AD Cmdlets 1.3 RTMed

Late last week we released to the web the latest version (1.3) of our free Active Directory cmdlets (also known as QAD-cmdlets, widely used by tens of thousands admins and compatible with more or less any version of Active Directory or ADAM/ADLDS).

You can read more about the cmdlets in this PDF guide, or online reference.

This is a significant update with some 14 new cmdlets, 24 new parameters, 43 enhanced ones, and a few bugs fixed (not that we had any really )

Detailed What’s New information can be found on page 19 of the PDF guide and in my upcoming blog posts. Download the new AD cmdlets now and let us know what you think by posting to the AD PowerShell discussion forum!

What’s new in PowerGUI 1.9.5

Yesterday we shipped the latest release of PowerGUI – the most popular PowerShell IDE and Admin console out there. Both components got improved.

Administrative console now has:

• Ability to automatically check for PowerPack updates when it starts – so if you are a PowerGUI user you can now be sure that all your PowerPacks (PowerGUI addons from PowerGUI library or any other intranet/internet location) are up to date.
• Improved grid performance – we are now much faster when displaying large datasets (a lot of objects with many properties.)
• Progress bars – you can use write-progress cmdlet in your PowerPack code to display progress bar for long operations.

Script Editor and Debugger:

• Also write-progress support – see Alan’s video on how nice it is compared to the one on native blue window.
• Customizable tab settings: You can have all tabs in the editor replaced with specified number of spaces. On the Tools menu, click Options, then on the Text Editor tab select whether you want to substitute tabs with spaces and the number of spaces.
• Support the prompt function in the PowerShell Console window: if you have customized your PowerShell prompt – we will now use your custom prompt in our console pane.
• Collapse regions in the Admin console or the Script Editor: all regions are collapsed when reopening a file or a script.

And we have obviously fixed a bunch of issues reported at our community forums.

Download PowerGUI 1.9.5 from the website today or wait about a week till we turn on automated updates for existing customers.

Tags: PowerGUI, PowerShell, Release
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Easier PowerPack troubleshooting

One great usability improvement in PowerGUI 1.9 admin console is the new Messages window which shows all information, warning and error messages from the scripts/cmdlets executes in PowerGUI.

For example, if I add a script node with this code:

Write-Host "Starting a sample script which will produce an error"
Write-Warning "Seriously, why not we look for qw:\1234\567?"
Write-Error "Oh-oh, here it goes"
Get-ChildItem qw:\1234\567
throw "Throw works as well  "

I will get the Messages pane show up below the grid (or any other location – all panes are now dockable!) and let you see all the messages:

The error ones even have shortcuts to the exact place in code where the error happened!

I can’t imagine going back to troubleshooting my PowerPacks without this.

PowerGUI 1.9 RTMs

The most popular PowerShell freeware tool has just got an update.

This is a good update with full Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 support (PowerShell v2 modules are now first class citizens!), revamped actions pane in the admin console, much improved intellisense in the editor, and a few other cool features and nice bugfixes.

In the next few days I will talk about the new features in detail. For now, here’s a quick copy/paste from the release notes:

New features in PowerGUI 1.9:

• Dockable panes in the Admin console: now you can just open the View menu and select the panes you need to be displayed; then you can right-click the title bar of any pane, and select Dockable – to drag, resize, or close the window, arranging the panes in the way you like.
• Messages pane: this feature will be extremely helpful in maintaining the tool. Select Messages from the View menu, and all errors, warnings, and information messages produced during PowerShell commands execution or scripts operation will become available for tracking in a special Messages pane.
• PowerShell 2 modules support: PowerGUI now allows you to work with PowerShell modules. Modules are the new form of PowerShell cmdlet/function libraries introduced in PowerShell v2. Like the snapins, modules are accessible to PowerPacks. PowerGUI supports intellisense, F1 help, and debugging for PowerShell 2 cmdlets from module scripts.
• Recently opened files: PowerGUI will “remember” the files you opened in Script Editor, and reopen them at startup, with the breakpoints, bookmarks, positions, splitted windows – to make your work with Script Editor even more convenient.
• Intellisense for function parameters in PowerShell 2: note that the function needs to be loaded in PowerShell before it appears in intellisense, which means that it is not enough to type its definition – you actually need to run your script or profile loading your function libraries.
• Re-worked Actions: instead of predefined Links/Actions/Common Actions groups, PowerGUI now lets you organize your actions in any custom categories. Note that Link (which used to be a separate entity) has been replaced with another entity – Action, outputting its results in a nested view.

