yesterday’s script<\/A> and therefore will not be discussed here. The code is seen here:<\/P>Function Get-ScheduleService\n{\n New-Object -ComObject schedule.service\n} #end Get-ScheduleService\n<\/PRE>\nWe also need to create the Get\u2013Tasks<\/B> function, which will return a task<\/B> object. This is the same function that we used yesterday and therefore will not be discussed. This code is seen here:<\/P>Function Get-Tasks($folder)\n{ #returns task object\n$folder.GetTasks(1)\n} #end Get-Tasks\n<\/PRE>\nThe Get-Task<\/B> function is seen here and is the same function that we used yesterday:<\/P>Function Get-Task($folder,$name)\n{ #returns a task object\n $folder.GetTask($name)\n} #end Get-Tasks\n<\/PRE>\nWe also need to use the New-TaskObject<\/B> function to create a folder<\/B> object for us to use. This is the same function we used just yesterday:<\/P>Function New-TaskObject($path)\n{ #returns a taskfolder object\n$taskObject = Get-ScheduleService\n$taskObject.Connect()\nif(-not $path) { $path = “\\” }\n$taskObject.GetFolder($path)\n} #end New-TaskObject\n<\/PRE>\nNow we come to the New-Task<\/B> function. This is a new function and we will need to spend some time examining it. Following the Function<\/B> keyword and the name, we define eight input parameters. Because of the way that the script is written, not all eight of these input parameters are required to be supplied when the script is run. This code is shown here:<\/P>Function New-Task($path,$Name,$description,$author,$command,$user,$password,$sddl)\n{\n<\/PRE>\nWe create a few constants. To create a new constant, we use the New-Variable<\/B> cmdlet while supplying a value and a name for the variable. The thing that makes the difference between a variable and a constant is the fact that a constant can neither be changed nor deleted. We did not need to use a constant here; we could in fact simply use a variable and assign a value to it. If we did not assign a new value to the variable, it would in effect be constant. The constant names are the same names that are defined in the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK). We did not need to use these names, but it will make the script easier to read and easier to maintain, particularly when we need to return to the SDK in order to identify additional options for the script. As a matter of fact, we do not even need to use a variable to hold the value. We could simply use literal values directly in the method call. The price for this efficiency is readability. The constants are shown here:<\/P>New-Variable -Name TASK_TRIGGER_IDLE -Value 6 -Option constant\n New-Variable -Name TASK_ACTION_EXEC -Value 0 -Option constant\n New-Variable -Name CREATE_OR_UPDATE -Value 6 -Option constant\n New-Variable -Name TASK_LOGON_NONE -Value 0 -Option constant\n<\/PRE>\nBecause we do not wish to always be required to supply a user name and a password when running the script to create a new scheduled task, we assign the variables $user<\/B>, $password<\/B>, and $sddl<\/B> to be equal to null. This is shown here:<\/P>$user=$password=$sddl=$null<\/PRE>\nIt is time to obtain the TaskService<\/B> object. To do this we call the Get\u2013ScheduleService<\/B> function and assign the resulting object to the $taskObject<\/B> variable. We then call the Connect<\/B> method:<\/P>$taskObject = Get-ScheduleService\n $taskObject.Connect()\n<\/PRE>\nNow we need to connect to the TaskFolder<\/B> object. The first thing that we need to do is to verify that a value was supplied for the $path<\/B> variable. If it was not, we connect to the root. We use the GetFolder<\/B> method from the TaskService<\/B> object and assign the resulting TaskFolder<\/B> object to the $rootFolder<\/B> variable. This is seen here:<\/P>if(-not $path) { $path = “\\” }\n $rootFolder = $taskObject.GetFolder($path)\n<\/PRE>\nNext we call the NewTask<\/B> method from the TaskService<\/B> object and assign the NewTask<\/B> object to the $taskdefinition<\/B> variable. The reason we supply the $null<\/B> value to the method call is because the flag that would normally be placed here is not defined in the API. We next need to obtain registration information and assign it to the $regInfo<\/B> variable. This is shown here:<\/P>$taskdefinition = $taskObject.NewTask($null)\n $regInfo = $taskdefinition.RegistrationInfo\n<\/PRE>\nI hate it when I am required to type in a description for the task if it is not something that I intend to keep around for a very long time. If a description is not supplied when the function is called, a default value of \u201cCreated by script\u201d is assigned to the $description<\/B> variable. The value contained inside the $description<\/B> variable is then assigned to the description<\/B> property as shown here:<\/P>if(-not $description) { $description = “Created by script” }\n $regInfo.Description = $description\n<\/PRE>\nThe same goes for the author, so if a value for $author<\/B> is not assigned when the function is called, we read the username<\/B> value from the system environment and assign the value to the author<\/B> :<\/P>if(-not $author) { $author = $env:username }\n $regInfo.Author = $author\n<\/PRE>\nNow we get to the TaskSettings<\/B> object. The TestSettings<\/B> object allows us to configure the items seen here:<\/P>![\"Image](\"http:\/\/img.microsoft.com\/library\/media\/1033\/technet\/images\/scriptcenter\/qanda\/hsg\/2009\/april\/hey0402\/hsg-04-02-09-1.jpg\")
