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How to Use PowerShell to Detect Logins and Alert Through Email using SendGrid

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From Microsoft MSDN, The Get-WinEvent data from event logs that are generated by the Windows Event Log technology introduced in Windows Vista.And, events in log files generated by Event Tracing for Windows (ETW).By default, Get-WinEvent returns event information in the order of newest to oldest.

Get-winevent : Gets events from event logs and event tracing log files on local and remote computers. The Get-WinEvent cmdlet uses the LogName parameter to specify the Windows PowerShell event log. The event objects are stored in the $Event variable.

This script reads the event log “Microsoft-Windows-TerminalServices-LocalSessionManager/Operational” from servers and outputs the human-readable results to Mail. The -MaxEvents 1 Specifies the maximum number of events that are returned. Enter an integer such as 100. The default is to return all the events in the logs or files.

#################################################################
#Project : How to Use PowerShell to Detect Logins and Alert Through Email using SendGrid
#Developer : Thiyagu S (dotnet-helpers.com)
#Tools : PowerShell 5.1.15063.1155 
#E-Mail : mail2thiyaguji@gmail.com 
##################################################################

$Timestamp = [System.TimeZoneInfo]::ConvertTimeBySystemTimeZoneId((Get-Date), 'India Standard Time')
$Text = "Timelines in IST"
$EmailBody = get-winevent -filterhashtable @{logname='Microsoft-Windows-TerminalServices-LocalSessionManager/Operational';id=21} -MaxEvents 1 | Format-List -Property TimeCreated,Message
$EmailFrom = "servermonitor@dotnet-helpers.com"
$EmailTo = "dotnet-helpers@accenture.com mail2thiyaguji@gmail.com"
$EmailSubject = "Server Login Notification"
$SMTPServer = "smtp.sendgrid.net"
[string][ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()] $Username = "azure_ad8e8e784erf789.com"
[string][ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()] $pwd = "xxxxxxxxxxx"
$pwd1 = ConvertTo-SecureString -String $pwd -AsPlainText -Force
$cred = new-object -typename System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -argumentlist $Username, $pwd1
$SMTPPort = 587
Send-MailMessage -From $EmailFrom -To $EmailTo -Subject $EmailSubject -body ($EmailBody + "($Text)" + "($Timestamp)" | Out-String) -SmtpServer $SMTPServer -Port $SMTPPort -Credential $cred

The Windows Task Scheduler can automatically send email at a specific time or in response to a specific event. The below article will help to configure the script in Windows Scheduler Task

Creating a scheduled task with PowerShell

Here i setting this script to execute the script if any user log in to the server, so it will intimate to the supervisor by triggering mail. Go to Triggers tab and add a new trigger. The trigger should be set to fire at log on, which can be selected from the drop down.

OUTPUT:

PowerShell

Reading XML Files With PowerShell

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Handling XML with PowerShell is very simple. It converts XML elements to properties on .NET objects without the need to write any parsing code. So it is very easy to use XML with PowerShell. Here we are going to discuss how to read the XML file values in different ways.

You can also read  How to add values to the string array from xml using Powershell and  How to write data to an xml file using Powershell 

A Quick Example

XML File : MyXM.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<EmpDetails>
	<Person>
		<Id>E00023</Id>
		<mailId>Aadharsh@dotnet-helper.com</mailId>
		<empName>Aadharsh G.K</empName>		
	</Person>
	<Person>
		<Id>E00042</Id>
		<mailId>Rakshu@dotnet-helper.com</mailId>
		<empName>RakshaNivasini S.T</empName>		
	</Person>
</EmpDetails>

Method 1:

Once you’ve run Get-Content to read the raw text from the XML document and cast the output to type [XML], you now have a variable called $XmlDocument that contains the entire XML node tree which we can process.

STEP  #1: Assign the XML file location into the variable.

$XMLfile = ‘C:\donet-helpers\Demo\MyXM.xml’

STEP  #2: Read the xml file using get-content cmdlet and assign to variable. The [xml] casts the variable as an XML object.

[XML]$empDetails = Get-Content $XMLfile

STEP  #3: Looping the child node to get the value.

foreach($empDetail in $empDetails.EmpDetails.Person){ }

Final Code:

############################################################
#Project : Reading XML files with PowerShell
#Developer : Thiyagu S (dotnet-helpers.com)
#Tools : PowerShell 5.1.15063.1155 
#E-Mail : mail2thiyaguji@gmail.com 
############################################################

$XMLfile = 'C:\D_EMS Drive\Personal\LBLOG\testpath.xml'
[XML]$empDetails = Get-Content $XMLfile

foreach($empDetail in $empDetails.EmpDetails.Person){

Write-Host "Employee Id :" $empDetail.Id
Write-Host "Employee mail Id :" $empDetail.mailId
Write-Host "Employee Name :" $empDetail.empName
Write-Host ''

}

OUTPUT:

Method 2:

STEP  #1: Assign the XML file location into the variable.

$Path = “C:\donet-helpers\Demo\MyXM.xml”

STEP  #2: The below command saves the XML path to the AliasProperty node in the $XPath variable.

$XPath = “/EmpDetails/Person”

STEP  #3: The Select-Xml cmdlet lets you use XPath queries to search for text in XML strings and documents. Enter an XPath query, and use the Content, Path, or Xml parameter to specify the XML to be searched.

Select-Xml -Path $Path -XPath $Xpath | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Node

Final Code:

############################################################
#Project : Reading XML files with PowerShell
#Developer : Thiyagu S (dotnet-helpers.com)
#Tools : PowerShell 5.1.15063.1155 
#E-Mail : mail2thiyaguji@gmail.com 
############################################################

$Path = "C:\D_EMS Drive\Personal\LBLOG\testpath.xml"
$XPath = "/EmpDetails/Person"
Select-Xml -Path $Path -XPath $Xpath | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Node

 

What do you think?

I hope you have an idea of how to Reading XML Files With PowerShell. I would like to have feedback from the readers of my posts. Your valuable feedback, question, or comments about this article are always welcome.