Use a Central File to Simplify Your PowerShell Profile

re: Use a Central File to Simplify Your PowerShell Profile

JV — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:51:43 GMT

The profile in the MyDocuments folder is the one to use for most things. If we redirect 'MyDocuments' to a network location in a GPO we can always have the same code available on any system. This is an All-Hosts on steroids. The profile can contain any or all modules in its modules folder. Just think, Anywhere you log into the network you have all of your code.

MyDocuments\WindowsPowerShell

MyDocuments\WindowsPowerShell\Modules

I have hundreds of scripts and modules in this location along with my per-user profile. I also have this set up on every network I support. We can also use BITS to keep things sync’d although I haven’t yet set this up.

re: Use a Central File to Simplify Your PowerShell Profile

Ed Wilson — Wed, 23 May 2012 14:41:19 GMT

@K_Schulte you are absolutely correct ... having one file for all users can become really complex. One thing you might consider in having multiple profiles is to have a basic one that ALL users do get for all hosts. Then Have additional commands for one group of users, and different file for the administrators. If you keep them like this,then the basic profile only goes to this group. The next group gets the basic profile, plus the other commands in the other file. The administrtors get all three files.

re: Use a Central File to Simplify Your PowerShell Profile

K_Schulte — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:34:05 GMT

Hi Ed,

I really like the "have ONE file" for all users idea!

But to be honest, I'm afraid that we won't have ONE but maybe SOME profiles located somewhere in our network! But SOME is less the ALL :-)

Having ONE profile and using script logic inside the script to distinguish between script types and user "groups" and ... whatsoever ... might be possible but will lead to rather complicated profiles ... especially if you are going to add functionality later on which should be available to group 1,2,4,8,16 ... but only for ISE hosts ... and not on Monday to Wednesday ... Well, than this script will be astonishingly difficult :-)(

Klaus