With Citrix an ADC (Netscaler) there is the possibility from version 12 on for a Native One-Time-Password (OTP) integration with an Authenticator App (Google, Microsoft etc.) for two-factor authentication. The authenticator delivers a number as a second factor. The respective device (mobile phone with app) must can be registered for a user beforehand. Information on the OTP is stored in the user account of the respective user. The management of users and equipment is not always easy. Actually, with a GUI this can only be Users themselves on the Citrix Gateway. Therefore we have developed a tool for a central Management.

In this blog you will find the description of the tool, the tool itself and more Backgrounds.

Have you always wanted to write a book with 100 or even 1000 or more pages? With Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Book Generator, it takes only a few seconds. The PowerShell Book Generator was created by the way on the last PSConf.eu and afterwards (I try to fill the time optimally and I hope to see you there again @psconf.eu in June 2020). Basically it is about implementing the internal PowerShell help for a topic completely in book form as PDF with table of contents.The idea came to me when I saw that there are more and more books where more and more content is simply copied from the internal help into the document. Of course the generator can also be used to document your own PowerShell modules. How does the internal PowerShell help work?

The basic version of the App-V server and vault report was created as a PowerShell script in mid-2019. In the tradition of Carl Webster, originally only one documentation script was to be created for an App-V environment. That means information about the SQL Server, the database and installation parameters as well as the provided App-V packages.In 2019 I quickly realized that this is a nice report but it does not contain the information I wanted. It often happens, for example, that the import of external configuration files is forgotten. Then no scripts are running or the services in the package are not deactivated and the user gets an update message after starting his application. Deployed applications behave strangely on the client and nobody knows why. Especially it is also a problem if those who once built the packages are no longer in the company. Nobody can know where which scripts are running and QA is everything.

Some time ago I created a PowerShell documentation script for an App-V server infrastructure. I reworked it with much effort in December 2019. Many functions that were previously mapped via the script have migrated into the module. In its current state the module is especially good for extracting information from the ".AppV" file but also for extracting information from the external configuration files UserConfig.xml and DeploymentConfig.xml.

Still the legal stuff: We do not give any warranty for the function or damages. The module is licensed under the MIT license. Program errors are not excluded.This year we plan to add more features to the module. First of all you can do some nice things with the module. You can download the module at the bottom of this blog. Alternatively you can download the current version from the PowerShell Gallery. If you install the module in UserScope (and PoSh 5.x) the package will be under Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules with the following command:

install-Module AppVForcelets -Scope CurrentUser

PowerShell_sign_code_and_upload_in_the_PowerShell galleryPowerShell_sign_code_and_upload_in_the_PowerShell galleryLast friday at the PowerShell Usergroup Hannover I briefly talked about CodeSigning for PowerShell modules for upload to the PowerShell Gallery. Well, the interest of my colleagues was bigger than expected and also some questions remained unanswered. Here also some things have changed. Fact is, most modules in the Gallery are unsigned. In the end, the question always arises, why sign at all, when the PowerShell execution policy can be so easily overridden?For example it is possible to execute arbitrary code with

Powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File <PathToPowershellSkript.ps1>.

I have been using code signing certificates for my community PowerShell scripts for several years. This is especially well received by our customers. Our work is digitally signed with it. Furthermore the inhibitions are a little bit bigger to change scripts later because the signature block always has to be changed.