PowerShell

We probably all use Active Directory (if we are on the MS platform) for central identity management (simplified user management and authentication). But the question is how many companies use the multitude of attributes we can set on a user. At the same time, we usually record various personnel or organizational data in HR systems. Although this is unavoidable, we can enter (or export or synchronize) this data into AD. And what is this good for? For example, the Outlook mail client can display this data and simplify our communication.

So PowerShell has gotten to me, not that I would resist it, but I prefer to do a lot of things in the GUI. For various bulk editing or listing certain values, it is a very useful helper. However, I think that PowerShell is not exactly User Friendly, so unless you use something regularly, it's impossible to remember it (it doesn't contain such simple and clever help as Cisco IOS). That's why I started creating this list of useful commands (and their variations), so that I have somewhere to refer to when needed.

Unlike Active Directory, MS Exchange Server 2007 had to use PowerShell for a number of operations right from the start. Some operations have been added to the Exchange Management Console GUI over time, but some we can only perform via PowerShell. So again my little pull of useful PowerShell cmdlets for Exchange server (so far in 2007 and 2010 versions).

We will use PowerShel for many areas. One of them is of course the operating system. Data discovery, configuration, etc. For running commands I mostly use PowerShell ISE, which is part of Windows 7.

Another article about the useful (and sometimes necessary) Microsoft PowerShell tool. This time we'll cover some special use cases where we can manage applications like MS Word and Outlook or access Active Directory. In fact, PowerShell allows you to access COM objects or classes from the .NET Framework, the programming interfaces of various applications.

For working with the Exchange server we have a number of cmdlets in PowerShell and for some GUI functions. But sometimes a slightly different way can be useful. We can use the Exchange Web Services Managed API, which is a .NET interface to EWS that uses the Web Services SOAP protocol and Autodiscover. And like other .NET layouts, we can use it straight from PowerShell.

New to the domain (forest) in the Windows Server 2008 R2 functional level is the Recycle Bin. I think it's a useful feature, although I've only used it once in the year it's been enabled. It certainly doesn't hurt anything. He's doing what everyone suspects. A deleted object in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) is moved to the Recycle Bin and can be restored to its original state.

or Some tips on how to use PowerShell. Every network needs supervision (monitoring, control) and the bigger it is, the more difficult it is to perform various checks manually. There are a number of systems that will do these checks for us, but the complex ones usually cost a lot of money. Yet everything can be built for free with less or more effort. The important thing is to understand what interests us in our network and what we want to be alerted to. Then we can create single-purpose scripts that give us the insight we need.

In certain situations, we may find it useful to find out when computers or users in a domain last logged in. One common situation is that we are looking for unused accounts. Or, on the other hand, we want to find how long the computer has been running. Here we will describe some possibilities using PowerShell. The first situation is relatively simple (if we accept some problems) and we get the information from Active Directory. In the second case, we have to access individual computers.

This article focuses on storing encryption certificates in Active Directory. How they are then accessed by clients such as Outlook or OWA. What problems can occur when we switch to a new CA and clients are still being offered old certificates from AD. And also the various PowerShell cmdlets that we can use to work with certificates in AD.

Let's mention a few ways to configure a local user account from the command line (using a script). As the main purpose is to bulk change local accounts on different computers in the (Active Directory) network environment. The article presents various configuration options and concludes with an example of bulk change of local user passwords. It is not a detailed script, everyone can customize it according to their needs.

This article is just my notes. It contains brief information about using PowerShell to get information about users in Azure AD and mailboxes in Exchange Online (EXO). It also covers working with licenses and various bulk operations. Describes how to remove (block) a specific service, such as Exchange Online or Teams. Finally, this information is used to solve the problem where a user with an on-premises mailbox has a second mailbox in EXO.