Define scheduled jobs in Windows PowerShell
Scheduled jobs are a useful combination of Windows PowerShell background jobs and Windows Task Scheduler tasks. Similar to the latter, scheduled jobs are saved to disk. You can review and manage Windows PowerShell scheduled jobs in the Task Scheduler, enabling and disabling tasks or simply running the scheduled job. You can even use the scheduled job:
- As a template for creating other scheduled jobs.
- To establish a one-time schedule or periodic schedule for starting jobs.
- To set conditions under which jobs start again.
Note
You can do all of these tasks from the Task Scheduler.
Windows PowerShell saves the results of scheduled jobs to disk and creates a running log of job output. Scheduled jobs have a customized set of commands that you can use to manage them. You can use these commands to create, edit, manage, disable, and re-enable scheduled jobs, job triggers, and job options.
To create a scheduled job, use the scheduled job commands. Note that anything created in Task Scheduler is considered a scheduled task even if it's in the Microsoft\Windows\PowerShell\ScheduledJobs path in the Task Scheduler. After you create a scheduled job, review and manage it in the Task Scheduler by selecting a scheduled job to:
- Find the job triggers on the Triggers tab.
- Find the scheduled job options on the General and Conditions tabs.
- Review the job instances that have already been run on the History tab.
Note
When you change a scheduled job setting in Task Scheduler, the change applies for all future instances of that scheduled job.
The commands that work with scheduled jobs in the PSScheduledJob module are included in the current versions of the Windows Server and Client operating systems. To review the complete list of commands, run the following command:
Get-Command –Module PSScheduledJob
Scheduled jobs consist of three components:
- The job itself defines the command that will run.
- Job options define options and running criteria.
- Job triggers define when the job will run.
You typically create a job option object and a job trigger object, and store those objects in variables. You then use those variables when creating the actual scheduled job.
Note
The ScheduledTasks module includes commands that can manage all tasks in the Windows Task Scheduler.