Jobs

Jobs are the result of running a script. Jobs are retained based on the script and server level settings.

Viewing Jobs

Jobs can be viewed by clicking the Automation / Jobs page. Click the View button to navigate to the job. Jobs in progress can also bee cancelled.

View Job Output

Standard job output is shown on the Output Tab of the job page. This should contain text from various PowerShell streams.

View Job Pipeline Output

Pipeline output for jobs are also stored within UA. Any object that is written to the pipeline is stored as CliXml and available for view within the Pipeline Output tab.

You can expand the tree view to see the objects and properties from the pipeline.

Viewing Errors

Any errors written to the error stream will be available on the Error tab within the job page.

Feedback

Some jobs will require feedback. Any script that contains a Read-Host call will wait until there is user interaction with that job. The job will be in a Waiting for Feedback state and you can respond to that feedback by click the Response to Feedback button on the job page.

Invoking Jobs from PowerShell

You can use Invoke-UAScript to invoke jobs from the command line. You will need a valid App Token to do so. Parameters are defined using dynamic parameters on the Invoke-UAScript cmdlet.

Invoke-UAScript -Script 'Script1.ps1' -RequiredParameter 'Hello'

Call Scripts from Scripts

You can also call UA scripts from UA scripts. When running a job in UA, you don't need to define an app token or the computer name manually. These will be defined for you. You can just call Invoke-UAScript within your script to start another script. Both jobs will be shown in the UI. If you want to wait for the script to finish, use Wait-UAJob.

Waiting for a Script to Finished

You can use the Wait-UAJob cmdlet to wait for a job to finish. Pipe the return value of Invoke-UAScript to Wait-UAJob to wait for the job to complete. Wait-UAJob will wait indefinitely unless the -Timeout parameter is specified.

Invoke-UAScript -Script 'Script1.ps1' -RequiredParameter 'Hello' | Wait-UAJob

Return Pipeline Data

You can use the Get-PSUJobPipelineOutput cmdlet to return the pipeline output that was produced by a job. This pipeline output will be deserialized objects that were written to the pipeline during the job. You can access this data from where you have access to the PowerShell Universal Management API.

Get-PSUJobPipelineOutput -JobId 10

Returning the last job's output

It may be required to return the output from a script's last job run. In order to do this, you will need to use a combination of cmdlets to retrieve the script, the last job's ID and then return the pipeline or host output.

$Job = Get-UAScript -Name 'Script.ps1' | Get-UAJob -OrderDirection Descending -First 1
Get-UAJobPipelineOutput -Job $Job
Get-UAJobOutput -Job $Job

Invoke a Script and Wait for Output

The following example invokes a script, stores the job object in a $job variable, waits for the job to complete and then returns the pipeline and host output.

Invoke-UAScript -Script 'Script1.ps1' -RequiredParameter 'Hello' | Tee-Object -Variable job | Wait-UAJob

$Pipeline = Get-UAJobPipelineOutput -Job $Job
$HostOutput = Get-UAJobOutput -Job $Job

Invoking Jobs with REST

You can call jobs over REST using the management API for PowerShell Universal. You will need a valid app token to invoke jobs.

Call Scripts with REST

To call a script, you call an HTTP POST to the script endpoint with the ID of the script you wish to execute.

Invoke-RestMethod http://localhost:5000/api/v1/script/7 -Method POST -Body "" -Headers @{ Authorization = "Bearer appToken" } -ContentType 'application/json'

Providing Parameters

To provide parameters to scripts, you will need to define the parameters are part of the body. Currently the value is required to be a CLIXML string.

$JobContext = @{
    JobParameters = @(
        @{ Name = "parameter1"; Value = '<Objs Version="1.1.0.1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/powershell/2004/04">
          <S>String</S>
        </Objs>' },
    )
} | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 5

Invoke-RestMethod http://localhost:5000/api/v1/script/7 -Method POST -Body $JobContext -Headers @{ Authorization = "Bearer appToken" } -ContentType 'application/json'

To generate CLIXML, you can use the PSSerializer class in PowerShell. You can pass any object into the serialize method.

If you want to pass a credential you will need to pass in the parameter as a variable. You do not need to serialize the variable name.

$JobContext = @{
    JobParameters = @(
        @{ Name = "parameter1"; Value = "myCredential"; IsVariable = $true },
    )
} | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 5

Invoke-RestMethod http://localhost:5000/api/v1/script/7 -Method POST -Body $JobContext -Headers @{ Authorization = "Bearer appToken" } -ContentType 'application/json'

Setting the Environment

You can set the environment by pass in the environment property to the job context. The property must be the name of an environment defined within your PSU instance.

$JobContext = @{
    Environment = "PowerShell 7"
} | ConvertTo-Json

Invoke-RestMethod http://localhost:5000/api/v1/script/7 -Method POST -Body $JobContext -Headers @{ Authorization = "Bearer appToken" } -ContentType 'application/json'

Setting the Run As account

You can set the run as account by passing in the name of a PSCredential variable to the Credential property.

$JobContext = @{
    Credential = "MyUser"
} | ConvertTo-Json

Invoke-RestMethod http://localhost:5000/api/v1/script/7 -Method POST -Body $JobContext -Headers @{ Authorization = "Bearer appToken" } -ContentType 'application/json'

Variables Defined in Jobs

There are several built-in variables that are defined when a job is run. You can use these variables in your scripts to retrieve information about the current job.

Name	Description
$UAJob	The current job that is running. This will include properties such as the script, the user that started the job and when the job was started.
$UAJobId	The ID of the running job.
$UAScript	The script that is running. This will include properties such as the name of the script and path to the script.
$UAScriptId	The ID of the running script.
$UASchedule	The schedule that was used to start the script.
$UAScheduleId	The ID of the schedule that started the script.

Retrieving the user that started a script

You can retrieve the name of the user that started the script by using the UAJob variable

$UAJob.Identity.Name