how to use PowerShell to inventory Scheduled Tasks

Question

Does anyone have a link or script that uses PowerShell to inventory the Scheduled Tasks on a server, including the Action?

I am able to get the Scheduled Service com object and what I would call "top level" properties (name, state, lastruntime), but would like to also get information from the "Actions" part of the Schedule Tasks (essentially, the name of Scheduled Task and its commandline).

For example:

$schedule = new-object -com("Schedule.Service") 
$schedule.connect() 
$tasks = $schedule.getfolder("\").gettasks(0)

$tasks | select Name, LastRunTime

foreach ($t in $tasks)
{
foreach ($a in $t.Actions)
{
    $a.Path
}
}

The above snippet of code works in terms of listing the tasks; but the loop on the Actions simply does not seem to do anything, no error, no output whatsoever.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

This is probably very similar to current answers, but I wrote a quick script to get you going. The problem with your current script is that there is no Actions property in a task. You need to extract it from the xml task-definition that the comobject provides. The following script will return an array of objects, one per scheduled task. It includes the action if the action is to run one or more command. It's just to get you going, so you need to modify it to include more of the properties if you need them.

function getTasks($path) {
    $out = @()

    # Get root tasks
    $schedule.GetFolder($path).GetTasks(0) | % {
        $xml = [xml]$_.xml
        $out += New-Object psobject -Property @{
            "Name" = $_.Name
            "Path" = $_.Path
            "LastRunTime" = $_.LastRunTime
            "NextRunTime" = $_.NextRunTime
            "Actions" = ($xml.Task.Actions.Exec | % { "$($_.Command) $($_.Arguments)" }) -join "`n"
        }
    }

    # Get tasks from subfolders
    $schedule.GetFolder($path).GetFolders(0) | % {
        $out += getTasks($_.Path)
    }

    #Output
    $out
}

$tasks = @()

$schedule = New-Object -ComObject "Schedule.Service"
$schedule.Connect() 

# Start inventory
$tasks += getTasks("\")

# Close com
[System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($schedule) | Out-Null
Remove-Variable schedule

# Output all tasks
$tasks

Ex. of output

PS > .\Untitled1.ps1 | ? { $_.Name -eq "test" }


Actions     : notepad.exe c:\test.txt
              calc.exe 
Path        : \test
Name        : test
LastRunTime : 30.12.1899 00:00:00
NextRunTime : 17.03.2013 13:36:38

Answer 2

here a quick one based on: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2015/01/17/weekend-scripter-use-powershell-to-document-scheduled-tasks/

Uses Powershell: Get-ScheduledTask and Get-ScheduledTaskInfo

### run like >>  Invoke-Command -ComputerName localhost, server1, server2 -FilePath C:\tmp\Get_WinTasks.ps1

$taskPath = "\"
$outcsv = "c:\$env:COMPUTERNAME-WinSchTaskDef.csv"
Get-ScheduledTask -TaskPath $taskPath |
    ForEach-Object { [pscustomobject]@{
     Server = $env:COMPUTERNAME
     Name = $_.TaskName
     Path = $_.TaskPath
     Description = $_.Description
     Author = $_.Author
     RunAsUser = $_.Principal.userid
    LastRunTime = $(($_ | Get-ScheduledTaskInfo).LastRunTime)
     LastResult = $(($_ | Get-ScheduledTaskInfo).LastTaskResult)
     NextRun = $(($_ | Get-ScheduledTaskInfo).NextRunTime)
     Status = $_.State
     Command = $_.Actions.execute
     Arguments = $_.Actions.Arguments }} |
     Export-Csv -Path $outcsv -NoTypeInformation