Help! My Powershell script isn’t working! Can you fix it?

This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Ask The Performance Team articles.

Hello AskPerf blog, Travis Gradert here from Microsoft Customer Services and Support. I handle quite a number of Powershell cases for our support team, and have noticed that we get a lot of cases where customers are asking for help with things that we do not support. I wanted to write here to help explain what we do and do not handle in our support team when it comes to Powershell. The easy part of this is that we do not support custom or 3^rd party scripts. There is no support for the creation of a script. CSS representatives may put in a best effort to you as the customer, however engineers may not have the expertise required.

Instead of engaging a Customer Services and Support team, if you are a premier customer and have a Technical Account Manager, they should be contacted to engage Microsoft Consulting Services for the creation or debugging of a custom or 3^rd party script.

[note scripts found in the Powershell Gallery are not supported scripts. Issues with scripts need to be addressed with the author, found on the page where the script was downloaded.]

So what is and is not supported? If a specific cmdlet, or the Powershell engine itself seems to be having an unexpected failiure, Customer Support and Services will be able to assist and work towards resolution of the failure. Below are some examples of supported requests.

1. A specific Powershell cmdlet with appropriate parameters returns:
   1. No result
   2. An unexpected result (missing or extraneous data)
   3. An error
2. The engine/console fails to load or crashes
3. Configuration and Customization of the console
4. Remote Connectivity and Authentication
5. Microsoft-Provided DSC Resources fail unexpectedly

Examples of Unsupported requests

1. Create script to perform “X” action.
2. Review “X” script to determine a cause of a failure. No script debugging has been performed, issue hasn’t been isolated to a specific commandlet.
3. Create DSC configuration

I’d like to provide some links that I think are helpful when looking for assistance with Powershell Scripts:

Script Debugging Resources

Using ISE to debug scripts

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/components/ise/how-to-debug-scripts-in-windows-powershell-ise?view=powershell-6

Remote Runspace Debugging

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/powershell-runspace-debugging-part-1/

Transcription and Logging:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/ashleymcglone/2017/03/29/practical-powershell-security-enable-auditing-and-logging-with-dsc/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.host/start-transcript?view=powershell-6

Measuring Command Performance:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.utility/measure-command?view=powershell-6