PowerShell Articles on Dave's Technical Journal

Mentorship - T-SQL Tuesday

Dave Carroll — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Hello reader, it’s been quite some time since I’ve written an article. In fact, it’s been almost 2 years. I’ve definitely had some things to say, but I have lacked the motivation. Obviously that has changed (at least for the time being).

SQL Saturday Atlanta

This past weekend, I attended my first SQL Saturday event in Atlanta and I had a blast. I spoke on Writing Cross-Platform PowerShell, and I met many wonderful people in the data community. Though I’m a self-declared SQL-adjacent, they were very welcoming.

Soft Skills - Part 3 - Motivation and Inspiration

Dave Carroll — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

This article is the last in a series of three which is a republishing of my chapter on soft skills from the PowerShell Conference Book Volume 2.

If you haven’t read the article on communication or article on collaboration, that’s okay, as each article has it’s own topics. I would suggest to read them though, as it will help round out your general knowledge of soft skills.

Motivation and Inspiration

How to Motivate Others

Effective leaders know how to motivate. As a leader, you must challenge your team to grow and support them along the way. Empower them to do their job and protect their time so they can do it. Maximize strengths within the team and minimize weaknesses.

Soft Skills - Part 2 - Collaboration

Dave Carroll — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

This article is the second in a series of three which is a republishing of my chapter on soft skills from the PowerShell Conference Book Volume 2.

If you haven’t read the first article on communication, that’s okay, as each article has it’s own topics. I would suggest to read it though, as it will help round out your general knowledge of soft skills.

Collaboration

Collaboration isn’t easy.

Personalities often collide, fueling negative emotions which break down the connections that allow for collaboration. This happens because everyone is a unique individual, a human being capable of myriad emotions (some simultaneously).

Soft Skills - Part 1 - Communication

Dave Carroll — Sat, 25 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

A few years ago, maybe the first part of 2019, I was asked to contribute a chapter for the PowerShell Conference Book Volume 2. So much has happened since then and I don’t remember who did the asking. The odds are decent enough though to guess Mike Kanakos.

This article is the first in a series of three which will be a republishing of my chapter on soft skills. I’ve only gently edited a few items from the original material.

PowerShell Summit 2023

Dave Carroll — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’m ready for PowerShell Summit 2023

I’ve been part of the PowerShell community for a few years now and I’ve attended some amazing sessions with user groups. I’ve also presented a few times, once for a PowerShell Saturday and a couple other times remotely. For Summit ‘21, I had a presentation via video on demand and a lightning demo.

Over the last few years, I’ve been ask how many times have I attended PowerShell Summit. Fully gripped with a backlog of FOMO, I’d give a sigh and say, “I’ve never been in person.”

Where are the PowerShell People on Mastodon?

Dave Carroll — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Mastodon

In light of recent events with Twitter, you may have heard about a different micro-blogging site called Mastodon. It has been around for a few years, 2016 to be exact, so it’s definitely not new.

And it’s technically not a site, as the heart and possibly the main draw of Mastodon is that it has multiple instances all run by individuals, typically not large corporations. Each instance can establish its own Code of Conduct and Terms of Services. Some instances require an invite, others do not. They are connected through federation to what’s know as the Fediverse.

Questions from a PowerShell.org Forums User

Dave Carroll — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

About a week ago, I commented on a PowerShell forum post and the poster struck up a conversation in my DMs.

He is starting his own PowerShell blog and wanted to ask me a few questions. (Insert self-deprecating comment here.)

I thought that the questions and my responses may help provide some insight for others.

1. What is your writing process? Do you write on subjects you are currently learning about or want to research more?

Sometimes the writing is the easy part.
Sometimes, like when I started writing these answers, it’s a struggle.

#PSFollowFriday Tweet with BluebirdPS

Dave Carroll — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Last year, I began exploring the Twitter API and wrote a module that adhered to PowerShell and general development best practices, one that seeks community input and involvement.

Since then I’ve released a few versions of the BluebirdPS module and I am using it to generate my #PSFollowFriday Tweets.

In the article that follows, I will take you through the BluebirdPS commands that I use to create these Tweets.

#PSFollowFriday

Jeff Hicks started the #PSFollowFriday hashtag on Twitter during last August’s #PSTweetChat. Anyone in the PowerShell community is welcome to suggest people or sites that engage with, or contribute in, the PowerShell online community.

