1 00:00:01,840 --> 00:00:04,050 Using online help is very easy. 2 00:00:04,050 --> 00:00:07,260 So let's jump back into PowerShell one more time and let me show you 3 00:00:07,260 --> 00:00:11,990 how. Once again let's start and look at help for a command like 4 00:00:11,990 --> 00:00:15,290 Get‑Process, one of our favorite commands here in this course. If we 5 00:00:15,290 --> 00:00:17,290 look down here under related links, 6 00:00:17,290 --> 00:00:20,380 we can see not only listings for other commands, 7 00:00:20,380 --> 00:00:26,120 but there is a link for an online source of this help content. 8 00:00:26,120 --> 00:00:30,320 Now you don't have to try to copy and paste that. We can just run help 9 00:00:30,320 --> 00:00:35,990 Get‑Process ‑online, and this will go for pretty much any commandlet that has 10 00:00:35,990 --> 00:00:42,310 an online link, ‑online should open it up. And what it will do is open the 11 00:00:42,310 --> 00:00:44,800 link in your default browser, which for me, 12 00:00:44,800 --> 00:00:48,690 is Microsoft Edge here, and here we go! And you can see, here 13 00:00:48,690 --> 00:00:52,400 is the help documentation for Get‑Process. 14 00:00:52,400 --> 00:00:57,040 This should be the same information that we see from the console. 15 00:00:57,040 --> 00:01:00,170 Now there are some advantages here in going online to look 16 00:01:00,170 --> 00:01:03,800 at this. For one, if I wanted to copy, 17 00:01:03,800 --> 00:01:08,550 say, this syntax, there are options here to copy and then I 18 00:01:08,550 --> 00:01:12,600 could paste it then into VS Code or in PowerShell ISE, or 19 00:01:12,600 --> 00:01:15,540 whatever I'm using to write my scripts. 20 00:01:15,540 --> 00:01:17,120 Here is the description. 21 00:01:17,120 --> 00:01:21,580 Here are the examples. Again, I could copy and paste the 22 00:01:21,580 --> 00:01:25,670 examples if I want to try them out for myself. 23 00:01:25,670 --> 00:01:31,820 Everything's here, I can scroll all the way down here to the bottom. 24 00:01:31,820 --> 00:01:35,330 You can see all the parameters as well. And at the very end, 25 00:01:35,330 --> 00:01:39,150 our links for the feedback on this page, remember I said all the 26 00:01:39,150 --> 00:01:42,640 PowerShell help documentation is open source. 27 00:01:42,640 --> 00:01:47,230 Let me also draw your attention, since we're already in a browser. Right now, 28 00:01:47,230 --> 00:01:52,420 I'm seeing help over here for PowerShell version 7. There are 29 00:01:52,420 --> 00:01:55,600 other versions of PowerShell, so if by chance you happen to be 30 00:01:55,600 --> 00:01:57,050 using Windows PowerShell still, 31 00:01:57,050 --> 00:02:00,960 you could come here to version 5.1 and look at the 5.1 32 00:02:00,960 --> 00:02:06,520 version. We're going to stick to PowerShell 7. 33 00:02:06,520 --> 00:02:10,450 And as you can see here, there are other commands as well. 34 00:02:10,450 --> 00:02:12,140 So once you are in the page, 35 00:02:12,140 --> 00:02:13,810 you can actually scroll through and look at help 36 00:02:13,810 --> 00:02:16,990 for all sorts of other commands. 37 00:02:16,990 --> 00:02:21,410 And I want to go back to PowerShell here because I want to show 38 00:02:21,410 --> 00:02:24,810 you that there is also help for other commands. 39 00:02:24,810 --> 00:02:29,670 There is a module installed on this machine called PS Release Tools, 40 00:02:29,670 --> 00:02:30,900 which is a module I wrote. 41 00:02:30,900 --> 00:02:32,770 You can install from the PowerShell gallery. 42 00:02:32,770 --> 00:02:36,340 There's a note in the demo that you can download. 43 00:02:36,340 --> 00:02:39,910 This module has commands that will make it easy to install 44 00:02:39,910 --> 00:02:43,700 PowerShell 7 on your Windows machine. 45 00:02:43,700 --> 00:02:44,880 So when I wrote this, 46 00:02:44,880 --> 00:02:50,490 I included an online link for the Install‑PowerShell command, so 47 00:02:50,490 --> 00:02:54,360 I can do ‑online, and in my particular case, 48 00:02:54,360 --> 00:02:57,960 this takes me to the GitHub repository, 49 00:02:57,960 --> 00:03:02,140 and it takes me to the markdown version of the help document. 50 00:03:02,140 --> 00:03:05,080 So this is a little bit different than what we saw with the Microsoft, 51 00:03:05,080 --> 00:03:08,780 I don't have the necessarily the copy and paste functionality. 52 00:03:08,780 --> 00:03:11,600 But this might be a little bit easier to read. 53 00:03:11,600 --> 00:03:16,550 And if by chance I am have updated the help, but maybe you 54 00:03:16,550 --> 00:03:19,580 are running an older version of the module, 55 00:03:19,580 --> 00:03:22,580 you may not realize that something may have changed in the command, so 56 00:03:22,580 --> 00:03:29,240 looking at the online help really can be to your benefit. 57 00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:30,200 Unfortunately, 58 00:03:30,200 --> 00:03:33,930 help doesn't work all the time, or I should say, 59 00:03:33,930 --> 00:03:36,130 online help doesn't work all the time. 60 00:03:36,130 --> 00:03:42,190 Let's look at help for a command called Test‑NetConnection. 