rsInternationalSettings DSC Module

rsInternationalSettings is a PowerShell DSC resource module, which can be used to manage international system settings such as setting system locale, time zone user keyboard layout and culture (formatting) settings.

##Changelog

######v0.5 Changes to make rsUserLocale resource more robust. It looks that under certain load conditions (ie. when provisioning the virtual machine in Azure environment) the scheduled job registered by using Register-ScheduledJob cmdlet is not immediately available to Get-Job and other similar cmdlets. Or maybe it was caused by not explicitly importing the PSScheduledJob module, I don't know ... but that shouldn't be the cause because the module should be imported by calling the Register-ScheduledJob cmdlet. The observed behavior is strange and sometimes not very deterministic.

######v0.4 More changes in the method of setting of the values, previous attempt failed when changing the user locale, because it looks like that the Set-Culture PowerShell cmdlet doesn't work under LocalSystem user account (used by default by DSC) and also when launched via DSC under any account! So I tried to use the trick with scheduled job to discover problems with registering this scheduled job under LocalSystem account :) The only combination left was running DSC resource under other than LocalSystem account and using the scheduled job trick in the resource's code. Aaaand ... it worked! Hurray!

######v0.3 Completely refactored and changed rsUserLocale resource, separated date, time and numbers formatting user locale from UI user locale, changed method of setting of the values, cleaned up copying from current user to other users and the template for new users.

######v0.2 Added support for setting manual peer list for NTP servers in rsTime using the PeerList variable. ######v0.1 Added support for setting time zone, culture, system local and all local (including default) user profile settings.

####To-do: Add support for provision of an optional time server parameter.

##Syntax##

See usage examples below...

###Usage Examples

Set Server to US locale and user input

This will force all system and user settings to US codepage, including input setting:

    $credential = [pscredential]::new("SomeLocalAccountWithAdminRights", (ConvertTo-SecureString -String "PasswordOfThatAccount" -AsPlainText -Force))

    rsSysLocale SysLoc
    {
        SysLocale = "en-US"
    }
    
    rsTime time
    {
        TimeZone = "Central Standard Time"
    }
    
    rsUserLocale UserLocale
    {
        Name = "UserLocale"
        DateTimeAndNumbersCulture = "en-US"
        UICulture = "en-US"
        LocationID = "244"
        LCIDHex = "0409"
        InputLocaleID = "00000409"

        PsDscRunAsCredential = $credential
    }

Set Server to UK locale and user input

This will force all system and user settings to UK codepage, including input setting:

    $credential = [pscredential]::new("SomeLocalAccountWithAdminRights", (ConvertTo-SecureString -String "PasswordOfThatAccount" -AsPlainText -Force))

    rsSysLocale SysLoc
    {
        SysLocale = "en-GB"
    }
    
    rsTime time
    {
        TimeZone = "GMT Standard Time"
    }
    
    rsUserLocale UserLocale
    {
        Name = "UserLocale"
        DateTimeAndNumbersCulture = "en-GB"
        UICulture = "en-GB"
        LocationID = "242"
        LCIDHex = "0809"
        InputLocaleID = "00000809"

        PsDscRunAsCredential = $credential
    }

Add manual NTP peer server list

To override the default time.windows.com NTP server or the automatic AD member time synchronisation, you can specify the PeerList parameter for rsTime, which will register the Windows Time service and configure it accordingly. Please note that omitting this parameter will always result in Windows Time Service to be unregistered if one is running already.

rsTime time
{
    TimeZone = "GMT Standard Time"
    PeerList = @("0.pool.ntp.org","1.pool.ntp.org","2.pool.ntp.org")
}

###Acceptable parameter values

#####$DateTimeAndNumbersCulture User locale used to format date, time, numbers and other such values. Use the following PowerShell command to list all available options:

[cultureinfo]::GetCultures([System.Globalization.CultureTypes]::AllCultures)

#####$UICulture User locale used for the language of the user interface (menu items, ...).

#####$TimeZone System time zone name description. Ex "GMT Standard Time" Use the tzutil /l command to list all possible options.

#####$PeerList An array of NTP servers to configure the local Windows Time service.

#####$LocationID Geographical System location ID (GEOID). Refer to Table of Geographical Locations for full list of possible options.

#####$LCIDHex Keyboard Language ID as defined by Microsoft. Used in combination with InputLocaleID, see Keyboard Language & Locale IDs Assigned by Microsoft

#####$InputLocaleID Locale ID as defined by Microsoft. Used in combination with LCIDHex, see Keyboard Language & Locale IDs Assigned by Microsoft

###Keyboard options tip: To easily identify correct settings for user keyboard options (LCIDHex & InputLocaleID), set the desired keyboard settings on a Windows 8/2012, or later, machine and run the following PS command Get-WinUserLanguageList. Property named "InputMethodTips" will provide the correct Language Code ID as {<LCIDHex>:<InputLocaleID>}.

#####Example:

PS C:\Users\Administrator> Get-WinUserLanguageList

LanguageTag : en-US
Autonym : English (United States)
EnglishName : English
LocalizedName   : English (United States)
ScriptName  : Latin script
InputMethodTips : {0409:00000409}
Spellchecking   : True
Handwriting : False