SharePoint Administration: Understanding PowerShell

On September 8th, I found myself on the road again, far from my home in the Seattle area, participating as a speaker at the annual SharePoint Saturday Cape Town (#SPSCPT) event in South Africa.

This was my second visit to the country this year, joining an all-star cast including well-known regional experts Alistair Pugin and Bradley Geldenhuys, SharePoint MVP Veronique Palmer, and international experts such as Paul Swider, Michael Noel, JB Howard, Mark Miller, and Joel Oleson, among others.

While the topics I present tend to center more around power-user and business analyst topics, I do try to attend a wide variety of sessions to expand my understanding of different aspects of the SharePoint platform. One of the sessions I attended in Cape Town was a presentation by Seb Matthews (@sebmatthews) entitled "PowerShell for the SharePoint IT Pro, Beyond the SnapIn" (slides available here) in which he introduced the history of PowerShell, and the value it provides to the SharePoint audience.

The History of PowerShell

At a high level, PowerShell gives SharePoint administrators more power and control over their environments. While it is often viewed as a way to avoid using Central Admin, it's not so much about avoidance of the user interface as it is a way to streamline and automate otherwise manual and tedious efforts to navigate through the UI.

According to Seb, PowerShell is not outdated, old technology, and it is certainly not just for developers — it is command line scripting, offering a Swiss army knife-like solution to quickly get to the heart of an issue, get data, solve a problem.

Some of the features of PowerShell were modeled after Unix and Linux to help attract people with backgrounds in those environments — in fact, Seb pointed out that in many cases, you can use Unix and Linux syntax inside of PowerShell. It is definitely a tool for the technical members of your team, to give your admins predictability and repeatability, and going far beyond what is available through the UI and Central Admin.

Several times during his presentation, Seb referred to PowerShell users as "reluctant developers," with admins using the scripting tools to give them more control and capability — without the time and effort it takes to become a full blown developer. He also added that it was a "myth" that admins still need to use stsadm command line tool, as much of what you need to do is hidden away inside of PowerShell.

Understanding the Construct

While it takes minutes to learn the basics of PowerShell, Seb admitted that it can take a lifetime to master. The basic constructs of PowerShell include Snapins (combined collections of cmdlets), modules (anyone can build scripts and scriptlets, save off into a bundled file as a module), cmdlets ("this is the thing that I am actually typing," includes Pascal casing — which means every line starts with a capital letter), objects (the lifeblood of developers. Something you can do something with) and pipelines (sequential actions).

PowerShell has a very simple construct: there is the Shell, or the window in which you will work; there are Blocks, a region or section in which you are focusing; there are Scripts, which consists of the things you build and save; and the Functions, which are modular scripts that be reused — compiled script that you can call up or even pre-load.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

5 Apps To Help You Swing Back Into Productivity Mode

As kids across the country jump back into their busy school routines this September, it's a great time for adults to bid farewell to summertime slacking and embrace the latest and greatest productivity tools.

When thinking about getting more done, popular apps such as Evernote and Dropbox come to mind, but here are a few new digital downloads that stand out from the crowd and get a big thumbs up for making our busy work lives easier to keep on track.

Clear: Drag, drop, pinch, and swipe your to-do lists.
While there are plenty of to-do list apps, few will stand up against Clear in terms of simplicity. If you're looking for a list-making app that is dead easy, this is it. Moreover, Clear takes advantage of some simple movements on your iPhone to make managing all the things you have to do more enjoyable. For example, if you want to exit a list to move back to the main menu, you simply pinch vertically on the screen to "shut" that list. To complete an item in a list, swipe right; to delete an item in a list, swipe left. It's also easy to drag and drop items, and the app is color-coded so you can keep the important stuff (in red) at the top. Oh, and you can shake to undo an item, once again saving us a few seconds in our day.

SwiftKey 3: Type faster, smarter, and more accurately.
If you're thinking about leaving the iPhone for Android, this app could seal the deal. I've been (happily) using an Android phone for about six months, but I've been frustrated with the built-in predictive text system. Too often the phone fails to "guess" the correct word I'm trying to type, so I'm left stumbling to find a match. Fortunately, just this week I stumbled upon SwiftKey 3. This app uses artificial intelligence to learn your writing style and it even predicts the words you might want to type next. If it sounds creepy, it is, but in a good way if you're trying to boost your email and messaging productivity. SwiftKey 3 also predicts the people you know and the places you go based on how much access you give it to sources such as your Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter accounts. For example, if you're writing an email on your Android phone within Gmail (with SwiftKey 3 installed), you can press the spacebar to see what words the app thinks you might want to write next. While not everyone will be comfortable granting this access, the app's privacy policy explains that the company never stores or collects your login credentials, key presses, or passwords.