Creating a Class Definition from an Existing Object - Part 3

Dave Carroll — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A PowerShell Conversion Challenge

In this article, the last in a series on my solution to the IronScripter PowerShell Conversion Challenge, I will be exploring and solving for the remaining requirements.

Last Week, On Creating a Class Definition

In part 1, I covered the basics for PowerShell objects and classes, the Get-Member command, the Requires statement, ValueFromPipeline to accept input from the pipeline, and the StringBuilder class. It solved 7 primary requirements and 1 personal requirement.

Creating a Class Definition from an Existing Object - Part 2

Dave Carroll — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A PowerShell Conversion Challenge

A few days ago I published Part 1 of my solution to the IronScripter PowerShell Conversion Challenge. If you haven’t already, please check out that article, as we will be picking up where it left off.

As a quick recap, my solution satisfied 7 out of 10 of the requirements set forth by the IronScripter Chairman, though it only solved 1 of my 6 additional requirements.

Here are the remaining challenge requirements:

Creating a Class Definition from an Existing Object - Part 1

Dave Carroll — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A PowerShell Conversion Challenge

The first IronScripter Challenge for this year was released a few weeks ago. The goal for A PowerShell Conversion Challenge is to write a tool that will generate a class definition based on an existing object.

I’ve distilled the requirements into the following list:

Copy selected properties
Insert placeholder for methods
Work from pipeline
Allow user to specify a new class name
Support Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7.x

Bonus Requirements

For a greater challenge, we are encouraged to include the following requirements:

A 2020 Year End Review and 2021 Directions

Dave Carroll — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A Long Time Ago

It seems an incredibly long time has passed since I wrote an article for my site. In fact, it’s been…

`1`	`New-TimeSpan -Start '8/17/2020' -End (Get-Date).Date.ToShortDateString() \| Select-Object -ExpandProperty Days`

It’s been 154 days since I’ve published the article on responding to a GitHub issue for my PoShDynDnsApi module.

I wanted to go over a few of the things that have been taking my time.

Please note this article contains more personal experiences than PowerShell. I need to put these to paper, so to speak. Feel free to skip any part of this article, or just close the browser tab and binge your next show.

Responding to an Issue Submitted for the PoShDynDnsApi Module

Dave Carroll — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The PoShDynDnsApi Module

I published the PoShDynDnsApi module to the PowerShell Gallery in January of 2019 though it feels more like 5 years than the actual 18 months or so.

Since it was published, I’ve written two articles about it — one announcing it and another providing a deep dive into the inner workings. The module has been downloaded from the gallery just over 350 times. Even with my testing and downloading, there are potentially over 340 people using it. That’s not a lot, but the main point is that it could be helping people manage their domains in (or perhaps migrate from) the Dyn Managed DNS service.

Building a PowerShell Command Inventory Solution - Part Deux

Dave Carroll — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

It’s been ten days since I published an article on my initial solution for the IronScripter challenge Building a PowerShell Command Inventory. That solution relied on regular expressions, most commonly called regex.

The article included a primer on regex mechanics and how to use regex in PowerShell. However, the regex for each code type that I wanted to discover produced some false positives.

I asked myself, How could I get better, more accurate, code discovery?

Building a PowerShell Command Inventory Solution

Dave Carroll — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

The latest IronScripter challenge, Building a PowerShell Command Inventory, helps us to understand our library of PowerShell code.

It is also a good way to introduce regular expressions, most commonly called regex.

Regex and PowerShell

Before we tackle the challenge, let’s briefly discuss regex and how you can use (or probably already have used) regex in PowerShell.

What is Regex

Regex is a pattern used to match text. A regex pattern can contain letters, numbers, spaces, other characters, operators, and other constructs.

A PowerShell Counting Challenge Walk-through

Dave Carroll — Fri, 22 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

The latest IronScripter challenge, A PowerShell Counting Challenge, had challengers learning about loops, possibly range and modulus operators, basic parameter validation, and creation of a simple custom object.

This post should serve as a walk-through, or learning guide if you will, for the Iron Scripter’s challenge.

Beginner

For the beginner challenge, the Chairman wanted the challenger to:

Get the sum of the even numbers between 1 and 100. You should be able to do this in at least 3 different ways. Show all 3 ways. You don’t need to write any functions or scripts.

PowerShell 7 Experimental Features

Dave Carroll — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

#PS7Now! PowerShell 7 Is Here

This #PSBlogWeek focuses on the official release of PowerShell 7 — the newest, fastest, and best PowerShell putting the spotlight on PowerShell’s Experimental Features.

