Articles Tagged “Automation”
21 articles tagged “Automation”, newest first.
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Automating PC Provisioning With winget + PowerShell — Making the Runbook Executable
How to make new-hire PC setup reproducible. Covers installing applications with winget and export/import, declarative configuration with WinGet Configuration...
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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
So that PowerShell beginners never get lost in real work, this article covers how to find cmdlets, the pipeline, file operations, CSV processing, execution p...