Essential PowerShell: To alias, or not to alias, that is the question

Kirk Munro15 Comments

Recently there was a discussion between community experts and a product team about a module they are working on.  The topic being discussed was cmdlet aliases: whether or not they should provide aliases for their cmdlets out of the box and if so, how they should be provided.  Aliases are great for ad-hoc PowerShell work, which is what most PowerShell users do at this point, and incredibly useful when you’re trying to put out a fire and managing your infrastructure using PowerShell.  However, there are many important things that module authors need to consider when planning aliases for their cmdlets, as follows:

1. There are many cmdlets out now, and more and more every month.  Coming up with a vsa (very short alias) that is unique is a challenge at best, and the more time goes by the more tla’s (three-letter aliases) will get used up.  The likelihood of an alias conflict is already high, and increasing all the time given the number of commands that are available both from Microsoft and from third party vendors.

2. The land grab with alias names is worse than it is with functions or cmdlets.  With functions or cmdlets, you can have multiple modules loaded with conflicting names and access either command using the fully qualified command name.  With aliases though you are not provided this same capability – there can be only one.  Aliases are simply commands set to a single value and they cannot be qualified using a module name qualifier to disambiguate if a name conflict arises.

3. Depending on how careful (or not) that developers are, it is very easy for a module author to completely take over (overwrite) an existing alias with no warning or message indicating that this has happened, resulting in potential command hijacking between module teams.  A simple call to Set-Alias does this without warning.  On the flipside, if developers don’t hijack aliases, then some of the aliases they would otherwise create may simply not be defined.

4. When aliases are hijacked, unloading a module doesn’t correct the problem because an alias that was overwritten by a module alias will simply become completely unavailable when the alias is removed as the module is unloaded.

As far as I am aware, this situation does not improve with the next version of PowerShell either, so it’s years away from getting better.

Believe it or not, even with these things in mind, I’m actually still pro aliases.  I just think that some extra care/thought needs to be put into their definition.  There is no real standard here that both satisfactorily addresses the issues identified above and that allows for consistency across companies/teams at this time.  Given that is the current state of affairs, if you are considering aliases for your module I recommend one of the following approaches:

1. [SAFEST] Rather than trying to come up with something that can be shipped despite these issues, at this time I think aliases would be best addressed in a "tips and tricks" type of blog post, proposing a short script that defines some useful aliases for the module/snapin in question in order to allow admins to be able to deal with fires quickly using ad-hoc PowerShell commands via some aliases.  Such a script should generate warnings whenever a name conflict is discovered so that users are aware when an alias either cannot be created or is overwritten.

2. [EXPERIMENTAL] Ship aliases with your module, but try to make sure they really are unique.  For example, if you’re a vendor whose company name starts with Q, you could prefix all of your aliases with "q".  This is attractive because there are no verbs that start with "q", so right from the start you’ve dramatically reduced the chance that you’ll have a conflict, setting yourselves up better to have aliases that belong to you.  Then you would only have to coordinate within your company to make sure the aliases used across teams are unique.  This isn’t foolproof though because there may be multiple products/vendors that adopt the same standard, and if the name of your company or product starts with G, the likelihood of a conflict would be much higher (the alias prefix used for "get-*" cmdlets is "g") so you may want to choose a pair of letters instead.  Regardless, you’ve likely reduced the risk, and you could generate a warning whenever you run into a conflict that prevents an alias from being created.

3. [RECOMMENDED] Lots of 1 and a little bit of 2: use unique alias names that work for your product team/company, but don’t ship them with the module.  Instead, push them out as a value add on a blog post, and see how the community responds.  At the same time work with MVPs and Microsoft to get these issues addressed such that a shorthand system for command names does work.  Some MVPs, already proposed a few things to the Microsoft PowerShell team that could help here (aliases for module names for one — think PS\gsv for a core PowerShell version of Get-Service or EX\gu for the Get-User cmdlet that comes with the Microsoft Exchange module or AD\gu for the Get-User cmdlet that comes with the Microsoft Active Directory module, and so on), but more discussions need to happen and this will take more time.

I recommend the third option because given the current issues with alias hijacking and with no support for disambiguation, it seems to be the best solution for now (from my perspective at least).  If you have come up with other alternatives that resolve these issues, please share them with the community so that this improves going forward.

Hope this helps,

Kirk out.

PowerShell MVP for 2012

Kirk Munro4 Comments

Every year around Christmas I anxiously await the New Year to see if I receive the Microsoft MVP award again that year.  Well that email came on January 1, 2012, and I’m quite thrilled about this one because it’s a milestone this time (year 5 as a PowerShell MVP).  Thanks to the community for being so great to work with, and thanks to Microsoft both for recognizing individual efforts with the MVP program and for creating such great products like Windows PowerShell!  Work has never been so much fun!

Kirk out.

PowerSE 2.5.3 is now available

Kirk Munro4 Comments

A little over a week ago we released PowerSE 2.5.3 to the web.  You can download the latest release here.  This release includes many great improvements to the PowerSE product, many of which were requested by you, so thanks for your feedback and please keep it coming!

No time limit for freeware

With this release, we’ve removed the requirement to re-download this product every 60 days.  This was our number one feature request since we made PowerSE a freeware product.  Now when you download PowerSE 2.5.3, it is truly freeware and you can use it as long as you like!

