PowerShell

Homeland Security’s Trusted Travelers API and PowerShell – Getting a Better Global Entry Interview Using PowerShell

Homeland Security’s Trusted Travelers API and PowerShell – Getting a Better Global Entry Interview Using PowerShell

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I am flying out of the country in February and I recently decided to enroll in TSA Pre-Check as well as Global Entry. With Global Entry you automatically get TSA Pre-Check, but Global Entry works for international flights as well and is only a few extra dollars more than TSA Pre-Check.

Once you get your application approved, the next step is to schedule an interview, which is essentially a 15-minute appointment where a customs officer ask you a few questions (like where you are going, when and why) and then take bio-metrics (fingerprint scans). The interview must be done in person at one of relatively few U.S. Customs and Border Protection locations, like an international airport, and you must schedule your interview within 30 days of getting your application approved (otherwise you have to resubmit your entire application). You are allowed to drop and pick up appointments if you find … Continue...

Deploy Web Link Shortcuts to the Desktop and Start Menu Using Intune

Deploy Web Link Shortcuts to the Desktop and Start Menu Using Intune

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I am currently doing a Auto Pilot / Intune deployment and was asked how we could deploy web link shortcuts to the users desktop as well as the start menu. Currently when you do a web link app deployment in Intune it will only ‘install’ it in the users Start menu and not the users desktop. By leveraging PowerShell and Intune Configuration policies we can have it deploy to the start menu and the desktop.

During my initial search I came across this blog which was exactly what I was looking for but since I have OneDrive folder redirection it seemed to be having issues finding the desktop path, and I wanted to use any icons instead of the default chrome or edge icons.

Azure Blob and Custom Icons

For the shortcut you need to specify a url to a ICO file. To do this I set up cold Azure … Continue...

Post Notifications About Unused Office 365 Licenses to Teams using Azure Runbooks

Post Notifications About Unused Office 365 Licenses to Teams using Azure Runbooks

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I have written several articles on using PowerShell to send alerts and notifications to Microsoft Teams, but up until now they were set up using only the task scheduler. As more and more companies move to the cloud I wanted to see how I could do cloud infrastructure alerting as well. In this article I am using an Azure RunBook to connect to my Office 365 tenant, parse my licenses, and return any that need reconciliation. If you get your Office 365 licenses from a CSP or any other kind of reseller, you may get charged for all of your licenses, applied or not. So it’s a good thing to make sure you don’t have any extra ones lying around.

Set Up the Azure Environment

Resource Group, Runbook and Automation Account Creation

I created a script that you can just change the variables for and it will create the following … Continue...

ChatOps: Setting up PoshBot for Microsoft Teams

ChatOps: Setting up PoshBot for Microsoft Teams

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PoshBot is a chat bot written in PowerShell and created by DevBlackOps. ‘It makes extensive use of classes introduced in PowerShell 5.0. PowerShell modules are loaded into PoshBot and instantly become available as bot commands.’1 PoshBot can do pretty much anything you configure it to do. You can have it create Azure servers, reset Active Directory passwords, create and modify help desk tickets, license Office 365 users, etc. ‘If you can write it in PowerShell, PoshBot can execute it.’1 

Important: PoshBot has some great documentation, make sure you bookmark and review it.

In this guide I will walk you through setting up PoshBot for Microsoft Teams. It’s a little more tedious than Slack (which is a few commands) but once you get it going it works flawless. Keep an eye out as I will be publishing more articles on different PoshBot plugins that I create which … Continue...

Configure Windows 10 Accent Color with Intune and PowerShell

Configure Windows 10 Accent Color with Intune and PowerShell

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My last two articles showed you how you can set a computers desktop wallpaper and lock screen wallpaper without having Enterprise or Education by using a PowerShell script and Intune. Now I wanted to figure out how to configure the Windows accent color to also match my corporate branding.

Get Color Values

The first thing we need to do is to get the proper registry values for the color we want to use. For this I just set my local computer’s accent color to the color I wanted to apply to my target machines. You only need to do this one time, once you set the color you want and copy the keys you will not have to do it again.

Once you set the proper color, you will want to navigate to the following registry path: HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Accent

  • The fist key we want to look at is the AccentColorMenu key.
… Continue...
Set Corporate Lock Screen Wallpaper with Intune for Non Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Education Machines

Set Corporate Lock Screen Wallpaper with Intune for Non Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Education Machines

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In my previous article I showed you how you can leverage PowerShell and Intune to set a computers wallpaper even if the OS was not Enterprise or Education. Currently, If you want to set the wallpaper or lock screen wallpaper via Intune Policies, you must be on either Enterprise or Education. In this article I will show you how you can leverage PowerShell and Intune, and set your own lock screen wallpaper no matter the version.