You can manually download it here and install the update now or (if you are a 1.8 user connected to the internet) wait a week and get PowerGUI autoupdated.

What’s new in AD cmdlets 1.2.2

As Bob blogged yesterday the latest release of Quest’s free AD cmdlets are now available for download. I wanted to take a few minutes to describe what’s actually new and changed in this release.

First and foremost – this is a maintenance release – think about it as a service pack: no new features but lots of bugfixes.

All features were introduced back in 1.2 two months ago and if you missed it have a look at the blog posts I had on these:

• 1.2 new feature list
• New group membership cmdlets
• Filtering by account creation date
• AD cmdlets for object undelete

The key bugfixes added to 1.2.2 maintenance release are:

• Fixed the Connection property and other incompatibility issues which affected Kirk’s AD PowerPack.
• Made Member, MemberOf and AppliesTo properties indexable: so you can do something like $user.MemberOf[1].
• Added the ability to connect to domain controller, ADAM/ADLDS server or ActiveRoles Server by IP address (e.g. if DNS is not set up properly.)
• Fixed TsHomeDrive and TsHomeDirectory bug reported by Shay.
• And finally enhanced the setup so it ensures compatibility with ActiveRoles Server should you have this product deployed.

Overall a good service release and the one we plan to make our minimal system requirement for AD PowerPack starting with PowerGUI 1.9.

Download it here.

Tags: AD, AD cmdlets, Active Directory, PowerShell, Release
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PowerPack Profiles

Shared Scripts (also known as PowerPack profiles) are another great feature introduced in PowerGUI 1.8.

If you ever wanted to have common functions available through-out your PowerPack or if you ever wanted to perform some kind of initialization before your PowerPack is used – this is exactly what you need.

From within any script node/link/action belonging to a PowerPack you can click Shared Scripts and edit the profile:

• This profile will be available to any scripted nodes, links or actions of the pack.
• The code will executed the first time any element of the PowerPack is clicked.
• This is a great place to store common functions, variables, or place your initialization code (e.g. connecting to Active Directory or virtualization infrastructure.)

When you export a PowerPack the Shared Scripts get exported with it.

If you want to include them with a centrally managed PowerGUI configuration, don’t forget to share the %appdata%\Quest Software\PowerGUI\Scripts folder in the same file share where you put the PowerGUI configuration file (by the way, renamed to config.xml).

We hope you like this new feature. Download PowerGUI 1.8 and let us know what you think!

Tags: PowerGUI, PowerPack, PowerShell, Release
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Improved PowerPack Management

Let’s continue to look into the new features of PowerGUI 1.8.

Today’s spotlight is on PowerPack management (File / Manage PowerPacks dialog box):

As you can see, the dialog box:

• Displays information about each PowerPack – including a link to the pack’s web-site (if you are a PowerPack creator – here’s how you can promote your blog or your company),
• Lets you check for a newer version of the pack (if the pack creator chose to provide a link) and upgrade to it,
• Obviously lets you uninstall a PowerPack or import a new one,
• Gives PowerPack creators a handy way to edit pack properties and export a newer version.

For users this means:

• Easier way to uninstall a pack,
• Ability to check for newer version and upgrade to it,
• More information including the pack description, version, and link to the author’s web site.

ForPowerPacks’ authors (which can be any of you!) the whole PowerPack creation and maintenance got easier as well:

1. You create a new PowerPack much like you did before – by right-clicking a folder in PowerGUI left-hand tree and choosing Create New PowerPack,
2. Then you can specify all the attributed of the PowerPack – including the new ones such as the URL of your home page and URL of the place where the .powerpack file will be hosted (can be our library at PowerGUI.org or any other site such as your internal SharePoint portal),
3. You keep working on the pack, changing its elements, adding new ones and so on (all nodes, links, actions now list PowerPacks with which they are associated in their Properties / More),
4. And export a newer version from PowerPack Management dialog box.

We hope you really like these changes. Download PowerGUI 1.8 and let us know what you think!

Tags: PowerGUI, PowerShell, Release, PowerPack
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What’s new in PowerGUI 1.8

Yesterday we posted to our downloads page the latest version of PowerGUI. Here’s my quick attempt to summarize the new features added in that release. I will obviously just highlight the ones I like the most.

The key improvements I love in PowerGUI Script Editor and debugger are:

• Faster start time – 1.8 takes just a couple of seconds on my desktop – and
• Automated intellisense and help update whenever you upgrade PowerShell or any of the snapins to a later version – you can count of these being always up to date.

