Top PowerShell Resources for Sysadmins: Locksmith, Maester & ImportExcel

Not sure where to start with PowerShell? Andrew's got a map. PDQ's PowerShell Wednesday team walks through their top PowerShell resources — covering beginner learning paths, essential modules like ImportExcel and Oh My Posh, and security-focused tools including Locksmith, Maester, and LeastPrivilegeMs.Graph for auditing Active Directory and Microsoft Graph permissions. In this video: Windows Terminal, VS Code PowerShell extension, and why PowerShell 7 matters for modern scripting The Getting Started with PowerShell Jumpstart series — still relevant despite being from 2013 PDQ's own resources: PowerShell Wednesday, the PDQ blog, and the weekly live stream PowerShell Conference Europe and powershell.org as sources for cutting-edge community talks on YouTube PSReadLine, Posh-Git, and Oh My Posh for improving your terminal experience ImportExcel: how to export data to formatted Excel files without having Excel installed Locksmith: auditing Active Directory Certificate Services for misconfigurations and privilege escalation paths Maester: running security baseline checks against your environment without needing to be a security expert LeastPrivilegeMs.Graph: auditing Microsoft Graph app permissions to enforce least privilege based on actual log activity Can't get enough PDQ? Subscribe and enable notifications! Join us on Discord!: https://discord.gg/pdq Our blog: https://www.pdq.com/blog/ PDQ Connect free trial: https://www.pdq.com/trial/connect/ The PowerShell Podcast: https://pdq.com/the-powershell-podcast Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/pdq/ X: @admarsenal Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PDQlive/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdq.com Instagram: @pdqlife TikTok: @pdqlife #PowerShell #sysadmin #informationtechnology #PDQ #ITAutomation #ActiveDirectory #WindowsServer #endpointmanagement CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction 0:28 Windows Terminal, VS Code & PowerShell 7 0:54 Getting Started with PowerShell Jumpstart Series 1:31 PDQ Blog, PowerShell Wednesday & Live Stream 1:48 PowerShell Conference Europe & powershell.org 2:13 PSReadLine, Oh My Posh & ImportExcel 3:33 PowerShell Security Tools Overview 3:52 Locksmith: Auditing AD Certificate Services 4:39 Maester: Security Baseline Checks 5:19 LeastPrivilegeMs.Graph: Auditing MS Graph Permissions 6:55 Outro