PowerVI Integration

Since PowerVI has joined the Devfarm family of products, we have now improved the integration between PowerVI and PowerSE and PowerWF. This enables easier authoring and testing of VMware automation scripts and workflows before you publish them to be integrated in the vSphere client, and it highlights one of the greatest values of the Devfarm products – the rich integration between them that make everything much easier.

Tabs to spaces support

We’ve added support for configuring how tabs are used in the PowerSE Script Editor.  If you want spaces inserted when you press the Tab key while editing scripts, all you need to do is to set $psise.Settings.AutoConvertTabsToSpaces to $true in the embedded console.  If you want the tab size to be something other than the default value of 4, you simply set $psise.Settings.TabSize to the number of spaces you want to use for tab characters.  These only need to be set once, so you can simply make the calls in the embedded console and then you’ll always have it configured that way going forward.

Enhanced history pane

The history pane in PowerSE has always been useful, but now it’s much better!  With the history pane in PowerSE 2.5.3, you can identify which commands were successful and which were not, all at a glance by looking at the icon.  You can also tell which commands were allowed to run to completion and which were cancelled.  Most importantly, you can identify the duration of any command that you run, so if you are trying to get the most performance from your scripts, this is an easy way to compare the performance for several related commands so that your scripts run as fast as they can.

Greatly improved support for international environments

In previous releases of PowerSE, there were a number of defects preventing international keyboard layouts (i.e. those other than “US English”) from working properly in the embedded console.  Those defects have been fixed, so now you can use the embedded console with international keyboards just fine.

We also added support for Unicode characters to the embedded console, making it easier for customers to get the output they expect regardless of where they happen to be.

Multi-select support in the File|Open dialog

With PowerSE 2.5.3, you can open multiple files in one folder at once by simply selecting the files you want before you click on the Open button.  This can be a big timesaver when you are working with modules containing many files!

Smarter variable Intellisense

When you enter a variable name in a script, it can be difficult to determine if you are entering the name of an existing variable or if you are creating a new variable.  Previous releases would sometimes complete a variable name incorrectly when you were in fact creating a new variable name.  This shouldn’t be a problem any longer, because we now allow you to enter new variable names and the auto-completion should only happen when you want it to happen.

Proper ps1xml file support

In PowerSE 2.5.3, if you are working with ps1xml files, you will now get proper Intellisense as well as auto-completion of xml elements as you would expect.

Fast clearing of the embedded console window

In today’s era of PowerShell, we all want to do more in less time, so much so that even typing in cls in the embedded console and pressing Enter can be cumbersome when you do it repeatedly.  PowerSE 2.5.3 allows you to clear the embedded console window at any time by simply pressing Ctrl+Del.

And more…

This is just a short list of some of the key changes we have made in this release.  There are others that I want to talk about, but I’m going to save a few for follow-up blog posts.  We’ve been spending a lot of time on PowerSE recently, and between our hard work and your great feedback, we’ve built a fantastic, best-in-class PowerShell script editor!  If you write PowerShell scripts, I encourage you to give this release a try, and be sure to let us know what you think!  Also, if you have any questions, feel free to leave me a note on my blog or pop over to www.devfarm.com and ask us directly in the chat window.  We’re always listening!

Thanks,

Kirk out.

Seasons of change: new Product Manager for PowerWF™ and PowerSE at Devfarm Software

Kirk Munro15 Comments

I always enjoy this time of year.  There is something about the transition that happens over Labour Day weekend that always gets me excited.  Maybe it’s a lingering feeling of anticipation over the new year at school or university from years gone by, a feeling that I can still appreciate these days as I watch my kids getting excited about their education and the new activities they will sign up for this fall.  Regardless, it’s always a fun time of year for me.

This year though I have some extra reasons of my own to be even more excited.  As of this morning, I am now working as Product Manager for the PowerWF and PowerSE products at Devfarm Software!  I am absolutely thrilled about this new position!  Devfarm has a great team and a great set of products, and I’m really happy to be able to help them drive those products forward.

With this news, today marks the end of a month that included some vacation time, some time to step back and refocus, and some time for reflection on what to do next.  During this time I received a ton of support from friends and followers in the PowerShell community, and for that I am very grateful.  This support helped one particular sentiment that I came across stay with me:

You know for a (while) I (wondered if) going back to the amazing experience of (PowerShell) wouldn’t be a good idea, but really now I’ve come completely around because (software can be) stressful and hard to make but ultimately what makes (it) fun is the people that you work with, and the fact that (I’m) going to be working with a lot of the old gang, with a lot of friends, and obviously making some new friends is really the point of being here, so I’m extremely thrilled.1

This really represents how I have felt since my departure from my last job as Product Manager for PowerGUI.  I really love PowerShell as a technology, but as great as that technology is, it just wouldn’t be the same without the community that surrounds it.  PowerShell is blessed to have a tremendous community, and I am very, very proud to be able to continue to participate in that same community as a Product Manager for some really cool products that use PowerShell, as a PowerShell MVP, and as a geek who fell in love with technology a long time ago.

Now that I’ve found my new direction and focus, it’s time to get down to business.  Whether you’re a current user of PowerWF or PowerSE or someone who is interested in trying PowerWF or PowerSE, I’d love to connect with you to hear what you like (or don’t like) about these products as well as what you would like to see added to them in the future.  Feel free to reach out to me at any time either in my blog comments or by using the Contact Me form on my blog.  I’m really looking forward to working with you.

