In this post I elaborate the steps that I went through to build the function to extract users into alphabetical order. I talk about the problems I face and how I resolved them.
I also post snippets of my code that I used so that new people can see how I wrote it.
I’m hoping that this help the new people that are out there.
Biggest tip in the post is what the secret sauce is on how to pass results from one cmdlet to another. As always always pleased to know people’s thoughts.
Link here.
I thought I would post my learning experiences as a person that has very little programming background. Don did say in one of the TechEd’s a few years ago that even a beginner could share their experiences with others. So I thought that I should contribute with the approach that I use to write my scripts so that other people starting to begin their Powershell adventure could benefit.
The scenario in this case is to do with three Active Directory security groups and synchronizing with a master Active Directory security group.
Link to blog post here.
Are you intimidated by scripting? Does PowerShell seem too much like programming to you? You aren’t a developer, why should you learn this mumbo jumbo?
It turns out, PowerShell is quite easy to get started with. Can you run ipconfig? Do you know how to give someone instructions? You could probably pick up the PowerShell basics in a month of lunches or so.
Don’t believe me? I spent a few minutes to compare a simple task in four languages. PowerShell is a single, easy to understand command. Python is two lines and starts to include some syntax like .().
We won’t even look at the C example here, but check out this C# code that simply reads and prints out the content of a file:
Here’s a sort of last call: Registration ends on March 1st, 2016, giving you just about ten days from today (Feb 18th). Additionally, we’ve got just around 24 seats remaining. About 5 of those are available as 3-day seats, and about 19 as 4-day seats. We’ll try and slide that availability around so you’re not forced into one or the other, but this is basically last call for attendees either way. Hope we’ll see you there!
There is a lot of documentation out there for interacting with Microsoft Office including Outlook, Excel, Word, etc with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). A lot of time you may only be able to find VBA examples. VBA’s require template files to be sent to the desktop and are a real hassle when trying to automate across multiple machines.
There are not many A to B examples of translating VBA to PowerShell so I took a problem I had solved in the past and presented the before and after. Hopefully it will provide enough information to allow others to convert VBA code into PowerShell for their scenarios.
You can check out the full article on PowerShellBlogger.com.
So, we’re already doing some planning for the 2017, 2018, and 2019 events. Because, you know. We do that around here ;).
One thing we’re considering is an option to lock-in venue pricing for that three-year period, helping to ensure we can keep our pricing at around $950 for a 3-day event. Doing so requires a hotel room block lock-in as well. On the plus side, that’ll lock in hotel pricing for 3 years too, which is great in terms of affordability and predictability. It’s scary, because we’re committing to paying for those rooms whether people sleep in ’em or not. Another upside is bringing all or most attendees together into one hotel, along with our speakers.
So what we’re considering is opening 2017 registration by only offering packages of either 3 or 4 days (it’ll be your pick) which are _inclusive of your hotel room. _This would be at a Marriott property, and we could provide receipts/invoices that showed the conference/travel expense breakout, if you needed. So up front, you’d only be able to buy that complete package. The package would also likely include something like a Sunday night meet ’n’ greet at the hotel - again, only open to people staying there.
Closer to the event, say in the 60 days before, we’d open registration to ticket-only sales, for however many seats we had remaining.
This is obviously an unabashed attempt to reduce risk by “forcing” people into the hotel package. Realizing that some people might not be able to book “inclusive” packages due to company policies, we’d try to also offer an option where you could buy just a ticket early-on, but were required to book your room in our block. Honestly, this is all about making sure we fill the block.
Our feeling is that a 3-day package would be around $1500 including hotel (3 nights), and you’d have the option of booking on additional nights if you wanted to. it’d be about $2300 for a 4-day/4-night package, if we do the pre-con day again (which is likely as it’s been our most popular option for 2016).
Another advantage of having our rates and dates locked in so far out is that we could let attendees put down a (refundable) deposit for 2017, 2018, and/or 2019 - locking in your seat before registration even opens, so you don’t have to worry about hitting the website at midnight sharp the day sales open ;). Now that we’re a nonprofit, collecting that in advance is much more do-able.
Anyway… we’d like some input from the community. Take a quick, one-question poll to tell us what you think.
Although we have a couple of puzzles queued up, we’ll be taking a brief break for the month of February 2016. So, no puzzle this month!
However, **we are in need of puzzles, including sample solutions and explanations. **This is a community effort, so if you’ve never contributed - now’s a great time to start! Drop an email to admin@ this domain. Include a ZIP file with your puzzle, solution, and explanation - all in plain-text files, please. You can include screen shots, as needed, as PNG files.
We’re also in need of a Games Master, who can collect monthly puzzles, queue them up for publishing, and scan reader submissions for noteworthy entries. Drop an e-mail if you’re interested.
Belong to a user group? Why not spend some time in your next meeting coming up with a puzzle or two that your group can submit? Make them easy or tricky, fun or devilish - it’s up to you. A user group could also collectively take on the Games Master role, giving you an important activity (reviewing entries and queuing them for publishing) at each monthly group meeting.
Become a contributor, and help keep this highly visible part of the PowerShell community up and running!
Join the Mississippi PowerShell User Group virtually on Tuesday, February 9th 2016 at 8:30pm Central Time when Ryan Yates will be presenting an “Intro session to Teaching the IT Pro how to Dev with ISE, Git, Pester & OneDrive”.
With the amount of additional technologies needed to optimise the efficency of writing PowerShell this can seem very overwelming to someone new to PowerShell and could even put them completely off following an efficency optimised script creation workflow. So in this session I will be Demoing a way of working that can help users progress into Test Driven Development with the Help of a module that adds additional functionality to PowerShell ISE to make this easier to work with.
Visit the Mississippi PowerShell User Group website to learn more about Ryan and to find out more details about this month’s meeting.
The Mississippi PowerShell User Group Meetings are held online (via Skype for Business) on the second Tuesday of each month at 8:30pm Central Time and are free to attend. The system requirements to attend these online meetings can be found on the MSPSUG website under the “Attendee Info” section.
Register via EventBrite to receive the URL for this meeting.
Note: It is not necessary to live in Mississippi or join our user group to attend our meetings or present a session for our user group.
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The previous article in this series covered the release of the Microsoft Azure Automation Graphical Authoring SDK, and began to outline some of the classes used and, where possible, the visible elements they relate to in the Azure portal itself.
This second part of the series focuses on probably the most time consuming and challenging part of scripting these runbooks, those to do with Activities.
You can read the full article at www.powershell.amsterdam
Ever wonder just what the heck the Microsoft PowerShell team was thinking? Come find out!
Keith Bankston is the senior program manager for PowerShell. Mark Gray is the senior program manager for DSC. Michael Greene is the program manager responsible for understanding customer feedback and getting it into PowerShell.
Join us for a panel discussion where they will answer all of our questions about PowerShell and we in turn will answer their questions about how we use PowerShell and how we would like to use it in the future.
Target North Campus
7300 Oak Grove Parkway
Brooklyn Park, MN
This is a secure facility. RSVP with full name is required. If you do not use your full name on meetup, please email us your full name. Park in the guest lot to the west of the complex. Check in with security with photo ID. You will be escorted to the meeting room.
Food and networking begin at 4:30. The main meeting will run from 5 to 7.
