{"id":37943,"date":"2022-10-03T13:55:04","date_gmt":"2022-10-03T12:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/?p=37943"},"modified":"2022-10-04T14:04:51","modified_gmt":"2022-10-04T13:04:51","slug":"what-makes-command-blocks-and-sets-different-from-powershell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/it\/blog\/what-makes-command-blocks-and-sets-different-from-powershell","title":{"rendered":"What makes Command Blocks and Sets different from PowerShell?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There will always be tasks that take more time than they should. <\/span>As tenant numbers grow and Microsoft processes advance, IT service providers will always chase the need to find extra time. This goes for efficient ways of working too.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are many useful Microsoft solutions to help support businesses with Windows admin tasks. One of the most commonly used being\u00a0PowerShell.<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is PowerShell?<\/span><\/h2>\n

PowerShell is a cross-platform task automation solution made up of a command-line shell, a scripting language, and a configuration management framework. PowerShell runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many MSPs and Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) use it to automate various repetitive user tasks, for example, converting an inbox to a shared mailbox or adding someone to a Microsoft Teams channel.<\/span><\/p>\n

The benefit of PowerShell<\/span><\/h2>\n

Specialists no longer need to spend hours building and configuring Microsoft 365 environments manually. When used, technicians can automate repetitive setup tasks at scale.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, challenges still arise when using PowerShell and scripts and they tend to appear when you manage a large volume of tenants.<\/span><\/p>\n

How can you manage customer environments more efficiently?<\/span><\/h2>\n

This falls to the support of Command Blocks and Command Sets. This could be new to you as it\u2019s specific Cloud User Hub<\/span><\/a><\/span> terminology, but bear with us, we\u2019ll touch on that soon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with an example.<\/span><\/p>\n

A help desk team member has 20 tenants whose security policies need updating to meet the latest requirements.\u00a0To facilitate this, they need to hop into each customer portal to do the setup, which naturally will take them a lot of time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, you could use PowerShell to do this, but it isn\u2019t a scalable service. So, how will you distribute those scripts or transfer the knowledge across a 20-user environment?<\/span><\/p>\n

While PowerShell scripts can make life a lot easier for Microsoft Partners, they still typically run inside each individual tenant. As scripts need to be kept up to date and tweaked when Microsoft configurations or settings change, switching from portal to portal to manage this becomes an inefficient way of working, and ultimately, can hold you back from scaling.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are other limitations to PowerShell, too:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n