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Welcome to another episode of Microsoft Knowledge Nuggets on M365.

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FM, I'm your host, Mirko Peters.

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What if I told you there's a tool already sitting on your computer that can automate almost anything?

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Think about your typical workday.

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You log in and open a few applications, click through the same menus you clicked yesterday,

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run the same reports, check the same services.

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Maybe you spend an hour doing something that feels like it should take five minutes.

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That tool I'm talking about is PowerShell.

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By the end of this episode, you'll understand what PowerShell actually is,

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how its commands work and why it's the hidden superpower of the Microsoft ecosystem.

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We'll start with the basic idea, work through the building blocks, and by the end,

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you'll have real automation you can use today.

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The big picture, what PowerShell actually is.

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So what exactly is PowerShell?

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Most people hear the name and think it's just a fancy command prompt.

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It's not. PowerShell is a full automation platform.

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Think of it as a command line shell, a scripting language,

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and a remote management tool all in one.

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In the command line shell, you type commands and get results,

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but it's also a scripting language that lets you write programs that run on their own

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and a remote management tool that controls dozens or hundreds of machines from a single window.

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20 years ago, automating something on Windows meant using a mess of different tools.

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You used batch files for simple tasks,

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VB script for more complex ones and separate admin consoles for exchange,

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Active Directory and file servers.

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None of them talk to each other.

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You'd copy data from one tool, paste it into another, and hope nothing got lost.

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PowerShell changed all that.

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It's one tool that talks to everything.

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Windows itself, Azure, Microsoft 365, Exchange, Teams, SharePoint, Active Directory,

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and even Linux machines now.

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You use the same language, the same patterns, the same commands, no matter what you're targeting.

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And it's cross platform.

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PowerShell 7 runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

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So in a mixed environment, you don't need to switch tools.

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Here's the thing.

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If you work in IT, PowerShell is the language of the Microsoft ecosystem.

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It's how you talk to your infrastructure and automate the boring stuff,

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so you can focus on the interesting problems.

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But before we get into what it can do,

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let's look at how it actually works.

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The verb noun pattern, how PowerShell commands work.

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Every PowerShell command follows a simple pattern called verb noun,

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and it's exactly what it sounds like.

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The verb tells you what you want to do.

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Get set, new, remove, start, stop.

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And the noun tells you what you're targeting like process, service, user, item, or mailbox.

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So get process gets you a list of running processes, get service shows you all the services on your machine.

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Set date changes the system time, stop service stops the service.

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The pattern is so consistent that once you learn it, you can guess commands you've never seen before.

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Want to start a service type start service need to remove a user type remove user.

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It's that straightforward.

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PowerShell was designed to be discoverable, so you don't need to memorize hundreds of commands.

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Your best friend here is the get command CMD let run get command noun service.

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And it shows you every command that works with services get service, start service, stop service,

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restart service, set service, new service, remove service.

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All of them right there just by asking, let me give you a concrete example.

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Say you want to know what commands can manage processes.

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You run get command noun process.

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You get back get process, start process, stop process, debug process, wait process.

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You don't need to guess the tool tells you that's what makes power shells so different from old school command line tools

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where you had to memorize every flag and switch.

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And here's why that matters.

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You don't learn power shell by memorizing a thousand commands.

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You learn the pattern and you can figure out the rest as you go.

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It's like learning that every verb in a language follows the same conjugation.

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Once you know the rule, you can apply it anywhere, but this is where power shell really breaks away from everything else.

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Objects not text, the game changer.

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So here's the thing that makes power shell fundamentally different from every command line tool that came before it.

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Traditional command lines output text, you run a command and get lines of characters on your screen.

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And that's it.

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If you want to do something with that output, you have to pass it, cut it up, extract the parts you need using string manipulation and it's fragile.

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One space out of place and your whole script breaks.

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Power shell doesn't work that way.

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It gives you objects structured data with properties and methods.

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When you run get process, you don't get a text table.

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You get process objects.

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Each one has properties like name, ID, CPU, memory, start time and methods like kill.

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You can pull those properties filter on them, sort them, export them.

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You can do things with the data that would take 20 lines of text passing in a single command.

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That's the game changer.

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Let me show you the old way using command prompts task list command.

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You get a text table.

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If you want to find processes using more than 50 CPU, you have to write passing logic.

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You have to account for column widths, spacing, headers, it's messy and it breaks constantly.

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The power shell way looks like this.

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Get process piped away object with a condition, piped to export CSV.

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That's one line filter only processes using more than 50 CPU, save to a CSV file done.

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What makes this all work is the get member Cmd let you pipe any command to get member

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and it shows you every property and method those objects have.

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It's like peaking under the hood.

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Run get process, get member.

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And suddenly you see everything name, id, handle, CPU, working set, start time.

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And methods like kill, refresh, wait for exit, you don't have to guess what data is available.

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The tool tells you here's a real world scenario.

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Say you're an admin managing 50 servers.

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You need to find all stop services across all of them.

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The old way you'd remote into each server open services.

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MSC check manually write it down.

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That takes hours.

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The power shell way you write one command, get servers on each machine, filter where status is stopped, export to a CSV.

