In the first part of this series I explained how you can create layers and assign shapes to each layer to toggle the visibility of them as you manage your layers. The second part explained how you can use the Developer tab to add a command button to your drawing and even create custom User Forms using VBA. So now it is time to get to the final part of this series and explain the VBA code that gets all components to work together and offer users a simple interface to toggle the visibility of the layers.
Archive for category Scripts
After explaining the manual configuration of visio layers in part 1, it is now time to add some VBA code to the mix and build ourselves a more user friendly interface to toggle the visibility (and printability) of the layers within a drawing.
In order to use the code I will provide, you’ll need to have VBA installed with your Visio installation and enable the use of Marco’s for your drawing.
Visio Setup VBA
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and start with the basics on how to setup Visio to work with VBA.
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I’m usually blogging about Citrix and/or RES Software products and my experiences implementing and designing SBC and VDI solutions with those products. This blog will however deal with a different tool … one that I use alot during the design phase of projects to ensure all parties are talking about the same components and their inter relationships, whether they have a technical background or not. A (simplified) picture still is more powerfull than 1000 words.
In order to create a sort of design poster to start the discussion with all parties involved I am a big fan of Microsoft Visio, which still does not have a good Open Source alternative to combine multiple views into one drawing. And with views I mean the option to show different components, other connections of special shape groups with just a couple of clicks by unleashing the power of layers
So let me explain the way I’m using different layers within one Visio drawing to provide specialized views to different parties within a project in this blog
Yesterday I was made aware of a new blogpost by @MichelHelderman on Twitter by my colleague @KBaggerman who refered Michel to a blogpost I wrote on enabling the VM autostart through the CLI for XenServer 6.0.
This feature is no longer available through the XenCenter GUI in XenSeerver 6.0 as it was interfering with the HA features on XenServer.
Michel provides you with a great alternative, namely the introduction of the new vApp feature for XenServer 6.0, which allows you to group VMs on a XenServer and control the automatic startup of the entire VM group. Even allowing you to set the boot order and wait time between boots.
The only setback with using the new vApp feature to group you VMs is that the vApp itself cannot be configured to automatically start when a physical XenServer Host is booted. It still requires a manual action through the GUI or CLI to start the vApp and have all VMs booted in their set order. Something we most definately want to be automated.
As there is no attribute for the vApp to configure it to auto-start, like my previous post explains for individual VMs, there are alternative ways to have a vApp be automatically started when a XenServer Host boots.
In this blogpost I have gathered some of the alternative methods to implement the auto-start feature for your VMs as I have found them on the internet.
XenServer PowerShell 101
Jan 26
Over two years ago I discovered PowerShell as a very usefull scripting language to support the fully automated install and config of a Windows 2008 Office Automation domain with XenApp and RES Software products. Thanks to RES Automation Manager (back than it was still called Wisdom) I could easily build PowerShell scripts to create the required Active Directory structure, Exchange environment and use small scripts for different configurational settings. RES Automation Manager ensured I only needed to concentrate on the actual scripts, as I could configure the Tasks options to ensure the correct execution rights were used and the required snap-ins were loaded by specifying the use of a PowerShell configuration file (.psc1).
This blog is all about reconnecting with PowerShell as I want to explore the PowerShell SnapIn for XenServer 6.0.
A quick overview of the available commands is provided with a great poster from Björn Andersson (diversetips.se) for XenServer 6.0:
This blog will be all about the basic PowerShell commands to setup my scripting environment and slowly build up to more complex scripts for XenServer management.