4.3

Security, Security, security!

Version 4.3

This release major focus was security.

• Full issue list available on GitHub
• Release highlights

Summary of important changes

Breaking Changes

• Removed the lingering nVelocity template presentation
• ISE and Console now require scripters to be in Sitecore\Developer role

Major new Features

• All arbitrary script executions, saves, and session elevation events are now logged in the SPE Sitecore logs763
• Added ability to specify that an endpoint can only be accessed over a secure connection 759
• Executing scripts through Integration points now verify the item templates so no unprotected scripts can be executed. 757
• Saving a script in library requires additional authentication (Session elevation) 756
• Executing a script in ISE or Console now require additional authentication. 755
• Send-File cmdlet dialog no longer uses URL parameters for paths.744

All improvements

All Fixes

4.2

Version 4.2

This release major focus was security and making your scripting testable and better functional for users in different roles and languages. We've also improved cmdlets for working with templates and as always improved our remoting module to make it even more functional in your CI scenarios.

Full issue list available on GitHub - 38 issues.

Summary of important changes

Breaking Changes

• You might want to check how your scripts behave for users in other languages as we're now setting the context language on the Job, which e.g. impacts how items are retrieved. [694]
• All remotely accessible services are now disabled by default 716 so you need to provide a patch config file if you want to use SPE in your CI environment out-of-the-box.

Major new Features

• Read-Variable cmdlet now supports validation on field and form level 728.
• ISE now allows you to emulate script execution in context of any user or language 726.
• Added Update-ItemReferrer cmdlet that allows you to re-link an item to another item or delete references to an item before e.g. deleting it. 726.
• Introduced Role/User based restriction for user access to endpoints. 715

Enhancements

• Full list of improvements can be found here

Fixes

• Full list of bugs fixed can be found here

4.1

Version 4.1

Another solid release. Yet again a fairly long wait but we;ve fixed a ton of bugs and did some solid improvements. Happy scripting!

Full issue list available on GitHub - over 60 issues.

Summary of important changes

Breaking Changes

• Get-RoleMember should return Role and User rather than AccountList 637.
• Publish-Item publishing behaviour was tuned to handle typical scenarios better 620.

New Features

• Support for Sitecore 8.2

Enhancements

• ...

Fixes

• ...

4.0

Version 4.0

A lot of hard work went into this release. Wasn't released as soon as we hoped, but we are certain many of you will be pleased with the results. Happy coding!

Full issue list available on GitHub - 95 issues.

Summary of important changes

Breaking Changes

• The Rebuild-SearchIndex command now returns an existing job 558 for an index if currently rebuilding.
• Request related variables such as $HttpContext are no longer added to the session 557 but can still be accessed through their static context properties.
• The Publish-Item command now supports the additional publishing options 539 introduced in Sitecore 7.1. The default behavior was changed to synchronous and requires the AsJob parameter to run asynchronously.
• The Add-ItemLanguage and Remove-ItemLanguage commands were renamed 532 to Add-ItemVersion and Remove-ItemVersion since item versions and languages are managed almost the same.
• The user management commands received an adjustment 520 498 497 in which New-Role no longer requires -Passthru to output the resulting account. Also, the Remove-User command now accepts the User object as input.
• User reported 511 that SPE conflicted with the InSite Commerce product due to the 2.x services location so we went ahead and broke compatibility.

New Features

• A new Experience Button integration point was added 546.
• Method signature in the ISE received a face lift 541. Now you can see the argument data types!
• Type names now autocomplete 540.
• SPE Remoting now supports uploading large files 528.
• Rebuilding the index for single items is now possible 523 with Rebuild-SearchIndexItem and removing with Remove-SearchIndexItem.
• Added a report 513 for unpublished items in one or more targets.
• Users can now peek the session variable values by way of a tooltip 495.
• The ISE now shows when a script is modified or not yet saved 458.

