
The Story
I recently started working on a project that required me to create a lot of System Center Orchestrator Runbooks. I quickly became frustrated with the Runbook Tester application because it would only run while a runbook is checked out, rendering the runbook useless for colleagues that needed it. Also the application would run under your current account instead of the orchestrator service account so I couldn’t trust it’s results (I know I can log in under that account but the point is: I really shouldn’t have to). I then switched to the Orchestrator Console to test the runbooks. This takes care of all of the issues above but was still frustrating to test with for the following reason: everytime I start a runbook I have to manualy enter all the parameters. The more input parameters your runbook has, the longer it takes to test it. And then if I test the runbook and it fails within ten seconds I have to start all over again! Say it with me, folks: frustrating!
After a few days of self-pity and blaming Microsoft for my sorrows I thought to myself: If you can’t get the proper tools for the product, build one yourself! So I went to my favorite Powershell tool: Sapien Powershell Studio. I used some Microsoft MSDN pages to create my own set of functions to utilize the orchestrator web service, only to find out after the fact that someone else had build a cool module for it (check out this codeplex site). Then I build a GUI around it. I think its my best work yet!
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