I had a requirement to generate password expiry date report for all accounts to validate a password policy change. Here is what I came up with (who know someone have same need for this report).

Important point is the calculated property msDS-UserPasswordExpiryTimeComputed. Which is in Long Date format.

It will create an CSV file on the same directory on where the script runs.

Get-ADUser -filter {Enabled -eq $True -and PasswordNeverExpires -eq $False}  –Properties "DisplayName", "msDS-UserPasswordExpiryTimeComputed"
 | Select-Object -Property "Displayname",@{Name="ExpiryDate";Expression={[datetime]::FromFileTime($_."msDS-UserPasswordExpiryTimeComputed")}} `
 | Export-Csv -path .\Password-Expiry-Report.csv -NoTypeInformation

Here is the same report:

“Displayname”,”ExpiryDate”
“Tim Dangthatsme”,”8/23/2019 9:23:10 AM”
“Don Anonymous”,”7/31/2014 3:17:20 AM”
“Robert Dome”,”12/17/2019 8:14:17 AM”
“Introvert Hopkins”,”9/6/2019 10:57:07 AM”

Found these helpful sites (http://ipinfo.io and http://wttr.in and wrote an script to get and display weather information of your current location. Now in a shell, I can check weather information too. 🙂

<#
 Script: Get-Weather.ps1
 Description: This script will
     * Get current location
     * Find the Weather info
     * Display the weather info

 Fun fact: This command will display the GPS location
 information

 Invoke-RestMethod -URI "ipinfo.io" -Method GET | Select  City,Region,Country,loc | FT -auto

#>

#Get current location (city)
$City = (Invoke-RestMethod -URI "ipinfo.io" -Method GET).City

#get Weather info
$weather = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "http://wttr.in/$City"
$WeatherInfo = $weather.ParsedHtml.body.outerText

#Display the weather info
$WeatherInfo

When you roll out updates to multiple computers, how do you find out ‘how many computers aren’t rebooted yet after the updates”. Well, here is one way with PowerShell.

(New-Object
-ComObject Microsoft.Update.SystemInfo).RebootRequired

This is returns TRUE or FALSE.

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I create log files or transcripts all the time with my PowerShell scripts. I needed a reliable filename with date and time. So I wrote an quick function to format the date and time that easy to read and identify the list of files.

Here it is. Use the function for your purposes. The code includes an example code on how I use the function.

<#
 Function to return current date and time formatted to use log file
 name. 
 How it works: Call the function and use the returned value to 
 create an log file name in your code. 
 E.g., 
 $logfilename = "My-Script-" + (date_time()) + ".log"
 #>
 function date_time()
 {
     return (Get-Date -UFormat "%Y-%m-%d_%I-%M-%S_%p").tostring()
 }


# Example use of function
# Create an log file name and assign to $logfilename variable
 $logfilename = "My-Script-" + (date_time) + ".log"
 
# Display the log file name
 $logfilename

Example file name created by this script:

My-Script-2019-06-12_08-26-30_PM.log

If the user’s ActiveSync device is blocked (Quarantined), User might be getting this email:

Subject: Your device is temporarily blocked from synchronizing using Exchange ActiveSync until your administrator grants it access.

Your device is temporarily blocked from accessing content via Exchange ActiveSync because the device has been quarantined. You don’t need to take any action. Content will automatically be downloaded as soon as access is granted by your administrator.

There are 3 ways to unblock the mobile device in Exchange On-Prem and Exchange Online. I will show you here all 3 ways. I personally use PowerShell. So, the PowerShell way first.

