PowerShell Automation Center

PowerShell Automation Center, or PAC, is a WinUI-based PowerShell desktop shell for collecting internal utilities into one clean launcher with shared UI, manifest-driven tools, and room for more complex workflow pages.

Overview

PAC is intended to be a central PowerShell application for launching reusable admin and utility workflows from a consistent desktop interface. The current implementation focuses on a shared shell, reusable child-window UI, and lightweight manifest-backed tools that can be added without rebuilding the entire application surface.

This repository currently contains a working PAC shell, a growing set of tool pages, and planning documents for authentication, permissions, logging, and broader enterprise workflows.

Current Tool Set

The app currently exposes these tools from the main navigation:

• Compress Directory
• CSV to JSON
• Enterprise User Audit
• Google Maps Url
• PAC Session Readiness Center
• Regex Extractor
• Text to Speech

These tools live under Tools/ and are surfaced through page definitions in Pages/.

Highlights

• Shared WinUI shell built with the WinUIShell PowerShell module.
• Manifest-driven simple-tool windows for fast tool registration.
• Category-aware navigation model for grouping tools in the left pane.
• Reusable shared helpers for dialogs, child windows, input controls, and page composition.
• Workflow-heavy custom tools for enterprise readiness and audit scenarios alongside the simple-tool builder.
• JSON-first configuration direction for tool settings, metadata, and future user preferences.
• PowerShell-first implementation that keeps individual tools easy to script and maintain.

Requirements

• Windows
• PowerShell 7 or newer
• WinUIShell installed for PowerShell 7

Windows PowerShell 5.1 is not the target runtime for the current PAC UI stack. The startup flow now relaunches in pwsh when necessary.

Quick Start

1. Install PowerShell 7.
2. Install WinUIShell for the current user.
3. Launch PAC with the batch file as the default entry point, or run the start script directly from pwsh if you prefer.

Install-Module WinUIShell -Scope CurrentUser
pwsh -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\start.ps1

Primary launcher:

PSExecutionPolicyBypass.bat

Direct script launch is also supported and does not require the batch file.

Project Structure

PAC/
|- Docs/                  Planning and requirements notes
|- Pages/                 Navigation pages and page registration
|- Shared/                Shared PAC UI helpers and tool-window components
|- Tools/                 Individual tools and per-tool manifests/config
|- WinUIShell Samples/    Reference experiments and sample UI scripts
|- modules.json           External module dependency notes
|- PSExecutionPolicyBypass.bat Default launcher
|- start.ps1              Direct PowerShell entry script

Planned Direction

The repo already documents a broader application direction beyond the current utility set. Major planned areas include:

• Active Directory-aware authentication when available.
• Role-based access for sensitive tools.
• User preference persistence with JSON or SQLite.
• Shared logging via PSLogging.
• Local module bundling for environments with restricted install rights.
• Registration flows for adding new tools with minimal wiring.

Authentication Direction

The current planning model distinguishes between local and Active Directory-backed access.

Auth Type	Authentication	Restricted Group Needed	AD Tools	Exchange Tools	General Tools
AD	Yes	SAMPLE SECURITY GROUP	Yes	Yes	Yes
Local	Yes	No	No	No	Yes

For AD-backed environments, the longer-term goal is to capture key user details, validate group membership, and gate sensitive tooling appropriately.

Logging Direction

PAC is also intended to support shared logging through PSLogging for operational tracing and troubleshooting. The detailed startup and log-writing examples are kept in the planning docs and can be promoted into the runtime once that integration is finalized.

Dependencies

Current documented external dependencies include:

• WinUIShell
• PSLogging
• ActiveDirectory
• ExchangeOnlineManagement
• SqlServer
• ImportExcel

On-prem Exchange support is currently session-detected rather than module-declared. The readiness workflow can report loaded on-prem Exchange sessions or management shells separately from Exchange Online connectivity.

See PSModules/modules.json and the docs in Docs/ for the current planning notes around packaging and distribution.

Acknowledgment

Special credit to the creator of WinUIShell, mdgrs-mei, for building the PowerShell module that makes PAC's WinUI-based shell possible.

WinUIShell repository:

https://github.com/mdgrs-mei/WinUIShell

Repository Notes

This README reflects the current prototype state of the PAC application. Some features described in the docs are planned architecture rather than completed runtime behavior.

Roadmap

• Expand the tool catalog beyond the initial conversion and utility set.
• Harden authentication and authorization flows.
• Reuse PAC Session Readiness Center capability state across enterprise workflow tools.
• Add preference persistence and theme handling.
• Improve packaging for restricted enterprise environments.
• Introduce more complex workflow pages alongside manifest-driven tools.