PowerShell One-Liner to Enable Features in Microsoft Windows 1809

In Windows 10 1809, I needed to enable some RSAT features that are now included in the OS. I figured this would be a good time to go from using a script to using one-liners for the build process. Mike Robbins's blog was a good start to developing this one-liner. This allows for you to manage the code within the task sequence, thereby negating the issue of storing a script and the possibility of the script accidentally being deleted.

NOTE: This script will only execute in the Microsoft Windows 1809. It will not run in 1803 or older.

The one-liner below enables a feature defined in the $Name variable. The $Name variable is used to make it easy to define what feature to enable by having it right at the front of the one-liner. Once that is defined, and the script is executed, it will check to make sure the feature is enabled and returns an error code 0, along with an "Enabled" message in the event the script is manually executed, or it returns an error code 1 if it failed to enable along with the message "Failed to Enable." I did verify that it will still report enabled, even if a system reboot is required.

When defining the $Name variable, you do not need to use the full feature name. For instance, the Active Directory feature's name is Rsat.ActiveDirectory.DS-LDS.Tools~~~~0.0.1.0. If there is no other feature with the name ActiveDirectory in it, you can use a wild card like this:

• $Name = 'Rsat.ActiveDirectory*'

NOTE: You see that I use apostrophes in the script. That is because of the quotation marks before the & and at the end of the script. 

Here is the one-liner script that I use to enable AD. You just need to change the $Name variable to whatever feature you want to be activated. 

 powershell.exe -executionpolicy bypass -command "&{$Name='Rsat.ActiveDirectory*';Get-WindowsCapability -name $Name -Online | Add-WindowsCapability -Online;If ((Get-WindowsCapability -name $Name -Online).State -eq 'Installed') {Write-Host 'Enabled';Exit 0} else {Write-Host 'Failed to Enable';Exit 1}}"  

Copy and paste the script into a command line task sequence as shown below.