Kirk out.

1 Paraphrased from Peter Jackson’s speech on the first day of filming for “The Hobbit”; his exact speech can be heard here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqzJ1LFh6x0&hd=1&t=9m15s.

One for the road: Stepping away from PowerGUI®

Kirk Munro34 Comments

Today was one of my most difficult days in my 7½+ year career at Quest Software.  The same week that I was given a performance raise (I got that email on Monday), this afternoon I got a phone call from the director over my business unit letting me know that my position has been cut effective immediately.  Part of a book balancing effort it seems –  funny (or not so much) how life works sometimes.

I’ve accomplished a lot while working at Quest, and spent a ton of professional and personal energy on the company and its products, particularly PowerGUI (far too much energy if you ask my wife, and today I must say I’m tending to agree).

Since I started working with the PowerGUI team at Quest back in 2007 (back in the version 1.0.x days) I have:

  • been awarded the Microsoft MVP award for my community support Windows PowerShell four years in a row
  • received recognition as a Quest Software expert in Windows Management (only 1% of the company employees have received this recognition)
  • provided feedback and direction over the product and its features through 3 major release cycles and many minor releases
  • supported the product and the community as a PowerPack developer, then as a PowerShell Solutions Architect, and most recently as the Product Manager (although I never could get those other positions backfilled so I ended up wearing all three hats most of the time)
  • released dozens of extensions for the product, including PowerPacks for platforms such as Active Directory, VMware, Hyper-V, and Exchange, and Add-ons such as the Script Editor Essentials Add-on or others for specific features such as script signing, transcription, the PowerShell blue console theme, and many more
  • pushed the number of commercial features in PowerGUI Pro from two when I took over as Product Manager to over six in the current version with many more on the way
  • initiated strategic partnerships with key enterprises such as NetApp and Intel and helped them create their own PowerPacks for their platforms
  • helped drive traffic to the powergui.org site through my blog and through social media as we grew the number of downloads from 100000 to over 1.2 million
  • provided feedback and direction to internal teams at Quest with PowerShell support in their products
  • successfully presented well-received PowerShell-focused sessions at many user groups and also at conferences such as Microsoft TechEd, the TEC conference, the PowerShell Deep Dive (a mini-conference in the TEC conference), and TechDays Canada
  • been elected as President for the PowerShellCommunity.org site
  • coordinated and provided direction over the first ever PowerShell Deep Dive conference

Unfortunately, most of that is now a legacy as it came to an abrupt end today.  I’m still a PowerShell MVP, and I will still be involved with the PowerShell community, however my work on PowerGUI has stopped for now.

Before I step back from this though, and before I reorganize/refocus my efforts onto more important things, I wanted to share one more new PowerGUI feature that I recently created for the community that I have spent so much time with these past 4 years.  I still have a strong affinity for PowerGUI and a lot of my heart and soul has gone into this product, and this feature is just a small example of that effort.  The new feature comes as part of the Call Stack Window add-on that I just published in the PowerGUI Add-on library.  Here’s a screenshot showing you what this add-on looks like in action:

PowerGUI Script Editor Call Stack Window

This add-on adds a call stack window to your PowerGUI Script Editor every time you start debugging a script. Working with a call stack while you debug anything beyond the most simple of scripts is essential because it provides you with a list of all nested calls that led up to the current line of script in your debug session. You can use this to determine where functions are being called from by setting a breakpoint inside a function and then walking up the call stack to see the script used to call the function. Also, this window has double-click support, so if you would like to go to any location in the call stack, simply double-click on the location you wish to see and the add-on will take you there, even if the file in question isn’t open at the time.

I was considering putting this feature in the Pro version in a future release, but that is beyond my control now so I decided I’d share what I have today and let you guys have fun with it.  Since I created the feature in this add-on, it’s been an incredibly useful feature to me and I hope you guys enjoy it as well.  To get this Add-on, simply select Tools | Find Add-ons Online in your PowerGUI Script Editor and search for “Call Stack”.

That will most likely be my last PowerGUI-centric post for a while, and it will be my last post for at least a week while I take a much needed vacation before moving on to new things.

Thank you for your continued support through the past four years.  I hope this post finds you well.

Sincerely,

Kirk Munro
Former Product Manager of PowerGUI Pro and PowerGUI

P.S. If you are in need of someone with my skills, either as a Product Manager, a PowerShell MVP, an expert in Windows management (with a strong focus on Active Directory and Exchange although I’ve also gotten deeply involved in virtualization with Hyper-V and VMware as well), a social media/community site manager, or as a freelance writer, my schedule has all of a sudden become much less busy and I’m interested in filling up that time with new work once I come back from vacation, so please get in touch.

PowerGUI® 3.0 Hotfix: Double-clicking on a ps1, psm1, or psd1 file to open the Script Editor shows the Start Page as the active page in the Script Editor

Kirk Munro1 Comment

This article describes an issue that was introduced into both PowerGUI and PowerGUI Pro when version 3.0 was released and provides a recommended solution to that issue.

Problem

While the PowerGUI Script Editor is closed, double-clicking on a ps1, psm1 or psd1 file or right-clicking on one of those file types and selecting “Open with PowerGUI Script Editor” will open the file you selected in the Script Editor as expected; however the Start Page will appear as the active tab in the Script Editor instead of the file you opened.

