Poshoholic

Today I am happy to announce that PowerGUI Pro  and PowerGUI 2.3 are now available.  This is a really exciting release for all PowerGUI users because there are a lot of cool new features in this release.

For PowerGUI Pro customers, we’ve spent quite a bit of time on MobileShell and made the following enhancements:

• More mobile device support!
  MobileShell now supports iPhone 3G, 3GS, and 4G, iPad, BlackBerry OS 5.0 and 6.0, Android OS 2.1 and 2.2, and even Windows Phone 7 OS devices!
• Improved user experience for MobileShell on smartphones!
  Since smartphones have limited real estate for apps, we have redesigned MobileShell to better fit your smartphone device.  Now when you log in you will see your favourite scripts first, front and center, and optionally you can go to another tab if you want to do some ad hoc scripting.  If you are using an iPhone and prefer the old UI, you can specifically use that UI but the new UI is highly recommended for smartphone devices.  Larger devices such as desktop browsers and the iPad still use the old UI since they have more real estate to work with.
• Improved favourite script management for MobileShell admins!
  Now admins can preconfigure the default favourites that are assigned to users when they first log on to MobileShell.  This makes it easier for you to set up the default commands you want available for your team once and then when they log in for the first time they will get assigned those commands automatically.
• Role-based assignment of MobileShell commands!
  Admins can now associate modules with Active Directory users and groups so that when a user logs on to MobileShell, all public commands in any module associated with their user account or with a group they are a member of are automatically made available to them as favourites.  This allows you to manage your MobileShell commands in modules using the PowerGUI Script Editor, and whenever you publish a new version your MobileShell users will automatically have the commands from that version available on their handheld device when they log on!

We didn’t forget the freeware community either!  This release also includes the following features for both PowerGUI Pro and PowerGUI (freeware):

• Virtualization support in PowerGUI!
  With version 2.3, the VMware PowerPack is now available as a core PowerPack included in the PowerGUI Admin Console.  This PowerPack is a fantastic way to manage your virtualization infrastructure.  If you want an example of how this might make a difference for you, have a quick look at this blog post.
• HTML Reporting support in PowerGUI!
  We have had an Advanced Reporting PowerPack available for download from PowerGUI.org for a while now.  That PowerPack has recently been renamed the HTML Reporting PowerPack, and it now comes with PowerGUI.  This PowerPack allows you to generate HTML reports with features such as indenting, grouping, collapsible sections, and support for list or tabular format for any data you have in front of you in the PowerGUI Admin Console grid.  Just click on the “Create report…” action, configure the report you want to generate, and it will handle the rest for you!
• Enter-PSSession and Exit-PSSession support!
  You asked, we answered.  Now you can use Enter-PSSession and Exit-PSSession from within the PowerGUI Script Editor to manage remote machines as if you were working on them locally.
• Greatly improved snippet support!
  This one is a personal favourite of mine.  Snippets are a great way to create a lot of useful PowerShell functionality really quickly.  You just insert the snippet you want, fill in the input fields, and you’re done!  We have had this for a while, and now we have added more features to this support including:

  a) Support for user defined snippets!  If you have snippets you want to use in PowerGUI, you no longer have to have admin access to put them in the snippets subdirectory under the PowerGUI installation folder.  Instead, you can put them into your Documents\WindowsPowerShell\snippets folder and they will automatically be picked up by the PowerGUI Script Editor.  Even better still, if you have a snippet that comes with PowerGUI that you want to override, you simply use the same relative path in the snippets folder in your profile and your snippet will be used in place of the one that comes with PowerGUI!

  b) Support for snippets in modules!  If you import a module, and if that module has a snippets subfolder, then PowerGUI will recognize those snippets and they will be available in the Script Editor automatically.  This allows module authors to include snippets as part of their offering so that users can learn how to use the module commands much more easily!  If you author a module and share it with others, I strongly encourage that you add snippets to that module.  Your module users will thank you for it!

  c) Support for using snippets from any path on your system!  PowerGUI now uses a PGSnippetPath environment variable to decide where to look for snippets, allowing you to reference snippets from any path you include as part of that environment variable!

  Can you tell I love the snippet features?

Of course we also included some bug fixes as usual.  One worth highlighting is that the PowerGUI Script Editor can now be used to debug files that are in a path containing paired square brackets.  We have had several customers let us know that they use these types of paths and that our new debugger wouldn’t stop on breakpoints for them, and this issue is now fixed.

