Changes in v4

Overview

• Modern Fluent user interface
• Digitally signed PowerShell module
• All C# code is now compiled
• Codebase completely refactored and optimized
• Complete removal of VBScript code
• Strongly typed and defined object types, no more PSCustomObjects, etc
• Defensively coded to ensure security and reliability
• Now provides PowerShell 7 and ARM support
• Extensions supported as supplemental modules
• Custom action support for extensions on deployment start/finish
• Support for overriding config via the registry
• Backwards-compatibility with v3 deployment scripts

Key Filename Changes

info

Further changes to the deployment layout are detailed in the Deployment Structure page.

Old Name	New Name	More Information
Deploy-Application.ps1	Invoke-AppDeployToolkit.ps1	Invoke-AppDeployToolkit
Deploy-Application.exe	Invoke-AppDeployToolkit.exe	Invoke-AppDeployToolkit
AppDeployToolkitConfig.xml	Config\Config.psd1	Configuration Settings
Was part of Config file	Strings\Strings.psd1	Language Strings

New Configuration Format

• .psd1 is PowerShell's native config file format. See the Customizing Deployments page for further info.

Key Function Name Changes

info

For a detailed mapping of all v3 to v4 functions, check out the Function Mapping page.

• The following table highlights the key function name changes where functions hve been renamed to avoid collisions with other scripts / modules.

Old Name	New Name / Details
Copy-File	Copy-ADTFile
Execute-Process	Start-ADTProcess
Write-Log	Write-ADTLogEntry

Variables

• The standard toolkit environment variables (e.g. $envProgramFiles) will be available once an ADTSession has been started, or the Export-ADTEnvironmentTableToSessionState command has been run.

• Variables specific to a particular deployment (e.g. $appName) can now be found within the ADTSession object (e.g. $adtSession.AppName).

Booleans Replaced with Switches

v3 had many Boolean parameters, some of which default to true, and others to false. It was often difficult to know what the default was for each command without looking up the help or code.

• Now instead of: TopMost $true or -TopMost $false
• We have a single optional switch -NotTopMost

This way, the name of the parameter naturally implies what the default behavior is.

Standardized Filtering

The Remove-MsiApplications command in v3 had -FilterApplication and -ExcludeFromUninstall parameters that use a complex syntax:

FilterApplication @(, @('Publisher', 'Oracle Corporation', 'Exact')) -ExcludeFromUninstall @(, @('DisplayName', 'Java 8 Update 45', 'Contains'))

In the new function Uninstall-ADTApplication, these have now been combined into a single FilterScript that should be familiar to anyone that has used PowerShell's Where-Object command:

-FilterScript {$_.Publisher -eq 'Oracle Corporation' -and $_.DisplayVersion -notmatch 'Java 8 Update 45'}

ScriptBlock Variables

Invoke-HKCURegistrySettingsForAllUsers in v3 required the use of a $UserProfile variable:

Invoke-HKCURegistrySettingsForAllUsers -RegistrySettings {
    Set-RegistryKey -Key 'HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common' -Name 'qmenable' -Value 0 -Type DWord -SID $UserProfile.SID
}

In v4, the UserProfile objects are piped to the provided scriptblock, so $_ should be used to represent these objects:

Invoke-ADTAllUsersRegistryAction -ScriptBlock {
    Set-ADTRegistryKey -Key 'HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common' -Name 'qmenable' -Value 0 -Type DWord -SID $_.SID
}

Standardized Array Inputs

Functions that accept multiple values now accept arrays rather than a single string delimited by commas. For example instead of:

Show-InstallationWelcome -CloseApps 'iexplore,winword,excel'

The process list is now defined like so:

Show-ADTInstallationWelcome -CloseProcesses iexplore, winword, excel

Instead of:

Execute-Process -Path 'setup.exe' -Parameters '/S' -IgnoreExitCodes '1,2'

The exit codes are now defined like so:

Start-ADTProcess -FilePath 'setup.exe' -ArgumentList '/S' -IgnoreExitCodes 1,2

Error Handling

Many commands in v3 used a -ContinueOnError parameter. In v4, you just use the standard PowerShell -ErrorAction parameter:

• Instead of: ContinueOnError $false or -ContinueOnError $true
• You use: -ErrorAction Stop or -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Uninstallation of EXE apps

• Uninstall-ADTApplication can now support uninstallation of EXE apps in addition to MSI.

• Use the -ApplicationType parameter to restrict to one application type or the other.

• -ArgumentList will replace the detected arguments found in the QuietUninstallString / UninstallString in the registry, -AdditionalArgumentList will append to them.

User Profile Paths

• Get-ADTUserProfiles now supports a -LoadProfilePaths switch to find various common folders for each user profile, such as Documents and Desktop.

• This can be used by Copy-ADTFileToUserProfiles to copy files directly to these locations.

WIM Support

• There is now support for compressing your file content to a WIM archive and mounting it during installation. This can be managed manually via Mount-ADTWimFile and Dismount-ADTWimFile.

• Alternatively you can use the -ForceWimDetection switch with the Open-ADTSession command to auto-mount and dismount any WIM files found.

If you leave the AppName blank, Zero Config will kick in, auto-mount any WIM file found and install the MSI found within.