Summary: Microsoft PFE, Steve Jeffery, talks about a new Windows PowerShell learning tool: Scriptify.

Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. Today I have a guest blog post by premier field engineer, Steve Jeffery. He talks about a new tool he created to help you learn Windows PowerShell. Now, here's Steve…

I started using Windows PowerShell several years ago as a SharePoint administrator. I quickly realized what a powerful language it is when I started automating my daily tasks with it. Eventually, I was automating complete builds.

Since then, I’ve become a Windows PowerShell fanatic, and I try to find reasons to use it every day! As a premier field engineer for Microsoft, I always promote Windows PowerShell to my customers as a great way to automate tasks and report on environments.

SharePoint 2013 has over 700 cmdlets (and growing), so finding the right cmdlet to use can be time consuming. I developed Scriptify as a personal project to help reduce the time it takes to find the SharePoint cmdlet that you need to use.

Scriptify categorizes the cmdlets and provides a visual navigation to get to the area of the product that you need to work with quickly and easily.

In the following screenshot, you can see the product area categories:

Clicking a category returns all of the relevant cmdlets, as shown here for the Access Services category:

When you have found the cmdlet you need, clicking it returns the parameters and a link to its related Microsoft TechNet topic, for example:

This is just the start for Scriptify. Over the coming weeks, I will be releasing some updates to it, which will include:

• A Windows 8 app that takes advantage of a REST API, which can consume the data outside the website
• Cmdlets related to other technologies (such as SQL Server and Active Directory)
• Example usage scripts to show the cmdlet in action

To find my categorization for Sharepoint 2013 cmdlets, see Scriptify: A navigation aid for SharePoint 2013 PowerShell Cmdlets.

Hopefully this helps the way you learn Windows PowerShell.

~Steve (@moss_sjeffery)

Thank you, Steve, for an interesting post, and for creating such a cool tool.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter and Facebook. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.

Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy