Prepare Orchestrator for PowerShell activities

Maybe you hit already various problems with .NET activity in Orchestrator for calling PowerShell scripts. The problem is that this activity is using only PowerShell version 2.


This is very limiting in your automation scenarios. I sow many workarounds by using PowerShell Remoting but those scripts were very complex and not so easy to use.


Fortunately there exists better and simpler way how to avoid this limitation. It is registry hack on Orchestrator server. Simply edit your registry path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework. Add hier a new DWORD entry and value for OnlyUseLatestCLR = 1.


That is all. Now you can without any limitation use latest available PowerShell version on your Orchestrator server.


Second very often limitation in your automation effort can be calling web request with Invoke-WebRequest command-let. The problem is that it is using IE engine for actual request and if your automation script is running under service account, very often this account never used IE before. When you open IE for the first time you can see this dialog:

It is the classical First Run customization wizard. Many organization are disabling this wizard by GPO but very often this GPO is not linked to OU with service accounts.

So if you see in your PowerShell runbooks this error:

Invoke-WebRequest : The response content cannot be parsed because the Internet Explorer engine is not available, or Internet Explorer’s first-launch configuration is not complete. Specify the UseBasicParsing parameter and try again.

it is because your account never went through IE First Run Customization Wizard and Invoke-WebRequest cannot make it's job.

To avoid this error, simply run gpedit on your Orchestrator server and open this setting:

Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer. Set the policy Prevent running First Run Wizard to Enabled.

With this settings you should be able to accomplish majority of your automation without bigger issue :)