Hey everyone! I know this is out a day late. I was actually at the Michigan Association of Educational Data Systems (MAEDS) throughout the week. I even met my good friend, Andrew Pla, the host of the PowerShell Podcast in person. Thank you all for your patience!
PowerShell 7.7 Release Candidate 1 Drops
Harm Veenstra at PowerShell is fun walks through the newly available PowerShell 7.7 Release Candidate 1 and provides installation instructions across multiple platforms. The update removes the built in update notification feature and applies numerous cmdlet fixes just as PowerShell 7.5 hits end of support on November 10.
👉 https://powershellisfun.com/2026/10/30/powershell-preview-v7-7-0-rc-1-release/
October 2026 PowerShell Roundup
Jeff Hicks at Behind the PowerShell Pipeline rounds up the latest community news for October 2026. He highlights the upcoming PowerShell 20th Anniversary livestream with Jeffrey Snover and details early bird ticket availability for PSConfEU 2027. The issue also includes a file object scripting challenge for those looking to stretch their class design skills.
👉 https://buttondown.com/behind-the-powershell-pipeline/archive/october-2026-powershell-roundup/
Jake Hildreth on Attacking and Defending AD CS
Jake Hildreth joined Andrew on the Halloween episode of The PowerShell Podcast to recap his recent presentation at Wild West Hackin Fest. He walked through his simple yet brilliant approach featuring one tool to build a vulnerable AD CS lab, another to attack it, and a final one to defend and fix the environment.
EdxPath Drops Part 1 of PowerShell Scripting Course
The team at EdxPath just dropped the first half of a comprehensive Windows PowerShell scripting course on YouTube. Designed specifically for IT support technicians and junior system administrators, this five hour session skips the GUI entirely to focus on terminal execution and automating everyday administrative workflows.
Entra ID Conditional Access Policy Plans Enter Preview
Tony Redmond at Office 365 for IT Pros breaks down the newly announced preview for Entra ID Conditional Access policy plans. The feature combats policy sprawl by allowing administrators to group related rules under shared conditions, which reduces configuration drift without altering the underlying enforcement engine.
👉 https://office365itpros.com/2026/10/29/conditional-access-policy-plans/
Repo Roundup
Merill Fernando took Maester 3.0 into release candidates with 35 RCs in a week, merged Maester Packs with Microsoft’s Zero Trust Assessment as a built-in pack, published his own Cloudflare pack, and added a sponsor page and an -ExcludeProduct switch. 👉 maester365/maester#2430
The PowerShell team shipped PowerShell 7.7.0-rc.1, which tightens Constrained Language Mode, requires -FetchExternalReference before Test-Json resolves external schemas, and drops the update notification, alongside servicing releases 7.6.9, 7.5.13, and 7.4.22. 👉 https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/tag/v7.7.0-rc.1
Chris Bergmeister merged more than twenty PSScriptAnalyzer formatter and DSC alias-detection fixes, and opened PRs to filter results by severity and to move the build to .NET 10, which raises the minimum PowerShell 7 version to 7.6. 👉 PowerShell/PSScriptAnalyzer#2266
Jos Lieben shipped nine VFS365 releases from 0.5.0 to 0.8.0, adding sign-in through Windows’ Web Account Manager, folder redirection, a right-click menu, and Office files that open as Microsoft 365 documents with co-authoring. 👉 https://github.com/jflieben/VFS365/releases/tag/v0.8.0
Clayton Tyger launched maester-pack-ua, a Maester pack that checks Microsoft Entra user attributes and one of the first community packs. 👉 https://github.com/DevClate/maester-pack-ua
Adam Driscoll released Homestead 0.0.1 through 0.0.3 (a self-hosted home for notes, articles, photo galleries, and check-ins built on ASP.NET Core, .NET 10, and SQLite) and added Mermaid diagrams and a zen-mode editor. 👉 https://github.com/adamdriscoll/homestead
Jake Hildreth released new ADCSGoat and Locksmith2 builds with a low-privilege RDP user, PAW discovery, CA web enrollment, and an ESC5a false-positive fix, and added maintainer-friendly HTML reports to LowBar, his hygiene suite for PowerShell modules. 👉 https://github.com/jakehildreth/ADCSGoat
Steve Lee shipped DSC 3.4.0-preview.2, merged a Windows Configuration Service Provider adapter, and changed the Appx manifest to defer updates. 👉 https://github.com/PowerShell/DSC/releases/tag/v3.4.0-preview.2
Fabien Tschanz released Microsoft365DSC 2.26.1028.1 with an Intune Administrative Template fix, and mgx 2.1.10, which only loads assemblies from its dependency folder. 👉 https://github.com/Microsoft365DSC/Microsoft365DSC/releases/tag/2.26.1028.1
Josh Hendricks shipped three WebContentPlugin releases (it adds web content to the XProtect Smart Client) with a redesigned address bar and a WPF Management Client, and laid out a plan to proxy page loads through the Event Server. 👉 https://github.com/joshooaj/WebContentPlugin
Jorge Suarez added accounts to EndpointJobs with saved jobs, saved filters, and hide-viewed, released IntuneHydrationKit WebApp 2.6.53 with an OpenIntuneBaseline sync, and started a CompTIA Project+ practice question bank. 👉 jorgeasaurus/EndpointJobs#88
Chrissy LeMaire made Connect-DbaInstance refuse SQL Server 2000 and 2005 and point to the last dbatools release that supports them, now that SMO has dropped them. 👉 dataplat/dbatools#10813
Doug Finke released PSAISuite 0.10.0 with DeepSeek Responses tools and a configurable execution policy. 👉 https://github.com/dfinke/psaisuite/releases/tag/v0.10.0
Michel de Rooij released Connect-Office365Services 4.0.9 and EDCA 1.0.1.2 (his Exchange Deployment & Compliance Assessment) with corrected Exchange CIS benchmark mappings. 👉 https://github.com/michelderooij/EDCA
Fabian Bader added column observations and opt-in casing advisories to KQLValidator, his MCP and REST API for validating KQL queries for Defender XDR and Sentinel. 👉 f-bader/KQLValidator#66
Gilbert Sanchez mapped out a language-neutral spec for Gatekeeper, his PowerShell feature-flag module, proven by a Rust client, and planned the move of his YouTube-to-Reddit Devvit app off Devvit Blocks. 👉 HeyItsGilbert/Gatekeeper#92
Tyler Leonhardt made VS Code’s Agents window usable without a GitHub sign-in by default. 👉 microsoft/vscode#344898
Fred Weinmann released PSFramework 1.15.479. 👉 https://github.com/PowershellFrameworkCollective/psframework/releases/tag/v1.15.479
Jeff Hicks tested Iseberg and filed seven issues, including a hang on Windows on ARM64. 👉 adamdriscoll/iseberg#35
Events
SpiceWorld 2026 | November 12 to 13, 2026 | Austin, Texas
👉 https://www.spiceworks.com/spiceworld/
Zero Trust World 2027 | February 17 to 19, 2027 | Orlando, Florida
👉https://ztw.com/
PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2027 | April 5 to 8, 2027 | Orlando, Florida
👉 https://powershellsummit.org/
PSConfEU 2027 | Dates and location to be announced SynEdgy is organizing the eleventh edition of PowerShell Conference 👉
https://psconf.eu/