$PSCmdlet.ParameterSetName

}

Taking a look at the syntax shows the function shown in the previous example does indeed have two Read more [...]

Categories PowerShell Tags PowerShell

Using Plaster to create a PowerShell Script Module template

Mike F Robbins February 15, 2018February 16, 2018 1

I have a function in my MrToolkit module named New-MrScriptModule that creates the scaffolding for a new PowerShell script module. It creates a PSM1 file and a module manifest (PSD1 file) along with the folder structure for a script module. To reduce the learning curve of Plaster as much as possible, I'm simply going to replace that existing functionality with Plaster in this blog article. Then moving forward, I'll add additional functionality. For those of you who aren't familiar with Plaster, Read more [...]

Categories Plaster, PowerShell Tags Plaster, PowerShell

Temporarily Disable the Azure AD Connect Accidental Deletion Protection Feature with PowerShell

Mike F Robbins February 8, 2018February 8, 2018 1

You've implemented Azure AD Connect to synchronize accounts in your on-premises Active Directory environment to Azure AD. If you took the defaults while running the setup wizard for Azure AD Connect, then everything in your Active Directory environment is synchronized. If you decided to filter the synchronization later to only specific OU's (Organizational Units) in your Active Directory environment, you could run into a scenario where the number of deletions exceeds the default threshold of 500 Read more [...]

Categories Azure, Office 365, PowerShell Tags Azure, Office 365, PowerShell

The PowerShell Iron Scripter: My solution to prequel puzzle 3

Mike F Robbins February 3, 2018February 4, 2018 1

I've been working through the Iron Scripter 2018 prequel puzzles which can be found on PowerShell.org's website. In puzzle 3, you're asked to create a "reusable PowerShell artifact". To me, that almost always means a PowerShell function. One requirement is to pull information from the PowerShell.org RSS feed. Invoke-RestMethod which was introduced in PowerShell version 3.0 is the easiest way to accomplish that task. You're also asked to display the returned information in a way that allows the Read more [...]

Categories PowerShell, Scripting Games Tags PowerShell, Scripting Games

Help in PowerShell Core is independent of help in Windows PowerShell

Mike F Robbins January 27, 2018January 27, 2018 0

You've decided to install PowerShell Core on your Windows system. First of all, keep in mind that PowerShell Core version 6.0 is not an upgrade or replacement to Windows PowerShell version 5.1. It installs side by side on Windows systems. Being aware of this makes what is shown in this blog article make more sense, otherwise it can be confusing. Based on the response to a tweet of mine from Don Jones, it appears that I’m not the only one who thought PowerShell Core should have been version 1.0 Read more [...]

Categories PowerShell, PowerShell Core Tags PowerShell, PowerShell Core

The PowerShell Iron Scripter: My solution to prequel puzzle 2

Mike F Robbins January 26, 2018January 26, 2018 0

As I mentioned in my previous blog article, each week leading up to the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2018, PowerShell.org will be posting an iron scripter prequel puzzle on their website. As their website states, think of the iron scripter as the successor to the scripting games. If you haven't done so already, I recommend reading my solution to the Iron Scripter prequel puzzle 1 because some things are glossed over in this blog article that were covered in detail in that previous one. Prequel Read more [...]

Categories PowerShell, Scripting Games Tags PowerShell