IT Admins can be a fickle bunch, partly through no fault of their own. Often, they want to push companies forward with new tech and software, which admittedly, makes their lives easier, other times they are as fearful of change as a house cat trapped outside. Partly shackled by the whims of upper management, IT Admins walk a tensioned line between what could be and what needs to be. To complicate matters, hardware and software vendors are continually updating systems and tweaking feature sets on the products IT Pros eventually have to figure out and administer for their companies.
While Microsoft may be guilty of ‘feature creep’, the company is wising up and starting to offer useful learning guides to their products. Starting today, PowerShell for Office 365 will have an accompanying website of the same name. The site is built with Office 365 IT Admins in mind. According to the Office team, “The website is focused on simple scenarios that are focused entirely for Office 365 administration.”
PowerShell for Office 365 was originally announced at Microsoft’s Ignite conference back in early May of this year. With today’s unveiling, IT Admins unfamiliar with PowerShell for Office 365, can find an easier and more efficient way to understanding and implementing the various features PowerShell scripts have to offer. IT admins will find the new site is organized and streamlined to help provide information that includes:
- A consolidated guide to help you setup your machine to run PowerShell.
- Simple and applicable common scenarios.
- Sample scripts you can download, edit and then use right away.
- Links to resources such as TechNet to get more details.
- Connect with your peers and with us in the Office 365 Network.
While PowerShell is not a replacement for Office 365 Admin Center, the complementary tools can help in the following scenarios:
- Adding or editing a large number of users.
- Using multiple filters to sort through data.
- Exporting data such as user lists and groups.
- Configuring less commonly used settings.
PowerShell for Office 365 will hopefully be the first of many Office 365 centric websites to help IT Admins navigate the robust and often overlooked features of Office.
Further reading: Admin, IT, Microsoft, Office 365, PowerShell