This is a totally awesome release, and I’m really happy that I can finally share it with you!  If you are already a PowerGUI Pro or PowerGUI user, you’ll probably notice the auto-update notify you of the new release when you start it up very soon.  If you don’t want to wait though, you can always force PowerGUI to check for updates using the “Check for Updates” menu item in the help menu, or you can update it manually by downloading it from Quest SupportLink if you use PowerGUI Pro or from the PowerGUI.org download page if you use the freeware version.

I will be recording screencasts for some of these specific features very soon so that you can see how they work first hand, but don’t hesitate to try them out in the meantime and ask questions if you have any.  Also please share any feedback you have for this release, I’d love to hear what you think of it and what you would like to see in future releases!

As always, thanks for your continued support, PowerGUI would not be what it is if we didn’t have such a great community!

Happy scripting!

Kirk out.

With the PowerGUI Challenge contest only a few weeks away, you may be wondering where you can go to learn more about PowerGUI in preparation for the contest.  Or maybe you’re looking for inspiration for the kinds of things you can do by using PowerShell with PowerGUI so that you can plan an entry for the contest.  To help provide some assistance with this, a few minutes ago I just published the first release of the new PowerGUI Online Add-on.  This Add-on adds a new PowerGUI Online menu to your Script Editor that provides you with fast access to dozens of useful resources for PowerGUI.  It includes links to many online resources, including:

• Contest resources
• Discussion forums
• Learning center
• PowerPack categories
• Script Editor Add-ons
• PowerGUI Team members on Twitter
• Developer resources (PowerGUI VSX)
• The PowerGUI channel on YouTube
• Request a script
• and more!

There are a lot of online resources available to help you get the most out of PowerShell and PowerGUI, and this Add-on pulls them all together into one organized menu.

One thing I really like about this Add-on is that when you click on any of the items in this menu, if you are running the PowerGUI Script Editor in STA mode (which is the default) the associated web page will be loaded right in the Script Editor!  Here’s a screenshot showing the Add-on in action with the embedded web browser appearing as another tab in the Script Editor:

If you are not running in STA mode (which means you are running in MTA mode), then the web pages associated with the PowerGUI Online menu items will load in your default web browser when clicked on.

This is the first release of this Add-on, so please let us know what you think.  It’s really easy.  Just click on the Feedback menu item in the new PowerGUI Online menu and leave us a note on our forums.

Kirk out.

P.S. Keep watching this blog for more useful content related to the PowerGUI Challenge contest that is coming soon.

Today I have the pleasure of sharing another PowerGUI Script Editor Add-on with you that I recently finished and that I personally find extremely useful.  This Add-on is all about defining PowerShell modules.  It’s called the Module Management Add-on, and it adds the following commands to the PowerGUI Script Editor menu and toolbars:

• New Module – facilitates the creation of brand new modules from scratch by creating the module folder as well as the script module (psm1) file and the module manifest (psd1) file that defines the module, pre-populating as many relevant details in the manifest as possible such as the module name, description and GUID, the copyright date, your name, your company name, etc. in the appropriate places.
• New Module Manifest – facilitates the creation of manifest files for existing modules, pre-populating as many relevant details in the manifest as possible such as the module name, description and GUID, the copyright date, your name, your company name, and the complete listing of all files included in the module.
• Convert to Module – facilitates creating a new module from an entire script file or from the selected portion of a script file (this also generates the manifest and it is a really easy way to convert from PowerShell 1.0-style ps1 files that act as a function library but cannot be unloaded to PowerShell 2.0 modules that can be loaded and unloaded as needed).

Here’s a screenshot showing what the File menu looks like after you have installed this Add-on:

Also, this Add-on adds some of the more frequently used commands to the toolbar:

When you want to create a new module, you can either use the menu item or the toolbar button to create the new module, or simply press Ctrl+Shift+M.  This displays the following dialog:

The author and company name are pulled directly from your Windows Registry, and the description and version fields are assigned generic default values.  You can change these values however you like for your module, and the Add-on will remember the values (aside from name) for the next time you use this command.  Also, you can use this dialog to create child modules by specifying a name with backslashes in it.  The module that is generated will be placed in the WindowsPowerShell\Modules folder under your user Documents folder, with all files in a folder for the module.  As soon as you enter a name and then click on OK, the module will be created and both the script module (psm1) file and the manifest (psd1) file will open in the Script Editor for editing, allowing you to add them to source control right away if you are using PowerGUI Pro with the source control feature.  As an option, you can use this dialog to create a new module without a manifest by simply clearing all fields except for the Name field.

