Get a specific Dynamics NAV Server Setting with PowerShell (a better Get-NAVServerConfiguration)

You might remember this blogpost: NAV 2013 R2: Powershell function to check if ServerInstance is Multitenant or not. It was a small tip on how to check a certain setting.

Recently I was working on a script, where I needed some other serversettings, and looking back on the way I was doing the above .. there had to be a better way. I mean .. looping all settings until I met the right one? Come on.. ;-).

Now, I don’t know if the following is “the best” method, but I find it at least somewhat better then above.

What is the problem?

Well, the output of the CmdLet “Get-NAVServerConfiguration” looks interesting and default, like:

It looks like the output is a number of objects with two properties: Key and value. But it isn’t. If you look at the members (with Get-Member), you actually have no decent properties at all :-/.

You might want to filter like this, but it doesn’t give you anything:

 Get-NAVServerConfiguration -ServerInstance LIVE | where Key -eq "Multitenant"

There must be a reason for this. I can imagine in the background, it’s going to read the config.settings file in the server-folder.

There is a better way …

Now, you can look at it as xml as well, by using the “AsXML” parameter. When you do that, you can treat this output as xml, navigating the different nodes.. . For example, to fill an xml-variable with the output of this CmdLet, you can do like:

 [xml]$myxml = Get-NAVServerConfiguration -ServerInstance LIVE -AsXml

And so you can look at it like xml .. not that I have too much experience in that .. but I noticed I could “browse” through the nodes by using intellisense. It didn’t take me much to figure out where everything was, quite an odd place, but hey .. Here, I found about the same output as the CmdLet itself:

 $myxml.configuration.appSettings.add

But if you look at the member, you can actually see the “Key” and “Value” property:

 $myxml.configuration.appSettings.add | Get-Member

So, I could definitely filter on this one with:

 $myxml.configuration.appSettings.add | where Key -eq "Multitenant"

Knowing this, there are numerous ways to make it easy on you, and create a few new commandlets that can get you to the right properties easily. Below is an example on how to create your own “Get-NAVServerConfiguration”: 

 
function Get-NAVServerConfiguration2
 {
 [CmdletBinding()]
 param (
 [parameter(Mandatory=$true,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)]
 [String]$ServerInstance
 )
 BEGIN
 {
 $ResultObjectArray = @()
}
 PROCESS
 {
 $CurrentServerInstance = Get-NAVServerInstance -ServerInstance $ServerInstance
 $CurrentConfig = $CurrentServerInstance | Get-NAVServerConfiguration -AsXml
foreach ($Setting in $CurrentConfig.configuration.appSettings.add)
 {
 $ResultObject = New-Object System.Object
 $ResultObject | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -name ServiceInstance -value $CurrentServerInstance.ServerInstance
 $ResultObject | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -name Key -value $Setting.Key
 $ResultObject | Add-Member -Type NoteProperty -Name Value -Value $Setting.Value
 $ResultObjectArray += $ResultObject
 }
}
 END
 {
 $ResultObjectArray
 }
 }

Now, you can do stuff like:
Get-NAVServerInstance | Get-NAVServerConfiguration2 | where Key -EQ “MultiTenant”

To get a list of all the “MultiTenant” settings of all the instances on your machine. In my opinion: now the CmdLet behaves like it’s supposed to
Enjoy!