In my presentations for PowerShell I sometimes want to start a process (like a backup) that will take some time. I normally pop up a notification “balloon” at the start, and then do the bulk of the work, and then pop up a balloon at the end to let me know it’s done. You can actually try out this little sample (on a test system, of course) without any other code to see what it does. Then just put the other PowerShell commands in the #Do Some Work part. Oh – throw an icon (.ico file) in a c:\temp directory or point that somewhere else.

(No, this probably isn’t original. Can’t remember where I saw the original code, but I’ve modified it a bit anyway, so if you’re the original author and this looks slightly familiar, post a comment.)

[void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms")

$objBalloon = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon
$objBalloon.Icon = "C:\temp\Folder.ico"

# You can use the value Info, Warning, Error
$objBalloon.BalloonTipIcon = "Info"

# Put what you want to say here for the Start of the process
$objBalloon.BalloonTipTitle = "Begin Title"
$objBalloon.BalloonTipText = "Begin Message"
$objBalloon.Visible = $True
$objBalloon.ShowBalloonTip(10000)

# Do some work

# Put what you want to say here for the completion of the process
$objBalloon.BalloonTipTitle = "End Title"
$objBalloon.BalloonTipText = "End Message"
$objBalloon.Visible = $True
$objBalloon.ShowBalloonTip(10000)

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