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Hello friends I am breaking into my new role as System Administrator and I was wondering if anyone has any cool or essential PowerShell automation and scripts I should check out to help my day to day much more efficient.

p.s I am open to SysAdmin tips to help me grow my environment

7 Spice ups
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I’ve been a sysadmin for a decade, and I’ve used scripts to automate many tasks, but those tasks varied widely depending on the organization’s environment. Without knowing what kind of environment you will manage, I can’t recommend specific automations that would benefit you.

2 Spice ups
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The one I use the most is a script to create new users; we have 4 techs in IT and I wrote it so that no matter who creates a new user it’s always done the same. Consistency is key, even if you yourself do it the same way everytime; why bother with all the clicking? There aren’t that many other repetitive tasks I do that I can use PowerShell for. I do have a few PowerCLI scripts I’ve cobbled together over the years to gather information from our VMware cluster but I don’t use them often so the scripts were more so I didn’t have to remember the commands. :smiley:

4 Spice ups
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I have lots of such scripts… most just work and I forget I have them until I have to think about it.

I approach task with a mindset of what do I do often, can I automate it. then take those items I flag and script them… Each environment is unique.

For example installing printers is a common one… I have a script that we use a lot setup for our customers where if someone needs a printer we simply run the script, pick the printer name from a list an it download the drivers and installs the printer.

This kind of automation has a few benefits, as it increases consistency for the end users (the printers are always installed with identical setups) which in turn reduces future support calls.

Automation is your friend.

You can also use scripts to monitor for (and correct) common issues that occur within environments. Usually in conjunction with an RMM tools.

For example We have a script that reads the onboarding status of the AV software we use with our customers and then raises an alert if a machine slips through the cracks and gets missed or accidently gets onboarded to the wrong tenant.

4 Spice ups
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I’d suggest start with doing as much automation with AD (users, groups, etc). Especially when it comes to bulk operation PowerShell will by your ally.

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I think some must have scripts include automating user creation, password resets, and group assignments in AD. Patch management scripts are a lifesaver for handling updates without the manual work. Automated log monitoring helps catch issues early, while disk cleanup scripts keep systems running smoothly. Software deployment scripts are another big win, letting you install or remove apps across multiple machines effortlessly.

Also, Pulseway has this great read on network monitoring that could help lots: Network Monitoring Handbook

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you should also have a look at powershell dsc (desired state configuration)
that and clever scripting can do quite a lot for you!

another good thing is to identify and assess your processes.
by that you might find priorities what to automate first :slight_smile:

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Use the Power Platform as Microsoft is moving away from PowerShell to APIs like Graph.

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Microsoft isn’t moving away from Powershell, and they are actively updating it. They have added commands in Powershell to simplify interacting with Graph API.

2 Spice ups