Powershell: The Desktop Support Tech's Scripting Language

In this modern business climate where IT departments can be seen slimming down, and the overall work needing to be done grows, an innovative tech needs to learn how to maximize their time and develop the skill sets to not only get the job done in less time, but to better yourselves and to stand out among your peers, as departments slim down. These are are some things to add to your tool set to help with not only help you by.

Powershell is one of the greatest things for technicians that Microsoft has incorporated into its environment they could have given us. With powershell you can effectively script every repetitive task you do. For those with little scripting experience this is perfect to step into. The language is easy to figure out, the online community is very strong, and powershell comes with an ISE that is rather fully featured. The greatest thing about powershell is that it is that it is backwards compatible and it is practically integrated in all Microsoft products. It allows you to do very complicated tasks on a desktop, then with the same script jump to a server, and then modify the Active Directory database, all in one fell swoop with one language and can easily be done with little scripting know-how.

With some scheduled tasking, some things to look at automating:

• User Creation / Termination
• Quickly and easily create users from a CSV or Database object
• Desktop / Server Configuration
• Again with a CSV file or database object, you can simply put a PC on the network and quickly configure the windows environment completely hands off
• Up-time Checks
• Quickly check against either a CSV or Active Directory OU and get reports back or issue commands to those machines if they fall outside of a set threshold.  Great for checking for those PCs that need a little “Reboot Maintenance.”
• Active Directory management
• When working on your configuration script for the desktop or user configuration you can also build in Active Directory management to the script, create, remove, move and edit Active directory Users and Objects to automatically set them in the right Organizational Units and Security Groups to get any Group Policies that may be needed, or to just keep your Active Directory Structure Organized.
• PC Information Collection
• In environments where you may not be directly involved with the PC creation and setup, however you may be tasked with managing those assests.  You can easily collect the wealth of information that the PC and build a database of each PC/Server in your environment.

Some of these are simple scripts, some can be quite complex with lots of controls and checks.  In the end though, some elbow grease on the front end, will pay off several times over when you don’t have to figure out where to fit those repetitive tasks in your ever growing task list.  Which will allow you to truly be in multiple places at once, and be the tech that stands out among their peers.