We use System Cetner Orchestrator with the Orchestrator Integration Pack. In this Integration Pack there is an Activity “Start Runbook”. Which worked like a charm – till now.
We use this “Start Runbook” activity to start a runbook with parameters. We can use any string parameter in any length except XML strings. If the XML Input gets too long, the call fails. (see screenshot below).
The Integration Pack is on Github, but there is no activity beside the initial upload.
Last year I found an amazing analysis of the MVP award numbers. (See here) I hope he will publish this analysis this year again.
I’d like to save the numbers, so here we go:
| Category | July 2018 | July 2019 |
| Development Technologies | 780 | 644 |
| Office Apps and Services | 383 | 491 |
| Azure | 366 | 409 |
| Data Platform | 366 | 332 |
| Cloud and DataCenter Management | 302 | 232 |
| Business Solutions | 184 | 167 |
| Windows Development | 186 | 119 |
| Enterprise Mobility | 122 | 106 |
| AI | ? | 84 |
| Windows and Devices for IT | ? | 57 |
| Office Development | ? | 47 |
So the two growing categories are Office Apps and Services and Azure.
(Data according to Patrick Guimonet and MVP Site)
Update: So there is a new site tracking MVP numbers. Have a look.
We discussed lately, that we have troubles using Microsoft Teams with multiple accounts. There is already a Uservoice filed on this.
But I also have a similar situation in Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Outlook (including additional email accounts), and Office applications that refer to various Onedrives.
So I’d like to store all these accounts on one place – preferably in the cloud. And it would be even great, to switch on and off accounts per device.
So now I’ve described my solution to this Szenario – now I’m looking for whom to tell.
Sometimes I have to flatten an PowerShell Array, since I have to have a String. How can we do this as easily as possible with PowerShell?
$a = @('Patrick','wants','a','String',';)')<br> $a -join ' 'You’ll get this output:
So it’s really easy to get a string from an Array.
This week I have been at the PowerShell Usergroup in Munich, Germany.
They wished to get information about PowerShell Profiles, so I commited a talk on PowerShell Profile. And here is the content.
There are 4 PowerShell Profiles loaded on startup of the console. But there can be some more Profiles in your environment. That is, beacause you have two PowerShell profiles per PowerShell console. So VSCode, PowerShell ISE and the PowerShell command prompt have two profiles each. One Profile is for All Users, one for the current user. Additionally you have got a PowerShell Profile for Windows PowerShell and a seperate one for PowerShell Core. So there can be some PowerShell Profiles on your computer.
Use the following command in your prefered console to get the actual profile pathes:
By the way, they are loaded in exactly this order (which makes sense).
I talked about which PowerShell Profiles exists and also, what I have in my profile as an PowerShell automator. As an automator my focus is on execution duration, so the most relevant part is the execution time in the prompt. It looks like this in my console:
There are some more featues in my PSProfile prompt, eg the color of the provider is integrated in the path, for example FileSystem and registry:
You can find my Profile on Github.
Here are some examples of profile pathes.
# PowerShell Core with VSCode
ProfilePathC:\Users\patrick\Documents\PowerShell\Microsoft.VSCode_profile.ps1
# Windows PowerShell with VSCode
ProfilePathC:\Users\patrick\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.VSCode_profile.ps1
# Windows PowerShell ProfilePath with ISE
C:\Users\patri\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShellISE_profile.ps1
# Windosw PowerShell in the Console
C:\Users\patri\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
Scripting Guy – Understanding the six PowerShell Profiles (there could be more, as you already know)
We grant access to Service Manager Serrvice Requests using AD Groups in User Roles. When a User is added to the AD Group the permissions are not updated – so they do not see the additional Service Request in the portal.
There are two things to do:
Here is the code to Recyle the App pool for the standard HTML Portal and the ITNetX Portal:
@('ItsmPortalv3Pool','SMSelfServicePortal_appPool') | % { Restart-WebAppPool $_}
Today I have been asked, what could be improved in the Azure Mobile App. Since I mainly use PowerShell, that is a bit of a challenge. In PowerShell there is no GUI – as you know. So I was thinking about ways to improve the Azure Mobile App.
I have multiple Azure AD and Live ID acounts – all can be managed in this app. And I see all subscriptions in each account. Very nice.
So my main purpose to look into the app are virtual machines. To look at the status and start or stop the machines.
So I figured out these three possibilities to improve the app:
I would find it useful, to have all subscriptions in one list – not only all subscriptions for each AAD account. So I do not have to search for a Subscription in one of my accounts.
I would prefere, to have Favourites over all subscriptions – like the recent list in Office. In the recent list in Office there are all Documents of all Microsoft accounts together in one recent-list. So I do not have to change the account and the subscription, to get to the favourites. I simply have them.
This could be an additional feature. Favourites on subscription level AND Favourites for all subscriptions.
Make the Favourites available and editable in the web browser on the Azure portal.
So these are my current suggestions to the Azure Mobile App.
