Introducing the SharePoint PowerShell Community Toolkit

CoreyRoth — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:04:43 GMT

This weekend, I got inspired to create what I think could be a great new CodePlex community Project. Last week, I saw a post in the forums as well a comment on the blog asking if specific PowerShell commands existed in regards to Enterprise Search. In both cases, I could not find existing commands so I thought why not create these commands. Then I thought that I should go ahead and provide a framework for other people to implement cmdlets to add to the ones I created. I took a look out on CodePlex to see if anything existed already and from what I could tell, there is nothing like this yet, so here we are. I am excited to announce the SharePoint PowerShell Community Toolkit on CodePlex. SharePoint already has 500+ PowerShell commands, but the community always wants to add more. :-) I thought this would be a great way to do it. I started out with cmdlets to do a few things in Enterprise Search since I knew there were requests from people in the community out there already.

Here are the commands I have implemented.

New-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryScopeDisplayGroup – creates a new scope display group
New-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryScopeDisplayGroupScope – adds a scope to an existing scope display group
Reset-SPEnterpriseSearchIndex – resets an Enterprise Search content index
Start-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryScopesCompilation – starts Enterprise Search scope compilation

Ok, so I know that is not that many commands yet, but how many did you expect me to write over the weekend? :-) I have a ton of ideas though, so you can expect me to add more soon. If you want to start using the commands now in your environment, download the distributable from CodePlex and use the install.bat file to copy the assembly to the GAC. You can then register the snapin inside PowerShell. More detailed installation instructions are on CodePlex.

If there is a PowerShell collaboration project out there already and somehow I missed it, let me know and I’ll be happy to add my contributions. :-) So how can you help? Create cmdlets and send them in. I’m looking for people to help contribute to the project. Not sure how to create a cmdlet yet? No problem! Check this post out to help you get started. It’s easier than you think. :-)

SharePoint PowerShell Community Toolkit on CodePlex

Corey Roth [MVP] : PowerShell, SharePoint PowerShell Community Toolkit, Enterprise Search

Introducing the SharePoint PowerShell Community Toolkit