Doing the community thing

One of the aspects I enjoy most about the TechNet community is creating TechNet gallery uploads. I like the fact that when I create a tool for personal use I can share the burden of testing it with the community, I like the new  ideas that sometimes follow after sharing a tool or pieces of code stemming from community feedback, I like to  watch if a tool becomes popular or not (which is just like a game to me), and I like the fact that I can always find my custom tools back. This blog post is about my most recent gallery upload, and I want to give it some attention here so the tool gets a better start in life.

When I start a greenfield SharePoint implementation, early on in the game I execute capacity planning analysis.  This gives me an idea about what the customer is planning to do with SharePoint, and it also gives me a chance to formally discuss what not to do with SharePoint. After a SharePoint environment is actually being used, I feel it's important to frequently check for capacity planning boundaries, such as the number of subsites, lists, columns, and so on. Because of this, some years ago I created a command line tool called Maxer For SharePoint 2010 which handles a nice standard set of checks. I do feel the tool had two shortcomings:
- In large environments it could take a really long time before the tool completed.
- It was not possible for people downloading the tool to extend it.

So, very recently I decided to port this command line tool to a PowerShell script, update it for SharePoint 2013, and make it available via the TechNet gallery at https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/PowerShell-Maxer-for-cd9e13d6. What I like most about PowerShell is the quote from the author of a PowerShell book I was a technical reviewer of: "If you don't learn PowerShell, you better learn the phrase: 'Do you want fries to go with that shake?'". Secondly, I also like the fact that PowerShell is so easy to customize to ones own needs. So I do believe that the PowerShell Maxer for SharePoint 2013 is a step forward.

If you absolutely feel that you want to check it out, I won't try to stop you!