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One command, 50 servers, same result every time.

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No clicking through GUIs, no manual note taking, no mistakes from copying data between windows.

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And here's why this matters.

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Object output means you can chain commands together.

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The output from one command feeds directly into the next as structured data.

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You're not passing text, you're manipulating objects.

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It's the difference between sorting through a pile of loose papers and working with a filing cabinet

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where everything has a label.

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So now you know the pattern and the pipeline.

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Let's talk about the commands you'll actually use.

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The five essential Cmdlet groups.

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You don't need to learn hundreds of Cmdlets to be productive with power shell.

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Start with five groups and you'll cover about 80% of what you'll do day to day.

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Group one is discovery.

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It's the most important because it teaches you power shell from within itself.

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Get help, get command, get member.

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These three are your learning tools.

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You don't need to memorize anything because you can always look it up.

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Get help shows you how to use any command.

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Get command shows you what commands exist and get member shows you what data those commands output.

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If you learn nothing else, learn these three.

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Group two is file system.

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Covering the everyday file tasks you do constantly.

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Get child item lists, files and folders, copy item copies them, remove item deletes them

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and get content reads file contents.

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You can do in one line what would take clicking through multiple folder windows.

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Group three is system, managing what's running on your machine.

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Get process shows running processes, get service shows services and start service and stop service control them.

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Restart computer reboots a machine if you've ever opened task manager or services.

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MSE these commands replace all of that and they work remotely.

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You can check services on 100 machines without leaving your desk.

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Group four is filtering and shaping where the pipeline really shines.

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Where object filters data based on conditions, select object picks which properties you want to see,

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sort object orders your results and group object aggregates them.

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These CMD let's turn raw data into useful information.

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Without them, you're just dumping data to the screen.

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With them you can ask specific questions and get specific answers.

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Group five is export how you save your work.

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Export CSV writes to a file you can open in Excel, outfile writes to a text file,

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and convert to JSON converts to JSON format.

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These CMD let's let you turn your commands into reports, logs or data files.

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You run a command filter the results and save them.

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That's a report, that's automation.

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Here's a quick example for each group.

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With discovery you'd run get command, noun service to see every service related command.

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With file system get child item C plus logs, recurs, where object length GT 10 made of me finds large log files.

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For system get service, frontware object status, ecu stopped lists stopped services.

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For filtering, get process, art, sort object CPU descending.

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Select object, first five shows the top five CPU hogs.

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And for export get service and export CSV services.

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CSV saves everything to a file.

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Here's why this matters.

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These five groups cover the vast majority of what you'll do.

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You don't need to be a power shell expert, just no way to start.

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And the best place to start is the group that teaches you everything else.

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Let's talk about discovery.

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Discovery first, get help, get command, get member.

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Let me tell you about the single most important cmd. you'll ever learn.

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Get help, it's power shells built in manual.

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Type get help, followed by any command name.

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And it shows you the syntax parameters and most importantly, working examples.

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You don't need to search the internet or memorize anything.

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The documentation is right there inside the tool.

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Say you want to understand how get process works.

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Type get help, get process.

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And it shows you the syntax, what parameters it accepts, and what each does.

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But the real goal is in the examples, get help, get process.

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Examples jump straight to working code you can copy and run.

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That's how you learn power shell from within power shell itself.

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Then there's get command.

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This cmd.let lists everything available in your session.

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Every cmd.let function and script.

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And you can filter it.

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Get command.verb.

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Get shows you every get command of which there are hundreds.

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Get process, get service, get date, get item, get child item, get content.

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All of them, just by asking, get command.

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And now service shows you every command that works with services.

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Get service, start service, stop service, restart service, set service, new service, remove service.

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You don't need to guess what's available.

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The tool tells you.

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And then there's get member.

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The one that unlocks everything.

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Pipe any command to get member.

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And it shows you what's inside the objects that command returns.

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Run get process, get member.

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And you see every property and method of process objects.

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Name, ID, CPU, working set, start time, and methods like kill.

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Refresh, wait for exit.

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You don't have to wonder what data is available.

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You can inspect it directly.

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Why this matters?

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You never need to memorize everything.

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You can learn as you go.

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Get help teaches you how to use commands.

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Get command shows you what commands exist.

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And get member shows you what data those commands return.

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These three cmd.lets are your learning tools.

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They make power shell self documenting.

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Once you know what's available, the next step is shaping that data into something useful.

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Filtering, shaping, and exporting.

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Turning commands into reports.

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Here's the thing about power shell.

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The power isn't in any single command.

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It's in how you combine them through the pipeline.

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You take the output from one cmd.let, pipe it into another,

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and build complex operations from simple building blocks.

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Where object is your filter that only passes through objects matching your condition.

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So get service, where object status EQ.

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Running gives you only running services.

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No scrolling through a list of 100 services.

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The command does the filtering for you.

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Select object picks, which properties you want to see.

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Get process, select object.

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Name, CPU,

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working set, returns just the data you care about.

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It strips away handles, page memory, and session IDs,

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leaving only the columns you asked for.

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That's how you turn a wall of data into a clean readable table.

