PowerShell Team
Automating the world one-liner at a time…
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PowerShell Deep Dive Registration Info & Call for Session Proposals
Here’s some more info on the 2nd PowerShell Deep Dive that will be at TEC Europe 2011 in Frankfurt on October 17 & 18. Registration Info Registration is now open for the PowerShell Deep Dive! The cheaper registration fee of 850 Euros is available until August 12. After that, registration will go up to 1000 Euros. To sign up: Event Structure We’re extending this PowerShell Deep Dive by a half day based on feedback we received after the last event. This Deep Dive will offer two full days of sessions (Monday & Tuesday), with some sort of Script Party at the end of each day. We are also doin...
PowerShell Deep Dive @ The Experts Conference Europe 2011
Based upon the excellent reviews received at the first PowerShell Deep Dive, we're pleased to announce a PowerShell Deep Dive will be coming to The Experts Conference 2011 in Germany. The PowerShell Deep Dive provides a deep technical and strategic engagement within the PowerShell Community. Attendees interact one-on-one with presenters, team members and other key members of the PowerShell Community. Deep Dive sessions take on a shorter and more technical format than the standard conference (35 minutes versus the usual 75 minutes). As with the first PowerShell Deep Dive, registration will limit the number o...
Invoke-Expression considered harmful
The PowerShell team frequently gets questions that start out “how do I get the quoting right for…” and the answer turns out to usually be – there is a simpler way – don’t use Invoke-Expression. The problem arises when trying to run some command external to PowerShell. Some common reasons people try Invoke-Expression: If you’re just running some command external to PowerShell (exe, cmd, etc.) and you’re using Invoke-Expression, you are just making things more difficult than you need to. So what’s wrong with Invoke-Expression then? If Invoke-Ex...
Download the Updated Core Help CHM
The best way to get updated help for Windows PowerShell core commands is to type "Get-Help –Online <cmdletname>," but that works only when you're online and your firewall permits Internet access. For all of those other times, there's the new Windows PowerShell 2.0 Core Help – May 2011 Update in CHM format. The newly released CHM includes Windows PowerShell Core cmdlet help, provider help, and conceptual "About" help topics as of May 1, 2011. It’s digitally signed and packaged in an executable file to ward off the meanies. You can get it from the Microsoft Download Center at http://go.micr...
PowerShell at TechEd 2011
We’re just a couple weeks away from TechEd (May 16-19) and there’s going to be a ton of great PowerShell content again this year! Kirk Munro just made a post over at Poshoholic with an easy-to-read list of all the PowerShell related sessions for the conference. Thanks to Kirk for his effort in compiling all of this in a single place. Link: http://poshoholic.com/2011/04/28/learn-more-about-powershell-at-teched-2011/ For those who will be attending, you can expect to see some of the usual suspects from the PowerShell Team and our group of MVPs. Travis Jones Windows PowerShell PM Microsoft...
Keeping Help Helpful: Use -Online and Redirectable Links
When you refer to Windows PowerShell help topics, such as in tools and blog posts, be sure to refer to the most recent version of the help topics. Few things are less helpful or more confusing than sending a reader to a topic that is missing a parameter or includes an example that doesn't work. To be sure that you're always referring to the newest help topics, refer to the online help topics in the TechNet library. The redirectable links will always be current. Even if a help topic page moves or changes, the redirectable link always connects to the newest version of the hel...
PowerShell Language now licensed under the Community Promise
The PowerShell team is excited to announce that starting today we are licensing the language specification for Windows PowerShell 2.0 under the Microsoft Community Promise. This means that now anyone can implement PowerShell on any platform they want to. We know some of our most passionate customers sometimes work on platforms that can’t run PowerShell today, so when writing this specification, we wrote it in a platform neutral manner. We hope to see implementations on all of your favorite platforms. This would benefit the industry, our partners, and our customers. We told you that you sho...
Using Get-WinEvent –FilterXml to process Windows Events
Introduction Windows Events can be extremely useful for debugging. Administrators often use events to diagnose problems in complex systems. However, Event Viewer is time-consuming and difficult to automate. Luckily, there is a simple way to fully automate the process. The FilterXml Parameter The FilterXml parameter allows you use a simple XML document to filter events quickly. You can use the "Create Custom View" and "Filter Current Log" features in Event Viewer to create a valid XML query. The exact query schema can be found here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=143685. An Example In Event Viewe...
Scaling and Queuing PowerShell Background Jobs
A couple of months ago I had asked the PowerShell MVPs for suggestions on blog topics. Karl Prosser, one of our awesome MVPs, brought up the topic of scaling and queuing background jobs. The scenario is familiar: You have a file containing a bunch of input that you want to process and you don’t want to overburden your computer by starting up hundreds of instances of PowerShell at once to process them. After playing around for about an hour on Friday afternoon, here is what I came up with… This example assumes you have a text file containing the names of many event logs and you want to get the content...