Introduction to PowerShell Courseware (PWS101)

This Introduction to PowerShell course offers a comprehensive exploration of PowerShell, a versatile scripting language used to automate tasks in Windows environments. Ideal for employee training at all levels, it aims to elevate your team's operational efficiency by leveraging the robust capabilities of PowerShell.

You’ll start off with the Introduction lesson, where the distinction between Windows PowerShell and PowerShell is clarified, uncovering its vast potential. Learn about commands and cmdlets, the core components of PowerShell, and explore various PowerShell hosts. The integration of the VS Code PowerShell Extension will be discussed to enhance your scripting environment, followed by practical exercises like creating a "Hello, World!" script and mastering copy-paste techniques.

Once familiar with the basics, the course dives into Help, focusing on how PowerShell’s built-in help can guide you. Discover the secrets to accessing both local and online help, employing the ShowWindow parameter, and updating the help files for best results. You'll also understand help documentation sections and practice reading them through exercises, alongside learning to find commands effectively in PowerShell's rich syntax.

As you progress to Basic Operations, you’ll explore execution policies, running PowerShell as an administrator, and controlling execution policies through hands-on exercises. Delve into creating variables, performing basic arithmetic in PowerShell, and decoding error messages. You’ll further examine working with type, string, and collection operators, setting environment variables, and conducting exercises related to the PATH and PowerShell versions, rounding off with string concatenation techniques.

The course then advances to more Advanced Operations, teaching you to write and manage effective scripts. You’ll learn to add parameters to scripts, name scripts strategically, and leverage functions, conditional statements, and looping. Explore arrays and HashTables, adept error handling, and harness the power of pipelines. We'll also cover objects, members, advanced PowerShell commands, and utilizing PowerShell profiles.

Through the Files and Directories section, gain expertise in navigating directories, creating and deleting them, and performing file operations. You’ll explore file and directory permissions, with practical exercises reinforcing your skills in managing filesystem operations effectively.

The topic of Modules and Packages is addressed next, where you'll gain insight into understanding, importing, and using modules. Experience the PowerShell Gallery, install and update modules, and engage in creating simple modules through exercises. Additionally, learn about packages, including installing and managing them smoothly.

Finally, the course wraps up with PowerShell Automation, in which you will learn to automate tasks, create scheduled tasks, and use event triggers, important concepts for streamlining processes and enhancing productivity.

By the completion of this course, your team will have a solid foundation in PowerShell, ready to automate and manage tasks efficiently, significantly boosting your organization’s productivity and technical capabilities.