In a given environment there can be many short term solutions that over time grow into long term headaches. We have a situation where we need to provide access to RDP sessions through Citrix. The original solution by previous admins was to create a custom RDP icon configured to the server in question and publish it in Citrix. This resulted in a rather 'busy' screen in Citrix and intermittant update issue.
A co-worker asked about PowerShell doing this and I said something off handed about Windows Forms to generate a menu selection should be do-able. He found a nice Windows.Forms example and then did a hard coded elseif menu (which seemed as bad as all the links to me). I came up with an improvement where we pulled the server/ip list from a file and used Select and Eric Woodford added a nicer $choice option with the added bonus of turning the line for launching RDP into a variable. This is good because we have a similar issue with putty links. This should wipe out 80 some odd custom published Citirx apps.
############################################################################# # Name: choiceRDP.ps1 # Date: 1/15/2011 # Description: This script allows populates a list from a file with a launcher for RDP sessions # Source: Windows.Forms reference ww w.powershell.nu/2009/01/21/dropdown-menu-using-windowsforms/ ############################################################################# ## Get servers from a list and store in the array this allows for easier managability versus editing the script ## File format for 'choiceRDPservers.csv' ## Header Row with first line: ServerName,IP ## Data on next line as : server01,192.168.1.2 ## : server05,192.168.16.25 $Servers = import-csv "C:\Scripts\choiceRDP\choiceRDPservers.csv" $Servers = $servers | sort servername ## This Function Returns the Selected Value and Closes the Form function Return-DropDown { $Choice = $DropDown.SelectedItem.ToString() $findIP = $servers |?{$_.servername -match $choice} $exp = "mstsc.exe /v:"+$findip.ip+" /w:1024 /h:768 /console" write-host $exp #$Form.Close() Invoke-Expression $exp #Write-Host $Choice } ## This loads the Classes into the Global Assembly Cache [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms") [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Drawing") #This piece of code creates the body of the form and allows you to label it $Form = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Form $Form.width = 300 $Form.height = 150 $Form.Text = ”Server RDP Launcher” ## This piece of code creates the DropDown List $DropDown = new-object System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox $DropDown.Location = new-object System.Drawing.Size(100,10) $DropDown.Size = new-object System.Drawing.Size(130,30) foreach ($Item in $servers) { $DropDown.Items.Add($Item.servername) } $Form.Controls.Add($DropDown) $Form.Controls.Add($DropDown) $DropDownLabel = new-object System.Windows.Forms.Label $DropDownLabel.Location = new-object System.Drawing.Size(10,10) $DropDownLabel.size = new-object System.Drawing.Size(100,20) $DropDownLabel.Text = "Server List" $Form.Controls.Add($DropDownLabel) $Button = new-object System.Windows.Forms.Button $Button.Location = new-object System.Drawing.Size(100,50) $Button.Size = new-object System.Drawing.Size(120,20) $Button.Text = "Select This Server" $Button.Add_Click({return-DropDown}) $form.Controls.Add($Button) $Form.Add_Shown({$Form.Activate()}) $Form.ShowDialog()
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