I have been using PSADT for the last 5 years and love it. But I am just at a point where I can take the time to automate some of my workflows. I have used VSCode primarily as a text editor, but I want to start leveraging its other features like Source Control and Tasks more.
I just watched this video From zero to hero VSCode, PSADT and GIT with Chris Gerke - and I was inspired to try to set something like it up.
I am unable to find a comprehensive or example VSCode Snippet File, specifically for PSADT functions and its common code blocks. I feel like I should be able to find one publically available. But the last few days of searching the interwebs isn’t finding anything PSADT specific.
Does anyone have a Snippet file they would be willing to share with me or the community at large? If not, I might take the time to work on one and share it out. But I would hate to recreate something that already exists out there. Especially one that would be better than what I could create on my own.
If anyone has comments, recommendations, resources, or warnings regarding the video I linked to above. I would love to hear about your VSCode/PSADT workflow automation setups, for software packaging, testing, and deployment.
My environment is primarily SCCM/MECM but we may bring InTune into play sometime this year… maybe.
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Sounds like a really good question to be asking, I would definitely be interested in seeing what others respond with.
I have been working towards automating as much of our application deployments as we can, so using Azure DevOps, pipelines, managed identities are all in the plan to make this process more hands-off - freeing up time for other projects.
Without wanting to rudely divert / hijack your question, I’d like to point others towards some tools to make App deployment automation a little easier…
There are some great Powershell modules out there which massively help with automating software deployments.
The 1st module I’d highly recommend to any deployment engineer is Aaron Parker’s superb Evergreen module - An absolute timesaver.
For those apps that don’t exist in EverGreen (usually because the app vendors do not supply a reliable / programatically repeatable download source), a webpage scrape is usually required - so in many cases you can additionally consider using @DanGough’s excellent NeverGreen module.
As we use Intune for our deployments, most of my focus has been on using Intune related modules to simplify package building and deployments.
I have recently been working on using the IntuneWin32App PowerShell module written by Nickolaj Andersen of MSEndpointMgr to further automate our app deployments (mainly as a personal knowledge learning experience) before expanding on this knowledge by considering the use of their Intune App Factory - mainly because it solves many of the challenges around app deployment. As part of it’s workflow it can use Evergreen, Windows Package Manager (WinGet) or an Azure Storage Account to supply updated app source files and can then use PSADT to wrap the apps of your choice, before making the app available to your chosen deployment groups. - Great solution
Only this week I have discovered something new to the mix, so for WinGet sourced apps we might consider using the simpler WinTunerApp.
Not that my point necessarily answers your question, but I hope it may help others towards their application deployment automation journey.
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I have also been busy with Nickolaj Andersen’s IntuneWin32App PowerShell module.
I also took a part of Intune App Factory, a part of another one of his project that he abandoned and created a tool to scrape PSADT’s Deploy-Application.ps1 to create an Intune Win32App. Afterwards I just need to assign it to a group.
It currently only works using my private PSADT fork.
It also doesn’t tolerate missing jpg/png for the app’s logo, etc.
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Adrian… Those are some great resources. I will definitely look into those. that NeverGreen module could potentially plug some holes for me.
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it is possible to use hyper-v virtual machine, instead of sandbox?