PowerShell: 0-60 in One Evening

VBUG Newcastle's first IT Pro event on Tuesday night was certainly a positive start, and one of my most enjoyable presentations. I promised to post links to the tools that I covered, so here they are, along with an overview and some things that I didn't get to in the presentation, which are good resources for people getting started with PowerShell...

In the first half of the session I did an overview of the PowerShell language, starting with the four cmdlets that let you discover what you can do with the shell and objects: Get-Help, Get-Command, Get-PSDrive and Get-Member. We then covered variables, arrays, objects and the pipeline, filtering and how to use the -whatif and -confirm parameters to save yourself from accidentally breaking things!

After a break for refreshments, I talked about and demoed a selection of free tools that can help you get up to speed and work better with PowerShell...

Free Tools

Help/Reference

• TechNet Script Center's PowerShell Graphical Help which contains more than Get-Help and is nicer to browse.
• Sapien's iPowerShell provides a handy copy of the PowerShell built-in help on iPhone and iPod Touch.

Cmdlets/Snapins/Extentions

• /\/\o\/\/'s PowerTab is tab-completion on steriods!
• Quest's PowerShell Commands for Active Directory provides cmdlets for managing AD objects.
• SDM Software's GPMC PowerShell Cmdlets let you work with Group Policy objects as long as you don't way to alter the internals of a GPO (they have a paid verison for that) - the free cmdlets let you copy/link/backup/etc.
• In the words of the Codeplex description: PowerShell Community Extensions (PSCX) is aimed at providing a widely useful set of additional cmdlets, providers, aliases, filters, functions and scripts for Windows PowerShell that members of the community have expressed interest in.

To build rich UIs with PowerShell

• Sapien's Primal Forms is a wysiwig editor for building a Windows Forms application with PowerShell. Primal Forms does all the code for the GUI and you add in your code to add the functionality.
• Joel Bennet's PowerBoots is a neat framework for creating Windows Presentation Foundation apps.
• PowerShellASP lets you include PowerShell code in your existing ASP.NET applications.

The biggest recommendation of the evening was to download and try Quest's PowerGUI, for both the main application, which can help you build PowerShell code by using the GUI, and for the script editor, which is great considering it's free. You should check out the additional PowerGUI Power Packs and forums at PowerGUI.org too.

Other Resources

I particularly encourage people to check out PowerShell.com, for the forums, Tobias' excellent daily email tips, a quick link (labeled "Live Chat") to the #powershell IRC channel on freenode.net (a great place to ask your PowerShell questions), and more.

In addition, it's worth looking at:

• PowerShellCommunity.org
• TechNet Script Center's PowerShell Scripting Hub
• The PowerShell code repository at poshcode.org
• The PowerShell Team Blog
• The PowerScripting and Get-Scripting podcasts
• Microsoft's official PowerShell newsgroup

If you're on Twitter, you can find lots of folk from the PowerShell community listed at mindofroot.com and on TweeterTags.com (where you can add the PowerShell tag to your Twitter account).

VBUG Newcastle: Free PowerShell Event: 24th March

I've been working with Andrew Westgarth, who runs the VBUG Newcastle events, to try to provide IT Pro (i.e. sys admin) content as well as their traditional developer events. The idea is that we'll run free developer and IT Pro events alternate months on the Newcastle University campus.

The first of the IT Pro events will be held on the 24th March in Claremont Tower and I will be presenting "Windows PowerShell: 0-60 in One Evening". The presentation will highlight a number of free tools to help you get up to speed quickly with PowerShell.

All the details are on the VBUG site at:
http://www.vbug.co.uk/Events/March-2009/VBUG-NEWCASTLE-Windows-PowerShell-060-in-One-Evening-with-Jonathan-Noble.aspx

If you'd like to come along, please book your free place through the VBUG site (just so we don't run short of refreshments).

Free events in Newcastle next week

I’ll be at these two events next week on the Newcastle University campus. If you’re in the area, come along – they’re both free…

I will be preseting a brief introduction to Windows PowerShell at this month's Super Mondays event in the Beehive (Old Library Building) on the 23rd at 18:00. These events are growing rapidly and well worth attending - the topics are usually diverse enough that there should be something of interest to everyone. See SuperMondays.org for the full line-up and the Upcoming link if you're attending. I hope to see you there.

The postponed VBUG Newcastle developer event on "Parallel Programming in .NET (VS2010)" with Eric Nelson has now been rearranged for Tuesday 24th February at 18:30 in Claremont Tower room 118. Sign up at:
http://www.vbug.co.uk/Events/February-2009/VBUG-NEWCASTLE-REARRANGED--Parallel-programming-in-NET-VS2010-with-Eric-Nels.aspx

February feast of PowerShell in old London Town

If you're in the UK, here's something to look forward to and take your mind off the declining value of your pounds!

On the afternoon of 10th February, Microsoft's James O'Neill will present a TechNet event entitled Managing Windows Servers with PowerShell V2 at Microsoft's Cardinal Place offices (near Victoria station). James really knows his PowerShell, so that should be enough to entice the IT Pros along, but that's not all...

I've been talking to Richard Siddaway of the UK PowerShell User Group, and he's arranged a User Group meeting to follow the TechNet event, which is going to feature a modest presentation by me! (That's phase one of my attempt to under-promise, over-deliver!)

This is the first time that I'll have been able to attend the UG in person, so I'm really looking forward to meeting as many people as possible there. Hope you can make it!

UK PowerShell User Group November activities

If you can make it to Microsoft UK’s Campus in Reading on the evening of Thursday 20th November, you’ve got just 24 hours to sign up. If you’re just starting out with PowerShell, there’s an introduction to a couple of features, followed by two sessions on PowerShell and SQL – the PowerGUI SQL Server Reporting Services powerpack and PowerShell in SQL Server 2008.

Whether you’re near Reading or not, on Tuesday 25th November you can attend the LiveMeeting covering PowerShell and Active Directory.

For details, check out Richard Siddaway’s blog:
20th – Meeting in Reading
25th – LiveMeeting