PowerShell 3.0 Workflows

As a system administrator, this has me really excited about automation and the next generation of Microsoft System Center products.

As a developer, this has me excited for hot-plug-and-go workflows within my app by hosting a PowerShell host... I've long wanted to use workflows within an app but was hesitant because it required coding knowledge to build new ones. This may be my way out of that problem so that admins can write their own workflows within the app but in PowerShell ...

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2012/03/17/when-windows-powershell-met-workflow.aspx

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PowerShell SupportsShouldProcess Worst & Best Practices

This has been a very big discussion within the Scripting Games 2013 community and I want to add my two cents in an official blog post.

I've left several people comments on how they might be misunderstanding how SupportsShouldProcess works, but I also realize, everyone of these individuals has given me more insight into its use and perhaps, how it should best be utilized.

For those of you that don't know, SupportsShouldProcess is a parameter on the CmdletBinding attribute you can place on your cmdlets that automatically adds the -WhatIf and -Confirm parameters. These will naturally flow into other cmdlets you use that also SupportsShouldProcess, e.g. New-Item, Move-Item.

The major discussion has been around, should you just let the other cmdlets handle the $PSCmdlet.ShouldProcess feature, and if not how should you implement it. ShouldProcess has the following definitions.
OverloadDefinitions��…

FIM 2010 R2 Self-Service Password Reset Auto-Registration

I have been working on our FIM 2010 R2 SP1 lab environment looking for ways to simplify some of the overly complicated scenarios we had to implement to workaround the limitations in FIM 2010. One of those workarounds was the auto-registration of SSPR for new employees. When we onboard a new employee, we want to create a simple SSPR for them to get their first-time password reset.

Prior to the R2 release we were using the http://fim2010client.codeplex.com/ client and PowerShell to complete the registration process on a daily schedule. I was working on converting this to use the R2 registration cmdlets and combined it with PowerShell 3.0 Workflows to get to a solution similar to this.
[CmdletBinding()] param() begin { workflow Invoke-RegisterSSPR { InlineScript { Import-Module FIM } $workflow = InlineScript { Get-FIMResource -Filter '/WorkflowDefinition[DisplayName = "Password Reset AuthN Workflow for New Employees"]' } $members …

PowerShell Error Handling Behavior Debunked

Note: I am using simple error messages as an example, please reference the best practices and guidelines I outlined on when to use custom error messages.

I have been churning in my mind for the last few days all the entries in the 2013 Scripting Games and how they handle errors, or lack thereof.

I am coming to the conclusion through some testing that the simple fact of seeing a try..catch or throw statements does not mean there is proper error handling.

I've been testing several variations and forms of error handling, so lets start with the basics.
function Test-WriteError { [CmdletBinding()] param() "Test-WriteError::ErrorActionPreference = $ErrorActionPreference"Move-Item -Path 'C:\Does\Not\Exists.log' -Destination 'C:\No\Where'"Test-WriteError::End"} Test-WriteError::ErrorActionPreference = Continue
Move-Item : Cannot find path 'C:\Does\Not\Exists.log' because it does not exist.
At line:6 char:5
+ Move-Item -Path 'C:\Does\N…

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