In my example I will use Intune to set the lock screen image of my end user machines to the following image:

First, we need to create a PowerShell script that will do the following:

  • Download the wallpaper
  • Store the wallpaper locally on the target machine
  • Set the lock screen wallpaper

In my example, I want to set my wallpaper as the following image: https://www.thelazyadministrator.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/nicewall.jpg, which will be named wallpaper_LazyAdmin.jpg and stored at … Continue...

Connect and Navigate the Microsoft Graph API with PowerShell

Connect and Navigate the Microsoft Graph API with PowerShell

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Graph is Microsoft’s RESTful API that allows you to interface directly with Azure AD, Office 365, Intune, SharePoint, Teams, OneNote, and a whole lot more. By using the Invoke-RestMethod PowerShell cmdlet we can connect and interact directly with the Graph API. The Invoke-RestMethod cmdlet sends HTTP and HTTPS requests to Representational State Transfer (REST) web services that returns richly structured data. PowerShell formats the response based on the data type. For an RSS or ATOM feed, PowerShell returns the Item or Entry XML nodes. For JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) or XML, PowerShell converts (or deserializes) the content into objects.1 In this article, I will walk you through setting up the Azure Application, assigning proper  permissions, Authentication and finally running queries against the Graph API. Once you understand how to properly authenticate and format queries you will see how powerful Graph can be for you and your organization.

1. Application

… Continue...
Getting Started With the Office 365 CLI

Getting Started With the Office 365 CLI

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Using the Office 365 CLI, you can manage your Microsoft Office 365 tenant and SharePoint Framework projects on any platform. No matter if you are on Windows, macOS or Linux, using Bash, Cmder or PowerShell, using the Office 365 CLI you can configure Office 365, manage SharePoint Framework projects and build automation scripts. Office 365 CLI is an open-source project driven by the SharePoint Patterns and Practices initiative. The project is built and managed publicly on GitHub at https://github.com/pnp/office365-cli and accepts community contributions.

Getting Started

NodeJS

The Office 365 CLI is distributed as an NPM package, to install it on a Windows machine you will need to first download NodeJS. NPM (originally short for Node Package Manager)[3] is a package manager for the JavaScript programming language. It is the default package manager for the JavaScript runtime environment Node.js.

Installing Office 365 CLI

Once we have NodeJS … Continue...

Find Un-Migrated Phone Numbers in Cisco Call Manager to Port to Skype for Business / Teams

Find Un-Migrated Phone Numbers in Cisco Call Manager to Port to Skype for Business / Teams

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Currently I am doing a Skype for Business migration for a large enterprise. The current phone system is Cisco Call Manager and I am migrating everything to Skype for Business / Microsoft Teams in Office 365. I am at a point where I have migrated a majority of my local users but I want to make sure I grab all available phone numbers I can. These phone numbers could be left from old users, systems, etc.

ImportExcel PowerShell Module

To make this work easier, I am going to be using the ImportExcel PowerShell module. I could use Export-CSV but then I will end up with several CSV data files to work with, and it can get confusing quick. Installing the module is easy as it is available on the PSGallery.

Gathering the Phone Data

Export Phone Numbers in Skype for Business Portal

By logging into Skype for Business Online via … Continue...

Deploy ConnectWise Automate (Formerly LabTech) Agent Remotely and Quietly with PowerShell

Deploy ConnectWise Automate (Formerly LabTech) Agent Remotely and Quietly with PowerShell

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There are many different ways to deploy an RMM agent to monitor end-user machines and servers. A popular option is Group Policy, also some RMM tools have the ability to do a subnet scan, but I wanted to try and do it with PowerShell while also ensuring I do not have any false positives. I wanted PowerShell to do the following tasks:

  1. Check if a machine is online
  2. Check if WinRM is available and configured correctly
  3. Check if LabTech was already installed
  4. Copy install file locally
  5. Install program
  6. Check if program installed
  7. Keep note of the installed machine

Below is a basic tree overview of the runtime flow.

The script would also log the data so I can let it run without monitoring it. It would also run in a loop, therefore if a machine was not on at a specific time, the script would end up coming back and … Continue...