I present at a lot of User Groups, Events, Online presentations and of course VMworld and if you have ever sat in one of my sessions you will notice I always ask for feedback, I love hearing the good and the bad because ultimately it gets fed back into the products I help create at VMware and makes our customers lives easier. I have to say as well that you are all great at giving me feedback, I enjoy walking away from VMworld and other sessions with a list of items we could improve on or are doing right and taking this back and adding it into our system to learn from and plan against in future releases. Hopefully you see that this data as well as data from the communities, blog posts, conversations and numerous other places we look at gets fed straight back into the product.
Sometimes however there is data we need to make decisions that will help you and us in the future but is hard to get, other than spamming you all with online surveys and lets be honest, who doesn’t get enough of them to fill out?!
How can you help answer these questions?
Easy! You may have noticed that we recently released PowerCLI 6.0 Release 3 which can be downloaded from here and supports vSphere all the way back to vSphere 5.0 as well as a number of other products like vRealize Operations, VSAN, vCloud Air, vCloud Director etc etc (why wait, update now!).
One thing that was also introduced in this version was a way for me as the Product Manager to receive basic information to help me answer questions like, what versions of the OS are people using? What versions of PowerShell are they using? and a few other basic details, this is called “Customer Experience Improvement Support” (CEIP), it basically gives you the opportunity to give me feedback without even realizing it and therefore allowing me to make the product even better than before (I know you cant believe it can be right?!).
How do I send you this data and help make PowerCLI even more awesome?
First, make sure you install PowerCLI 6.0 Release 3 form here.
Second, launch PowerCLI from the PowerCLI Icon provided on your desktop or from the start menu. The first time you launch this Icon you will be prompted to participate in the CEIP, just hit enter as the default answer is “J” for Join and then you are done, easy right! You can now sit back and enjoy that warm fuzzy feeling inside knowing that you are making the world of PowerCLI a better place. This is a per user choice so each user that launches the icon for the first time will get the option to send back the data.
But what about scheduled tasks that run as a user I never log into? Don’t worry, notice I said it was the PowerCLI Icon you had to click on to get this prompt, if you just launch PowerShell and add the modules and snapins in the script or if you launch the ISE or another script editor you will notice you don’t get prompted for this and it will remain unset until the PowerCLI icon is clicked on for the first time. This makes sure your scheduled tasks or scripts will still work fine.
But wait, I didn’t know about this and I already installed PowerCLI and declined sending you my data
Its ok, you can still be a helpful PowerCLI contributor, you can easily check what your current setting is by using the following command:
Get-PowerCLIConfiguration -Scope User | Select *CEIP*
You can also change the setting easily by using the Set-PowerCLIConfiguration to join the CEIP as follows:
PowerCLI C:\> Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -scope User -ParticipateInCeip $true
Perform operation?
Performing operation ‘Update vSphere PowerCLI configuration.’?
VMware’s Customer Experience Improvement Program (“CEIP”) provides VMware with
information that enables VMware to improve its products and services and to fix
problems. By choosing to participate in CEIP, you agree that VMware may
collect technical information about your use of VMware products and services on
a regular basis. This information does not personally identify you. For more
details: press Ctrl+C to exit this prompt and type “help about_ceip” to see the
related help article. You can join or leave the program at any time by
executing: Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -Scope User -ParticipateInCEIP $true or
$false.
[Y] Yes [A] Yes to All [N] No [L] No to All [S] Suspend [?] Help
(default is “Y”):y
Scope ProxyPolicy DefaultVIServerMode InvalidCertificateAction DisplayD
eprecati
onWarnin
gs
—– ———– ——————- ———————— ——–
Session UseSystemProxy Multiple Unset True
User UseSystemProxy
AllUsers
PowerCLI C:\> Get-PowerCLIConfiguration -Scope User | Select *
DefaultVIServerMode :
ProxyPolicy : UseSystemProxy
ParticipateInCEIP : True
CEIPDataTransferProxyPolicy :
DisplayDeprecationWarnings :
InvalidCertificateAction :
WebOperationTimeoutSeconds :
VMConsoleWindowBrowser :
Scope : User
PowerCLI C:\>
What re you waiting for?
Next steps, download PowerCLI 6.0 R3, remember it works with versions all the way back to vSphere 5.0! and join the CEIP, help shape the product and build a better future for PowerCLI.
