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## Something about me
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## Transforming IT Landscapes with Automation
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Hello and welcome!
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Welcome to PSCustomObject, where we delve into the transformative power of automation in IT.
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Many thanks for taking the time to visit my GitHub page, my name is Daniele Catanesi I'm an IT Industry veteran with more than 20 years’ experience in various fields of the IT world spanning from IT Infrastructure, Network Engineering and Training as I used to work as Senior Infrastructure Trainer for a large training institution in Italy.
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Whether you're interested in mastering PowerShell, exploring cloud technologies, or learning about automation with different programming languages, you've come to the right place.
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I used to work as a *Messaging Specialist* but nowadays I spend my time designing *automation frameworks* and writing code to automate various business processes.
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## My Journey: From Manual Tasks to Automated Solutions
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I guess somebody would use the word *DevOps* but I still prefer to consider me an Infrastructure Engineer doing lot of coding.
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I'm Daniele, and I've dedicated my career to revolutionizing IT environments. Over the years, I've had the privilege of helping numerous companies transition from cumbersome manual processes to efficient, automated workflows.
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**If you're interested in the full story feel free to read below.**
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My mission has always been to replace "doing everything by hand" with seamless, "run-by-robots" solutions that drive efficiency and scalability. Easy as that!
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----
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## My Expertise: Crafting the Perfect Tool
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## The beginning
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With hands-on experience in a variety of programming languages and technologies, I specialize in crafting tailored solutions to meet specific needs:
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I started my career as a Windows Systems Administrator and later specialized in messaging systems where I oversaw messaging systems based on *Microsoft Exchange* for multiple enterprise customers.
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-**PowerShell**: Mastering scripting for automation and system management.
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-**Go**: Developing efficient, high-performance applications and tools.
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-**Python**: Building versatile tools and scripts for diverse applications.
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-**C#**: Creating robust applications and integrations.
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-**Cloud Technologies**: Leveraging the power of the cloud to enhance scalability and flexibility.
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In my role as Messaging Engineer I was in contact with a multitude of technologies spanning from Storage to Networking and **nix* based systems that I was mainly using to maintain custom anti-spam rulesets and enforce messaging hygiene.
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## Teaching and Training: Sharing Knowledge
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I enjoyed so much working with *nix that it eventually turned it from a passion to my full-time job.
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In addition to my technical expertise, I have a long history as a trainer and educator. I'm passionate about sharing my knowledge and helping others grow their skills.
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## The dark side
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Whether through workshops, webinars, or written content, I aim to empower you with the tools and insights needed to succeed in the world of automation.
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I switched sides when I joined the oldest IT Company in the world, hint it has to do with the *blue* color, as Linux Systems Engineer dealing with Mail Systems, High Availability and Automation (mainly via Bash, Python and Puppet which at the time was an emerging technology).
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## What You'll Find Here
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During my years serving as Linux Engineer I learned a lot about writing reusable code and, as a colleague called it, the *tool mindset*.
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-**In-Depth Guides:** Comprehensive tutorials mainly on PowerShell but do expect Go, Python, C#, and more.
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-**Automation Insights:** Practical advice and strategies for implementing automation across various platforms and technologies.
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-**Cloud Solutions:** Tips and best practices for utilizing cloud services effectively.
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-**Educational Content:** Resources and training materials to help you enhance your skills and knowledge.
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> Try not to write code that will serve a single purpose but write code that can be re-used multiple times. Your goal is writing a tool not a bunch of code that can be thrown away after you completed the task at hand.
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## Open Source and Tested Code
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## The end of cscript.exe
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All the code shared on this blog is freely available for you to use and adapt. You can find it in my [GitHub repository](https://github.com/PsCustomObject).
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When Microsoft started developing *Monad* that picked up my interest as, like many other engineers, I always thought the lack of a proper scripting language was one of the weakest points for Microsoft Enterprise ecosystem and, as a bonus, it had many similarities with technologies I was already familiar with so I started toying around with it.
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Each piece of code is not just theoretical—it's tested and proven in production environments, ensuring that what you're learning and implementing is reliable and effective.
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I did not know but my skills would have come handy sooner than I thought or planned.
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I believe in *eating my own dog food*, so you can trust that the solutions provided are practical and battle-tested.
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## Back to the roots
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## Join the Community
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Shortly after Microsoft released Exchange 2007, the first Exchange version that was heavily relying on PowerShell rather than on GUI tools, I had my chance to put newly acquired skills to good use.
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I invite you to explore the content, engage with the community, and share your own experiences. Let's collaborate and continue pushing the boundaries of what automation can achieve.