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To do this, we need to first retrieve the TestSettings<\/B> object by querying the settings<\/B> property from the TaskDefinition<\/B> object and storing the results in the $settings<\/B> variable. In our script we select two properties from the TaskDefinition<\/B> object to work with. The first property, StartWhenAvailable<\/B>, allows the scheduled task to begin after it becomes available. The second property, Hidden<\/B>, allows the task to be visible. This is seen here:<\/P>$settings = $taskdefinition.Settings\n $settings.StartWhenAvailable = $true\n $settings.Hidden = $false\n<\/PRE>\nWe need to create a Trigger<\/B> object. The Trigger<\/B> object is obtained by querying the triggers<\/B> property from the TaskDefinition<\/B> object. We store the returned object in the $triggers<\/B> variable. Now we need to decide what kind of trigger we’re going to use. This is where we can really begin to see some of the power of the Task Scheduler 2.0 API. In this example, we want the scheduled task to run only when the computer is not doing anything. To do this we will create an idle trigger. The $TASK_TRIGGER_IDLE<\/B> constant is used to define the kind of trigger that we will use. We store the idle trigger in the $trigger<\/B> variable. This is seen here:<\/P>$triggers = $taskdefinition.Triggers\n $trigger = $triggers.Create($TASK_TRIGGER_IDLE)\n<\/PRE>\nNow we need an action<\/B> object. The action<\/B> object is used to define the action that the scheduled task will take when the trigger fires. We use the actions<\/B> property from the $taskdefinition<\/B> object and call the create<\/B> method to create the action<\/B> object. The create<\/B> method is given the $TASK_ACTION_EXEC<\/B> constant to tell it what kind of action is to be created. We store the returned action object in the $action<\/B> variable. We then use the path<\/B> property of the action<\/B> object and give it the path to the command that will be executed. This is stored in the $command<\/B> variable. This code is seen here:<\/P>$action = $taskdefinition.Actions.Create($TASK_ACTION_EXEC)\n $action.Path = $command\n<\/PRE>\nIt is time to actually register the scheduled task. This part is actually a little surprising; we use the folder<\/B> object to give us access to the RegisterTaskDefinition<\/B> method. This method has seven parameters. Each of the parameters for the method is supplied values via the variables and constants that we defined earlier. This makes it easy for us to understand what the task is supposed to do:<\/P>$rootFolder.RegisterTaskDefinition($Name,$taskdefinition,$CREATE_OR_UPDATE,\n $user,$password,$TASK_LOGON_NONE,$sddl)\n} #end New-Task\n<\/PRE>\nWe may want to delete a previously scheduled task. To do this we use the DeleteTask<\/B> method from the folder<\/B> object. We create a Remove-Task<\/B> function to allow us to easily call this method. This is shown here:<\/P>Function Remove-Task($folder,$name)\n{\n$folder.DeleteTask($name,$null)\n} #end Remove-Task\n<\/PRE>\nThe entry point to the script is the section of the script that allows us to call the functions contained within the script. There are a number of things that we could do such as returning a collection of task objects that list each of the tasks within a specific folder. If we were to do this, the syntax might look something like this:<\/P>
Get-Tasks -folder (New-taskObject -path “\\microsoft\\windows\\defrag”)<\/PRE>\nWe may decide that we would like to look at a specific task. To do this we would call the Get-Task<\/B> function, pass it the folder<\/B> object that we obtain via the New-TaskObject<\/B> function. We would need of course to specify the name of the task as seen here:<\/P>Get-Task -folder (New-TaskObject -path “\\”) -name “Test idle trigger”<\/PRE>\nIf we want to create a new task, the only things which must be supplied are the command to execute and the name of the task. We could even create a function that would generate a random name for the task and allow us to skip the problem of making up names for one-off scheduled tasks, but we have not done so in this particular script. You could use the technique seen in this \u201cHey, Scripting Guy!\u201d article<\/A> to give you some ideas for creating random task names. The code to create the new task is shown here:<\/P>New-Task -command “C:\\Windows\\System32\\notepad.exe” -path “\\hsg” `\n -name “test idle trigger”\n<\/PRE>\nIf you read the article yesterday and learned how to create your own folders, you probably want to create your scheduled tasks inside a new folder. To do so you use the New-Task<\/B> function, and specify the command, the name, and the path parameters as seen here:<\/P>New-Task -command “C:\\Windows\\System32\\notepad.exe” -path “\\hsg” ` -name “test idle trigger”<\/PRE>\nIf you need to delete a task, we specify a folder<\/B> object that contains the task as well as the name of the task that is to be removed. We need to use the New-TaskObject<\/B> function because the method will not accept a string as a path to the folder. It requires an actual folder object. Keep in mind that we must supply a folder object even if the task is stored in the root of the scheduled tasks<\/B> folder. This code is seen here:<\/P>Remove-Task -folder (New-TaskObject) -name “test idle trigger”<\/PRE>\nIf the task that you wish to remove is stored in a different folder, we use the New-Task<\/B> object function and specify the path<\/B> parameter to that function. We place this inside a set of parentheses and then supply that to the folder<\/B> parameter of the Remove-Task<\/B> function. We then specify the name of the task as we did earlier. This is shown here:<\/P>Remove-Task -folder (New-taskObject -path “\\hsg”) -name “test idle trigger”<\/PRE>\nThis concludes our article detailing the process for creating scheduled tasks and deleting scheduled tasks. It also brings to a conclusion our Scheduled Tasks Week. We hope that you have enjoyed this series of articles and are somewhat intrigued by the new and exciting possibilities offered by the Scheduled Task 2.0 API. Join us tomorrow for Quick-Hits Friday. Until then, peace. <\/P>\n
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Ed Wilson and Craig Liebendorfer, Scripting Guys<\/B><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! I need to be able to run a script when my computer is idle. But only when it is idle. I have looked in WMI and everywhere else and cannot find anything that will detect when the computer is idle. Can you tell me how to do it?– NM Hi NM, You […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,32,3,45],"class_list":["post-54053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-operating-system","tag-scheduled-tasks","tag-scripting-guy","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! I need to be able to run a script when my computer is idle. But only when it is idle. I have looked in WMI and everywhere else and cannot find anything that will detect when the computer is idle. Can you tell me how to do it?– NM Hi NM, You […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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