Affected Products

  • PowerGUI 3.0 (freeware)
  • PowerGUI Pro 3.0

Solution

To resolve this problem, a new version of the Script Editor Essentials Add-on has been released.  This version (3.0.0.75) includes a modification to the Script Editor behaviour such that any file you use to open the PowerGUI Script Editor will immediately become the active file.

To install this hotfix, please follow these steps:

If you are connected to the Internet

  1. Open the PowerGUI Script Editor.
  2. Run the following command from the embedded PowerShell console: 
    $oldState = $PGSE.Configuration['/CollectAndSendInformation']
if (-not $oldState) {
    $PGSE.Configuration['/CollectAndSendInformation'] = $true
}
  3. Select Tools | Find Add-ons Online to show the Find Add-ons Online dialog.
  4. Type “Script Editor Essentials” into the text box at the top of the Find Add-ons Online dialog.
  5. Click on the Search button.
  6. Once the search results are returned, Select the Script Editor Essentials Add-on if it is not already selected.
  7. Click on the Install button to download, install and load the Script Editor Essentials Add-on.
  8. Once the Script Editor Essentials Add-on is installed, run the following command from the embedded PowerShell console: 

    if (-not $oldState) {
    $PGSE.Configuration['/CollectAndSendInformation'] = $false
}
  9. Close the PowerGUI Script Editor.

If you are not connected to the Internet

  1. Open your web browser and browse to http://www.powergui.org/entry.jspa?externalID=2952.
  2. Follow the steps outlined in the “Manual install” section on that page, copying the Add-on.ScriptEditorEssentials.zip between machines as appropriate.
  3. Close the PowerGUI Script Editor.

At this point you should be able to double-click on ps1, psm1 or psd1 files if you file association is set up and have those files open in the PowerGUI Script Editor as the active document.

Feedback

This solution is being provided based on the feedback of users who notified us about the issue two days ago on the forums.  If you have any questions about this solution, please let us know in the forums or in the comments on this post.

Thanks!

Kirk out.

PowerGUI® Pro 3.0: Mobile Systems Management Using MobileShell

Kirk Munro4 Comments

In case you missed the announcement last Friday, PowerGUI Pro 3.0 was released to the web.  With this release we included a new feature that I’m really excited about: Mobile Systems Management Using MobileShell.  We’ve had MobileShell for quite a while, but prior to this release you could only use it to invoke your favorite scripts or commands from modules associated with your user account as well as ad hoc commands you wanted to run.  Here’s a screenshot tour showing you what this interface would look like on a handheld device:

PowerGUI Pro MobileShell - Favorites - 1 of 4   PowerGUI Pro MobileShell - Favorites - 2 of 4   PowerGUI Pro MobileShell - Favorites - 3 of 4   PowerGUI Pro MobileShell - Favorites - 4 of 4

As you can see from this, the capabilities in this version were very cool (what’s not to like about running PowerShell from your smartphone), but they were somewhat limiting as well because you couldn’t really work with a management user interface from your handheld device this way.

PowerGUI Pro 3.0 changes all of that, by including a new management interface for MobileShell that is based on PowerPacks (in case you don’t know already, PowerPacks are extensions for the PowerGUI Administrative Console that provide a management experience much like MMC, but that are driven entirely by Windows PowerShell commands and scripts).  With 3.0 we’ve provided a new mobile interface for MobileShell that allows you to use PowerPacks associated with your AD user account or groups that you are a member of from your mobile device!  Also, we’ve made the management experience even more responsive at the same time, so now you can do more with MobileShell and it will do it more quickly than before!  All you need is a mobile device with a WebKit-enabled web browser (sorry, that means no BlackBerry 5.x or Windows Phone 7 support for now).

Here’s a screenshot tour showing you how this new experience can be used to do something very simple like unlock a user account:

PowerGUI Pro MobileShell ScreenShot Tour - 1 of 12   PowerGUI Pro MobileShell ScreenShot Tour - 2 of 12   PowerGUI Pro MobileShell ScreenShot Tour - 3 of 12   PowerGUI Pro MobileShell ScreenShot Tour - 4 of 12

PowerGUI Pro MobileShell ScreenShot Tour - 5 of 12   PowerGUI Pro MobileShell ScreenShot Tour - 6 of 12   PowerGUI Pro MobileShell ScreenShot Tour - 7 of 12   PowerGUI Pro MobileShell ScreenShot Tour - 8 of 12

PowerGUI Pro MobileShell ScreenShot Tour - 9 of 12   PowerGUI Pro MobileShell ScreenShot Tour - 10 of 12   PowerGUI Pro MobileShell ScreenShot Tour - 11 of 12   PowerGUI Pro MobileShell ScreenShot Tour - 12 of 12

As you can see from this screenshot tour, this user experience is much richer and it gives you a full management console on the go, allowing you to respond to issues you are responsible for no matter where you are or what time it is.  It’s also configurable using role-based access control (RBAC), so you can assign different PowerPacks to different MobileShell users based on their AD user and group membership.  Even better, we make configuration of this functionality even easier by providing you with a MobileShell Administration PowerPack as part of the PowerGUI Pro 3.0 package.

