Other tools and frameworks

As time passed and frustrations grew due to having to work with CSOM and other low-level SharePoint APIs, solutions began to emerge seeking to simplify interactivity between SharePoint and PowerShell. Some are free and some come with a price; every one offers the promise of increased capabilities with reduced complexity.

While it would be impossible to cover every available framework and their available commands in any detail, it's important to understand these resources exist. Eventually, when you hit the limits of what can be done using the tools described previously—or perhaps sooner—you'll want to explore what these tools can do for you:

• Sharegate: While this product got its start as a tool for migrating files into SharePoint, over the years it has gained many functions for reporting and management. Practically everything Sharegate can do in the UI can be done in PowerShell too. Its price is US $1,500 to US $3,000 per year (http://sharegate.com).
• CloudPower: For sophisticated SharePoint automation and management needs, the authors of Kraken created CloudPower, a set of PowerShell scripts that interact with SharePoint. CloudPower is a commercial product with both free and paid editions, ranging from US $250 to US $1,250 per year (http://liquidmercurysolutions.com/apps/cloudpower).

If the idea of paying for supported commands to interact with SharePoint doesn't appeal to you, or is simply beyond your reach, you could try some of these open-source offerings:

• SharePoint PnP: This is a set of tools published by Microsoft's Patterns and Practices team. It includes a library of code for accessing the SharePoint APIs, including PowerShell commands. It is a very powerful set of tools, but perhaps it is not always the most user-friendly or fault-tolerant option, since it was written by developers for developers and is available for free as an open-source project (https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline).
• Kraken SharePoint client: First developed for SharePoint 2010, Kraken is a set of tools available for streamlining access to SharePoint and SharePoint Online. Kraken is an open-source library; as such it can be accessed from C# or PowerShell or similar (https://github.com/LiquidHg/kraken/tree/master/Kraken.SharePoint.Client).
• Gary Lapointe's PowerShell modules: This is an older set of PowerShell commands that has been around for a while. It was one of the first toolkits published, so it may be out of date in some cases (https://github.com/glapointe?tab=repositories).

Certainly, there are many more SharePoint tools out there that would be of use to admins using PowerShell. It's a big—and constantly changing—universe! We encourage you to continue your search online and check back often for new offerings.