this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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I am trying to use powershell to setup a process that off boards users and doing the AD side of things is great but I am not sure how to use powershell to interact with our other software that only has a gui.

For example user management in studio3T where they only have a web UI or an application that you can download and run locally.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

oh man I have so many things to learn.

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago

I have it on good authority that you currently have a project idea which you can use to pick one (or more) of those paths and start learning. ;-)

For example user management in studio3T

Not sure how I missed this on my first read of your post. But, this looks like a fancy front end to making MongoDB calls. That makes life easier, MongoDB has a well documented API and a driver for C#. As an aside, if you want to get really good at PowerShell, getting a basic working knowledge of C# and .Net in general is really helpful. For the lazy (and I always like lazy), there's even a pre-built MongoDB module on the PowerShell Galley called Mdbc. There is also the Project's GitHub Page which has a lot of useful info.

Granted, this path likely means learning enough about MongoDB to create/delete/modify users. But you came here expecting a load of homework, right? Also, this is a good excuse to spin up a docker container running MongoDB and go hog wild breaking the fuck out of it (just call it "research" if management asks). And who doesn't love breaking stuff?

I'd also note that you may be able to get some help along the way by capturing the network traffic to the server caused by the Studio3T GUI. WireShark can capture the traffic to/from the DB server and you can read that to reverse engineer some of the calls you care about. Just, make sure you talk to your security folks before you download/install WireShark. If they are worth their salt, they'll understand an engineer installing/running wireshark, it just makes their day easier if they know the alert is coming first. Assuming the GUI isn't complete shit, it may encrypt traffic. This can be dealt with by using the SSLKEYLOGFILE environmental variable. In most cases, this results in the TLS keys being saved to a file and that can be imported into WireShark.

Good luck, and have fun!