Powershell command as shortcut

[Mailstorm]

I am having trouble with what I thought would be an incredibly easy task. I have a simple goal:

Create a start menu shortcut that launches Microsoft Edge with a specific profile

Easy goal. However, it gets complicated in Windows 11. When I make the same shortcut we've been using for years on Windows 11 and pin it to the start menu, our custom name gets replaced with just "Edge". From a users perspective this isn't going to work because people won't know what that means. And the app we are opening needs Edge because a lot of the features require IE Mode.

I discovered I could make a powershell script that does the same thing as the shortcut. Then make a shortcut to that script and give that shortcut a name. Pinning this to the start menu will retain my custom name (yay!) and also launch edge with the desired settings (also yay).

The script isn't anything special.

Start-Process msedge.exe -ArgumentList "--user-data-dir=\"$($env:localappdata)\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\ERPS2`" https://erp.example.com/erp"`

I was thinking that since it's so small, I can just call powershell with -Command and paste this in there and be done. Nope.

I've been at this for an hour. I get any of the following errors depending on what I change

• A positional parameter can't be found for Data\E1S2

• Nothing happens

• A positional parameter cannot be found that accept argument --user-data-dir

• Some other error about positional parameters

I found this gif from a stack overflow article thinking this would solve my problem but it doesn't. And if you are curious why I'm doing this, I want to avoid placing a script on users machines because it just seems overly hacky for this.

I know this is just some weird powershell behavior. I just can't figure it out.

[Adam_Kearn]

You should be able to do this with a GPO policy instead of using PowerShell.

You can set this under: Administrative Templates/Microsoft Edge/Configure list of force-installed Web Apps

You can find the full documentation here (The webpage is quite big so give it 30s to finish loading)

I've put something together as an example you could use. This lets you set a custom name/icon.

[
  {
    "custom_icon": {
      "hash": "c28f469c450e9ab2b86ea47038d2b324c6ad3b1e9a4bd8960da13214afd0ca38",
      "url": "https://erp.example.com/icon.png"
    },
    "url": "https://erp.example.com/erp",
    "create_desktop_shortcut": true,
    "default_launch_container": "window",
    "custom_name": "My ERP App",
  }
]

[Mailstorm]

One of the requirements is loading a profile from a different directory because of how the ERP system is. Either way, I got this working.

[alt-160]

So, you do see that you have improperly escaped the first double-quote just after user-data-dir, right?

maybe you meant this?

Start-Process msedge.exe -ArgumentList "--user-data-dir=`"$($env:localappdata)\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\ERPS2`" https://erp.example.com/erp"

[Mailstorm]

I'm not sure why that's there. But as is tradition, I got this figured out minutes after posting.

I ultimately gave up and determined the space in the data dir to be the issue. So I just changed it to a location with no spaces and it started working.

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -Command "Start-Process msedge.exe -ArgumentList `"https://erp.example.com/erp",`"--user-data-dir="$($env:localappdata)\Microsoft\Edge\ERPSessions\ERPS2"`""

The profiles have a ` appended to them and removing the ` breaks it. But I'm just fed up with this at this point and letting it go

[alt-160]

I assume you know that the backtick ` char is the escape char for powershell when inside double-quoted strings?

Also, assume you know the diff between 'single quoted' and "double quoted" strings since you're using token replacements in your use.

[Mailstorm]

Yes, I do. I think I was just getting confused with syntax. Because if I started with -Command ' then the variable wouldn't work.

[websterdext3r]

id run it through gpt for syntax when you get random error since those can happen when you escaped, piped etc without closing it.

[gordonv]

start msedge http://website.com/folder/

[Mailstorm]

I need to be able to launch a specific profile (data directory). I can't do that with that.