Announcements!

• Desired State Configuration (DSC) Planning Update
  A fun and informative blog post sharing the exciting plans and roadmap for Desired State Configuration (DSC), including plans for compatibility, transparency, cross-platform support, and more.

Blogs, Articles, and Posts

• Find enabled local Group Policy settings with rsop.msc and PowerShell
  When it comes to GPO troubleshooting, you might want to find settings that are configured by local Group Policy. With rsop.msc, a graphical tool is available for this purpose. However, it is generally more efficient to generate a report using gpresult.exe and evaluate it with PowerShell.
• Your Getting Started Guide to PowerShell Approved Verbs
  Discover how to get started with PowerShell Approved Verbs to make sure your scripts and code is top-notch in this ATA Learning tutorial!
• How to optimize and speed up your PowerShell scripts
  My best practices, tips and tricks working with PowerShell This is a blog post that is not deeply technical. I will not go deep into the tips and tricks, because you will learn this automatically when you have more experience & when you are ready. I have a seperate blog post about best practices, tips … Continue reading How to optimize and speed up your PowerShell scripts
• PowerShell Advanced Functions: Cmdlet Bindings and Parameters
  Part 1 of this series on advanced PowerShell functions introduces the key concepts, including cmdlet bindings and common parameters like ErrorAction.

Projects, Scripts, and Modules

• Announcing PowerShell Crescendo 1.1.0-RC1
  This RC contains several community requested features and fixes including improved support for PSScriptAnalyzer, improvements to error handling, and the addition of ExcludeAsArgument property.
• Using the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK to Generate a Mailbox Traffic Report
  Microsoft 365 makes it easy for administrators to get mail activity usage data for users. However, if you want to know which domains are sending most mail, you need to do some work. In this article, we cover how to use cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK to create reports about user mail activity over time and the traffic sent by different domains.
• ServerCertificateValidationCallback (or rather, collector) for .NET Core
  ServerCertificateValidationCallback (or rather, collector) for .NET Core - Get-WebCertificate.ps1
• About Colors.md
  When I'm having a bad day, I can spend hours just fiddling with colors and recursion. Today I wrote an HslEnumerator class which is fun because if you output it to the PowerShell terminal it just goes on producing colors forever:
• Get-AadJoinInformation.ps1
  Get Azure AD (Entra ID) Join Information without dsregcmd

Books, Media, and Learning Resources

• From Cloud to Console: Harm Veenstra’s PowerShell Perspectives
  We had a cool chat with Harm Veenstra, the guy behind powershellisfun.com. We got into some neat PowerShell stuff like Out-ConsoleGridView and the -PassThru parameter. Harm also gave us the lowdown on when to quit the cloud and spilled the beans on running his blog. Plus, he shared how he keeps up with the quick mojo of the tech world. Tune in for a fun and laid-back tech talk!

Community

• Unlocking PowerShell Magic: Different Approach to Creating ‘Empty’ PSCustomObjects
  Today I saw an article from Christian Ritter, "PowerShell: Creating an "empty" PSCustomObject" on X that got me curious. Do people create empty objects like Christian proposes? I want to offer an alternative to Christian's article, which uses OrderedDictionary and converts to PSCustomObject.
• Simplifying Creation of Empty PowerShell PSCustomObjects using Custom Functions
  Creating an empty PSCustomObject in PowerShell is a common task, but the traditional approach can be verbose and repetitive. In this blog post, I'll walk you through a more structured and efficient way to achieve this using functions and property definitions.

Fun

• PSQuizMaster
  A module for creating and running quizzes to learn PowerShell - GitHub - jdhitsolutions/PSQuizMaster: A module for creating and running quizzes to learn PowerShell

Check out psweekly.dowst.dev for all past editions as well as a searchable archive.