If you’re interested in trying this functionality out, here’s what you need to do:

  1. Make sure you have an IIS server ready where you can install it.
  2. Install MobileShell on the IIS server.  The MobileShell installer is pretty self-explanatory.
  3. If you didn’t add the MobileShell users during the installation, add anyone who you want to be able to access MobileShell to the PowerGUI MobileShell Users group (note: there may be a delay once you add users before they have access, up to 15 minutes).
  4. Install the PowerGUI Pro Admin Console on the IIS Server with the MobileShell Administration PowerPack.
  5. Open the PowerGUI Pro Admin Console.
  6. In the MobileShell Administration PowerPack, select Users and then click on the Add User action to add your user account.  Repeat this for each user account you want to provide access to.
  7. Select the PowerPacks node and then click on the Publish PowerPack action.  Provide the path for the PowerPack you want to expose via MobileShell and then click on OK.  Repeat this for each PowerPack you want to expose via MobileShell.
  8. Go back to the Users node, select the users you want to provide PowerPack access to, and then click on Assign PowerPack to assign one of the PowerPacks you have published to the selected users.

At this point you should be ready to go with your first MobileShell management experience.  Point your WebKit-enabled web browser to https://serverName/MobileShell/Admin, sign-in, and you’re off and running!

Note: PowerPacks don’t support the new MobileShell management experience by default.  We made the decision to make it off by default because we wouldn’t be able to tell which PowerPacks would display UI on the web server (such as a message box) reliably.  Any PowerPack can support this new experience though, they just need to be updated to suppor tit. The core PowerPacks that ship with PowerGUI Pro have been updated to support this new management experience so you’re already enabled with a rich mobile management experience for Active Directory, VMware, Exchange, and Windows management.  I’ll write another post later that describes what is required to turn on mobile management for a PowerPack.

That’s it for this post.  If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

Kirk out.

PowerGUI® Pro and PowerGUI® 3.0 are now available

Kirk Munro13 Comments

Today’s an exciting day because I’ve finished releasing PowerGUI Pro 3.0 and PowerGUI 3.0 to the web!  This release is something we’ve been working on for a long time, and it has a ton of new goodies for you to play with.  You can learn more about the individual features in this release in the highlights below.  When reviewing these features, anything that is only available in PowerGUI Pro will be marked as a Pro feature.

Mobile Systems Management (Pro feature)

Ever wish you could immediately respond to hot issues from wherever you are without having to run to the office or to your home computer?  Now you can!  PowerGUI Pro 3.0 now provides you with a mobile systems management console on your handheld device!  Better yet, the systems management console you use is fully customizable using PowerShell scripts!  You can also configure different management experiences for different users and groups in your organization by using role-based access control (RBAC) to define which PowerPacks are assigned to various AD users and groups.  Since this leverages the PowerPack model, that’s a whole lot of mobile systems management possibilities for you to pick and choose from.

Here’s a screenshot showing what this looks like as you browse through the Active Directory PowerPack using MobileShell and retrieve an AD user you want to modify:

PowerGUI MobileShell - Managing an AD user object

Currently the list of mobile devices that support this new management interface include:

  • iOS devices
  • BlackBerry devices (BlackBerry OS 6.0 and higher)
  • Android devices (Android OS 2.2 and higher)

You can also use this from a desktop or laptop by connecting with the Chrome 11 and higher or Safari 5 and higher web browsers.

    Customizable Start Page (some Pro-only functionality)

    Completely new to this release, we have created a customizable Start Page that appears when you launch the Script Editor or the Admin Console.  The Start Page is designed to allow you to keep aware of what’s going on in the PowerShell community, provide you with a tip of the day, featured videos, and the most recent additions to the library of Add-ons and PowerPacks on PowerGUI.org.  This feature is available in both the free and the Pro versions, however Pro users get an extra bonus here: with PowerGUI Pro you can customize the RSS feeds that are shown on this page to get even more of your favorite PowerShell news or, if you don’t want to use it that often and you’re a PowerGUI Pro customer you can simply indicate that PowerGUI should not show it on start-up.  Personally I’m a Pro user and I use the new Start Page every day to keep up to date on news.

    PowerGUI Pro Script Editor Start Page

    Create Executable from Script (aka Compile Script; Pro-only)

    Another new feature in PowerGUI Pro in this release is the ability to create executables from script.  This feature greatly simplifies having someone else in your organization run some functionality that you’ve built in a PowerShell script.  Instead of sending them a script, worrying about execution policy, providing them with instructions about how to run the script, and wondering if they’ll modify (and break) the script or not, you can simply provide them with an executable program that does whatever your script was designed to do.  You can also be comfortable with the contents of these programs, either encrypting them with a password or leaving them decrypted, in which case the scripts that are packaged in the executable program are obfuscated to keep their contents hidden from prying eyes.

    PowerGUI Pro Script Editor - Create Executable From Script

Go to Function Definition (Pro-only)

Yet another new feature in PowerGUI Pro 3.0 is support for going to the definition of any function from the name of that function in a script file.  This feature is very useful, both when you’re building your own function libraries or modules, and when you are using other function libraries or modules.  With this feature you can right-click on the name of any function in a script file that you’re looking at and select Go to Definition from the menu that appears.  If it’s not a function, nothing happens, but if it’s a function, you’ll be taken to the location where that function is defined, even if you have changed the file, so it’s great when you’re editing scripts.  If it cannot find the function definition in a file, such as when you right-click on a function that is defined by PowerShell itself, you can show the definitions of those functions in a new file, making it easy to override behaviour this way.  This is great functionality whether you are working by yourself or with a team of users (where you may not know the location of functions you are working with).

