The first step is to download and install WinSCP, you will need to do this on the SQL server that will be running the SSIS package.  Once you have installed WinSCP you should create a connection to the distant sFTP server in WinSCP so you can test and confirm that you can connect to it.  Create and name a saved session so that you can call that session from your script later.  I will name this session “MySecureFTP”.

Once you have done that you will need to create a WinSCP script to transfer your files.  For examples of scripts see the WinSCP documentation.  Here is a very basic script that I created to copy a csv file.

 

option batch on

option confirm off

open MySecureFTP

put c:\outbound\*.csv /inbounddirectory/

exit

After testing the script by running it from a command prompt and confirming that it works, you are ready to step into SSIS and call it from your workflow.

In Microsoft Visual Studio in your SSIS Package, go to the Control Flow tab and from your toolbox add an “Execute Process Task” to the workflow.  It should look like this after you’ve added it.

Double click the Execute Process Task to open the Task Editor.  You should now have a window like this.

Go to the Process section on the left and then you will need to fill out some information.

In the executable line you will need to fill out the correct path to the WinSCP executable.  Mine was in the (x86) directory but it may be different for your computer.

Then in the Arguments line you will need to put the /script= switch and then the path to that script.  I also included the /log= switch to log the execution to a file.  That way I can go back and review the FTP connection and make sure everything was a success. 

You may need to add an entry for the WorkingDirectory if you do not use absolute paths in your script.  I didn’t require it. 

Now you can build your SSIS package and deploy it.  That’s all that you need to do. 

I had a request to automate the upload of a file to an FTP site.  This example dates back to 2006 so I know there are better ways to do this now, but it is a good example of the flexibility of VB Scripting.

‘ VBScript source code

Dim Fso : Set Fso = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
Dim WshNetwork : Set WshNetwork = CreateObject(“Wscript.Network”)
Dim WshShell : Set WshShell = CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
Const LogFile = “C:\VBScript\FTP.log”
‘Declares the log file.
Set FSO = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
Dim strFileName : strFileName = “C:\VBScript\holdings.csv”

‘Checks to see if the file is ready.
If not Fso.FileExists(strFileName) then
‘File is not ready exit out and wait
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
RunString = “%comspec% /c echo ************************ “ & WeekDayName(WeekDay(Now), True) & ” “ & Now & ” FILE NOT READY ************************ “
Return = WshShell.Run(RunString & ” >> ” & LogFile & ” 2>&1″, 0, TRUE)
WScript.quit
Else

RunCmd

Sub RunCmd()
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
RunString = “%comspec% /c echo ********************************************** “
Return = WshShell.Run(RunString & ” >> “ & LogFile & ” 2>&1″, 0, TRUE)
RunString = “%comspec% /c echo “ & WeekDayName(WeekDay(Now), True) & ” ” & Now & “, “& strFileName & ” is available – sending via FTP”
Return = WshShell.Run(RunString & ” >> “ & LogFile & ” 2>&1″, 0, TRUE)
RunString = “%comspec% /c echo ********************************************** “
Return = WshShell.Run(RunString & ” >> “ & LogFile & ” 2>&1″, 0, TRUE)
‘FTP the file to client
RunString = “%comspec% /c %WINDIR%\System32\ftp.exe -i -n -s:C:\VBScript\instructions.txt “
Return = WshShell.Run(RunString & ” >> “ & LogFile & ” 2>&1″, 0, TRUE)
RunString = “%comspec% /c echo ********************************************** “
Return = WshShell.Run(RunString & ” >> “ & LogFile & ” 2>&1″, 0, TRUE)
RunString = “%comspec% /c echo FINISHED: “ & WeekDayName(WeekDay(Now), True) & ” “ & Now
Return = WshShell.Run(RunString & ” >> “ & LogFile & ” 2>&1″, 0, TRUE)
RunString = “%comspec% /c echo ********************************************** “
Return = WshShell.Run(RunString & ” >> “ & LogFile & ” 2>&1″, 0, TRUE)
Set WshShell = Nothing
End Sub
End

Basically this script will check to see if a file exists and if it does it will send the file via FTP to a remote location and log all the output to a log file.   This is a good simple script to quickly and repeatedly perform a task and log it.

