Microsoft Goes Live with Azure Active Directory PowerShell 2.0 -- Redmondmag.com

Microsoft Goes Live with Azure Active Directory PowerShell 2.0

By Kurt Mackie
12/05/2016

Microsoft today announced that the Azure Active Directory PowerShell 2.0 module has reached the "general availability" (GA) milestone.

The module is either at GA as of Dec. 2, or it was so back in November. Microsoft's PowerShell Gallery page shows two earlier November GA releases of version 2.0.

In any case, the module is bringing new commandlets (cmdlets) deemed ready for use in production environments by Microsoft. Specifically it brings new authentication support, including "new management capabilities for applications and Certificate Authority through PowerShell," according to Microsoft's preview description.

For instance, Microsoft added cmdlets to "create, modify and remove applications." There are cmdlets to manage extensions, manage owners of applications and manage applications credentials. Microsoft added four Certificate Authority cmdlets to the module. It's possible to specify token lifetimes for applications in a tenant. Lastly, there's a new "SearchString" parameter that permits searches within a directory for specific data.

Moreover, Microsoft has built the cmdlets in the new module on top of its Graph API, which fulfills requests by customers. Microsoft lists all of the cmdlets in the new module at this page.

The GA version of the Azure AD PowerShell 2.0 module only supports Graph API features that are production ready. Microsoft's announcement clarified regarding Graph API support that "the cmdlets excluded from this release include those used to manage Administrative Units, Domain settings, Policy settings, and Directory settings."

Microsoft's Azure AD PowerShell module is replacement of an older Microsoft Online (MSOL) PowerShell module. The PowerShell team is "not planning to publish new functionality in the MSOL PowerShell module," according to Microsoft's announcement, but right now, the Azure AD PowerShell 2.0 module doesn't have all of the functionality of the old module. However, "over time," Azure AD PowerShell will have all of those capabilities, Microsoft's PowerShell team has promised.

Given that change in direction, Microsoft has changed cmdlet names from "MSOL" to "AzureAD" in Azure AD PowerShell 2.0. For example, New-MSOLUser" becomes "New-AzureADUser" in Azure AD PowerShell 2.0.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

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