61 00:03:42,190 --> 00:03:44,510 There is an online link there, 62 00:03:44,510 --> 00:03:50,640 so let's try help Test‑NetConnection and do ‑online and see what happens. 63 00:03:50,640 --> 00:03:52,980 All right, so there is help here. 64 00:03:52,980 --> 00:03:54,150 However, 65 00:03:54,150 --> 00:03:57,830 it may slightly be out of date because you conceive the message 66 00:03:57,830 --> 00:04:02,750 there that Microsoft is no longer updating the help. 67 00:04:02,750 --> 00:04:04,940 I don't know what's going to happen with this module. 68 00:04:04,940 --> 00:04:07,180 I have no idea what the long term plans are. 69 00:04:07,180 --> 00:04:11,820 It may be that it gets revised and that help will be updated. 70 00:04:11,820 --> 00:04:16,350 But it's still better than nothing, so, you can get online help. 71 00:04:16,350 --> 00:04:20,390 Again I have a nice copy feature, I have again all of the 72 00:04:20,390 --> 00:04:22,670 details on the parameters, all of the examples. 73 00:04:22,670 --> 00:04:28,930 It's all there, so you still may find help, but it may not be maintained. 74 00:04:28,930 --> 00:04:33,000 The last thing that is a potential gotcha as much 75 00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:36,340 as you may be thinking oh great, all this online help is awesome. 76 00:04:36,340 --> 00:04:41,100 Let's go back to my vegetable commands. To get vegetable, so you decide, hey, 77 00:04:41,100 --> 00:04:43,230 let's look at the online help, forget vegetable. 78 00:04:43,230 --> 00:04:46,600 Yeah I get an error message there. 79 00:04:46,600 --> 00:04:50,080 The online version of the help topic cannot be displayed, 80 00:04:50,080 --> 00:04:52,670 well, that's because if we look at help, 81 00:04:52,670 --> 00:04:57,800 for get‑vegetable, you can see under related links, there's no online link, 82 00:04:57,800 --> 00:05:02,330 so this particular command doesn't have online help, so of course you are out of 83 00:05:02,330 --> 00:05:07,090 luck. There is no online version of help for this command, 84 00:05:07,090 --> 00:05:09,940 and you will find this in other commands as well, 85 00:05:09,940 --> 00:05:13,750 both from Microsoft and other third party vendors and from 86 00:05:13,750 --> 00:05:16,090 modules that you may install from the community. 87 00:05:16,090 --> 00:05:18,840 There's no requirement that PowerShell has online help. 88 00:05:18,840 --> 00:05:21,240 That's why you have to look at the help documentation. 89 00:05:21,240 --> 00:05:22,430 If you see the link, 90 00:05:22,430 --> 00:05:25,750 then you can use it. The last thing here with online 91 00:05:25,750 --> 00:05:28,640 help, it's an unfortunate deficiency. 92 00:05:28,640 --> 00:05:32,140 If I run help about_Aliases and say, you know what, let me 93 00:05:32,140 --> 00:05:37,930 see the online version. That also fails. None of the about 94 00:05:37,930 --> 00:05:40,740 topics have online links. 95 00:05:40,740 --> 00:05:43,320 We in the PowerShell community and the MVP's, we've 96 00:05:43,320 --> 00:05:46,670 asked for this for a long time, and it still has never happened. 97 00:05:46,670 --> 00:05:48,950 I don't know if it ever will. 98 00:05:48,950 --> 00:05:53,070 Let's go back to Internet Explorer here and let me go back 99 00:05:53,070 --> 00:05:57,550 to my Get‑Process command. Remember I showed you that I can 100 00:05:57,550 --> 00:06:00,310 get help for other commands. 101 00:06:00,310 --> 00:06:11,790 I can also come here and let's type a search for about_aliases. 102 00:06:11,790 --> 00:06:18,290 Click the link there, and now here is a link for about aliases. 103 00:06:18,290 --> 00:06:23,190 Now I have the about topic, the online version. 104 00:06:23,190 --> 00:06:25,450 So the online version exists. 105 00:06:25,450 --> 00:06:30,320 That's why we wish there was a link in the local help to bring me to this page, 106 00:06:30,320 --> 00:06:31,460 but it doesn't exist. 107 00:06:31,460 --> 00:06:34,030 But once you're here, then you're good to go, 108 00:06:34,030 --> 00:06:38,100 because now I can read the about topic all online, and I can read 109 00:06:38,100 --> 00:06:40,850 the most current version of the about topic, 110 00:06:40,850 --> 00:06:45,180 and as you can see here, here are all the other about topics, so I 111 00:06:45,180 --> 00:06:47,740 can just scroll through and read the about topics. 112 00:06:47,740 --> 00:06:51,340 You may want to bookmark this page so you can get back to 113 00:06:51,340 --> 00:06:55,440 this information really nice and quickly. 114 00:06:55,440 --> 00:07:00,980 That is a look at working with the online versions of help, 115 00:07:00,980 --> 00:07:04,430 something that you probably want to get in the habit of doing. 116 00:07:04,430 --> 00:07:06,710 It is nice to be able to copy and paste, 117 00:07:06,710 --> 00:07:07,990 especially the examples, 118 00:07:07,990 --> 00:07:11,010 so that you can try them out for yourself because it's a great way 119 00:07:11,010 --> 00:07:18,000 to learn PowerShell and to see how it works. Let's go back to the slides and wrap it all up.