Get #PS7Now to experience them yourself!

Experimental Features Defined

After becoming open-source software, the PowerShell community requested a mechanism for users to try out new features and provide early feedback to feature developers. This discussion took place in PowerShell RFC0029 which was finalized and implemented in PowerShell Core 6.1.

PowerShell 7 Changes to JSON Cmdlets

Dave Carroll — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

#PS7Now! PowerShell 7 Is Here

Part of #PSBlogWeek, this article is one of many from several community members and PowerShell bloggers, like me, that focus on a given topic.

The topic of this #PSBlogWeek is PowerShell 7.

NOTE

I was incredibly flattered when Jeff asked me to participate in this #PSBlogWeek. Though I’m relatively new to the blogging scene, I’ve been using Windows PowerShell well over 10 years. Most recently and beyond this blog, I’ve participated in several IronScripter challenges, contributed a chapter on soft skills in the PowerShell Conference Book, Volume 2, and been part of conversations within the PowerShell community.

Writing Windows Events with Smart EventData

Dave Carroll — Sat, 07 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

I’ve spent quite some time researching how to create events using EventData with named Data elements. It’s not easy and is even less easier to write some PowerShell to make it “dynamic”.

EventData with Named Data

In order to enable named Data elements in your event logs, you have to go through several hoops. I won’t go through them in this post, but here are some links to various posts that can help you get started. It’s not for the faint of heart!

Get-History Lesson

Dave Carroll — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A Quick History Lesson

Today, I did a significant amount of work in a PowerShell session and, even though most of what I did was copy/pasted from a file (open in VS Code), I wanted to grab only the essential commands from the session.

Instead of scrolling or arrowing up (which is actually using PowerShell history, by default), you can list all of the commands that you have executed in your session, up to a predefined maximum.

PowerShell Beginners Have to Start Somewhere

Dave Carroll — Sun, 13 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Iron Scripter grew out of the scripting games at PowerShell Summit and the quote below comes from the introductory post on the Iron Scripter site.

The Chairman has decided that it is in the best interests of his Iron Scripters, and those that wish to attain that valued designation, that training continue year-round. To that end, he has commissioned a series of PowerShell challenges. These challenges will range in complexity and be tagged accordingly.

Design Deep Dive - PoShDynDnsApi

Dave Carroll — Wed, 08 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

In January, I published the first release of the PoShDynDnsApi module to the PowerShellGallery, along with a blog post introducing the module. It was the culmination of months of often-distracted work that began nearly a year prior.

In this post, I want to give you a peek into my development process.

Topics Covered

Below are the topics that I will cover in this post.

Dyn Managed DNS Service
- Managed DNS API
PowerShell Web Cmdlets
- Changes Between Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core
- Strictly RESTing
Testing Tool
Module Variables
- Session
- History
API Request
- Invoke-DynDnsRequestDesktop
- Invoke-DynDnsRequestCore
- Invoke-DynDnsRequest
Output
- Classes
- Output Streams
- Write-DynDnsOutput
Help

Dyn Managed DNS Service

When I first started working on this module, I had access to Dyn’s Managed DNS through an employer. When I left them in October 2018, I obviously lost my access to Dyn.

Using the PSGSuite Module for G Suite

Dave Carroll — Sun, 03 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

About a week ago, I was scrolling through Reddit and came across a post in r/sysadmin, Get list of aliases in Gsuite/Gmail.

I took a few minutes to install and configure PSGSuite, a module for interacting with G Suite (Google Apps) API that I heard about sometime last year. In short order, I was able to provide a response to the post.

IMPORTANT

I am not affiliated with PSGSuite project, other than being a very new, casual user of the module. Please visit the GitHub repo or wiki for help with commands or to raise an issue.

This module allows you to work with GSuite users, groups, sheets, and more. See the wiki for details.

Introducing the PoShDynDnsApi Module

Dave Carroll — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Sometime in Early 2018

Manager: Hey, Dave. I need you to add all of our domains as Accepted Domains in Exchange Online.
Me: Okay. How many do we have?
Manager: Maybe 50?
Me *finally gets access to Dyn and checks*: We have over 170 in Dyn.
Manager: Yeah, all those.
Me: We will need to create a TXT record in Dyn Managed DNS to prove ownership of the domain in Azure first.
Manager: Do your thing.
Me *sqeeeeee*: Okay.

