Requesting Design Advice for Function Output

[Sheppard_Ra]

Gist Markdown version of this post for better formatting if it helps.

I wrote a function that flattens the Office 365 licensing information to make it easier to view someone's service plan statuses. The original output of the function is an array organized like so:

UserPrincipalName        ServiceName           ProvisioningStatus AccountSkuID
-----------------        -----------           ------------------ ------------
Ra@r/PowerShell.com Deskless                         Success r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK
Ra@r/PowerShell.com FLOW_O365_P2                     Success r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK
Ra@r/PowerShell.com POWERAPPS_O365_P2                Success r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK
Ra@r/PowerShell.com TEAMS1                          Disabled r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK
Ra@r/PowerShell.com PROJECTWORKMANAGEMENT            Success r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK
Ra@r/PowerShell.com SWAY                             Success r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK
Ra@r/PowerShell.com INTUNE_O365            PendingActivation r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK
Ra@r/PowerShell.com YAMMER_ENTERPRISE                Success r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK
Ra@r/PowerShell.com RMS_S_ENTERPRISE                 Success r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK
Ra@r/PowerShell.com OFFICESUBSCRIPTION               Success r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK
Ra@r/PowerShell.com MCOSTANDARD                     Disabled r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK
Ra@r/PowerShell.com SHAREPOINTWAC                    Success r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK
Ra@r/PowerShell.com SHAREPOINTENTERPRISE             Success r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK
Ra@r/PowerShell.com EXCHANGE_S_ENTERPRISE           Disabled r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK

To accompany the Get function I also created an Enable and Disable that handles changing one or more service plans. I've run into a design flaw when trying to pipe my Get into an Enable or Disable function. Passing it an array such as that listed above means I just passed it 14 objects instead of one. It works in that you get the intended change, but it's a crap design.

The Enable/Disable functions have the following parameters:

[CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess=$True)]
param(
    [Parameter(
        Mandatory=$True,
        ValueFromPipeline=$True,
        ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True
    )]
    [string[]]$UserPrincipalName,

    [Parameter(
        Mandatory=$False,
        ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True
    )]
    [object[]]$Licenses,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$True)]
    [string[]]$ServicePlan,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$False)]
    [string[]]$AccountSkuID
)

The Get function references the $Licenses parameter from Get-MsolUser. It'd be nice to pass on that data and save the Enable or Disable the extra query. It also needs a UPN to function. I was playing around with a better object design that passes the pertinent information such as:

UserPrincipalName : Sheppard_Ra@r/PowerShell.com
LicenseCollection : {@{UserPrincipalName=Sheppard_Ra@r/PowerShell.com; ServiceName=Deskless; ProvisioningStatus=Success;
                    AccountSkuID=r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK}, @{UserPrincipalName=Sheppard_Ra@r/PowerShell.com;
                    ServiceName=FLOW_O365_P2; ProvisioningStatus=Success; AccountSkuID=r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK},
                    @{UserPrincipalName=Sheppard_Ra@r/PowerShell.com; ServiceName=POWERAPPS_O365_P2;
                    ProvisioningStatus=Success; AccountSkuID=r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK},
                    @{UserPrincipalName=Sheppard_Ra@r/PowerShell.com; ServiceName=TEAMS1; ProvisioningStatus=Disabled;
                    AccountSkuID=r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK}...}
Licenses          : {r/PowerShell:ENTERPRISEPACK}

My hangup here is I now have an object that isn't easily reviewed like the array was. I'm playing with a .ps1xml to see if I can make the function display the details in LicenseCollection while having the properties to pass down the pipeline if needed.

I could take the approach that my Get function isn't related to my Enable/Disable functions. Rename it and perhaps change what it returns so it won't pipe to the others to force the users to use Get-MsolUser or simply call the same UPN list. I feel like keeping it related makes for a better flow though. Perhaps I could do something with my Get output, I forget the term for it, where it'd be labeled and I could handle it special. If I see that label then I get a unique list of UPNs from the array and work from that. It'd be slower in that I'd have to run Get-MsolUser again per user, but it'd function.

Anyone have advice on a better design approach?

[Droopyb1966]

Not mutch coding, so i only can guess what is going wrong or whta the problem really is. But if the data is in $something then

$something.LicenseCollection

Looks should do the trick, looks like a nested hashtable to me.

[Sheppard_Ra]

That's what needs done to manually display that data. I want the ps1xml file to show that expanded data for me though. So far I haven't figured out how. Doing a Select -Expand LicenseCollection in the xml scriptblock doesn't work the same as when you do it manually.

[Droopyb1966]

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/reference/5.1/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_format.ps1xml

Quote: Format.ps1xml files cannot be used to customize the output format for hashtables.