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):
A system restart from a previous installation or update is pending. Restart your computer and run setup to continue.
For the list of pre-requisites needed to install the product please refer to:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=106209
Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup.

After doing some research I found this link at Microsoft’s TechNet site about common installation issues. 

The fix for my dilemma was to find this registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\PendingFileRenameOperations

To delete the orphaned PendingFileRenameOperations registry key  

1. Open a registry editor, such as Regedit.exe or Regedt32.exe.
2. Navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\
3. In the right navigation pane, right-click the PendingFileRenameOperations key and select Delete.
4. Close Registry Editor.

After deleting the registry key (MAKE A BACKUP JUST IN CASE) I was able to continue on and complete my installation of SharePoint 2010.

So, I started researching what I wanted to do.

Since his home PC was not a part of the office domain he would need to authenticate before he could access those network shares.  So, I decided to use the cmdlet Get-Credential to prompt him for his username and password.

Then I started working with the cmdlet New-PSDrive which did a good job of mapping a drive and allowed the credentials to be passed in.  However, I quickly discovered that using that cmdlet only allows access to that mapped drive within that PowerShell instance.  This was a deal breaker.  I wanted to have him run the PowerShell Script and have access to the drives outside of powershell.  So I did some more searching and found I could use the following code to make this work.
$creds=Get-Credential

$map=New-Object-ComObject WScript.Network

$map.MapNetworkDrive(“H:“,“\\SVR1\Users“,0,$creds.UserName,$creds.GetNetworkCredential().Password)

$map.MapNetworkDrive(“I:“,“\\SVR1\Admin“,0)

$map.MapNetworkDrive(“M:“,“\\SVR1\Data“,0)

$map.MapNetworkDrive(“N:“,“\\SVR1\Software“,0)

This script works fine for my basic purposes for now. But I have ideas to expand upon it and maybe use a foreach loop to reduce the amount of lines of code.

I had two main processes that I needed to handle.  The first was to copy the files to the local folder for the intranet and the second was to send an email to someone with those files attached so he can open them on his mobile device. 

So the first step of my script was to define some variables to stand in for my file locations. 

$SourceDir = "\\SVR1\data\Reports\Trading\*.pdf"
$DestDir = "c:\inetpub\intranet\research\reports\"
$BlotterSource = "\\SVR1\data\Reports\Blotters\*.pdf"

Then I use the Test-Path cmdlet to determine if the reports exist at the source location.  Normally this cmdlet would return True if the files exist and False if they do not.  But I use it in an If statement to say if it evaluates to True then do something else.  The something else is to start the file copy. 

If (Test-path $SourceDir )
{
    Copy-Item $SourceDir -Destination $DestDir -Force
}

If (Test-path $BlotterSource)
{
    Copy-Item $BlotterSource -Destination $DestDir -Force
}

I do this twice, once for one location and then again for the second location. 

And once my script is finished copying the files I use the send-mailmessage cmdlet to email the files to the recipient.  Since I have multiple files I’d like to attach I use a Get-ChildItem cmdlet to get all the file names and pipe them into the send-mailmessage cmd. 

This is what the finished script looks like. 

$SourceDir = "\\SVR1\data\Reports\Trading\*.pdf"

$DestDir = "c:\inetpub\intranet\research\reports\"

$BlotterSource = "\\SVR1\data\Reports\Blotters\*.pdf"

If (Test-path $SourceDir )

{ Copy-Item $SourceDir -Destination $DestDir -Force }

If (Test-path $BlotterSource)

{ Copy-Item $BlotterSource -Destination $DestDir -Force }

Get-ChildItem $DestDir | Where {-NOT $_.PSIsContainer} | foreach {$_.fullname} | send-mailmessage -from "Reporting <reporting@anyone.com>" -to "Jonathan <jonathan@anyone.com>", "Rob <rob@anyone.com>" -Cc "Greg <greg@anyone.com"> -subject "Daily Research Reports" -smtpServer mailserver.anyone.com -Body "Here are the daily research files for your review"

Now that the script is done I just schedule it via Windows Task Scheduler and we’re all set.  Now the files will get copied and emailed quickly and efficiently.

