Book Image

PowerShell for Office 365

By : Martin Machado
Book Image

PowerShell for Office 365

By: Martin Machado

Overview of this book

While most common administrative tasks are available via the Office 365 admin center, many IT professionals are unaware of the real power that is available to them below the surface. This book aims to educate readers on how learning PowerShell for Offi ce 365 can simplify repetitive and complex administrative tasks, and enable greater control than is available on the surface. The book starts by teaching readers how to access Offi ce 365 through PowerShell and then explains the PowerShell fundamentals required for automating Offi ce 365 tasks. You will then walk through common administrative cmdlets to manage accounts, licensing, and other scenarios such as automating the importing of multiple users,assigning licenses in Office 365, distribution groups, passwords, and so on. Using practical examples, you will learn to enhance your current functionality by working with Exchange Online, and SharePoint Online using PowerShell. Finally, the book will help you effectively manage complex and repetitive tasks (such as license and account management) and build productive reports. By the end of the book, you will have automated major repetitive tasks in Office 365 using PowerShell.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

PowerShell is a cmdlet based language with verb-noun syntax


The building blocks of PowerShell are called cmdlets (pronounced command-lets). Cmdlets allow us to get things done in PowerShell. A cmdlet is a lightweight command that is used in the Windows PowerShell environment. The Windows PowerShell runtime evokes these cmdlets within the context of automation scripts that are provided at the command line. We can put multiple cmdlets together into a set of commands to run all at once, or we can place them in a file with the extension .ps1 to create a PowerShell script that we can run manually or using a scheduler. In Office 365, the following cmdlets are commonly used:

  • Get-MsolUser
  • New-MsolUser

In PowerShell, cmdlets follow a pattern with verb-noun syntax. For example, to manage users, the syntax is <Verb>-MSOL<Noun>.

Here, MSOL stands for Microsoft Online.

To manage SharePoint Online, the syntax is <Verb>-SPO<Noun>.

SPO is SharePoint Online.

The following is the list of the most commonly used verbs in PowerShell:

  • Get
  • Set
  • Add
  • New
  • Remove
  • Connect
  • Disconnect
  • Test
  • Enable
  • Disable
  • Invoke
  • Start
  • Stop