“How do I stay in touch with PowerShell practice?”
Yes, this is one question is surely asked in all my PowerShell batches.
It’s obvious that people get overwhelmed with capabilities of PowerShell and wonder how do I keep practising. The biggest question is where do I start?
Well!!! PowerShell can answer that, PowerShell can solve that for you with following steps,
- Update-Help
- $PROFILE (Set up your PowerShell profile)
- Get-Help (Automated)
Lets try to understand more about the solution.
Step 1 – Update-Help
- Update-Help cmdlet downloads the newest help files for Windows PowerShell modules and installs them on your computer.
- You do not have to restart Windows PowerShell to make the change effective.
- With this you will also get several about_* topics downloaded on your computer at C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\en-US and inside modules where latest help manuals are available.
- This will lay the foundation for further steps.
Step 2 – $PROFILE
- The $Profile automatic variable stores the paths to the Windows PowerShell profiles that are available in the current session.
- A Windows PowerShell profile is a script that runs when Windows PowerShell starts.
- You can use the profile as a logon script to customise the environment.
- You can add commands, aliases, functions, variables, snap-ins, modules, and Windows PowerShell drives.
- You can also add other session-specific elements to your profile so they are available in every session without having to import or re-create them.
- Windows PowerShell supports several profiles for users and host programs. However, it does not create the profiles for you by default.
- The Windows PowerShell console supports the following basic profile files. The profiles are listed in precedence order. The first profile has the highest precedence.
Different PowerShell Profiles
HOW TO CREATE A PROFILE :
To create a profile for the current user in the current Windows PowerShell host application, use the following command:
if (!(test-path $profile)) {
new-item -type file -path $profile -force
}
HOW TO EDIT A PROFILE:
You can use either of the following options at PowerShell prompt
notepad $profile
opens profile file in notepad to edit.
ISE $profile
opens profile file in PowerShell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment) to edit.
ADD FOLLOWING CODE TO A PROFILE:
help about_* |
ForEach-Object{
if (($_.Split())[0] -match 'about_'){
($_.Split())[0]
}
} |
Select-Object @{n='name';e={$_}} |
Get-Random |
Get-Help -ShowWindow
SAVE PROFILE CHANGES AND EXIT
Step 3 – Just Open PowerShell to Get-Help
The above code will execute every time you open PowerShell.
Technically,
- It pulls all the about topics
- Filters empty line and header row
- From the output and just get the topic name as about_[topic] string
- Get-Random picks a random about_topic and passes to Get-Help
- Get-Help opens a topic in new window.
- It will present you with one of the about_[topic] randomly. This will take out the burden of choosing topic.
- Just make sure you read the presented topic at least for 5-10 minutes maximum.
- I used to do this at least 3 times a day. Morning before starting work, just after lunch (before starting other work) and before I shutdown my computer at the end of the day.
- So essentially minimum 15 minutes to maximum 30 minutes a day spent reading something about the PowerShell topics. Whenever I had extra time, I used to practice some of the examples from the about_topic.
- This helped me register most of the topics in my head within 3-4 weeks of time.
- Few years back, I was talking to someone on learning new skills and the person pointed out Rule Of 21 to me.
- There are many articles if Google Or Bing it. Some of them even call it myth. I don’t want to talk PRO or CONS here about the same.
- In my personal case it worked to gain good knowledge. Some of my participants also have responded that it was a helpful tip.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Food for thought: If you want to plan focused learning in every week, then you can extend the code. Have a starting and ending date. At the launch check if current dates falls in First, Second or Third week or more. Depending on that Get a random topic from the focused bucket.
i.e. Below command will select one command randomly from module NetAdapter. This was you can focus only on commands from selected module/area of learning.
Get-Command -Module NetAdapter | Get-Random | Select-Object Name
*Replace the Select-Object with Get-Help and you will get the help file.
That’s it for now.
If you like this tip do share your feedback. If you try this and find valuable, then do write me to with your experience.
All the best and enjoy PowerShell Scripting!!!
mukesh notes 
You must be logged in to post a comment.