PowerShell 7.7-preview.2 Released, and the MSI Installer Is Gone, Jeff Hicks Ships PSIntro
+A 10 script toolkit this week aimed at the practical endpoint questions you actually field every day
PowerShell 7.7-preview.2 Released, and the MSI Installer Is Gone
Microsoft shipped PowerShell 7.7.0-preview.2 this week, and Tony Schultz over at the Icewolf blog flagged the change that matters most for anyone managing PowerShell on Windows at scale. Starting with 7.7-preview, there is no more MSI installer. The MSIX package becomes the primary install method on Windows, MSI continues for 7.6 but not future releases. Tony walks through running the new preview without and with the M365PSProfile module from his download of the ZIP. If you push PowerShell with Intune, ConfigMgr, or your own deployment plumbing, your packaging for 7.7 and beyond needs a rethink before this hits stable.
https://blog.icewolf.ch/archive/2026/05/28/powershell-v7-7-0-preview2-has-been-released/
Built In PowerShell Parameters You Should Be Using with Lucas Allman
Andrew Pla hosted Lucas Allman for a PowerShell Wednesday on the common parameters baked into every advanced function and cmdlet. Lucas walks through what an advanced function actually is, how CmdletBinding or a decorated parameter unlocks the full set, and why the six output streams exist as separate channels for success, error, warning, verbose, debug, and information. He also covers the action parameters and preference variables that change how your code reacts to traffic on those streams, including capturing stream output to a variable using InformationVariable. Part one of two. Lucas comes back next week for the more interesting ones including WhatIf and Confirm.
Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance: Find Configuration Drift
Microsoft Mechanics published a deep walkthrough this week on capturing your tenant configuration as code across more than 200 resource types spanning Entra, Intune, Exchange Online, Teams, Defender, and Purview, then turning that snapshot into an ongoing drift monitor. If you have ever wished you could diff your tenant the way you diff source control, this is exactly that workflow. The angle that should land hardest for our crowd is treating configuration as a versioned artifact, which finally gives PowerShell-driven environments a story for change management that does not depend on screenshots and prayer.
Useful PowerShell Scripts for Windows Admin Tasks
Andrew Pla at PDQ dropped a ten-script toolkit this week aimed at the practical endpoint questions you actually field every day, like which critical errors showed up in event logs, which scheduled tasks look suspicious, are certificates valid, is BitLocker enabled, what shape are the batteries in, what is mapped where, what browser and VS Code extensions are installed, do my config baselines hold, is Defender healthy, and is Secure Boot ready for the UEFI 2023 certificate changes. The scheduled task auditor is the standout for me. It flags hidden tasks, encoded commands, execution policy bypasses, user writable paths, web downloads, and known LOLBins in one pass. Worth lifting straight into your PowerShell Scanner library.
https://www.pdq.com/blog/useful-powershell-scripts-for-windows-admin-tasks/
Jeff Hicks Ships PSIntro, a Welcome Screen and Tutorial Set for PowerShell Beginners
Jeff Hicks built PSIntro, an educational module that grew out of conversations with Jason Helmick about giving brand new users a friendlier front door into PowerShell. It puts a splash style welcome screen in front of beginners when they start a session, complete with clickable links in Windows Terminal, and it ships a set of short interactive tutorials on core concepts like Get-Command, with live output pulled from the user’s own session so the lesson matches their real environment. There are also helper commands for the things beginners stumble on early, like checking whether key modules need updating with Get-ModuleStatus, reporting on where profile scripts live, and creating one with New-PSProfile. It runs on both Windows PowerShell and PowerShell 7 across Windows, Linux, and macOS, and it is localized for English, French, and German. If you mentor anyone just getting started, or you run a user group with newcomers, this is a thoughtful thing to point them at.
https://github.com/jdhitsolutions/PSIntro
Automate Platform SSO Setup During macOS Enrollment
Cindy Crane on the Microsoft Entra Blog has a nice walkthrough this week on automating Platform SSO setup as part of macOS enrollment in Intune. The shape of the win is the usual modern endpoint story, less user friction during onboarding and fewer of those tickets that are really just a confused first sign in. If you are pulling Mac users into a Microsoft first stack, this is the cleanest path to a single sign in experience that I have seen documented end to end.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/category/microsoft-entra/blog/microsoft-entra-blog
Harm Veenstra on the PSBoundParameters vs IsPresent Question
Harm Veenstra dropped a fresh post this morning that started from a conversation with a colleague over which approach is right for checking whether a switch or parameter was actually used in a script or function. He breaks down what each does, PSBoundParameters being the automatic hashtable that fills in with whatever parameter names and values were passed on the command line, IsPresent being the simpler true or false check on a switch. The walkthrough uses his own Update-Modules function as the example and shows the same Install-PSResource call written both ways so you can see them next to each other. The honest answer to which is better is the IT classic of it depends, but Harm makes the practical case for IsPresent on plain switch logic and PSBoundParameters when you want the full picture of what the caller actually specified, with the caveat that defaults set inline never show up in the hashtable. He also signed off with a tease that next week’s post will be his PSConfEU recap.
