The World According to Mitch

This is a guest article written by my colleague Michael.  Mike and I have been working closely together for the past two years, and I have turned him into a monster!  He is now trying to learn anything he can get his hands on.  So when he wrote me an e-mail with a suggestion for an article on how to get help with PowerShell.  He wrote it out, and I didn’t feel the need to change anything.  Here is what he wrote. –MDG

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I was reading some of your blog articles today (not everyday, sorry!) and the one on Distinguished Names (see article) caught my attention, I started writing a comment but then thought it might be better to suggest a follow up article in terms of using PowerShell and how to really get-intoPowerShell | get-TheMost | out-OfIt.

I started using PowerShell when we first met at your suggestion, but only really used it in a superficial way, get-this | set-that (and do it for 20 computers that I list). So about a month ago, I took the time and went through the MVA (Microsoft Virtual Academy) PowerShell courses with Jeffrey Snover (very entertaining and super informative), the regular Jumpstart and the advanced scripting. I would strong recommend these, as not only did it give me great ideas, but they describe how to make cmdlets that don’t normally work together, actually work together on the fly. Later they went on to teach how to make your own scripts, functions, cmdlets, tools and even modules.

What prompted me to write though, was the suggestion as Google and Bing as a first point to look, and I totally agree, its great for ideas and for examples. My suggestion for a follow up would be the PowerShell Help system, and maybe the ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment) built-in functions (like snippets and the intellisense) later.

For example, I don’t know the cmdlet, but what to do something with Active Directory Groups

Get-help *-ad*group*

Oh, I want Add-ADGroupMember,  but how do I use it…

Get-help Add-ADGroupMember –showwindow ( or –full, or if only need examples –examples)

Cool, I now know

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Thanks Michael, you have some very interesting and important points here.  And yes, I promise that coming soon I will write a post on the Integrated Scripting Environment! –MDG