Controlling windows terminals with Ansible needs an initial configuration step on the terminal that activates WinRM, enables https transport, and creates a self-signed certificate. In this way one can manage small scale fleets that are not part of an ActiveDirectory Domain.

The most reduced procedure involves these two files:

A batch file that one can easily call with “Run as administrator…”. It calls this well known powershell script and makes some of its configuration options explicit.

Here is a copy, in case the repository goes away at some point in the future (archived version Version 1.9 - 2018-09-21)

The batch file expects the script file to be in the same directory.

Batch file content:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -File %~dp0\prep_ansible.ps1 -Verbose -CertValidityDays 3650 -ForceNewSSLCert -SkipNetworkProfileCheck