This document discusses how PowerShell can be used to automate and streamline many common tasks in Configuration Manager such as creating boundaries, collections, deploying applications, and managing software updates. It provides examples of how much time can be saved for tasks such as creating 200 boundaries (40 minutes saved), collections with membership rules (20 minutes saved), and deploying secondary site servers (60 minutes saved per server). The key benefits outlined are that it is easy to automate daily CM tasks with just a few lines of PowerShell code and that this can save thousands of minutes over manual methods.

1. Managing Configuration Manager
with PowerShell
Team Coretech
Kent Agerlund & Kaido Järvemets #ECMDay2015

2. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Who we are
• Kaido Järvemets & Kent Agerlund
• Profession
– Developer / Consultant
– Coretech A/S, System Center Gold Partner
• Titles
– Microsoft MVP: Enterprise Client Management
• Communities
– Owner of http://cm12sdk.net/
– Moderator on Microsoft TechNet Forums
– Member of the System Center Alliance Team
– Member of the System Center Influencers Team

3. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Examples from real life - Boundaries
• It takes 25 seconds to create 1 boundary manually.
• It takes 40-50 minutes to create 200 boundaries.
• How long will creating 200 boundaries take using PowerShell?
How much time have we saved with this easy task?
Time saved at least 40 minutes

4. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Examples from real life - Collections
Do you know how much time it takes to create 4 Folders, 24 Collections and 44 Collections
Membership rules manually?
It takes 23-25 minutes to create these manually
It takes 1 minute to create these with PowerShell
Time saved 20 minutes

5. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Examples from real life – Collections #2
• Do you know when your Collections are updating?
• Do you know how many Collections have Incremental updates enabled?
Time saved 1000 minutes

6. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Examples from real life - Client Health
• Do you have a dashboard for Client Health?
• Do you have KPIs and an SLA for Client Health?
• Do you measure your Client Health progress?
• Do you know how many broken clients you have?

7. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Examples from real life - Client Health
• Coretech System Center Dashboard
Client Health
Solution
Active
Directory
ConfigMgr
ConfigMgr
Client Script
OSD Frontend

8. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Examples from real life - Client Health

9. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Examples from real life - Client Health

10. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Examples from real life - Deploying Site Servers and
Site Roles
• How do you deploy your Site System Servers and Site Roles?
• It takes 4-5 minutes to manually install Secondary Site Server roles and features and go
through Installation wizard
• But what about?
– Server configuration i.e. IIS configuration etc.
– SQL updates & configuration
– Documentation, notifications
– Additional software & tools
– ConfigMgr configuration
• You definitely want every site installation & configuration to be the same
Time saved 60 minutes per Secondary Site

11. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Examples from real life - Working with
Applications
• Case 1
– Deploying Applications/Packages using Active Directory Groups
• Case 2
– Speed up testing
If you are good at Excel, take these skills to PowerShell and ConfigMgr!

12. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Examples from real life - Working with
Applications #2
• Case 1 - Deploying Applications/Packages using Active Directory Groups
• It takes almost 2 minutes to create:
– 2 Collections
– 2 Collection Rules
– 2 Active Directory Groups
• But WHAT IF I need to create 50 or 100 of them?
It takes 14 seconds to create all these for 12 Applications with PowerShell
Time saved 23 minutes (12 applications)
It took 10 minutes to develop

13. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Examples from real life - Working with
Applications #3
• Case 2 – Speed up testing
– Microsoft APP-V applications
– Inbox folder
– Automatically moves content to a correct location, creates APP-V application, deployment type
and deployment, sends content to a distribution point
It took 48 seconds to do this all manually for 1 application
It took 36 seconds for 3 APP-V applications with PowerShell
Time Saved 1 minute per application

14. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Examples from real life - Working with OSD
• How often do you create your reference images?
• You only need 5 steps to add your reference image to ConfigMgr with PowerShell
• We have many options to extend the solution e.g. Hyper-V VM creation, etc.
• What if you could automate the process 101%?

15. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Examples from real life – Software Updates
• SMART Maintenance Windows
• Software Update Management Tool
• Export/Import

16. MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGERWITH POWERSHELL
Key takeaways
• It´s SUPER EASY
• Most daily activities in Configuration Manager require 3-5 lines of PowerShell code
• If you follow these simple techniques, you will save 3146+ minutes
• You can do it!
• Work Smarter, not Harder
• More time to learn new stuff

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