Articles Tagged “Automation”
21 articles tagged “Automation”, newest first.
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Automating PC Provisioning With winget + PowerShell — Making the Runbook Executable
Make new-hire PC setup reproducible: winget installs and export/import, declarative WinGet Configuration, the settings PowerShell fills in, and unattended-ru...
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Distributing and Updating PowerShell Modules In-House — PSResourceGet and an Internal Repository
How to move on from copying and reusing ps1 files in a shared folder. Covers how to write a module manifest, versioning, building an internal repository with...
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Integrating With REST APIs From PowerShell — Invoke-RestMethod in Practice
A practical guide to calling in-house and SaaS REST APIs from PowerShell: passing authentication headers, avoiding mojibake in non-ASCII JSON, handling 4xx/5...
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Where to Look When a PowerShell Script Is Slow — Arrays, Pipelines and Matching
The classic causes of slow PowerShell scripts, laid out. Why += on an array is O(n^2), the difference between the pipeline and foreach, turning matching into...
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Stop Using Write-Host — PowerShell Output Streams and Log Design
How to choose between PowerShell's six output streams, the problems with Write-Host and where it genuinely belongs, why function return values get polluted, ...
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An Introduction to Microsoft Graph PowerShell — Running Microsoft 365 After the Retirement of AzureAD and MSOnline
A practical guide to migrating Microsoft 365 operations to Microsoft Graph PowerShell now that the AzureAD and MSOnline modules have been retired: connecting...
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Parallel Processing in PowerShell — Choosing Between ForEach-Object -Parallel and Jobs
A practical rundown of the differences between ForEach-Object -Parallel, Start-ThreadJob and Start-Job and when to use each, $using: and thread safety, how t...
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Calling External EXEs Correctly from PowerShell — The Pitfalls of Argument Quoting, Exit Codes, and Mojibake
Call robocopy or an in-house EXE from PowerShell and the arguments break, the exit code is unavailable, and the output turns into mojibake. A practical rundo...
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Calling COM and .NET from PowerShell — Widening What Your Scripts Can Reach
A practical guide to calling .NET classes from PowerShell, embedding C# and Win32 APIs with Add-Type, driving COM, cleaning up leftover Excel processes, why ...
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Handling Credentials Safely in PowerShell — Banishing Plaintext Passwords from Your Scripts
A practical walkthrough of moving plaintext passwords out of PowerShell scripts and into safe storage: what SecureString really is and where it stops, how Ex...
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Parameter Design and Modularization for PowerShell Scripts — From a Script That Works to a Script You Can Hand Over
A step-by-step procedure for raising a PowerShell script to a quality you can hand to someone else. Covers the param block and [CmdletBinding()], input valid...
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An Introduction to PowerShell Remoting (WinRM) — Managing Multiple Windows Machines at Once
An introduction to managing multiple Windows machines at once with PowerShell Remoting (WinRM). Covers how it works and ports 5985/5986, what Enable-PSRemoti...
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The Differences Between Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7 — A Practical Guide to Migrating In-House Scripts
The relationship between Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7 (side-by-side coexistence and pwsh.exe), Microsoft's official position that 5.1 gets no new ...
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Automating Excel and CSV Work with PowerShell — Practical Recipes for Aggregation, Reconciliation, and Report Output
Practical recipes for automating CSV aggregation, reconciliation, and Excel report output with PowerShell. Covers the default encodings of Import-Csv/Export-...
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PowerShell Error Handling and Retry Design — From the try/catch Trap to Exit Codes and Retry Best Practices
A practical rundown of PowerShell error handling: the difference between terminating and non-terminating errors, the -ErrorAction Stop pattern for the try/ca...
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PowerShell Execution Policy and Script Signing — A Practical Guide to Graduating From "Papering Over It With Bypass"
PowerShell's execution policy is "a safety feature, not a security boundary." This article covers the differences between policies like RemoteSigned, scope p...
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How to Run PowerShell from C# (CSharp) and Receive the Results as Objects
How to launch PowerShell from C# and receive results as PSObject rather than strings — a practical walkthrough of the PowerShell SDK, AddCommand, AddParamete...
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Testing PowerShell with Pester — A Practical Approach to Making Operations Scripts Harder to Break
A practical walkthrough of testing PowerShell scripts with Pester v5 — safely covering date handling, file operations, deletion logic, mocking, and CI execut...
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Practical PowerShell Command Recipes — Growing the Small Tools You Use Every Day
A practical roundup of PowerShell commands for everyday work, covering where to use Measure-Object, Group-Object, Select-String, Compare-Object, Tee-Object, ...
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Applied PowerShell Scripting — Safely Automating Log Investigation, Archiving, and Reporting
Practical steps for safely automating log investigation, CSV reporting, archiving old logs, keeping audit trails, and Task Scheduler execution with PowerShel...
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PowerShell Command Basics — The Operations to Learn First and How to Use Them Safely
A guide for PowerShell beginners who need to get real work done: how to find cmdlets, the pipeline, file operations, CSV processing, execution policy, and th...