Enhancements

• We went crazy on the styling of the console windows so now you can 565 configure the foreground and background colors. The Show-Result command also retains 566 the colors of the host session.
• Variables are now hidden from the autocomplete 560 unless the token begins with a $.
• The ScriptSession now contains a property LastErrors 559 that contains the errors encountered in a script rather than cluttering the log.
• The Publish-Item command suggests database names 553 and filesystem is no longer an option.
• The export command in reports no longer require a temporary file 551. This should now add support in hosted environments such as Azure 549529.
• The Show-ListView command now enumerates collections 544 rather than printing the class name.
• The UseDefaultCredentials parameter is now supported 531 when using the New-ScriptSession command in SPE Remoting.
• The Publish-Item command will not publish to all targets by default 530 without requiring the target to be specified.
• Some of the UI elements using Show-ListView can be hidden when using the Hide parameter 521.
• Your favorite commands Get-Item and Get-ChildItem now have 519 tab completion on the -Language and -Database parameters.
• SPE Remoting supports $using:[variablename] in the scriptblock 499.

Fixes

• The SPE Remoting commands Send-RemoteItem and Receive-RemoteItem now use Write-Error when an error is encountered 564.
• The Show-Result command was not adhering to the font settings 552.
• The GetItemWorkflowEvent command threw exceptions for missing optional parameters 545.
• Automatic properties no longer require a restart to update 534.

3.3 for Sitecore 7 and 8

Version 3.3

Yet another monthly update and in many aspects a major one!

Full issue list available on GitHub - 35 issues and new contributing members @Kasaku & @marrrcin!

Summary of important changes

New Features

• Major re-work to our script session management engine allowing us to 463 spin up new script sessions from your scripts. This allows you to divide scripts into asynchronous parts that can execute in parallel or run operations that would otherwise 462 cause your remoting operations to time out.
• You can even 475 run more interactive sessions from an existing interactive session!
• The 454 remoting web service added the ability to download large files streamed from server rather than serialized in a SOAP envelope and this has already been 461 conveniently exposed using our remoting module!
• Our new member has contributed a cool functionality that 472 allows you to reset fields and layouts to standard values.
• More of the PowerShell scripts that you can find online will also work OOTB for you as we have implemented the logic that 471 allows the Read-Host command to run in our interactive sessions. This command will now pop-up a dialog asking you to provide a line of text like it would in Windows PowerShell.
• Your scripts using 473 Read-Variable can now request for strings from users that will be hidden from the prying eyes of bystanders when you specify the Editor to be password. The typed characters will be replaced with the standard password masking characters in the editor. Your script will still receive a proper string back though.

Enhancements

• One weakness the script session management exposed particularly was that 479 interactive cmdlets like Read-Variable would cause a script session to hang in non interactive scenario as there would be no UI to handle the message from the script. This has now been fixed and 475 sessions are aware whether they are interactive or not.
• To compliment the new functionality we have 467 extended the Background Session Manager available from the toolbox to show next to each session whether it is busy running a script or not.
• 476 Script sessions are now also aware whether they are busy running script or not and will gracefully reject another script being sent to them if asked to execute one.
• it is now significantly easier to find the item template when using the New-Item command as the -ItemType parameter now features a fully dynamic autocompletion.
• The 448 Broken Links report now can analyse all versions, not just the latest one.
• The 447 Lock-Item command now supports transferring a lock to another user. If the item is piped to it that is already locked - using the -Force parameter will cause the lock to be transferred to the new user specified in the command.
• Some of the 446 commonly used types have gotten type accelerators specified for them so you can use those and cast to them much easier.
• Last but not least our second new contributor @marrrcin has contributed 444 a way to Get-ChildItem by providing item ID with the -ID parameter rather than using the path.

  Fixes

• We discovered that when removing more than one rendering the 453 Remove-Rendering command encountered an error .
• The very useful 455 Get-ItemReference command returned the wrong item, so we fixed that.
• Lots and lots more of them... actually 10 more!

Potential Breaking Changes

• You may find that the changes to 463 Get-ScriptSession syntax can potentially interfere with scripts using it.

3.2 for Sitecore 7 and 8

Notable improvements:

Version 3.2

We've managed to turnaround a release in a little over a month!

Full issue list available on GitHub - 62 issues closed!

