Friday 16 October 2015

Azure Automation PowerShell ISE Addon

Microsoft recently released to GitHub and the PowerShell Gallery a new solution that adds an extension to the PowerShell ISE allowing you to author, maintain and test Azure Automation PowerShell Workflows locally.

http://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/AzureAutomationAuthoringToolkit/

I've created a quick video to show the installation and initial configuration:



The next day after creating the video I realised that I had uninstalled the module while doing the video so I went to re-install it, only to be told that I had version 0.2.2.4 installed already, but version 0.2.2.6 was now available.

Thankfully, adding the -Force switch to the Install-Module AzureAutomationAuthoringToolkit command makes it very easy to update.

 
 

I'll be following up soon with a quick guide on usage.

Tuesday 6 October 2015

Problem Installing Intune Extension for ConfigMgr

Microsoft recently released the iOS 9 Intune extension for System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager.

While I had updated my locally installed desktop consoles ok, the installation on our RDS server decided it didn't want to play ball.

Every time the console was opened, I received the prompt that a new extension was available and to install now or suffer having the console in read only mode.



However... each time I clicked yes to install, the console would close and then I would get a prompt saying the console was still open.


Checking task manager and logs etc. verified that no consoles were actually open, but when clicking retry, nothing appeared to happen and reopening the console would bring me back to the start off the loop.



Upon checking deeper, I could see the update process in task manager, which would go into a suspended state then resume then just quit.

A check of the event log revealed an error message with some form of .NET exception... oh...



I'll cut a long story short and after trying various things I finally tried running the installation process silently and it worked.

If you navigate to the ConfigMgr console installation folder (by default it's in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Configuration Manager\AdminConsole and run an elevated admin command prompt (or PowerShell) then navigate to the bin folder and then run:

AdminUI.ExtensionInstaller.exe /Q

This ran the installation smoothly with no errors and the console now opens fine with no prompts.


** Update 2nd Dec 2015 **
I've just had this same error after updating to SP1/2 CU2 and with the latest Conditional Access extensions, however the information above didn't work this time.

Looking at the log file, it recognised that the /Q parameter was being passed for a silent installation, but was complaining that no source had been specified.

Looking at the logs of a successfully updated device there was another parameter: SiteServerName=<<server name>>

So the new full command to run was:

AdminUI.ExtensionInstaller.exe /Q SiteServerName=serverFQDN


Monday 5 October 2015

Microsoft MVP Award 2015

I almost forgot last week that it was "that time of year" again.

No, not Christmas, but the renewal period time that I am part of for the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award.



I'm still so very humbled to have received the award, let alone for 3 years running now.

While I may have been a little quiet on the blogging front (that will change with lots of 2016 content to come) I've been busy with other bits like getting the Operations Manager Cookbook out and speaking at various events.

I've also been very, very (can't stress just how very busy), within my working life setting up and growing PowerONPlatforms.

I've always been quiet on this blog about my company, mainly as I don't want it to ever seem like it's just purely marketing, however I'm extremely proud of what myself and the team have achieved (can you say full production ready System Center deployments in under a day anyone?) and as the team continues to grow with even more talent I will start to make more references and comments to things that we're building and deploying.

Not only that, but we're also actively creating new community solutions and publishing them for all to benefit and learn from, one quick example is the ConfigMgr PowerBI report set recently released by Rafael from the team: http://www.poweronplatforms.com/power-bi-and-sccm-dashboard-reporting/

While I will be posting more content here soon, be sure to check out the PowerONPlatforms news section and add it to your favourites/RSS feeds as a consolidated view of various posts from across the team.

http://www.poweronplatforms.com/news/