Migrating From Universal Dashboard 2.9

PowerShell Universal Dashboard v2.9 is a PowerShell module that allows you to create dashboard with PowerShell script. It is the predecessor to PowerShell Universal. The technology the enabled UD has been migrated into PowerShell Universal. You should be able to run the same PowerShell scripts in PowerShell Universal that you would in Universal Dashboard with some minor modifications.

When looking at the Universal Dashboard v2 documentation, you can click the link at the top of each page to take you to the corresponding documentation for PowerShell Universal.

Migrating from Universal dashboard to PowerShell Universal

No need to call Start-UDDashboard

In Universal, all you need to do is return the result of New-UDDashboard from your script. There is no need to call Start-UDDashboard. The configuration of the webserver is taken place using the PSU appsetting.json file.

New-UDDashboard -Title 'My dashboard' -Content {

}

No need to call New-UDEndpointInitialization

This cmdlet has been removed from Universal Dashboard. There is no longer a need to call it.

Scheduled Endpoints

You do not need to pass the value of a scheduled endpoint to anything. You can just call New-UDEndpoint with a endpoint schedule and it will automatically be registered with PSU.

$Schedule = New-UDEndpointSchedule -Every 10 -Minute
$Endpoint = New-UDEndpoint -Schedule $Schedule -Endpoint {}

REST APIs

To learn more about APIs, click here.

Authentication and Authorization

Authentication and authorization are now handled by PSU and there is no need to configure UD login pages. Authentication and authorization are configured with the PSU appsettings.json file. Dashboard's themselves can be either authenticated or not authenticated. A license is required to enable authenticated dashboards.

To enable role-based access controls, you can assign roles to pages and use the automatic $Roles variable to check which roles the user is a part of. The $User variable will provide the name of the user.

Authorization Policies

Authorizations policies in Universal work very similar to the ones in Universal Dashboard, you will define them using the New-PSURole cmdlet. When you define the role, you have the option to define a policy that will assign that role automatically to a user.

For example, let's adjust a claims policy from Universal Dashboard for Universal.

Universal Dashboard

$AuthorizationPolicy = New-UDAuthorizationPolicy -Name "Policy" -Endpoint {
    param($User)

    $User.HasClaim("group", "administrator")
}

Universal

New-PSURole -Name 'User' -Policy {
   param($User)

   $User.Claims | Where-Object { $_.Type -eq 'group' -and $_.Value -eq 'administrator' }
}

Enforcing Roles

Much like the Get-UDAuthorizationPolicy cmdlet in Universal Dashboard, you also have access to the assigned roles for users in Universal. Simply check the $Roles variable to see which roles the user has.

PS C:\Users\adamr> $Roles = @('Administrator')
PS C:\Users\adamr> if ($Roles -contains 'Administrator') { $true }

Published Folders

Click here to learn more about Published Folders in PowerShell Universal.

Migrating to Universal Dashboard v3

This section contains migration information for upgrading from UDv2 to UDv3. They are vastly different frameworks and will require rewriting your dashboard. Many of the concepts are the same.

Pages

Pages have a different behavior in v3. All pages are dynamic pages. This means that you don't have to worry about whether a page will be generated at run time or doing start up. Pages are always generated during runtime.

If you have a page such as this one:

New-UDPage -Url "/myPage/:owner" -Endpoint {
    param($owner)
}

You can convert it to a v3 page by changing the syntax to:

New-UDPage -Name 'myPage' -Url "/myPage/:owner" -Content {
    param($owner)
}

New-UDTable (formerly UDGrid and UDTable)

Rather than having two cmdlets for tables (New-UDTable and New-UDGrid). The New-UDTable in v3 provides the ability to display data in a table, filter, page, and sort it. It supports both client and server-side processing.

You can view examples of the table on GitHub.

New-UDDynamic

Unlike in v3, components do not have -Endpoint and -Content parameters. Each component will instead simply have a -Content parameter. To achieve dynamic sections of a page, you can instead use the New-UDDynamic cmdlet. This cmdlets let you define an entire section of a page as dynamic. It also provides auto refresh functionality so you can refresh sections of a page all at once.

New-UDDynamic -Content {
    New-UDTypography -Text (Get-Date)
}

New-UDGrid

New-UDGrid allows you to define a grid layout using the Material UI library. You use this single cmdlet to define rows and columns within your dashboard.

You can view examples of the grid on GitHub.

New-UDForm (formerly UDInput)

New-UDInput has been replaced by New-UDForm. The UDForm component allows far more configuration that UDInput did. You will use the standard controls like UDTextbox, UDCheckbox, and UDSelect instead of New-UDInputField. This means that there are a single set of input cmdlets to use for UD.

All of the input control examples can be found on GitHub.

Navigation

Instead of using New-UDSideNav, you will now use a combination of New-UDAppbar and New-UDDrawer. When New-UDAppBar is used with the default position, it will overlay the AppBar at the top of the page. You can then specify a drawer to customize the navigation experience within your dashboard.

You can see examples of how to do navigation on GitHub.

Nivo and Sparklines are now open source

The Nivo and sparklines controls are now open source and on the Universal Dashboard repository. You can now use them without purchasing a license.

For more examples of Nivo and sparklines controls, see GitHub.

Map is now open source

The map control is also open source and on GitHub.

You can find examples on GitHub.