I'm a SAPIEN MVP 2015

A few weeks ago, Sapien announced on their blog the introduction of the SAPIEN Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award. This program goal is to recognize and show their appreciation for community members who promote their products and contribute to their improvement and success.

And last week I received some unexpected great news from June Blender (SAPIEN Technologies Inc)!!

Congratulations! As a token of our appreciation for your help in the SAPIEN community, we have awarded you a SAPIEN MVP award for 2015."

If you follow my blog, you probably noticed that I've been playing with Sapien tools for a while now, mostly with the PrimalForms/PowerShell Studio products but also with the recent WMI Explorer. Some of my contributions include the creations of Youtube videos on how to create basic GUIs and I also got the chance to participate to the PowerShell Studio 2014 Beta program.

Thanks SAPIEN! It's great pleasure and honor to receive the SAPIEN MVP Award :-)

Sapien MVP Page - Francois-Xavier Cat

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, leave a comment or send me an email at fxcat@lazywinadmin.com. I invite you to follow me on Twitter @lazywinadm / Google+ / LinkedIn. You can also follow the LazyWinAdmin Blog on Facebook Page and Google+ Page.

PowerShell/SCSM - Change the Status of a Manual Activity or a Service Request.

Using the PowerShell module SMlets you can easily change the Status of a Ticket inside System Center Service Manager.

Here are the small bits of code to change the Status of a Manual Activity and a Service Request.

# Import the module
Import-Module -Name smlets

# Get a specific manual activity
$ManualActivity = Get-SCSMObject -Class (Get-SCSMClass -Name System.WorkItem.Activity.ManualActivity$) -filter "ID -eq MA51163"
# Change the status of the Manual Activity
Set-SCSMObject -SMObject $ManualActivity -Property Status -Value Completed

# Get a specific Service Request
$ServiceRequest = Get-SCSMObject -Class (Get-SCSMClass -Name System.WorkItem.ServiceRequest$) -filter "ID -eq SR51160"
# Change the status of the Service Request to Completed
Set-SCSMObject -SMObject $ServiceRequest -Property Status -Value Completed

PowerShell Studio 2014 - DataGridView Sorting

When creating graphical tools with PowerShell Studio 2014 and using the DataGridView control, I often find myself looking for the following tip!

The DataGridView control provides a customizable table for displaying data. You can extend the DataGridView control in a number of ways to build custom behaviors into your applications. A DataView provides a means to filter and sort data within a DataTable. The following example shows how to sort a DataGridView by using a DataTable Object.

In this example, I'm using PowerShell Studio 2014 from SAPIEN, you can download a 45 days trial version here.

PowerShell Tip - PSReadLine shortcuts

If you are using PowerShell everyday like me, you probably started to populate you profile with some neat tools that make you like easier. In my case It's loading some modules or add some functions such as Connect-Office365 or Clx.

PSReadLine is one of the module I've been using for a while now and I can't work without it anymore!!!!

and that was 2014…

We just started 2015 so I figured it was the time to look back at what I did in the past 12 months.

I have some of stats which may be of interest, but of course also on a more personal level 2014 was an Awesome year !!


Achievements and Projects

• Became a Microsoft MVP for Windows PowerShell !! What an achievement!! And had the chance to attend my first Summit in November where I got to meet tons of other MVPs.
• Received the PowerShell Heroes 2014 recognition from PowerShell.org with 4 other people
• Joined Warner Brother Games studio in Montreal as a Senior System Administrator. My role is mostly focused on Automation and Microsoft Products
• Created the PowerShell Module NetBackupPS, which basically parse the output of the Symantec NetBackup cmd line tools. Unfortunately I don't have access to this solution so I can't really continue the development but the code in on GitHub and anybody is welcome to contribute.
• Created the PowerShell Module WinFormPS, which allows you to interact with some Winform controls.
• Created the PowerShell Module AdsiPS, which allows you to interact with Active Directory. Microsoft AD Module and Quest AD Snapin are really awesome but I wanted to develop my knowledge with Active Directory and play around with .NET Framework/LDAP Queries.
• Presented my first presentation on "How to get started with PowerShell" at my work office

Stats for my blog lazywinadmin.com for 2014:

• 39 Blog Posts
• +450 000 pageviews
• Top5 2014 blog posts:
• PowerShell - LazyTS
• PowerShell - Parse this: NetStat.exe
• PowerShell - Playing with the new OneGet module (v5 preview)
• PowerShell - Playing with the new ConvertFrom-String cmdlet
• PowerShell - ConvertFrom-String and the TemplateFile parameter

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, leave a comment or send me an email at fxcat@lazywinadmin.com. I invite you to follow me on Twitter @lazywinadm / Google+ / LinkedIn. You can also follow the LazyWinAdmin Blog on Facebook Page and Google+ Page.

Microsoft MVP 2015 for PowerShell !

What an Amazing way to start the year !!! It is a great pleasure and honor to receive the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for a second year for my contributions in Windows PowerShell. Can't wait to stack the 2015 ring on the MVP Award trophy!

HUGE Thank you to my family, friends and people who support me!!!

Chère/Cher Francois-Xavier Cat, 

Félicitations! Nous sommes heureux de vous remettre la récompense MVP Microsoft® 2015! Cette récompense est accordée aux leaders d'exception de la communauté technique qui partagent activement leur expertise pratique de grande qualité. Nous apprécions vos remarquables contributions dans les communautés techniques PowerShell lors de cette année passée.