$Directory = "\\SVR1\DATA\Reports\Trading\"

Get-ChildItem -path $Directory -recurse -include *.pdf | ForEach-Object {Start-Process -FilePath $_.fullname -Verb Print -PassThru | %{sleep 10;$_} | kill }

This will loop through the “Trading” directory and all subdirectories and print out the pdf documents it finds.  The one thing I still want to refine is the ability to close out Acrobat.  Right now it closes Acrobat after printing each document only to reopen it again for the next document.  I will look into just closing it at the end one time.  But for now this is at least a decent working script I plan to get a lot of use out of. 

So, that got me to thinking.  This would be a great way to use PowerShell!  So here is what I did.

First I started experimenting with the Out-Printer cmdlet to see if I could use that.  However since a pdf document is not plain text I couldn’t use this command.

get-content c:\docstoprint\doc1.pdf | Out-Printer

All that would get me is several pages worth of useless garbage.

Then I found another command I could use.

Start-Process –FilePath “c:\docstoprint\doc1.pdf” –Verb Print

This worked exactly like I had hoped.  I was able to print the pdf document to my default printer.  With one side effect, Adobe was left open after the print job.  So I tried this option.

Start-Process –FilePath “c:\docstoprint\doc1.pdf” –Verb Print -PassThru | %{sleep 10;$_} | kill

The extra options told powershell to wait 10 seconds and then kill the process.  This worked perfectly.  So now all I needed to do was create a script to print out the list of documents and then set it up in Task Scheduler.

So here is my finished script.
Start-Process -FilePath “c:\docstoprint\doc1.pdf” –Verb Print -PassThru | %{sleep 10;$_} | kill

Start-Process -FilePath “c:\docstoprint\doc2.pdf” –Verb Print -PassThru | %{sleep 10;$_} | kill

Start-Process -FilePath “c:\docstoprint\doc3.pdf” –Verb Print -PassThru | %{sleep 10;$_} | kill

Start-Process -FilePath “c:\docstoprint\doc4.pdf” –Verb Print -PassThru | %{sleep 10;$_} | kill

Start-Process -FilePath “c:\docstoprint\doc5.pdf” –Verb Print -PassThru | %{sleep 10;$_} | kill
The last step is to actually schedule this in Windows Task Scheduler.

So, first launch Task Scheduler, right click on the Task Scheduler Library and select “Create Basic Task”

Give your task a meaningful name, I chose “Daily Automated Report Printout”.  And put a little description of the task so someone else will understand the purpose.  Then click Next.

The next step is to decide when you want the task to start.  In my case I need it every weekday at 6am.  So, I chose “Weekly” and then clicked next to select the time and days.   After selecting the days and time click Next.

Now you need to tell Task Scheduler what action you want to perform.  In this case you want to “Start a Program”

Click Next and then you need to tell Task Scheduler what program to start.

The program is powershell.exe and it should be located in C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe

Then in the “Add arguments” section you need to put in the path to the powershell script.  In my case it was c:\users\greg\documents\powershell\DocsToPrint.ps1

Click Next to finish the wizard.  You will be presented with a Summary of your new task, make sure everything is correct, be sure to click the “Open the Properties dialog” checkbox and then click Finish.   

In the Properties for the task you have one last step to configure. 

In the Security Options section on the General Tab, you need to change the option to “Run whether user is logged on or not”

Then when you click OK you will be asked to put in account credentials for running this task.  That way when the job is started it will have privileges to run the job and print out to the default printer.

This query will return the Report Name, the JobID, description and the LastStatus.