The PowerGUI admin console had far more changes. We more or less revamped the whole PowerPack infrastructure (PowerPacks are the admin add-ons you can find and share in our library):

• Added one centralized place for PowerPack management (File / Manage PowerPacks),
• PowerPacks themselves got profiles – scripts shared within a pack and executed before the pack is used,
• PowerGUI now remembers all elements associated with a pack and maintains the selection for re-exports,
• Links and actions got a lot more fine-tuning via Display Configuration button in Properties.

Later this week we will look into all of these features in detail.

For now, download the latest version and let us know what you think!

Tags: PowerGUI, PowerShell, Release
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AD cmdlets reference updated

I have just updated QAD cmdlets online reference with the help data from version 1.2.

The following new articles got added:

• Get-QADMemberOf
• Restore-QADDeletedObject
• Get-QADPasswordSettingsObjectAppliesTo
• Get-QARSOperation
• Get-QARSApprovalTask
• Approve-QARSApprovalTask
• Reject-QARSApprovalTask

The following parameters got added to existing articles:

PARAMETERS	ADDED ON
• Tombstone • LastKnownParent	• Get-QADComputer • Get-QADGroup • Get-QADObject • Get-QADPasswordSettingsObject • Get-QADUser
• CreatedOn • CreatedAfter • CreatedBefore • LastChangedOn • LastChangedAfter • LastChangedBefore	• Get-QADComputer • Get-QADGroup • Get-QADObject • Get-QADPasswordSettingsObject • Get-QADUser • Get-QARSAccessTemplate • Get-QARSAccessTemplateLink
• Type • ObjectAttributes • Name • DisplayName • Description • Anr	• Get-QADGroupMember
• MemberOf • IndirectMemberOf • NotMemberOf • NotIndirectMemberOf	• Get-QADComputer • Get-QADGroup • Get-QADObject • Get-QADUser
• ContainsMember • ContainsIndirectMember • NotContainsMember • NotContainsIndirectMember	• Get-QADGroup

P.S. For those interested: I have used my old out-wiki script and created another one – post-wiki – which actually posts the files to the wiki site. This was incredibly cool to watch but I probably won’t publish it so I don’t help someone do something stupid against our wiki or any other MediaWiki site such as Wikipedia.

Tags: AD, AD cmdlets, Active Directory, PowerGUI.org, PowerShell, Release, cmdlets, reference
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AD cmdlets 1.2 available for download!

The latest version of Quest’s free AD cmdlets (aka QAD cmdlets) are finally available for download.

In addition to numerous bugfixes improvements based on community feedback, there are quite a few new features and cmdlets, including:

• Get-QADMemberOf – Retrieve group memberships of a particular object in Active Directory. Supported are both Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS).
• Get-QADPasswordSettingsObjectAppliesTo – Retrieve Password Settings objects that match the specified conditions. Active Directory version of Windows Server 2008 or later is required.
• -Tombstone parameter for Get-QAD* cmdlets to let you find deleted objects.
• Restore-QADDeletedObject - Undelete objects in Active Directory by restoring tombstones back into normal objects. This cmdlet requires an Active Directory domain controller running Windows Server 2003 or later.
• Get-QAD* cmdlets’ new parameters to filter objects by their modification or creation date.
• New parameters for Get-QADGroupMember to search by type, name, display name, description (!), or any custom attributes.
• New parameters for any Get-QAD* cmdlets to search by group membership.
• Strongly typed parameters for Get-QADPasswordSettingObject.

For the happy users of our commercial ActiveRoles Server platform there are additional features providing for convenient work with AD change history and approvals:

• Get-QARSOperation – Retrieve operation records from ActiveRoles Server. Each operation record represents a certain change request, whether pending or completed, in ActiveRoles Server.
• Get-QARSApprovalTask – Retrieve approval task records from ActiveRoles Server. Each approval task record represents a task,whether pending or completed, to approve or reject a certain change request in ActiveRoles Server.
• Approve-QARSApprovalTask – Apply the Approve resolution on approval tasks for which you are assigned to the Approver role in
  ActiveRoles Server.
• Reject-QARSApprovalTask – Apply the Reject resolution on approval tasks for which you are assigned to the Approver role in ActiveRoles Server.

I will probably spend next couple of weeks going into these exciting new features in detail – but for now the administrator’s guide and get-help are your friends.

Download the new AD cmdlets and let us know what you think!

Tags: AD, AD cmdlets, Active Directory, ActiveRoles Server, PowerGUI, PowerShell, Release, cmdlets
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