Summary of important changes

New Features

• 383 ISE plugin tab and integration point added - you can now write scripts to process your scripts!
• 390 ISE plugin added to find scripts containing selected text
• 388 ISE plugin added to prettify edited script
• 422 Expand-Archive command added
• 411 ISE dialog to search for scripts by name
• 438 Console and 436 ISE results are output in real time
• 396 New-Role, Test-Role, Remove-Role commands added
• 435 Get-SearchIndex, Rebuild-SearchIndex, Stop-SearchIndex, Resume-SearchIndex, Suspend-SearchIndex commands added
• 434 Render-ReportField function-script added to improve Authorable Reports

Enhancements

• 421 Read-Variable dialogs can now show variable editors in a grid-like manner where you can assign 1-12 columns per variable editor
• 413 Read-Variable dialogs showing non-editable messages (for additional dialog explanatory messages where needed)
• 259 Read-Variable dialogs can now have mandatory fields
• 427 Read-Variable dialogs can now have placeholder text.
• 412 Show-ListView can now contain links executing actions in a specific report row
• 382 SPE Remoting module improvements
• 415 Find-Item criteria now supports inverted Filter
• 418 Improved formatting for Find-Item results
• 379 SPE Remoting support for Windows Authentication
• 417 Verbose messages are now yellow and black
• 391 Find-Item DecendentOf criteria added for faster searches
• 424 Find-Item supports Fuzzy and Date search
• 401 Read-Variable supports "item" editor that has no value selected on input or output.

Fixes

• 420 Find-Item Contains criteria complained about case sensitivity
• 419 ISE did not format data in the results pane
• 414 ISE buttons would enable at the wrong time
• ... many, many more

Potential Breaking Changes

• 376 Compress-Archive api change
• 356 Changes in existing commandlets for old Sitecore search APIs - Get-SearchIndex repurposed for new api, Get-Index and Get-ItemByUri are no longer available.
• Full Release notes
• Issues closed as part of the release

3.1 for Sitecore 7 and 8

Notable improvements:

• Create anti-packages
• Rules-based report creator
• Content Editor "Insert" menu integration
• Content Editor warning integration
• Experience Editor notification integration
• New cmdlets for managing Item security allowing for changing which users/roles can do what to which items.
• New-SecuritySource command added to enable inclusion of Users and Roles in packages
• New SPE Remoting module for use outside of Sitecore
• Most Recently Used scripts are now user specific and be stored in master database with user settings.
• Ability to open and save in ISE scripts stored in different database than the current ContentDatabase.
  Enhancements
• Read-Variable cmdlet provides the ability to edit Sitecore rules.
• New-FileSource and New-ExplicitFileSource commands support InstallMode for package creation
• New version specific dll introduced for compatibility with both Sitecore 7 and 8 from a single code trunk.
• Ability to set height of a field in dialog created by Read-Variable
• Show-ModalDialog can pass parameters through Url handles opening more OOTB Sitecore dialogs for re-use.
• Full Release notes
• Issues closed as part of the release

3.0 for Sitecore 8

• Sitecore 8 compatibility
• Dropped compatibility with Sitecore 6.x
• Major revamp for ISE and platform
• Final implementation for Modules - instrumentation added
• Hardening & security of web services
• Refactor to best practices of Controls and services placement & project structure refactor
• Compatibility with non-InProc sessions
• -WhatIf and -Confirm implemented on all commandlets
• Large number of other improvements

3.0 for Sitecore 7

• Sitecore 7-0 - 7.5 compatibility (on par with Sitecore 8)
• Dropped compatibility with Sitecore 6.x
• Major revamp for ISE and platform
• Final implementation for Modules - instrumentation added
• Hardening & security of web services
• Refactor to best practices of Controls and services placement & project structure refactor
• Compatibility with non-InProc sessions
• -WhatIf and -Confirm implemented on all commandlets
• Large number of other improvements

2.8 Release

Final/FINAL Sitecore 6.x/7.x release. We're switching to Sitecore 8 from now on.
Fix for a number of issues discovered since 2.7.5 release & following improvements:

• PowerShell Scripts can now be placed in modules. As described in this blog post
• Ability to run PowerShell scripts as Workflow Actions.As described in this blog post
• SPE can now be configured to run with other database than master as a default.
• other minor issues and improvements - http://bit.ly/ScPs28Iss