There may be cases where you already have a module that you have created, and you want to create a manifest for that module.  Or perhaps you have a module you are already working with and you want to create additional manifests for that module (this allows users to work with an entire module or only portions of that module).  In these cases, you can use the menu item to create the new manifest, or you can simply press Ctrl+Shift+N.  This displays the following dialog:

Look familiar?  It should.  Creating a module manifest for an existing module is very similar to creating a new module because most of the details you provide in this dialog are stored in the module manifest.  Just like when you create modules, you can modify these details that are provided by default and you can assign a name (with an optional relative path) for the module for which you are creating a manifest.  Once the manifest is created, the Script Editor will open the manifest file automatically.

The other useful feature included in version 1.0 of the Module Management Add-on is the Convert to Module command.  This can be invoked through the File menu or the toolbar button as well.  You can either convert an entire file to a module or, if you have any text selected in the file, only the selected text will be used in the new module.  Note that the original file and its contents are left intact during the conversion process.  To perform the conversion, simply open the file you want to use for the conversion and select the text you want to use as the base for your module or don’t select anything if you want to convert the entire file.  Then click on the Convert to Module command in the File menu or on the toolbar, and you will be presented with the following dialog:

Once more, this should look familiar.  All operations for creating modules and manifest accept the same input values because they are all used in each operation.  You simply provide the necessary details, or remove all fields except for the module name if you don’t want to use a manifest, and then click on OK for the module to be created and the appropriate files to be opened in the Script Editor for you.

These are all very useful features to have at hand, whether you are working on new modules in PowerShell 2.0 or creating PowerShell 2.0 modules from function libraries (ps1 files) that you created in PowerShell 1.0.

If this Add-on interests you, simply go to the Module Management Add-on page and follow the installation instructions provided there.

As with many other Add-ons I have created, this is an early version of the Add-on so I would love to get your feedback on it. Do you find it useful as is?  How you would like to see it improved in a future release?  Would you like to see a Module menu and/or toolbar with menu items to add functions and aliases?  What else would you like to see for improved module management?  I have ideas, but I don’t want to influence your feedback too much, so I’ll keep my ideas to myself and let you speak up about what else you would like to see in this Add-on or others.

As always, thanks for reading!

Kirk out.

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Last Monday while I was down at Tech·Ed we quietly released PowerGUI 2.1 on our website.  I’ve been looking forward to us getting this release out the door for quite a while because there are some really cool features in the release that I wanted to share with you (some of which I’ve been hinting about on my blog recently), so it was very exciting to see this get released.  Since it happened at Tech·Ed though, my schedule was completely booked and I just couldn’t find a minute to start blogging about the release.  Now that I’m back home and fully recovered from a week packed with all sorts of cool technology, I can catch up and share this release with the rest of you.

Aside from the great performance improvements that were made in the Script Editor, not to mention the Charts and custom HTML support in the administrative console, there’s one particular feature that really grabbed my attention in this release: we now have a documented and supported SDK for the PowerGUI Script Editor!  This is great news because up to this point the only extensions that were possible were in the administrative console where you could create PowerPacks.  Now with 2.1 available anyone can create extensions for the Script Editor that add really cool functionality to it as well!

The screenshots I was blogging about a few weeks ago showed some of the Add-ons that I have been working on, and I just started publishing some of those Add-ons in the Script Editor Add-on category on PowerGUI.org.  These Add-ons are just PowerShell modules so you can see exactly how they work by opening the module files in the Script Editor.  With Add-ons, not only do you get the features that were implemented in the core product, you now get to pick and choose additional features that you want as they become available by installing Add-ons.

What sort of things can you do with Add-ons?  Well, for starters you can sign your script files:

publish scripts online:

or change your embedded PowerShell Console to blue:

If that inspires you, you can also try creating your own Add-on:

And if you want to learn more about how you can create an Add-on, there’s even a tutorial available to help get you started.

There are some other useful Add-ons available right now, and more are in development so check the Script Editor Add-on category often to see what has been recently published.

If there are Add-ons you would like to see developed but you aren’t comfortable creating them yourself, share the ideas on our forums so that others can step up and help you out (or maybe even create the Add-on for you).

The Script Editor SDK that was added to this release is brand new to the PowerGUI product and we would love to hear your feedback on it.  Please speak up and let us know what you think about the SDK, the Add-ons we have made available so far, or anything else related to PowerGUI.  We’re always listening.

Thanks and happy scripting!

Kirk out.

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