welcome

This book is for people who already work with PowerShell, and now want to start using it to its maximum functionality. To automate complex tasks and processes, you need to learn scripting, and that is what this book will teach you. The goal is to provide you with all the fundamental information you need to start scripting and creating basic PowerShell tools. If you are already scripting, we think this book can teach you better and more ways to do it.

Most of the preliminary information you need is covered in chapter 1, but here are a few things we should mention up front. First and foremost, we strongly suggest that you follow along with the examples in the book. In order to follow along, you’ll need PowerShell installed. This book was written based on PowerShell 7.2, but honestly, 99% of the book also applies to earlier versions of Windows PowerShell.

You’ll also need to install a script editor. Though Windows PowerShell's Integrated Script Editor (ISE) is included on client versions of Windows, we recommend removing it, since the PowerShell team has not put any maintenance or support into it since Windows 7 was released. Microsoft recommends Visual Studio Code (VS Code), which is free and cross-platform. Download that, and in chapter 2 we'll show you how to set it up.