Introduction

This article provides basic guidance to using the Run External Program The Run External Program tool runs self-terminating shell executable programs including .exe or .bat for example, or any file type that is associated with such a shell executable program. Programs can either be existing programs that exhibit the right attributes or programs specially created to provide integration with proprietary protocols, systems or applications. tool to run PowerShell scripts.

Procedure

It is recommended you create the PowerShell script in a separate file, stored locally to the BPA Platform client. You can then use task variables Variables are created and used extensively throughout and can either have fixed values or values that are dynamically populated when a task is run. Task variables are only available for the specific task they are created for. Users with Task Administrator rights can create task variables. to determine the file path and script file to call at task run-time.

You use the Parameters table to specify the command line syntax which calls the script as Name | Value pairs, for example:

This example is a V2 PowerShell script. At task run-time, the PowerShell program is invoked and the following command run (note that example file paths and names have been used in place of the BPA Platform variables):

-executionpolicy remotesigned -noprofile -noninteractive -sta -command "c:\scripts\script1.ps"

Note: If using PowerShell v1.0, the –executionpolicy, remotesigned, and -sta arguments will not work. Instead, run set-execution policy remotesigned first before running the command to call the script. For a detailed description of the security implications of setting the execution policy, refer to the PowerShell help (help set-executionpolicy).

If you are unsure whether you are running v1.0 or v2.0, note the copyright message when you start up a PowerShell prompt — this will say (c)2006 for v1.0 or (c)2009 for v2.0.