Get all (non-default) scheduled tasks

I tried querying the scheduled tasks to give me a list of all (non-default) scheduled tasks. I also wanted to have its schedule information, which appeared to be a pretty hard task in the get-service command. After several unsuccessful attempts, I tried something else with great and immediate results. It appeared that the schtasks did give me all the info I need, so I query the tasks by using the schtasks dos tool and saving that information into variables.

Since all default tasks either have no computername, no author, next run time as N/A, or contains the author Microsoft. So first I will query for all scheduled tasks and then filter out those that I don’t need; thus leaving me with the tasks I need for my automatic documentation purposes.

I haven’t tested the script on Windows 2008, but I assume that it uses the same naming as Windows 2012; the commands itself are all Powershell 2 compatible, so should work on 2008 as they also work on Windows 2003.

In this script I don’t remove disabled tasks from the list, because I need to list those myself as well, but I did supply the line that you can add to the where-object part of the $ScheduledTasks to filter those out as well.

The text for every schedule was returned over several properties, of which I make a readable (pretty plain English) text at both Switch parts of the script (one for Windows 2003, the other for 2012 (and presumably 2008)). Beware of the spaces after Daily and Hourly, which schtasks appears to return!

#Get all scheduled tasks on the system in a Csv format
$Tasks = schtasks /query /v /fo csv | ConvertFrom-Csv
#Filtering out all Windows tasks for Windows 2k3 and 2k12 (and 2k8?)
$ScheduledTasks = $Tasks | Where-Object { $_.HostName -eq $env:COMPUTERNAME -and $_.Author -ne "N/A" -and $_.'Next Run Time' -ne "N/A" -and $_.Author -notmatch "Microsoft" -and $_.TaskName -notmatch "User_Feed_Synchronization" }
# -and $_.'Scheduled Task State' -ne "Disabled" # <-- Add this to the where-object selection in the line above to filter out disabled tasks as well

Foreach($ScheduledTask in $ScheduledTasks)
{
$Tasktext = ""
$ScheduledTask.'TaskName'.Substring($ScheduledTask.'TaskName'.IndexOf("\")+1)
$ScheduledTask.'Start In'
$ScheduledTask.'Task To Run'
#In case of W2k12 (and W2k8?)
If($ScheduledTask.'Schedule Type')
{
Switch($ScheduledTask.'Schedule Type')
{
"Hourly " { $Tasktext = $ScheduledTask.'Schedule Type' + "at " + $ScheduledTask.'Start Time' }
"Daily " { $Tasktext = $ScheduledTask.'Schedule Type' + "at " + $ScheduledTask.'Start Time' }
"Weekly" { $Tasktext = $ScheduledTask.'Schedule Type' + " on every " + $ScheduledTask.Days + " at " + $ScheduledTask.'Start Time' }
"Monthly"
{
If($ScheduledTask.Months -eq "Every month") { $Tasktext = $ScheduledTask.'Schedule Type' + " on day " + $ScheduledTask.Days + " at " + $ScheduledTask.'Start Time'}
Else { $Tasktext = "Yearly on day " + $ScheduledTask.Days + " of " + $ScheduledTask.Months + " at " + $ScheduledTask.'Start Time' }
}
}
}
#In case of W2k3
If($ScheduledTask.'Scheduled Type')
{
Switch($ScheduledTask.'Scheduled Type')
{
"Hourly " { $Tasktext = $ScheduledTask.'Scheduled Type' + "at " + $ScheduledTask.'Start Time' }
"Daily " { $Tasktext = $ScheduledTask.'Scheduled Type' + "at " + $ScheduledTask.'Start Time' }
"Weekly" { $Tasktext = $ScheduledTask.'Scheduled Type' + " on every " + $ScheduledTask.Days + " at " + $ScheduledTask.'Start Time' }
"Monthly"
{
If($ScheduledTask.Months -eq "JAN,FEB,MAR,APR,MAY,JUN,JUL,AUG,SEP,OCT,NOV,DEC") { $Tasktext = $ScheduledTask.'Scheduled Type' + " on day " + $ScheduledTask.Days + " at " + $ScheduledTask.'Start Time' }
Else { $Tasktext = "Yearly on day " + $ScheduledTask.Days + " of " + $ScheduledTask.Months + " at " + $ScheduledTask.'Start Time' }
}
}
}
#This line can be removed if the filter excludes disabled tasks
If($ScheduledTask.'Scheduled Task State' -eq "Disabled") { $Tasktext = "Disabled" }
$Tasktext
}

This leave you with the following 4 variables, which you can use for exporting or other purposes

$ScheduledTask.'TaskName'.Substring($ScheduledTask.'TaskName'.IndexOf("\")+1)
$ScheduledTask.'Start In'
$ScheduledTask.'Task To Run'
$Tasktext

You can download a copy of this script here