{"id":400,"date":"2014-11-05T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2014\/11\/05\/remotely-run-a-powershell-workflow\/"},"modified":"2014-11-05T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T00:01:00","slug":"remotely-run-a-powershell-workflow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/remotely-run-a-powershell-workflow\/","title":{"rendered":"Remotely Run a PowerShell Workflow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/b>: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about running a Windows PowerShell workflow on a remote computer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. This morning it is beautiful outside. I am sitting on the porch sipping a cup of English Breakfast tea. I made a pot this morning, and I added some orange peel, Meyer lemon, and a bit of hibiscus flower to give it a nice tangy flavor.<\/p>\n

The Scripting Wife is still at the MVP Summit in Seattle, so I had to head to a local bakery to score some scones for breakfast. I found some really nice cinnamon scones, but they also had cinnamon sugar drizzled over the top—so I had to scratch that junk off. But after I had groomed the scone, it went well with the tea.<\/p>\n

Speaking of grooming stuff…<\/p>\n

One of the cool things about running a Windows PowerShell workflow through a remote server is that I can access modules that may not be available to my client machine. I can also employ alternate credentials.<\/p>\n

In my example today, there are actually four computers. The client machine is C1 and it is the computer from where I run the workflow. I target the domain controller, DC1, to be my workflow server. I do this by creating a PS Workflow Session on the target machine. This is really easy. Because I want to specify alternate credentials when I create the workflow session, I use the –Credential<\/b> parameter in my command. I store the resultant session in a variable that I call $wfs<\/b>. Here is the line of script:<\/p>\n

$wfs = New-PSWorkflowSession -ComputerName DC1 -Credential Nwtraders\\administrator<\/p>\n

The domain controller, DC1, is the workflow server. It is the server that uses Windows PowerShell workflow to run commands on remote servers.<\/p>\n

I use the Invoke-Command<\/b> cmdlet, and I specify the session I just created. In my script block, I import two modules. I created the first one yesterday (Workflow-Install-Uninstall.psm1 module). It resides on a server as a shared resource, and therefore, it is easily accessible. When I call Import-Module<\/b>, I specify the full path to the module.<\/p>\n

The second module is ActiveDirectory<\/b>, and I do not need to import because it will automatically load when I call Get-ADComputer<\/b>. But because I am loading modules, I may as well load this one. Here is the script:<\/p>\n

Invoke-Command -Session $wfs -ScriptBlock {<\/p>\n

  Import-Module \\\\dc1\\Share\\PoshModules\\Workflow-Install-Uninstall-ISE.psm1 -verbose<\/p>\n

  Import-module ActiveDirectory}<\/p>\n

The two target servers are S1 and S2, but I do not specify the computer names directly. Instead, I find the computer names by using the Get-ADComputer<\/b> cmdlet from the ActiveDirectory<\/b> module. It is more efficient to obtain computer names from Active Directory, because the list is always up-to-date, and it avoids a lot of typing.<\/p>\n

Because the servers begin with the letter “S” and are followed by a number, I use a regular expression for a pattern filter. I do this by piping all returned computer objects to the Where-Object<\/b> command, and as shown here, I store the resultant matches in the $cn<\/b> variable:<\/p>\n

$cn = Get-ADComputer -Filter * |<\/p>\n

          Where Name -match 'S[0-9]'<\/p>\n

The last thing I need to do is to call the specific workflow from the module I loaded earlier. That script is shown here:<\/p>\n

Invoke-Command -Session $wfs {UnInstall-ISE -pscomputername $using:cn.name -AsJob}<\/p>\n

For the computer names, I need to select the Name<\/b> <\/i>property from the computer objects I stored in the $cn<\/b> variable. The –pscomputername<\/b> parameter is an automatic parameter that appears in workflow commands.<\/p>\n

Because I retrieve the computer names from the DC1 computer, they are local objects. To bring the local objects into the work flow, I need to use the $using<\/b> directive. The –AsJob<\/b> parameter means that I will create a Windows PowerShell job, and therefore, I can manage the process with the Job<\/b> cmdlets.<\/p>\n

Here is the basic drawing for my example today:<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is he complete script for today’s example:<\/p>\n

$wfs = New-PSWorkflowSession -ComputerName DC1 -Credential Nwtraders\\administrator<\/p>\n

Invoke-Command -Session $wfs -ScriptBlock {<\/p>\n

  Import-Module \\\\dc1\\Share\\PoshModules\\Workflow-Install-Uninstall-ISE.psm1 -verbose<\/p>\n

  Import-module ActiveDirectory}<\/p>\n

    $cn = Get-ADComputer -Filter * |<\/p>\n

          Where Name -match 'S[0-9]'<\/p>\n

Invoke-Command -Session $wfs {UnInstall-ISE -pscomputername $using:cn.name -AsJob}<\/p>\n

That is all there is to using Windows PowerShell to remotely run a workflow. Workflow Week will continue tomorrow when I will talk about more cool stuff.<\/p>\n

I invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n

Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/b> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about running a Windows PowerShell workflow on a remote computer. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. This morning it is beautiful outside. I am sitting on the porch sipping a cup of English Breakfast tea. I made a pot this morning, and I added some orange peel, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,4,45,382],"class_list":["post-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-scripting-guy","tag-scripting-techniques","tag-windows-powershell","tag-workflow"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about running a Windows PowerShell workflow on a remote computer. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. This morning it is beautiful outside. I am sitting on the porch sipping a cup of English Breakfast tea. I made a pot this morning, and I added some orange peel, […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}