There are a couple of tools for Powershell scripting that if you try, I don’t think you will ever want to be with out. You pretty frequently hear about PowerGUI, which is a pretty nice tool, especially for Powershell newbies, but I wanted to share with you my favorite toolset I use when working really rolling up my sleeves for some serious work in the shell. I’ll give you some quick tidbits on features, but you really need to give these a trial run.

Powershell Analyzer -  This was the first editor I picked up prior to Powershell 1.0 RTM. You get a SQL Query Analyzer type interface, allowing you to highlight a snippet for code and press F5 to run. What’s more, you get the big white space for scripting with a Powershell window in the upper pane. It has better intellisense than the native shell as well.  I keep a file with all my most common code snippets, such as connecting to my management group. It makes scripting so much more convenient because I can highlight and execute snippets at will.

• The visual provider explorer lets you visually browse the Powershell drives in an expandable tree view.

• The vistual results  explorer lets you drag result properties to a toolbar for sorting (much like Silect MP Studio if you’re familiar).

By Powershell Analyzer is just the beginning. You can kick your environment up another notch with Powershell Plus. Powershell Plus turbo-charges your intellisense by indexing all the providers on your machine, and provides advanced intellisense for WMI providers - no need to memorize all those WMI proviers anymore!  The code editor is similar to the white space you see in Powershell Analyzer, but it pops out in a separate floating window. You can save your code snippets in a library for easy retrieval into the editor, and it has a nice debugger.

You really must give these a try. I think I paid about $79 at http://www.powershell.com/analyzer/