Notifications on Windows Server 2019

[Mohrpheus78]

I want to use BurntToast on a Windows Server 2019 RDS (Terminalserver) in the user context. It works, but if I delete the start menu folder "Windows Powershell" from the users start menu I don't get notifications anymore. There is no error, it just doesn't work. I only delete the folder with the powershell shortcuts from
"C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs"

[Windos]

You've stumbled onto something a bit deep in the weeds with how toast notifications work.

The notifications API require a shortcut in the Start Menu with an "Application User Model ID" (which I refer to as AppIDs) embedded in them.

This is why creating "custom" sources for toast notifications is such a hassle.

BurntToast defaults to using the AppID for Windows PowerShell ({1AC14E77-02E7-4E5D-B744-2EB1AE5198B7}\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe) as that tends to be a fairly safe bet.

If the shortcut is removed, the notifications API can't attach the toast to an application and so it fails.

You can attach the toast to another shortcut, the available ones can be found by running Get-StartApps, though I think this info comes from the registry and I'm not sure if it updates when the paired shortcut is removed from the Start Menu.

You can supply any of those AppIDs to -AppID on New-BurntToastNotification, or to make it the default, change the AppID in BurntToast's config.json file (remember, updates will overwrite this* and it's a json file so if the AppID has slashes in it they need to be doubled up or otherwise escaped)

* I need to make it so that you can store a persistent config file outside of the module... will add that to the todo.

[the-c0d3r]

Thanks for the answer, it solves my issue as well. I just created a shortcut of powershell and put it at the same startmenu folder, and now my notifications are displayed.

[anton-hystrix]

You've stumbled onto something a bit deep in the weeds with how toast notifications work.

The notifications API require a shortcut in the Start Menu with an "Application User Model ID" (which I refer to as AppIDs) embedded in them.

This is why creating "custom" sources for toast notifications is such a hassle.

BurntToast defaults to using the AppID for Windows PowerShell ({1AC14E77-02E7-4E5D-B744-2EB1AE5198B7}\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe) as that tends to be a fairly safe bet.

If the shortcut is removed, the notifications API can't attach the toast to an application and so it fails.

You can attach the toast to another shortcut, the available ones can be found by running Get-StartApps, though I think this info comes from the registry and I'm not sure if it updates when the paired shortcut is removed from the Start Menu.

You can supply any of those AppIDs to -AppID on New-BurntToastNotification, or to make it the default, change the AppID in BurntToast's config.json file (remember, updates will overwrite this* and it's a json file so if the AppID has slashes in it they need to be doubled up or otherwise escaped)

* I need to make it so that you can store a persistent config file outside of the module... will add that to the todo.

This implementation is weird indeed. One problem is when you install PowerShell 7 from WindowsStore you can't use New-BurntToastNotification at all because you can't place the shortcut to it into the start menu normally. So you need to install PowerShell 7 manually or use some kung fu to create shortcut for Store app.

After placing shortcut for Store app nothing happened. It seems I need to reinstall PowerShell from manual installer which seems a lot of work.

At the same time the notifications work for old PowerShell 5 because its shortcut is there in the start menu.