Improved Version Control Support (Pro-only)

We spent some time in this release sprucing up our version control support.  PowerGUI Pro has always supported integrated version control.  Now that support is better, allowing you to retrieve files from version control that you have never checked in or out without having to go to a separate client.  It also supports version control providers that have their own check-in dialog, allowing you to make sure you only get prompted for comments during check-in once.

Reset Runspace on Demand

Here’s a really useful new feature that’s available in both freeware and Pro.  As you work with PowerShell, you create variables, add functions, and change the state quite a bit.  A best practice worth following is before you publish any scripts, make sure that they pass your tests in a clean environment.  In previous versions of PowerGUI this would require resetting your runspace with each debug (something I don’t recommend anymore), or restarting PowerGUI.  Now you can simply select Debug | Reset Runspace, and your environment will be reset without having to close and re-open the product.

PowerGUI Pro Script Editor - Reset Runspace on Demand

Improved Snippets Support

Snippet support in PowerGUI has always been best-in-class, but in this release they get even better!  We now have a brand new snippets hierarchy that reorganizes our existing snippets and adds a bunch of new ones.  Snippets are a huge timesaver when it comes to writing PowerShell scripts, and we’ve just made it easier to find the snippets you’re looking for by organizing them better into appropriate folders and adding additional snippets where some were missing.  Personally I’m a huge fan of snippets, and would love to know what other snippets you would like to see going forward.

PowerGUI Pro Script Editor - Snippets Hierarchy

Also, I’m going to call out a specific feature in our snippet support that you may be interested in knowing about.  If you create a module with commands and you want those commands to be easy to use, one very natural way to help your users learn your commands is to provide snippets.  In PowerGUI, when you load any module that has a snippets subfolder as a child of the module base folder, those snippets will immediately become available in the PowerGUI Script Editor.  That means as a module author, all you need to do is ship your module with snippets in a snippets subfolder and any PowerGUI user will automatically get access to them when they load the module.  This is a very cool feature, and one that I encourage you to try out and support.

Performance Improvements

During our beta cycle for this release we spent a lot of time looking at performance and were able to make some changes now and plan some changes for later.  With this release, we have dramatically improved our parser performance, which means that files will parse more quickly in the PowerGUI Script Editor.  This in turn means files will open more quickly, which means the Script Editor itself will open more quickly when you’re loading a lot of files.  There are more performance improvements coming, but we’ve already made great progress and I’m sure you’ll be happy with the improvements in this area!

Multi-line Support in the Embedded Console

Rich Beckett, this bud’s for you!  Rich and a bunch of other PowerGUI users pointed out that they didn’t like how our Script Editor would return an error if you pressed enter when it was obvious that the line was not finished yet (for example, when you finish a line with a round curly brace, or a pipeline symbol, or a line continuance character like the backtick).  We’ve fixed this now, so you can enter multi-line commands without having to worry about getting errors and without having to think about pressing Shift+Enter to get a newline in the command pane.

One-click Install for PowerPacks

In our previous release we added support for one-click install for Add-ons in the Script Editor, allowing users to search for Add-ons on PowerGUI.org and install them with a single button click (there are some highly recommended Add-ons available by the way, so check them out if you haven’t already). Now we’re providing the same support for PowerPacks, so you can search online for PowerPacks, select the ones you like from the list of results, and click on a button to download, unblock, install and load those PowerPacks in the Admin Console. We have a large library of PowerPacks available, which you can see by clicking on the Show All button in the Find PowerPacks Online dialog. I strongly recommend you give them a look, because there is a ton of useful PowerShell functionality in those PowerPacks.

AdminConsole.FindPowerPacksOnline

Admin Console Authoring Mode

If you’re like me, from time to time in the Admin Console you accidentally move something, or delete the wrong thing, or make some change you didn’t intend to make. Being able to change any PowerPack is great because it allows for rich customization, but when you’re just using the PowerPacks day to day, you may not want to make any changes. It’s also possible that you’re providing the PowerGUI Admin Console to some staff members who need the features but not the customizability. In those cases, you can now launch the Administrative Console in default (non-authoring) mode, and be assured that you can’t accidentally break one of the PowerPacks. When you need to make changes though, you can open the Administrative Console in Authoring mode and create and customize whatever you like!

Improved Action Support

The handling of Admin Console actions was improved a lot in this release.  Now when you select one or more rows in the grid in the Admin Console, only the actions appropriate for those rows will be displayed.  If you select mutliple objects of different types (files and folders, for example), you will only be presented with actions that apply to both types of objects.  Also, only the relevant actions that don’t require any selection will be displayed when you click on a node or action and no data is returned.  All of these changes make using the Admin Console much easier than before.

Improved Shared Script Support

Shared Scripts in the PowerGUI Admin Console allow you to define functions that you want to have access to in more than one location in a shared script file. These script files would only previously be loaded once you clicked on a script node or script action in a module, meaning that you could not create a simple node or simple action from a function in a shared script file. That’s changed now, such that shared scripts are invoked when you click on any node or action in a PowerPack.

VMware PowerCLI 4.1+ Support

We’ve had a beta version of the VMware PowerPack available for a while that provides support for PowerCLI 4.1.  This release of PowerGUI includes that PowerPack in release form, officially catching PowerGUI support up to the latest VMware PowerCLI releases.

Of course there’s more!

