Create Windows Scheduler Task By PowerShell Automation

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In this article, we will see simple steps to configure windows scheduler tasks using PowerShell Automation.

This article can be useful in conjunction with some of the earlier articles written on Process Automation using PowerShell

Before getting into the code, let see the Windows Task Manager to understand where we can find tasks which are getting created by the code

Type “Task Manager”

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You can see the highlighted section where you can find newly created Tasks

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The code is pretty simple and based on standard PowerShell cmdlets as described below:

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In Step 1, we are defining Trigger for the Task by using “New-ScheduledTaskTrigger” cmdlet. It could be any permissible Time Unit as shown below

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In Step 2 & 3 we are setting up User Name and Password that the Task will be used as Owner Account to run the defined action

In Step 4 we are defining the action by using “New-ScheduledTaskAction” cmdlet that needs to be executed by the task when trigger reached, in this demo, this task will execute a PowerShell script

Finally, in Step-5 we are registering the tasks by using “Register- ScheduledTask” cmdlet. This cmdlet takes Name, Trigger, UserName, Password and Action as an input parameter (as defined in above steps)

Once the script gets executed a new task will be added to the Windows Task Scheduler

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We can see the new task added in Task Scheduler Window as shown below:

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If we double- click this task, it will open the task configuration screen that we can use verify the task properties as explained below:

General Tab: Here we can see the name of the Task & User Account that will be used to execute the defined action

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**Triggers Tab: **Here we can see the Trigger defined for this task

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**Actions Tab: **Here we can see the action defined for this task. In this demo, we have specified a PowerShell Script to be executed whenever respective trigger achieved

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In case if you make any changes to this task Windows will present you a password dialog to confirm the User Credentials, If asked enter the respective credentials

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This is a simple implementation that allows us to configure Windows Tasks using PowerShell Automation.

That is all for this demo.