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As it often happens in life things abruptly changed, the project I was working on came to an unexpected end and my role was made *redundant* as the bulk of my work was bound to that specific solution.
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Thank you for visiting my site. I'm excited to share this journey with you and help you navigate the ever-evolving world of IT automation!
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One day a colleague from another team told me they were facing a shortage in resources with skills in the Messaging and *Exchange* area and were desperate to find somebody to complete a project, while I was not planning to go back to the Microsoft world I thought this could give me some time to work on something rather sitting idle with little in my hands. That's how all is started... **again!**
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## Stay in touch
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I mentioned my past as *Exchange Engineer* and messaging skills and the same afternoon I spoke to her manager together with the project Architect who agreed to immediately make me part of the team.
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Comment, write me an e-mail, open an issue report or a PR anything will do!
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Being completely honest, after a lot of time spent into an SSH session going back to a world made of GUIs, was familiar and *weird* at the same time but allowed me to further sharpen my PowerShell skills and see how the Microsoft world has evolved during my *absence*.
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## Supporting Charitable Causes
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Back ad the time I had to write a lot of *custom* code to carry on simple tasks like sending an email, as cmdlets like *Send-MailMessage* were not yet part of PowerShell, but that just made motivated me to learn more and write tools/functions that I felt could be beneficial for other engineers like me.
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Nowadays most of the functions I wrote have been implemented as native cmdlet with better performances and functionality but still there are bits used in production environments like my **Microsoft Exchange Nagios Monitoring** plugin.
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To support meaningful causes, this site does run advertisements. However, I want you to know that all earnings from these ads are dedicated to charitable organizations.
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Like all good things even this project came to an end but I received an unexpected offer to remain in the team as an Advisory Engineer helping with Automation and Messaging projects.
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I personally support groups such as Doctors Without Borders and associations that aid children and individuals with autism—causes that are very close to my heart.
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Probably I gave this away with the title and you have guessed it. I was back to my roots.
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## PowerShell and GUIs
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In my new role as *Advisory Engineer* I found myself solving a lot of the same challenges I was dealing as a Linux Engineer, processes that were being executed manually, a lot of scheduled tasks that were configured with dependencies I defined as *black magic* and a lot, and I mean **a LOT**, of batch files.
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I spent most of my first year converting all these batch files to proper PowerShell scripts while discovering the power of workflows, not a new concept in the Linux world, and started to gradually introduce **Orchestrator Runbooks** that helped removing lot of the black magic I was talking of earlier.
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At the same time I, once gain, wore the *trainer* hat and started showing my colleagues the benefits of automation and started fighting again the *...it always worked like this, why change it now?...* mindset.
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Once all the legacy tasks have been converted I started writing support scripts for my colleagues but there was an issue that seemed all too common, especially among Junior staff, which was adapting to the new paradigm of having a CLI tool carrying on all the heavy lift work, this is when I started poking around with PowerShell and GUIs.
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I started converting some of the CLI only tools I wrote to their GUI counterpart while most these tools were internal only I released some of them like my **[Exchange message tracking GUI](https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Exchange-message-tracking-73a2604c)** which is a replacement for (now defunct) Exchange Log Tracking utility.
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## The present
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Fast forward to date I’m lucky enough to work as a *Senior Engineer*, guess my role goes by the fancy name *DevOps* nowadays, developing complex automation frameworks for a large enterprise.
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In few words I spend my time writing PowerShell code and not shying away from **C#** or **Python** which I deeply love for its simplicity and elegance.
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I mainly deal with *Active Directory/Azure AD*, *Identity Management* and *Office 365* so more often than not you will find example and snippets related, in a way or another, to these technologies.
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## Why a blog
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I used to maintain a full blown WordPress blog where I rambled about various technical arguments but with the passing of years time grew scarce and I closed it down, issue is I do love to write (ok ramble is more appropriate) and to give back to the community so I started this GitHub space where I share code snippets, full scripts or functions hoping to help somebody out there.
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## ADs on the website
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I, like most of you, don't like invasive AD especially when I'm trying to consume content but nonetheless placed some ADs on the website not because I want to make money from the blog, ultimately I enjoy doing what I do and it does not cost me a dime, but because any payout from ADs will go directly to **charity**.
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The world we live in is plagued with wars, famine and other such *amenities* and the first victim of all of this are children, for this reason we always try to give as much as we can to charitable associations helping people who most need it.
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This is the only reason why I have placed ADs on the website, if you are using an AdBlocker that is fine, I do that myself, but if you take a second to display an AD be sure any earning will go to charity and I want to **THANK YOU** for that.
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By visiting this site, you’re contributing to these important efforts, and for that, I’m deeply grateful if you could consider disabling your AD Blocker.
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