Introduction

PowerShell as a scripting language will execute actions on your target environment. Scripting is not a new concept and PowerShell is definitely not a new language. However, PowerShell and SharePoint 2010 integrate very well. This integration allows administrators and developers to access not just a limited set of commands, but also to connect to SharePoint objects and libraries to take advantage of additional capabilities of SharePoint as a platform.

To ensure that we are on the same page while reading this book and trying out various recipes, we'll start by setting up your environment and verifying the setup by running a test script. After all, SharePoint relies on components, most of which we're going to be directly interacting with, and having a consistently configured environment will help in reducing any potential integration issues.

Although we can author our PowerShell scripts in Notepad and execute them in a PowerShell command-line environment, you can experience more...