Articles

PowerShell articles, tutorials, and guides from community experts.

Don Jones

PowerShell Great Debate: Can You Have Too Much Help?

In The Scripting Games this year, more than a few folks took the time to write detailed comment-based help. Awesome. No debating it - comment-based help _is a good thing. _ But some folks felt that others took it too far. There were definitely scripts where the authors used, for example, the .NOTES …

Steven Murawski
Announcements

Need Desired State Configuration Modules?

You’ve probably been hearing about Desired State Configuration from a number of sources (Runas Radio, the PowerScripting Podcast, or the Channel 9 TechEd video for example). If you haven’t go check out those previously mentioned resources, I’ll wait… Ok, now that you have a …

Don Jones
PowerShell for Admins

My PowerShell Workflow Series on TechNet Magazine

As most folks are aware, I’ve been writing the Windows PowerShell column for Microsoft’s _TechNet Magazine _for… wow, going on 7 years now. For 2013, I was doing a serialized column on PowerShell Workflow, introducing a bit of the technology at a time in each month’s …

Don Jones
Announcements

A Quick #PowerShell #PSHSummit Update (Europe & NA)

PowerShell Summit North America 2014, April 28-30 (special precon on April 27) is open for registration to our 2013 alumni, shareholders, and to TechLetter subscribers. The alumni block will be released on August 15, and the subscriber block on September 15th; shortly after, sales will be open to …

Don Jones
Training

Is this list "Everything" in PowerShell?

Soooo…. it’s time for me to start looking at updating my various training materials (books, videos, courses, whatnot) for v4. I’m going to, with at least some of these, take an all-versions approach. I’ll teach what’s in v2, then cover what v3 added, then cover v4, …

Don Jones

PowerShell Great Debate: Script or Function?

One of the most frequent comments in The Scripting Games this year was along the lines of, “you should have submitted this as a function, not a script.” Of course, the second-most frequent comment was something like, “you shouldn’t have submitted this as a function.” …

Don Jones

PowerShell Great Debate: PowerShell Versions?

Today’s Great Debate is a bonus, offered from former team member June Blender. Take it away, June! Like several of the excellent debates in our Great Debate series, this debate issue arose during in Scripting Games 2013 when different judges used different selection criteria to evaluate …

Don Jones

PowerShell Great Debate: The Purity Laws

This should be interesting. During The Scripting Games, I observed (and in some cases made) a great many comments that I’m lumping under the name “Purity Laws.” You shouldn’t use a command-line utility like Robocopy in a PowerShell script. You shouldn’t use .NET classes …