Troubleshooting Azure DevOps Pipeline Error: The Term ‘vm.labVmId’ is Not Recognized

In Azure DevOps, using PowerShell tasks to automate processes in your pipelines is common, especially when interacting with Azure resources. However, you may occasionally run into issues, such as the one described in the error message below:

The term 'vm.labVmId' is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or executable program.

This specific error is caused by a misconfiguration or misunderstanding of how pipeline variables are passed into a PowerShell script. In this article, we will cover the possible causes of this issue, how to resolve it, and some best practices when dealing with pipeline variables in Azure DevOps.

Understanding the Error

The error is produced when the PowerShell task tries to run the script GetLabVMParams.ps1, which expects a parameter called labVmId. However, the pipeline fails to pass the value of $(vm.labVmId) correctly, resulting in PowerShell not recognizing it.

Here’s the relevant part of the error message:

The term 'vm.labVmId' is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or executable program.

Why Is This Happening?