There are a ton of other minor changes in this release as well, ranging from usability improvements to bug fixes to changes that make it a little easier to create PowerGUI Add-ons.  We have new automatic variables ($PGHome, $PGUICulture, $PGVersionTable and $PGSE).  We automatically load PowerPack requirements now when a PowerPack is loaded.  I’m sure there are other changes in this release that I’m forgetting, but suffice it to say, we put a ton of energy into this release and it shows (I’m exhausted! Smile).

Great!  How can I get it?

PowerGUI Pro is a fantastic PowerShell-based product with a ton of value for the $199 US price tag, even more with this 3.0 release.  If you like the features in PowerGUI Pro or if you like what we’re doing with PowerGUI in general and feel it’s time you put your money where your mouth is, simply point your browser to http://www.quest.com/GetPowerGUIProNow to go to our eStore and buy yourself a copy (or two or three Winking smile).

If you’re not ready to commit to the Pro version just yet, please give our new PowerGUI Pro 3.0 release a try by browsing to http://www.powerguipro.com and clicking on the Try button on that page to download a trial version.  A license key will be sent to you to allow you to try it out for 30 days.  If all you’ve been using so far is the freeware version, we have put a lot of energy into the Pro release in 3.0 and this is a trend that will continue going forward, so I strongly encourage you to give it a try and see what you think.  Note that PowerGUI Pro and PowerGUI (freeware) install side by side, so you can try it on the same system where you use the free one…just pay attention to the shortcut you use to launch it so that you get the one you’re looking for!

After you’ve tried out PowerGUI Pro, if you’re not able to spend $199 for the product right now, then we do have the freeware version available from www.powergui.org.  You can’t miss the big Download button near the top of that page.

Of course, if you already have either PowerGUI Pro or PowerGUI freeware, both of these will auto-update to the new version automatically when the auto-update system detects the new version is available.  This should happen the next time you start-up the product.

An Important Note About Feedback and Usage Statistics

With all of our releases, feedback is what drives us and motivates us to continue doing what we’re doing, and this release is no exception.  We received a ton of feedback during our beta cycle and were able to fix some serious issues because of it.  I need to shout out a special thanks to Glenn Sizemore, Chris Piper and Thomy Kay for their feedback – it was particularly helpful!  The key point here though is that the feedback system really works.  If you love something, let us know, we’d love to hear how PowerGUI is making your life easier!  If you don’t like something, let us know that as well, we’ll see what we can do to make it better!  Or if you think we’re missing something, well, let us know!  We’ll see what we can do to put that in!  I manage this product and we have developers who develop this product, but ultimately I’m taking most of my direction from you guys, so please keep the feedback coming!

Also, regarding feedback, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one last feature that we’ve added to this release.  This release introduces anonymous data collection to PowerGUI.  It was important for us to add this for the reasons I just highlighted in the last paragraph – your feedback is that important, and we can learn a lot about where we need to spend our effort by reviewing usage data.  The data gathered does not contain any personal information, nor does it contain any scripts you write or anything like that.  It’s simply data about how you are using the product.  Please opt-in for this usage data collection so that we can make the product even better going forward.  You can always opt out, but feedback is important, so we’d really appreciate it if you would opt-in.

That’s it for this post.  I hope you like this release, and look forward to hearing about how it’s making a difference for you!

Enjoy!

Kirk out.

vWorkspace PowerPack: A great example of the power and flexibility you get from PowerShell and PowerGUI®

Kirk MunroLeave a comment

Last week, the Quest vWorkspace guys showed their prowess once again when they released the first version of the vWorkspace PowerPack for PowerGUI® Pro and PowerGUI®.  I love this PowerPack because it really demonstrates how PowerGUI is so complementary to PowerShell.  To see what I mean, take a look at the following screenshot:

vWorkspace PowerPack - multi-farm management

This screenshot shows two major improvements to the vWorkspace management experience by demonstrating how you can use the vWorkspace PowerPack to perform management tasks across all farms, and by demonstrating how you can use the vWorkspace PowerPack to perform management tasks across all locations in a single farm or across all locations in all farms.  In the native vWorkspace management user interface, you can only work with one farm at a time, and you can only work with one location at a time.

Scaling management tasks out in a product like this can take a long time when you need to build the capabilities into a native management user interface, and these days in many cases PowerShell is provided as the vehicle to satisfy larger scale automation and management needs.  PowerShell is great and it definitely fits the bill for these medium to large enterprise needs, however it does not provide a user interface to facilitate those management scenarios.  This is where the administrative console in PowerGUI Pro and PowerGUI really shines, because it allows you to build out rich PowerPacks with enterprise-ready solutions with very low cost and effort.

I spoke directly with Adam Driscoll (author of PowerGUI VSX, member of the vWorkspace team, and one of two developers who created the vWorkspace PowerPack) about this, and it took them less than one week to put this PowerPack together.  That’s less than one week for two developers to create a rich, functional management user interface that not only provides many of the management capabilities that come with the vWorkspace management console, but that also adds additional enterprise capabilities that the vWorkspace management console does not provide natively.  Aside from the multi-farm management and multi-location management features I mentioned earlier, it also allows administrators to upgrade the vWorkspace VM tools on the VMs you select, and it simplifies how administrators search for provisioning objects like templates, sysprep customizations, parent VHDs, and so on.  And by building these capabilities into a PowerPack, vWorkspace administrators can perform custom filtering and sorting of the data in the grid, generate rich HTML reports for that data, export the data to an external file for use in other programs, and view the PowerShell scripts that are doing all of the work, all because those features come with the PowerGUI administrative console automatically.  That’s an amazing feat for one weeks worth of effort!