Daniel Bradley Publishes 1,400 Plus Microsoft Architecture Icons at msicons.com
Daniel Bradley collated more than 1,400 Microsoft architecture icons and put them all in one easy to search spot at msicons.com. For every icon you can grab the scalable SVG, pull a PNG at whatever size you need, or embed it straight into a website or markdown file, and you can flip between light, dark, and transparent backgrounds depending on where it is headed. There is a compare view for putting icons side by side and a favoriting feature so you can bulk download a whole set at once. I am flagging this one specifically because if you build visual PowerShell apps with something like WPF, WinForms, or a web front end, having a consistent and official looking icon set on hand makes a real difference for style consistency, and this is the cleanest place I have seen to pull them.
https://msicons.com/
Solving Problems at the Root with Mark Littlefield. The PowerShell Podcast E230
Sending a Welcome Message to New Employees Part 2
Tony Redmond is back with a follow up to his welcome email project, and this one is the PowerShell heavy half. Instead of attaching ICS files, this version uses Get-MgUserCalendarView and Update-MgUserEvent in the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK to find existing corporate calendar events, then quietly add new employees to the participant list so the meetings land on their calendars automatically. It is a cleaner pattern than building ICS bytes by hand, and the code is small enough to drop into an existing onboarding runbook without much surgery.
https://office365itpros.com/2026/05/27/new-employee-email2/
Reporting Usage Patterns for Room Mailboxes
Also from Tony this week, a practical look at finding out whether your room mailboxes are actually being used. The article weighs two paths, the classic Exchange Online PowerShell module versus the newer Graph Places API, and is honest about the permissions and ongoing run mechanics each one demands. The right answer probably depends on what else lives in your reporting pipeline, but the side-by-side here is exactly the comparison you want before you commit to one approach for a recurring report.
https://office365itpros.com/2026/05/26/room-mailboxes-usage/
What’s New in Microsoft Intune, May 2026
Scott Sawyer’s monthly Intune roundup updated this week with the May changes worth knowing, focused on Android, macOS, and certificate management refinements across the service. It is the post I always tell our team to read first when they want to know what changed without grinding through the message center one card at a time. If you are responsible for the Intune side of an environment, this is the cheapest five minutes you will spend on staying current.
Midwest Management Summit 2026
Kevin Levart shared his recap of MMS, and if you have somehow never made it, this is one of the most respected systems and endpoint management conferences in the country. The Mall of America edition wrapped up earlier this month in Bloomington, Minnesota, with the deep ConfigMgr, Intune, Azure, and PowerShell sessions it is known for, the attendance cap that keeps it small and personal, and the community energy regulars will not stop talking about. If you missed this one, the second 2026 edition heads to the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego later in the year, so there is still a chance to get your MMS fix in 2026.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/midwest-management-summit-2026-kevin-levart-yq36c/
I Let Claude Take FULL Control of a Fresh Windows 11 PC (Debloat + Setup)
Memory gave Claude Code one prompt to set up a fresh Windows 11 install and let it run the PowerShell commands itself to remove bloat, install his apps, and lock down privacy in a VM. Cool watch and interesting concept; honestly the future of some development and testing.
Events
Microsoft Build 2026
Microsoft’s flagship developer conference runs June 2 to 3 this year, moving to San Francisco and online after its long run in Seattle. The focus is squarely on building and scaling AI, with the product teams going deep on real code and real systems. If you cannot make the trip, the online option is free and worth blocking off given how much of the year’s Azure, Microsoft 365, and developer tooling news tends to land at Build.
https://build.microsoft.com/
PowerShell Conference Europe 2026
The big one is just around the corner, June 1 to 4 in Wiesbaden, Germany. Heads up that ticket prices already moved to 1,950 euros as of May 11 with the event entering its final logistics phase, so if you have been sitting on the fence, the cost only climbs from here.
https://psconf.eu/