office 365 why all this powershell

[round2it]

Why do I have to run powershell commands to do stuff that can easily implimented into the admin centre gui

 

I dont feel comfortable running commandlets.

 

I like a good gui.

 

dont get me wrong office 365 is good but feels incomplete.

 

 

 

 

Anyone else feel like this or is it just me

[FN-GM]

Its like that with loads of Microsoft products. Exchange is a good example.

[halbaradkenafin]

You can do almost everything in the gui but when you want to do the same thing to 20/50/600 users then I'll take Powershell taking 10 minutes (or even an hour once you add in research and testing) rather than x hours and tons of clicking.

 

The time you put into learning even the basics of Powershell will pay off ten fold or more, everything on the server side is becoming Powershell orientated and most of the gui is just a front for Powershell commands (see the new active directory admin centre which even let's you see the command line that will be run).

[steve]

I think @round2it understands why PowerShell exists, but is questioning why its taking over everything.

 

Having become a bit of a PowerShell convert, there are a couple of plus points I can see.

 

Repeatability and reproducatibilty - Once you've got the code, you can do the same task over and over pretty easily - or others can or you can schedule scripts. It also gives a good audit trail of whats been done (useful in change management).

[Mr_Jiminy]

I think @round2it understands why PowerShell exists, but is questioning why its taking over everything.

 

Having become a bit of a PowerShell convert, there are a couple of plus points I can see.

 

Repeatability and reproducatibilty - Once you've got the code, you can do the same task over and over pretty easily - or others can or you can schedule scripts. It also gives a good audit trail of whats been done (useful in change management).

 

I'm with Steve, once you have the scripts you'll be surprised how easy it becomes.

 

Better to embrace it... It aint going away

 

Or, move to GAFE.

[theo_logical]

Using command line of any description gives me a real feeling of power and superiority, I love it.

 

I accept of of the wise words above, but what scares me though, is when using powershell or any CLI, how quick and easy it is to make a real fist of something, and how difficult it is reverse out of the disaster of my own making. It's really hard to test some scripts without causing mayhem.

[snagrat]

Using command line of any description gives me a real feeling of power and superiority, I love it.

 

I accept of of the wise words above, but what scares me though, is when using powershell or any CLI, how quick and easy it is to make a real fist of something, and how difficult it is reverse out of the disaster of my own making. It's really hard to test some scripts without causing mayhem.

 

Use the WhatIf command to test

[psydii]

The role of the system administrator is bifurcating. There are elements that previously required technical aptitude that can now be complete just as effectively by the office manager, and on the other side there are activities that require skill that match more closely to those of developers.

 

This is closely linked to the drive to move everything into the cloud, where vendor employed Dev-Ops do what was once upon a time our job.

 

Why isn't more of it point and click? Because Microsoft threw a sop to their partner community - beyond the end user system administrators, this group is worst impacted by the changing landscape, and so created a ?temporary market for them to move into as on-premises server slowly become a thing of the past.

 

Pretty much anything I want to do in azure can be done by salamander for substantially less cost than my salary. Within a five years it will be very difficult to justify the position of Network Manager in any context. In schools happy with a basic, robust, ICT environment, we are already redundant.

[Oaktech]

I too dislike powershell.

 

I pay MS money for it to not be like linux.

[sted]

just some simple things like setting password expiration policies I don't get why that cant be gui

 

I know everything is heading to powershell but while I understand it to some degree it wouldn't be hard to imagine a scenario where youre searching for some code to do x and it does something else either maliciously or unintended and unless you know every office 365 powershell command you may not even know

[dry]

Indeed, Powershell is a scary beast. It's your best friend at times but can quickly become your worst enemy at a slip of the return key.

[theo_logical]

In schools happy with a basic, robust, ICT environment, we are already redundant.

 

Obviously PSYDII has never worked with Solus3 Capita's on our side.

[PotNoodleTech]

I totally agree. Its Microsoft Laziness, they just can't be bothered to do any more coding on the web interface.

 

This is the modern era - I don't use DOS any more. Here's an example. I want to disable Clutter for all users. So I would assume, Go into Admin > Exchange > Features? > Clutter > Disable? Easy right?

 

Aww no you need to use powershell for that. WHY?!!!!!

 

PowerShell is great for doing batch or complicated stuff yes - but I don't fire up the command prompt if I want to change a user password so I don't see why MS insist on forcing us to make every day admin changes via PowerShell RATHER THAN THE *ADMIN* SECTION in Office365????

 

//eof rant

[tomo1095]

Finally, someone's taken one for the team and said what a lot of us (I think) were thinking.

 

I can completely understand why everything's moving over to powershell, but I don't think it would be much of an ask for them to include more of the basics in the gui. It seems to be good at making changes to individual accounts but hopeless for batch changes.