Pluralsight is Expanding!

I’ve been working for a couple of years as a course author for Pluralsight and have several courses in their library. They’ve been a fantastic company to work with – the people are great and the processes work very smoothly. Writing courses for them has been a joy.

In the past week, however, they’ve gone from strength to strength with two amazing acquisitions. First, as announced very recently, Pluralsight has acquired Peepcode, a market leader in open source software training. So if you have used Peepcode for training in Ruby, Javascript, Ruby on Rails, Node, Git, etc., you can not get that training from Pluralsight.

But the biggest announcement, for me at least, happened to day, when Pluralsight announced it had acquired TrainSignal, the world top online training resource for IT professionals. You can read about the purchase over on the Pluralsight blog: http://blog.pluralsight.com/2013/08/05/pluralsight-acquires-trainsignal/

As a Pluralsight author, I am utterly delighted at these two acquisitions. First, it should drive a lot more customers our way, and therefore increase the author income – and that’s a good thing. But second, with the acquisition of TrainSignal, Pluralsight is now moving into IT Pro training, which is where my own history lies. I think that’s a really, really great thing! And as I’m just finishing up my latest Pluralsight course, Managing Windows Server DHCP with PowerShell, the timing could not have been better.

Congrats to Pluralsight!

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Pluralsight Course–Formatting with PowerShell

I’ve just finished creating my latest course for Pluralsight, entitled Formatting with PowerShell. The course looks at how you can get great output from PowerShell  - including both defaults and what you can do to improve your output.

Formatting, to my mind, is the art and science of presenting data to your target audience. Great looking output not only is easier to read and consume, but it often gives (possibly unearned) credibility!  PowerShell does a lot of things by default, making it the superior tool for the IT Pro. This course shows you how you can get the most out of what PowerShell provides by default, but also what you can do to over ride these defaults.

The course has 6 modules:

Module 1 – Introducing .ToString(). The core of PowerShell (and .NET) formatting is the .ToString() method. I regard the .ToString() method as the basis for all formatting in PowerShell, so it’s important to understand this .NET feature. The module looks as using .ToString to format numbers, dates, time spans and enums.

Module 2 – Composite Format Strings. This is a feature, leveraged from within .NET that I use a lot. We look at what makes up a composite format string and how to use the –f operator to format strings.

Module 3 – Formatting In the Pipeline. This module looks at how you can use the Format-* commands to format objects coming from the pipeline.

Module 4 – Using Hash Tables. Hash tables can be used to improve the output, particularly output generated by Format-Table and Format-List. We look at these hash tables and provide examples as to how they work.

Module 5 – Format Files and Display XML. Default formatting in PowerShell is based on format files and display XML. This module looks at how you can write your own format files, both to change default output and to create new views for your own, or existing, data types.

Module 6 – Other Output Mechanisms. This final module looks at the other ways you can data out of PowerShell, including using the Out-* cmdlets, CSV and CliXML for persisting objects and both HTML and Office document output.

Each module has demos, best practices and provides a great summary. The course material includes the slides and all the demos which you get depending on what level of Pluralsight membership you have.

The course is finished and is going through the production phase which shouldn’t take too long – I expect the course to be on the web site this week. I have to say, the guys at Pluralsight are pretty good not only about making sure the course is high quality, but that all the bits are where you want them! I’m impressed overall with their people and their process. They make me want to write more material for them!

And a call out to TechSmith (www.techsmith.com). The course is recorded using Techsmith’s Camtasia and the screen shots captured using Techsmith’s SnagIt product. I could not have recorded this course without these two great products. If you are developing presentation or training course material, you should be looking at these two products. Once you have them, you’ll fall in love with them!  Thanks TechSmith!!

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Introduction to WMI and PowerShell – A NEW Pluralsight Course

I am quite pleased to be able to announce I’ve finished my first video class for Pluralsight, Introduction to WMI and PowerShell. It’s now available for viewing for Pluralsight subscribers.  I’ve been watching it a bit this morning and it’s not bad, if I do say so myself.

The course is a total of 2:29, and is broken down into 5 modules as follows:

• Introduction to WMI and PowerShell (21:28) – Describes WMI in Windows and discusses some of the key WMI exploration tools. The module then looks at PowerShell support for WMI in PowerShell V3, and describes the WMI cmdlets. The module finishes with some of the gotchas you need to be aware of when using WMI with PowerShell.
• Using PowerShell and WMI  (34:37) This module looks at accessing WMI data, including instances, instance properties and methods, WMI classes, and static class methods. We cover the use of the key WMI cmdlets and explain the use of Type Accelerators.
• Practical PowerShell (24:42)  - This module looks at the range of data you can use in WMI. We show key namespaces and key classes you might leverage. The module also looks at some of the security settings you might make use of when using WMI in a Enterprise environment.
• Using WMI Query Language (29:36) – Describes the WMI Query Language and how to use it with the PowerShell WMI cmdlets.
• WMI Eventing (39:16) - This final module looks at accessing WMI events. It shows how to create both temporary and permanent event subscribers for intrinsic, extrinsic, and timer events. It also explains all those terms and shows how to leverage WMI’s eventing subsystem.

So if you are currently a Pluralsight subscriber, why not consider it? If nothing else, take the free trial – 10 days access to the entire library, including this course.

And also: a big thank you to Alexandar Nikolic (@alexandair on Twitter) for his proof reading of the course – much appreciated!!

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Pluralsight WebCast on Using WMI from PowerShell

I got a fun call last night – PluralSight has a regular webcast but this week’s presenter has had personal issues – and would I like to do the webcast? Well SURE!  When don’t I like the chance to talk about PowerShell!?!?

As it turns out, this is perfect timing - I’ve just finished developing a new PluralSight course, Using WMI from PowerShell which goes LIVE today. So this web cast is a great opportunity to tell you a bit more about the course, and hopefully tempt you to download it and consume the video! I’ll enjoy talking about it!!

The webcast is at 11:00 US Eastern Time – 16:00 time here in the UK. Please join us at: http://www.pluralsight-training.net/microsoft/Webcasts

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