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Sort object orders your results.

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Get process, hmm, sort object CPU.

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Descending shows you the most CPU intensive processes first.

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So you can find the problem immediately instead of scanning through an unsorted list.

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Export CSV saves everything to a file you can open in Excel.

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This is where the magic happens.

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You run a command, filter it, shape it, and save it.

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That's a report and that's automation.

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Here's the full pattern put together.

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Get service, most where object status EQ.

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Stopped, select object name, display name.

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Export CSV stop services.

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CSV, it's one command that gets all services, filters to only stop once,

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picks just the name and display name and saves the result to a CSV file.

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You can run this on one machine or 100 and you get the same result every time.

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This is what replaces hours of clicking through GUIs and manual copy pasting.

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Instead of opening services, MSC on every server scrolling through the list,

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writing down what stopped and typing it into a spreadsheet.

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You run one command.

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It takes seconds, it's accurate and it's repeatable.

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Why this matters?

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You go from reactive to proactive.

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You can run these reports on a schedule.

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Every morning a script checks your services, exports the results and emails them to you.

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You spot problems before they become emergencies because you know what's running,

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what stopped and what needs attention.

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Instead of waiting for something to break, you stay ahead of it.

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So now you have the pieces, the discovery tools to learn what's available,

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the filtering tools to find what matters and the export tools to save your results.

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Let's see how they all fit together into one system.

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How it all connects?

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The pipeline in action.

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The pipeline is the heart of PowerShell, not just a feature.

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Every CMD-LED outputs objects and the pipeline sends those objects directly into the next CMD-LED.

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That simple idea is what makes PowerShell so powerful.

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You build complex operations from simple building blocks, one pipe at a time.

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Let me give you a real scenario.

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Say a user calls because their account is locked out.

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This happens all the time.

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Someone types their password wrong too many times and suddenly they can't log in.

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The old way of handling this is a pain.

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You open Active Directory users and computers.

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Scroll through the list, find the user, right click, check the account, unlock it,

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then open Event Viewer to find the lockout event, then manually note the time and source.

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That whole process takes five to ten minutes per user.

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And if you have multiple users calling in, you spend your whole morning on this one thing.

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The PowerShell way is completely different.

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One command, get a user, filter, lockout, EQ true, finds every locked account in your domain.

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Then you pipe that into Unlock AID account and that's it.

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The script finds the locked accounts and unlocks them, then you pipe the result to a logging

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function or export it to a report.

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You have a record of what happened when it happened and which accounts were affected

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all from one line of code.

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And here's the thing, the same pattern works everywhere.

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Exchange mailboxes, Teams, channels, SharePoint sites, Azure resources, the CMD-Lets change,

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but the pipeline stays the same.

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You get something, filter it, do something to it and save the result.

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For example, get mailbox, filter by some condition, set a property export to CSV, or get

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team, filter by membership, add a member, log the change.

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The pattern is identical every time.

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Why this matters?

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Once you understand the pipeline, you can automate almost anything.

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The pattern is the same whether you're managing one user or a thousand, one server, or a hundred.

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You learn the pattern once and apply it everywhere.

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All right, you've seen what it is and how it works.

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Now let's talk about what you should actually do next.

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Your first steps to automation.

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So where do you start?

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Open PowerShell and Run Get Help to start exploring.

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Type Get Help, Get Process and see what it shows you.

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Then type Get Help, Get Service examples and look at the working examples.

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This is how you learn the tool from inside the tool.

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No searching the internet or watching tutorials needed.

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The documentation is right there.

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Next pick one task you do every week.

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You see it's checking which services are running on a server, listing files in a folder or exporting

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a report.

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Write a one-liner for it and start simple.

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Something like Get Service, where object status, EQ running.

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That's a one-liner.

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Run it, see the output and save it.

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You just automated something you used to do manually.

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Then use Get command and Get member to discover what's possible.

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You don't need to know everything upfront, just how to find what you need.

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Get command, noun service shows you every service related command, and Get Process.

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Get member shows you every property of process objects.

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The tool tells you what it can do and you just have to ask.

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The best first step is simple.

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Automate the task you do most often.

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Even a simple one-liner saves you time.

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If you check services every morning, write a one-liner that checks them for you.

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If you clean up temp files every week, write a one-liner that does it.

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Start small and build from there.

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Now where do you go from here?

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Microsoft learn has free PowerShell learning paths.

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They're structured, practical, and completely free.

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The PowerShell gallery has thousands of community modules, so someone has probably already

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written a module for whatever you're trying to do.

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You don't need to reinvent the wheel.

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PowerShell is a skill, not just a tool.

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The more you use it, the more it clicks.

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You don't need to be a developer.

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You just need to start.

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Ten minutes a day is enough to build real capability.

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Run one command today, run two tomorrow, and before you know it, you're automating things

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you never thought you could.

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So that's PowerShell.

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The language that connects the entire Microsoft ecosystem.

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Open it up and Run Get Process to see what it looks like.

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Then subscribe for more knowledge nuggets and drop a comment about what you want to automate.

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What's one task you wish you could automate?

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Let me know.

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in a future episode.