Powershell on When Software Attacks!

Calling Application Insights API using Powershell

Sat, 06 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

If you have an application, instrumenting it with something like Application Insights to emit useful data is something I cannot espouse the benefits of enough. As a service, however, Application Insights can offer other benefits, such as Availability Tests to tell you if the application is accessible to your users.

Configuring BizTalk 2020 Application Insights telemetry behind a firewall

Sat, 06 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

BizTalk 2020 allows you to connect it to an Application Insights instance, where it will send tracking data as customEvents so you see what’s going on. However, getting it working in an environment where security is important and the network team want to open the fewest paths through the firewall as possible is an exercise in patience. This blog post is as much aide memoire for me as an information post for you.

Configure Server 2016 ADFS and WAP with custom ports using Powershell

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A pull request for Chris Gardner’s WebApplicationProxyDSC is now inbound after a frustrating week of trying to automate the configuration of ADFS and WAP on a Server 2016 lab.

With Server 2016, the PowerShell commands to configure the ADFS and WAP servers include switches to specify a non-default port. I need to do this because the servers are behind a NetNat on a server hosting several labs, so port 443 is not available to me and I must use a different port.

Setting Enroll Permissions on ADCS Certificate Template using DSC

Thu, 02 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

As part of the work I have been doing around generating and managing lab environments using Lability and DSC, one of the things I needed to do was change the permissions on a certificate template within a DSC configuration. Previously, when deploying to Azure, I used the PSPKI PowerShell modules within code executed by the Custom Script extension. I was very focused on sticking with DSC this time, which ruled out PSPKI. Whilst there is a DSC module available to configure Certificate Services itself, this does not extend to managing Certificate Templates.

Creating Azure Virtual Networks using Powershell and XML Part 4: Local networks and site-site connectivity

Sun, 09 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This is part 4 of a series of posts building powershell functions to create and modify Azure Virtual Networks. Previous posts have covered functions to create virtual networks and then delete them. In this part, I’m going to show you functions that will define local networks and configure site-site VPN connectivity between a local and virtual network.

Gary Lapointe to the rescue: Using his Office 365 powershell tools to recover from a corrupted masterpage

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I also need to give credit to the Office 365 support team over this. They were very quick in their response to my support incident, but I was quicker!

Whilst working on an Office 365 site for a customer today I had a moment of blind panic. The site is using custom branding and I was uploading a new version of the master page to the site when things went badly wrong. The upload appeared to finish OK but the dialog that was shown post upload was not the usual content type/fill in the fields form, but a plain white box. I left it for a few minutes but nothing changed. Unperturbed, I returned to the mater page gallery… Except I couldn’t. All I got was a white page. No errors, nothing. No pages worked at all – no settings pages, no content pages, nothing at all.

Creating Azure Virtual Networks using Powershell and XML Part 2: Powershell functions

Tue, 04 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In my previous post I talked about what was involved in creating an Azure network configuration using Powershell. In this post I’ll cover where I’ve got so so far, which is a series of functions that do the following:

Creating Azure Virtual Networks using Powershell and XML Part 3: Powershell functions for deletion

Tue, 04 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This is part three of a series of posts about using powershell to script the creation, deletion and (hopefully) modification of Azure Virtual Networks. In part 1 I went through the key steps with some rough code. Part 2 showed the much tidier functions I’ve now written to create virtual network elements. This is part 3, and I will present functions to remove elements. Hopefully I will manage to get the modification functions to work which be a fourth installment!

Creating Azure Virtual Networks using Powershell and XML

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’ll be honest, I expected this task to be easier than it is. What I’m working on is some powershell that we might use as part of automated build processes that will create a new Virtual Network in an Azure subscription. What I’m after is to add a new network to the existing configuration.

Content Types programmatically added to SharePoint libraries not appearing on New menu

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This one caused some consternation, I can tell you. As usual, the solution could be found on the great wide web, but it took some digging, so as usual I am repeating it here.

Powershell to find missing features in SharePoint 2010

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

When migrating from SharePoint 2007 to 2010, no matter how hard you try there’s always the chance the the content database upgrade process will throw out errors about features being referenced that are not present in the farm. We have used Stefan Goßner’s WssAnalyzeFeatures and WSSRemoveFeatureFromSite (see his original article) to track down the references and exterminate them. It’s not the fastest thing on two legs though, and I have a fondness for having my SharePoint 2010 tooling in PowerShell because of the flexibility it gives me.

Powershell script to rename files for use as SharePoint 2010 User Profile thumbnails

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

User profile photos have changed in SharePoint 2010 in that they are now stored in a single image library in the MySite Host root site collection. They have also changed in that when you change the profile photo, SharePoint takes the file and creates three new images at specific sizes, then discards the file you gave it. These files have specific names to link them to the user account and come in small, medium and large flavours.