Freshbooks: Invoice, track time, and manage expenses on the go.
As a small business owner, my company has been using Freshbooks for some time for everyday accounting purposes. There are few cloud-based tools that make invoicing as easy, and dare I say, kind of fun. Moreover, if you're doing hourly client work, you can track your unbilled hours (and even manage team projects with team time sheets, including the option to have different rates for different projects). Just recently, Freshbooks launched its iPhone app so you can do all of these things on the go. Trust me, there is nothing more satisfying on the productivity front than stepping away from your desk, sitting down for a quick bit to eat, and sending an invoice on your iPhone for a job well done.

Captio: Email yourself with one quick tap.
Productivity gurus the world around will tell you that using your email as your to-do list is a big no-no. However, for many people (myself included), this is a tough habit to break. And Captio doesn't make it any easier to ditch using your in-box for task management since it makes it easy to send yourself an email message with one fast click. Open the app, write a message, and press send. For those of you hooked on Evernote or other popular note-based tools, Captio allows for easy integration with these services. In short, if Evernote is just too many clicks when you have to remind yourself to call someone or pick up some milk, and you want a message to rise to the top of your email, Captio will do the trick.

Wayk 4: Wake up with a next generation alarm clock.
It's impossible to be productive during the day without a good night's sleep. Wayk 4 calls itself a "revolutionary alarm clock," based on how it performs--it's a little smarter than your typical wake-me-up device. To set an alarm simply turn the inner digital wheel to choose the hour and the outer digital wheel to choose the minutes. When the alarm goes off in the morning, wave your hand over the top of your phone to snooze for a few more minutes (before you hit the pillow for some more rest, a voice will remind you of the time, and the voice will do the same thing when you finally wake up for good, along with sharing the local temperature out loud). If you want to wake up to your Google Calendar or your favorite RSS feeds on your screen, that is also an option so you're prepared for what you have on tap for the day before you even set foot on the ground.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

iPhone 5 Likely To Go On-Sale 21 September

While it would be easier to get blood from a stone, than confirmation from Apple, all the ecosystem signs are now pointing to a 21 September launch for the next iPhone, with Verizon banning all sales staff holiday from that date until the end of the month.

Ringing in the Changes and the Sales

As a spectator sport, frankly Apple could sell tickets and popcorn for its launch events. This year, Verizon has all but confirmed the date for the new iPhone by cancelling holiday from that point for the rest of the month. I'm quite happy with my iPhone 4S, I have no need for a more powerful device, or a bigger screen, or any of the other bells and whistles Apple will no doubt be offering, but for a gadget circus, this should be hard to beat.

With all signs now pointing to a 12 September launch event and the opening of pre-orders (hopefully Apple will have bulked up the web store, but I bet it will still keel over within seconds) for the iPhone 5, with it going on sale the following week. There is also the likely announcement of the iPad Mini (or whatever it will be called) which should be available in October, we're all set for another fun Fall of gadget watching.

And this year is set to be quite the event, with new Nokia Windows Phone 8 devices across all categories including Nokia phones, a new Samsung Galaxy Note and much more. But the iPhone 5 will likely be the media-enforced high point of the season and whatever technology Apple can pack into it will get the masses enthused.

Changing the Record Too

However, as we've seen in recent iterations, don't expect the huge queues and over-dramatic theatricals, smartphones aren't magical anymore, no matter how the makers try to spin then. For a start, more users are locked into longer contracts, buyers have less money, or other things to spend it on, and there is a wider range of top class devices to choose from.

Verizon will be stocking Nokia's Windows Phone 8 devices this year (according to Bloomberg), and likely giving them a great deal more space then than original Lumia devices got in other stores. So, we might have seen a peek in launch-period sales for smartphones, with the money now coming from the mid-range and emerging markets.

To spice things up, we should see some added tabloid "fury" as Apple has changed the dock connector, expect a good few "I'll never buy another Apple device ever" non-event stories. The current range of lawsuits being flung about might get even more ridiculous (expect someone to try to ban Apple from selling iPhone 5 in at least a few territories).

Either way, prepare for the excitement, or, if you're bored of the whole thing, remember to turn the Internet off that day.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com