When I get in to work in the morning, I like a good cup of coffee waiting for me, a neck rub, and all my favorite programs open and waiting for me. Since the first two seem out of the question, I focus on the third.
I’ve automated my start-of-day set of programs before by other means, but it’s awfully fun to see how PowerShell does it. So I did.
First, the PowerShell itself:
## Open Outlook ### From script on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3675533/powershell-to-open-outlook-make-visible #
$outlook = new-object -com Outlook.Application
$namespace = $outlook.GetNamespace("MAPI")
$folder = $namespace.GetDefaultFolder("olFolderInbox")
$explorer = $folder.GetExplorer()
$explorer.Display()
## Open IE with several tabs ###Modified from script on http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ITCG/thread/9d003109-0903-414b-a635-ca2a9c485381/ #
$ie = New-Object -ComObject InternetExplorer.Application
$ie.Navigate2("about:Tabs",0x1000)
$ie.Navigate2(https://myemail.com/)
$ie.Navigate2("www.twitter.com",0x1000)
$ie.Visible = $true
## Open SSMS ### Inspired by http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee176882.aspx #
Invoke-Item c:\temp\blank.sql
## Open a Word document ###Modified from script on http://powershellscripts.blogspot.com/2007/02/convert-or-export-word-documents-to-pdf.html #
$word = new-object -ComObject "word.application"
$doc = $word.documents.open("c:\path\to\My Documents\Status.doc")
#Note: This script will only finish after SSMS receives the required authentication #
A couple of note: Clearly, I got all these scripts from digging around on Google, and some playing with Powershell Help. I like that I can open multiple tabs in IE; I leave one tab blank for Pandora, which would start playing automatically if I started it with this…and I don’t want music playing from my computer without me here. I didn’t find an easy way to just open SSMS - I’m sure somebody will provide me the answer in Comments below – so I just opened a blank SQL file to do the trick.
Next, I created a BAT file with the PowerShell command powershell -command “& ‘c:\command\Open_My_Programs.ps1′ “ I saved this BAT file and the POSH file in c:\command\
Finally, I scheduled this to run right before I start my work day, using Windows Task Scheduler (see the Control Panel). The scheduled task uses a command prompt, and I used advanced options to change the command to C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /C “c:\command\Open_My_Programs.bat” and to kill the process if it runs for 90 minutes. (If I”m not at the office to log into SSMS, no point it letting the POSH script hang).
I haven’t tested this yet (how’s that for lazy blogging?), but as I understand it you kinda have to put the Powershell call in a batch file, because of the double quotes.
So there you go, a quick, dirty, and fun way to feel like the rock star IT guy you know you are.
By-the-by, I’m reading through Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches by Don Jones (link goes to my review on ITBookworm.com), and I HIGHLY recommend it!
Happy days,
Jen McCown
