Troubleshooting the “vm.labVmId” Not Recognized Error in Azure DevOps Pipelines

When running PowerShell scripts within an Azure DevOps pipeline, you may encounter an error that states:

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

This error typically occurs when you’re attempting to pass a variable, such as vm.labVmId, into a PowerShell script, but the variable either isn't defined or isn't being passed correctly. In this article, we'll discuss common causes for this error and provide step-by-step instructions for resolving it.

Understanding the Error

The key part of the error message is:

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

This indicates that the pipeline is trying to reference the vm.labVmId variable, but it hasn't been defined or isn't accessible when the PowerShell script is executed. In Azure DevOps pipelines, variables need to be set and referenced correctly; otherwise, the pipeline treats them as literal strings instead of dynamic values.

Key Log Information

From the logs, we can see the following steps: