Jason Yoder, MCT

I start both my PowerShell and Windows Server classes off with a basic lesson on PowerShell’s syntax. This lesson includes the importance of using TAB completion.  It never fails.  I always find someone who insist on typing everything.  Here are a few benefits of press the TAB key. Faster typing Less work Greater productivity Fewer typing errors No more using parameters that do not exists. No more using cmdlets that do not exists Less troubleshooting All these sound like good reasons to press the TAB key, yet there are those that will not.  For those who want to type everything, this is what you are doing that the rest of the PowerShell community is not. Working hard More debugging Wasting time Making typos More frustration More stress Less productivity Remember, every time you press the dash “-“ key, type one or two more characters and then press TAB. It will make your life easier. It is strange at first, but once that lught bulb turns on, you will not believe how mu

I’ll be speaking at the AZ PowerShell Users Group on November 3 rd . We will be talking about your return on your PowerShell investment. We will look at what kind of information that you need to gather to prove your worth to the boss. We are going to justify your next raise or even help you keep your job. Yes, I will be handing out the code to do it. http://www.eventbrite.com/e/arizona-powershell-users-group-november-meeting-tickets-19207088920

Happy Monday all! I’m finally getting around to posting some code from my last PowerShell class in Phoenix.  As always, I invited my class to bring an idea with them that they would like to try on Friday.  The idea that one of my PowerShell Rock Stars brought in reminded me of a problem that I had many years ago.  You see, when the company that I worked for acquired another business, my job was to go in and join their IT systems into our domain.  Not a big deal with only about 30 clients.  This company had no dedicated IT support prior to our take over so I was going to be the first IT staffer the former employees meet when we hired them back.  All went well the first morning.  It was after lunch that I spotted a problem. Before they all returned, I removed all the video games from the clients. Right after lunch, I was walking through the cubes and was watching people play video games.  Kind of bold considering it was their first day at work after being re-hired.  That evening, I di

Today in my PowerShell class, we are utilizing custom properties to allow us to create user accounts in mass.  In our scenario, we have a CSV that contains everything that we need except a property called “Name”.  We are using Select-Object to grab information from another property in the CSV to create our “Name” property. To do this we have to type some cryptic code.  To make life easier, I’m sending my class the procedure below.  It will inject a new ISE Snippet that will create an easy to use template to create a custom property with Select-Object. 1. Create a new PowerShell script with the below line.  Do not be concerned if there are any errors. @{ N = "##PropertyName##" ; E = { $_ . ##PropertyValue##}} 2. Save this script. 3. Create a new script in the ISE with the code below. $Text = ( Get-Content -Raw -Path "E:\PowerShell\SOHash.ps1" )   $Props = @{     "Title" = "Select-Object Custom Property" ;     "Descr