Windows Forms

Dave Carroll — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Recently, I was tasked to provide a GUI for a PowerShell script. Okay, I think I tasked myself, but it was an interesting foray into the .Net [System.Windows.Forms] class.

As one does to find script inspiration - some might call this a starting point - I took to my favorite search engine and found numerous scripts built with SAPIEN Technologies PowerShell Studio as well as manually coded scripts on GitHub.

How I Implement Module Variables

Dave Carroll — Sun, 14 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

Originally, I used globally scoped variables for my PoShDynDnsApi module to store the API URL, the authentication token, and the API version. These three variables were created during the initial connection to the service then updated or removed as needed.

A week or so ago, I was talking with a previous co-worker, Steven Maglio, that just happens to be a .Net developer. We were reminiscing and checking out some PowerShell code that we’d written. He pointed out that I could create a pseudo-namespace, a la hashtable, to store the values for all the modules variables. At first, I was reluctant to change the method I was using for my variables. After all, my module was nearly complete - I was just working on the help files.

ForEach-Object -WhatIf

Dave Carroll — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

While working on my PoShDynDnsApi module, I came across an issue with with a function I had predominantly borrowed from a TechNet blog post from Jamie Nelson. Specifically, in my function Update-DynDnsRecord that called the Compare-ObjectProperties function, when I used the -WhatIf parameter, I unexpectedly received the following:

What if: Performing the operation "Retrieve the value for property 'Name'" on target "InputObject: ipaddress Address {get;set;}".
What if: Performing the operation "Retrieve the value for property 'Name'" on target "InputObject: string Name {get;set;}".
What if: Performing the operation "Retrieve the value for property 'Name'" on target "InputObject: int TTL {get;set;}".
What if: Performing the operation "Retrieve the value for property 'Name'" on target "InputObject: string Type {get;set;}".
What if: Performing the operation "Retrieve the value for property 'Name'" on target "InputObject: string Zone {get;set;}".
What if: Performing the operation "Retrieve the value for property 'Name'" on target "InputObject: ipaddress Address {get;set;}".
What if: Performing the operation "Retrieve the value for property 'Name'" on target "InputObject: string Name {get;set;}".
What if: Performing the operation "Retrieve the value for property 'Name'" on target "InputObject: int TTL {get;set;}".
What if: Performing the operation "Retrieve the value for property 'Name'" on target "InputObject: string Type {get;set;}".
What if: Performing the operation "Retrieve the value for property 'Name'" on target "InputObject: string Zone {get;set;}".

The Compare-ObjectProperties seemed to be throwing these additional What If statements. I saw where the ForEach-Object alias of % was used a few times and determined that these two lines were the cause.

Download Newest Sysinternals Tools

Dave Carroll — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

I have a new laptop and have been configuring it as my primary PowerShell development system.

Today, when I was looking for a way to search for all of my GitHub repositories, I found a couple Gists from Jeff Hicks for New-GitHubGist and SendTo-Gist. Knowing Jeff is a prolific PowerShell blogger, I dug a little deeper and found his post on using a PowerShell workflow to download Sysinternals.

Updatable Help

Dave Carroll — Sat, 25 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

PowerShell has provided a way to update the help files for modules since version 3.0.

Since creating my first two modules, I have tried adding updatable help support, but came across a few issues. Tonight, I finally resolved them for my module PoShEvents.

GitHub Bad, GitHub Pages Good

My module repository is in GitHub, and I originally thought that I could simply use the Raw view for my updatable help. After all, I was successfully serving the online help version using the markdown files straight out of GitHub.

Clear DNS Server Cache

Dave Carroll — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

How often have you needed to clear the DNS server cache?

Regardless how many domain controllers in your environment, a few simple lines of PowerShell can clear the cache on all of them.

First, we need to get the name of the domain. Of course, if you already know the name, you can simply use it.

`1`	`$DomainName = Get-ADDomain \| Select-Object -ExpandProperty DnsRoot`

Next, we find all name servers in the domain and show only the hostname.

Unique Email Domains

Dave Carroll — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

So you’re working on getting all of your email domains that’s on-prem into Azure or you simply want to ensure that your on-prem Exchange has been configured for all the domains your user accounts utilize. Your Active Directory domain contains over 30,000 accounts. How would you go about discovering the unique email domains?

Knowing that the Active Directory attribute proxyAddresses contains the account’s SMTP addresses, we can start there. Also, you only want to include only those domains for active accounts. [Note: The proxyAddresses also contains other address types, but we are only concerned about SMTP for this exercise.]