Unblock the ActiveSync Device using PowerShell

1. Open PowerShell and connect to Exchange server Or Exchange Online
2. Run Get-CASMailbox command and NOTE Down the “blocked ActiveSync device id”. E.g., See Below. Notice the blocked device id: androidc274977591

PS E:\> Get-CASMailbox -Identity anandTheAwersome | Select-Object "*ActiveSync*"
ActiveSyncAllowedDeviceIDs         : {4E6F74657361613733653433336533}
ActiveSyncBlockedDeviceIDs         : {androidc274977591}
ActiveSyncMailboxPolicy            : Default
ActiveSyncMailboxPolicyIsDefaulted : True
ActiveSyncDebugLogging             : False
ActiveSyncEnabled                  : True
HasActiveSyncDevicePartnership     : True
ActiveSyncSuppressReadReceipt      : False

3. Add the noted blocked device id into Allowed Devices in CAS Mailbox Properties.

Set-CASMailbox -Identity anandTheAwersome -ActiveSyncAllowedDeviceIDs @{Add='androidc274977591'}

4. To verify, Run the Get-CASMailbox again to see the device id is in ActiveSyncAllowedDeviceIds list.

PS E:\> Get-CASMailbox -Identity anandTheAwersome | Select-Object "*ActiveSync*"
ActiveSyncAllowedDeviceIDs         : {4E6F74657361613733653433336533,androidc274977591}
ActiveSyncBlockedDeviceIDs         : {}
ActiveSyncMailboxPolicy            : Default
ActiveSyncMailboxPolicyIsDefaulted : True
ActiveSyncDebugLogging             : False
ActiveSyncEnabled                  : True
HasActiveSyncDevicePartnership     : True
ActiveSyncSuppressReadReceipt      : False

That’s It. Give it a minute or two. The Mail/Calendar client App in the device will start synchronizing. Now, for the underlings who gets scared of PowerShell, I will show how to do this in Exchange Admin Console.

(Way 1) Unblock the Active Sync Device in “Mobile Device Details”

1. Open ECP console in your favorite browser
2. Go to Mailboxes and find and select the user’s mailbox.
3. On the right-side pane, click on “View Details” under “Mobile Devices”
4. Select the blocked device (Status says “Access Denied”). Click on the Second Icon to “Allow” the device.

1. Click “Save” button.

(Way 2) Unblock the Active Sync Device in “Mobile Device Details”

1. In Exchange Console Panel, Select Mobile
2. In “Mobile device access” tab, find the user and blocked device in “Quarantined Devices”
3. After you find and select the device, click on the second button to “Allow” the device

1. Give it a minute or two, client app will start synchronizing.

Hope that was easy. If you like this blog, leave me a “holla”.

You are running Invoke-WebRequest and hit with “Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel”, It simply means TLS 1. 2 is not being used.

Windows selects most strong cryptography from the list. How do you know what’s your crypto list?

Display the list of cryptos form this .Net Class variable:

PS E:> [Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol

Tls, Tls11, Tls12

My computer shows three cryptos and most strong one is TLS 1.2. If you get the above error message ( “Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel” ), that means the most strong crypto is not supported by the web site you are accessing. (Is Tls12 missing?)

Since this is PowerShell, you can fix it two ways. For temporarily enable TLS 1.2 and make a Invoke-WebRequest,

Run this command before you run Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet. Young only need to set the security protocol to TLS 1.2 only once in the script.

[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol =[Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12

Obviously when you finish running the script, security protocol assignment is lost. It goes back to computer’s default setting.

If you need to make it permanent, you could add TLS 1.2 in the cryptography list in Registry. Open PowerShell in Administrative mode (Run as Admin), then add these registry entries:

Set strong cryptography on 64 bit .Net Framework (version 4 and above)

Set-ItemProperty -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NetFramework\v4.0.30319' -Name 'SchUseStrongCrypto' -Value '1' -Type DWord 

Set strong cryptography on 32 bit .Net Framework (version 4 and above)

Set-ItemProperty -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NetFramework\v4.0.30319' -Name 'SchUseStrongCrypto' -Value '1' -Type DWord  

You have close all PowerShell Windows and reopen it to take effect the registry settings.

Did that help? leave me a reply.

If you can’t see the troubled user’s free/busy data and you get this error message.

This means that user’s calendar has more than 1000 items in the calendar. You would be asking “Why this limitation?” “Can I increase this limit?”. I don’t think so. I didn’t any information on it yet.

Your solution is to tell the user to delete some items (especially any recurring meetings, if he/she can).

Source: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2962513/you-can-t-view-free-busy-information-on-another-user-s-calendar-in-exc