There've been a lot of interesting articles about PowerShell on Simple-Talk lately, but when I brought the topic up in conversation with our SysAdmin here at Red Gate, I discovered that not all technical masterminds think in command-line statements. I asked Simon if he could explain his thoughts in a guest editorial, and here's what he said:

I've been using Exchange 2007 for around 6 months now: Most Exchange administrators who have had the same pleasure discovered that this inevitably means having to get to grips with one of the big changes introduced in Exchange 2007 - PowerShell. As most people know, all administrative tasks in Exchange 2007 are now built on PowerShell, and Microsoft are actively pushing it as the future of Exchange administration. Exchange Administrators and, to a greater extent, all System Administrators have been crying out for this sort of command line functionality for quite some time; and it is a great improvement to find that there is now a scriptable option for all Exchange administrative tasks.

However, I dislike being forced into using only PowerShell for one-off administrative tasks when these were previously done much faster through the GUI. Take the job of assigning public folder permissions, for example. I know that public folders were supposed to be deprecated in future versions of Exchange and are somewhat of a 'poor cousin' in Exchange 2007; but how hard would it have been to add a permissions-editing component into the Public Folder tool that was introduced with SP1? Another example is the task of changing the configuration settings to the Attachment Filter on the Edge Transport Role - all the other anti-spam mechanisms have a GUI interface - why not this one? It would also save our time if you could start the Edge Transport synchronization process by using the GUI.

Yes, I know that PowerShell is the cool new thing in Exchange administration, and there is no doubt that it is extremely useful for the automation of repetitive tasks and many other things in Exchange. However I'd still like to have the option of using the GUI for all tasks, especially for many of the smaller daily administrative requirements that I find are faster and more convenient to accomplish via the GUI.

There may be a better way of ensuring PowerShell's ubiquity as an administrative took, and it is a way that is being increasingly adopted within Windows. This is to provide, for all administrative tasks, a GUI alternative that generates a Powershell script that is executed, but which can then be used and adapted to automate the task. Surely, this provides a more sensible solution, and allows Powershell-heads all the automation they wish, whilst putting less pressure on the Exchange Admin to adopt new techniques without any benefit.

Exchange 2010 looks great, but it would be very disappointing if the option to choose the GUI for administrative tasks is removed from even more administrative functions in the final release

What do you all think?

Cheers,

Simon Lye