The really sweet part of all of this is that it gets even better very soon.  If you’ve been following my blog recently you’ve seen that we have released two betas of PowerGUI Pro 3.0 in the last little while which comes with many great features worth highlighting, however for now I only want to mention one: MobileShell.  In PowerGUI Pro 3.0, you can provide administrators with a custom mobile management solution, defined using PowerPacks and tailored for their needs using role-based access control (RBAC).  That means that once we release PowerGUI Pro 3.0 (which should happen very soon), the vWorkspace guys will be able to publish an update to their PowerPack that enables mobile management support so that vWorkspace administrators can have a mobile management solution for very little cost!  All they will need once the vWorkspace PowerPack is updated to support this mobile management scenario is a license of PowerGUI Pro 3.0 for each administrator who wants to manage their vWorkspace environment from their webkit-enabled mobile device.  Considering that it also allows those administrators to create executable files from PowerShell scripts, work with integrated version control in a best-in-class script editor, manage systems remotely using easy PowerShell remoting capabilities, find functions they are working with using go to definition support for functions, and more, the PowerGUI Pro price of $199/user is a pretty good value.

If you are at all interested in VDI, you should give vWorkspace a look because it’s an awesome solution that keeps getting better all the time.  If you use vWorkspace already I encourage you to take a look at the PowerShell capabilities that this team is providing, particularly in the PowerPack, because a ton of additional value is being provided here that is worth checking out.  You can find the installation instructions for the PowerPack on the vWorkspace PowerPack page on PowerGUI.org.

That’s it for this post.  If you have any questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to reply in the comments below.

Thanks!

Kirk out.

PowerGUI Pro® 3.0 Beta 2 is now available

Kirk Munro3 Comments

Hot on the heels of our first beta cycle for PowerGUI Pro 3.0, today we released beta 2 of PowerGUI Pro 3.0 to the web.  This release includes a lot of fixes and improvements based on the feedback we’ve received from you during our first beta cycle, so thank you for that feedback!

Here are some details about the improvements that have been made in the 2nd beta of PowerGUI Pro 3.0:

Improved snippets hierarchy

Several users indicated that some of our snippets were hard to find.  To resolve this issue, I’ve reorganized our snippets into an improved snippets hierarchy that should make it easier for you to find the snippets you are looking for and learn more about what you can do with PowerShell from our snippet collection.  A special thanks goes out to Denniver Reining, author of the very popular Snippet Manager Add-on.  Denniver was able to provide very useful feedback as I was going through the improvements in this release, which was very helpful.  To browse the new snippet hierarchy, simply press Ctrl+I while editing a document in the Script Editor.  Here’s a screenshot showing the top level representation of the new snippets hierarchy:

PowerGUI Pro 3.0 Snippet Hierarchy

Installer option to open Script Editor

Since the first release of PowerGUI we have provided an option at the end of the installation to open the PowerGUI Admin Console.  This is useful, but myself and many of our users have requested if we could open the Script Editor as well.  With this beta 2 release, you can now open the Script Editor or the Admin Console at the end of the installation.

PowerPack Shared Scripts are now loaded from regular nodes and actions

When you author a PowerPack, you can create a function library inside a shared script for the PowerPack.  This is useful, however until now shared scripts would only load when you clicked on a script node or script action.  This has now been changed so that shared scripts are now loaded from regular nodes and actions, allowing you to keep all of your PowerPack functions in one location and then create regular nodes and actions using those functions.

Performance improvements, usability improvements and lots of bug fixes

In addition to these items, we have improved the performance in some scenarios in MobileShell and in the Script Editor, we have addressed some usability improvements in the Script Editor, the Admin Console and MobileShell, and we have fixed a lot of bugs as well (it is a beta cycle after all, and what good would a beta cycle be if it didn’t include bug fixes?).

Don’t forget all of the new features that were in the first beta!

Besides these changes, if you’re just finding out about the beta of PowerGUI Pro 3.0, make sure you read my other blog post that highlights all of the new features like compiling scripts into executables, or the new MobileShell user interface that allows you to use PowerPacks from your smartphone or tablet – those features and many more were included in the first beta of this release.  If you want to try the awesome new MobileShell capabilities, this blog post will help you get that set up in your test lab: Configuring RBAC for MobileShell in PowerGUI Pro 3.0.

Great, so where can I get beta 2?

Beta 2 is available for download now, in the same location where we posted the first beta.  You can find it on the PowerGUI Pro 3.0 beta page.  When you are installing this beta, you will need to provide a license key.  License keys for the beta are included in the zip file for the beta, right beside the msi and exe installers for the PowerGUI Pro 3.0 components – look for the asc file in the Components folder.

Please share your feedback!

We will be running the second beta for a short period while we work on finishing up this release.  Your feedback is very important during this beta cycle, so please give the beta release a try and share your feedback by posting messages on the PowerGUI forums.  The sooner we get your feedback, the sooner we can respond to it.  I’m really looking forward to hearing what you like, what you don’t like, and what else you would like to see in this and future releases, so please share your thoughts with us.

Enjoy!

Kirk out.