Jul 17, 2015

As some of you may have already been aware, Microsoft has just released a website dedicated to PowerShell for Office 365. This website, is aimed at IT Administrators who have little or limited experience with Windows PowerShell and focuses on simple scenarios in the Office 365 environment. It is a huge source of information for anyone using or about to use PowerShell cmdlets on Office 365.

The website has a simple layout, with five tabs across the top:

Home Tab

Contains a brief description of What is PowerShell and why? and how it fits in with the Office 365 Admin Center, with a link to the Getting Started tab for more information. Also on the Home tab page is a list of What’s New links, and dynamic sections giving overviews of the current top items from the last three tabs listed above.

Getting Started Tab

Lists information on the required PowerShell tools, a great section detailing what is needed to run PowerShell in your Office 365 environment – including download links and instructions for not only connecting to Office 365, but also importing the PowerShell modules associated with Office 365 – Azure Active Directory, Skype for Business and SharePoint for Business. Please take note that Exchange does not have its own PowerShell module, but the Exchange cmdlets become available when you create a remote connection into Exchange Online. There is also a section on 'Things to Note' such as 'Setting execution policies on Windows PowerShell', and links to Microsoft TechNet articles, resources, and instructional videos.

Scenarios

Has a large list of PowerShell scenarios and links to script samples, arranged under four expandable categories: Setup, User Management, Reporting and More Functionality. Some of these scenarios include Getting Help with PowerShell, Automating the importing of multiple users, Setting passwords for multiple users, Report on Office 365 licensed and non-licensed users and much much more...

Script Samples Tab

Contains many sample PowerShell scripts and their descriptions, including the scripts associated with the scenarios from the previous Scenarios tab. Don’t forget the 'Next page' and the 'Previous page' buttons at the bottom of the page for even more sample scripts.

Community Tab

Contains an invitation to join the Office 365 Network, which is a community that is “home to thousands of experts sharing best practices of not only PowerShell, but Office 365, Exchange, Skype for Business, SharePoint, Project, Visio and Yammer.” This community is based upon Yammer, and the Community tab page includes a list of the latest articles as well.

So go and check out this new site – and I think you will find that it is an ideal place to go to get started and to discover the power behind using PowerShell for Office 365 as well as information on lots of automation scripts!

And don’t forget, New Horizons has a number of great Office 365 and PowerShell courses for all levels – just check out the details on our website.