PowerShell Automation: Scripts, Benefits & Access Guide

The saying “Time is Money” has never been more relevant in today’s fast-paced world. Time is one of the most valuable assets for any organisation. For IT companies, timely project delivery is not just a goal—it’s a key driver of client satisfaction and long-term success.

IT and Software companies can save time by streamlining their processes, enabling them to stay competitive. Automation is playing a pivotal role in helping companies to streamline their daily tasks. Many organisations are now going for automation to streamline business operations and increase the productivity of teams cost-effectively.

There are a plethora of languages and tools easily available in the market. Most of them are free, while some have charges. One such tool that stands out is Windows PowerShell.

In this article, we’ll explore what PowerShell is, its key benefits and features, and how it can be leveraged for automation to streamline IT operations.

What is PowerShell?

PowerShell is an automation framework and scripting language provided by Microsoft. According to Microsoft:

PowerShell is a cross-platform task automation solution made up of a command-line shell, a scripting language, and a configuration management framework. PowerShell runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

It looks somewhat familiar to Command Prompt (CMD) in Windows, but it is much more than that. PowerShell is based on the Microsoft .NET Framework. It is a scripting language and also provides a complete and interactive command-line environment as well as a configuration Management Environment (Powershell DSC).

̌Command Line Shell: Powershell provides a modern Command Line Shell that includes the best features of other popular and mature shells (Like Bash). What differentiates PowerShell from these other shells is that they only accept and return text, whereas PowerShell accepts and returns .NET Objects. Additionally, it includes the following features:

• Robust Command Line History
• Tab Completion
• Support For Aliases
• Support for Pipelines
• A help system similar to man pages.

Scripting Language: As a scripting language, PowerShell is commonly used for automating the management of systems
PowerShell is a versatile and powerful scripting language ideal for automating management tasks and processes. Its Turing completeness allows it to perform any computation that a Turing machine can, given sufficient time and memory.

Key features of PowerShell include:

• Variables and Data Types: Supports various data types like strings, integers, arrays, and objects.
• Control Structures: Includes loops (for, while, do-while) and conditional statements (if, else, switch).
• Functions and Modules: Allows defining functions and creating modules for reusable and organised code.
• Object-Oriented Features: Utilises .NET framework objects for sophisticated data manipulation and interaction.
• Pipeline Architecture: Enables chaining commands to process data efficiently.
• Extensibility: Supports custom cmdlets and external API integration.
• Error Handling: Offers robust mechanisms like try-catch-finally for managing exceptions.
• Scripting and Automation: Facilitates scheduling and executing scripts for consistent, time-saving task automation, with detailed logging for troubleshooting.

These features make PowerShell a powerful and Turing-complete scripting language.

Automation Platform: PowerShell is a powerful automation platform due to its extensibility and comprehensive features like pipeline architecture, custom cmdlets, and robust error handling. These allow for efficient task automation, detailed logging, and integration with various technologies. PowerShell can work with almost any technology:

• Microsoft Windows
• Azure
• SQL Server
• Exchange
• AWS
• Vmware
• Google Cloud

As mentioned, PowerShell is also a scripting language, and you can write different scripts to perform basic administration tasks to automate complex processes. The PowerShell script is a simple text file with a PS1 extension, containing single or multiple commands.

Why Use PowerShell Scripting for Automation? : PowerShell Automation

Microsoft created PowerShell to automate tasks like batch processing, mainly to save time. However, time-saving is not the only reason for scripting. PowerShell can also be used for tasks such as system administration, managing network configurations, performing software installations, monitoring system performance, and automating repetitive tasks in IT environments.

Automation scripts bring consistency to the tasks, every time the same function will take place and produce the same results. Another advantage of PowerShell automation scripting is that details are logged of every task being performed. In case of any error, you can analyse the log file and easily detect the issue. One more advantage is that your team can focus on more important tasks that have high business value, instead of performing time-consuming repetitive tasks daily.

Scheduling the Windows update installation is an example of a PowerShell automation script. You can automate hundreds of such tasks using PowerShell automation.

Brief History of PowerShell

PowerShell was officially launched by Microsoft in 2006 with version 1.0. PowerShell has come a long way with a lot of improved features and improvements. The current version of PowerShell is 7.1.3.

Initially, Microsoft named PowerShell “Monad” during its early development from 2002-2005. Until Windows 7 was released, PowerShell was not a default program but needed to be installed separately. From Windows 7 onwards, PowerShell has been pre-installed with the OS.

Benefits of PowerShell

The question is, what is so special about PowerShell that it is considered for performing the daily administration tasks and automating the processes? Well, the answer to this is the benefits that PowerShell provides.

Let’s discuss some of the great points about PowerShell.

• Secure Scripting Engine

Security is one of the most important factors, especially in corporate setups. Cert-based signed scripts are supported by PowerShell and have a lot of restrictions by default.

• Allows interaction between different platforms

Windows administrators have to interact with a lot of other applications or perform some functions, like security restrictions, etc. These tasks cannot be performed using a graphical interface, and you need PowerShell for such scenarios. PowerShell can work with and can integrate various technologies like Office applications, .NET framework, Windows registry, SharePoint, Rest APIs, etc.

• Consistency

When all the tasks are performed using PowerShell, it brings consistency. For example, every user in a company will see the same operations, similar restrictions, values, errors, etc.

• Command-line shell and Scripting language

PowerShell is both a command line and a scripting language. Administrators can perform automated tasks on both local and remote Windows systems. The latest version of PowerShell comes with more than 1500 cmdlets. Cmdlets are single-function command-line tools built into the shell. These cmdlets can help you in building complex scripts and thus make automation easier.

How to access PowerShell

Let’s see how you can easily launch PowerShell on the Windows operating system. As mentioned earlier, PowerShell comes as a default Windows program, and no separate installation is needed.

Simply go to the Search option in the Windows toolbar and type PowerShell.

Below is the default screen of Windows PowerShell.

Real-World PowerShell Automation Examples

Below are some practical, real-world automation examples that demonstrate how PowerShell can save time and enhance efficiency in IT operations.

Automating User Creation and Management in Active Directory

Managing user accounts manually in Active Directory (AD) can be time-consuming, especially in large organisations. PowerShell allows administrators to create, modify, and remove users effortlessly.

$Password = ConvertTo-SecureString "P@ssword123" -AsPlainText -Force

New-ADUser -Name "John Doe" `
    -GivenName "John" `
    -Surname "Doe" `
    -UserPrincipalName "jdoe@company.com" `
    -SamAccountName "jdoe" `
    -Path "OU=Users,DC=company,DC=com" `
    -AccountPassword $Password `
    -Enabled $true

Deploying Software Updated Automatically

Keeping software up to date is crucial for security and performance. PowerShell can automate software installation across multiple machines.

$Computers = Get-Content "C:\computers.txt"

Invoke-Command -ComputerName $Computers -ScriptBlock {
    Start-Process "msiexec.exe" `
        -ArgumentList "/i \\server\share\Notepad++.msi /quiet" `
        -Wait
}

Looking to automate your server with PowerShell scripts? Attune provides a simple interface and allows you to execute PowerShell scripts on multiple target machines on schedules that you define easily.

Post Written by Uzair Ghalib

Uzair Ghalib is a writer who shares his insights on topics such as SysOps, DevOps, and server automation. With a talent for simplifying complex concepts, Uzair makes technology accessible to readers of all levels.