Tag: Visio

Create your own org chart from AD with PowerGUI!

Kirk Munro18 Comments

Another week has gone by and I have another brand new PowerPack ready for download.  This time around it’s the Org Chart PowerPack.  This is a PowerPack that I put together based on a Get-OrgChart function I wrote to analyze org chart data at work.  It lets you do some really cool things such as:

  1. Dynamically create an org chart from users in Active Directory using title, department, office, address, and other properties.
  2. Generate a Visio Org Chart from PowerGUI for the any branch of an organization.
  3. Create statistical reports for the employees in your organization to see breakdowns of employees by office, department, management, etc.
  4. Dynamically generate Office Directory reports in HTML when using it in conjunction with the Advanced Reporting PowerPack.

Note: The Org Chart PowerPack uses the Quest AD cmdlets to retrieve information from AD so you will need to install those first before you can use the PowerPack.

If you would like to see how this PowerPack can be of benefit to you, check out this screencast:

This screencast was recorded in HD format so you can click on the HD button once you start watching it to enable high definition video.  Alternatively, if you would prefer to watch a high resolution flash version with a table of contents you can watch the screencast here.  I decided to try widescreen format this time since that is my format preference…let me know if this is a problem for you.

This is the first release of this PowerPack and I’m anxious to hear what you think so please give it a look and share your feedback so that I can improve it with another update in the future.

Thanks for listening!

Kirk out.

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VMware Infrastructure PowerPack 2.1.5 released

Kirk Munro14 Comments

The PowerGUI VMware Infrastructure Management PowerPack seems to be really popular with people, so I’ve been spending a lot of time over the past four months significantly enhancing that PowerPack.  Some of the enhancements are things that we wanted to put in and others are things that community members had requested (note to the reader: if you like a particular PowerPack and would like to see it improved, speak up on the PowerGUI Forums…we really take your feedback very seriously! :)).  Today I just finished posting another release of the VMware Infrastructure Management PowerPack with a few more enhancements, and I’m particularly happy with this one.

This release greatly improves usability through the new icons that were added (and I mean *greatly* improves…the value the icons add is huge).  It’s also the first PowerPack release that takes advantage of some really cool Visio scripts that I’ve been working on.  The Visio scripts I’m referring to were largely inspired by Alan Renouf’s vDiagram script, although the Visio script I ended up with doesn’t look anything like the original.  I’m itching to talk more about those scripts, but I want to write a blog post specifically on that topic so watch for more on this soon.  For now I’ll simply point out that to use the Visio functionality, you have to download the additional VESI_Visio.zip file that was added to the VMware Infrastructure Management PowerPack document page and install it as per the instructions in that document (see the “How to enable vDiagram support” section).  Visio 2007 is required.

For those of you who were fortunate enough to attend VMworld Europe in Cannes at the end of February, this release contains the icons and Visio features that Scott Herold was showing off during that show.  You can see a live demo of the new features on Scott’s website, here.

If you want to learn more about this PowerPack, including version history and other details, you can go here.  You can download the PowerPack from that location as well.

Kirk out.

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