Scheduled Tasks are a cornerstone of automation on Windows servers—but configuring them manually through Task Scheduler is slow, error-prone, and completely unscalable. 😩

Whether you want to run a nightly cleanup script, trigger a compliance check every hour, or reboot a rogue app every Sunday, PowerShell is your friend. In this post, we’ll show you how to create, configure, and troubleshoot scheduled tasks entirely from the command line.

💡 Bonus: If you’re using Ohlala Operations, you can run these PowerShell commands across your EC2 instances directly—without RDP or GPOs.

⚙️ Step 1: Define the Action

Every scheduled task needs an action. Here’s how to define one that runs PowerShell with a specific script:

$action = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute "powershell.exe" -Argument "-File C:\Scripts\cleanup.ps1"

You can also run inline commands:

$action = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute "powershell.exe" -Argument "-Command `"Get-Process | Out-File C:\temp\procs.txt`""

⏰ Step 2: Define the Trigger

Want the task to run daily at 2 AM? Use a time-based trigger:

$trigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -Daily -At 2am

Need more control? You can create weekly, at-logon, or one-time triggers:

# Every Sunday at 3 AM
$trigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -Weekly -DaysOfWeek Sunday -At 3am

👤 Step 3: Set the Principal (Who Runs It)

By default, tasks run as the current user. But on a server, you typically want SYSTEM or a service account:

$principal = New-ScheduledTaskPrincipal -UserId "SYSTEM" -LogonType ServiceAccount -RunLevel Highest

Replace "SYSTEM" with a domain user if needed.

🧩 Step 4: Register the Task

Now put it all together:

Register-ScheduledTask -TaskName "NightlyCleanup" `
    -Action $action `
    -Trigger $trigger `
    -Principal $principal `
    -Description "Deletes old temp files every night at 2 AM"

This task is now ready and visible under Task Scheduler > Task Scheduler Library. 🎉

🧪 Step 5: Verify and Troubleshoot

List all tasks:

Get-ScheduledTask

Check your specific task:

Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName "NightlyCleanup" | Get-ScheduledTaskInfo

Check the event log if it’s failing silently:

Get-WinEvent -LogName Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler/Operational | 
    Where-Object { $_.Message -like "*NightlyCleanup*" } |
    Select-Object TimeCreated, Id, Message -First 10

🚀 Bonus: Run This Remotely with Ohlala

Using Ohlala Operations, you can run all of the above PowerShell commands remotely—across one or many EC2 instances—without needing RDP or interactive logins. 💻🌐

Simply open the Command Runner in the Ohlala UI, paste the commands, and execute. For example:

$action = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute "powershell.exe" -Argument "-File C:\Scripts\cleanup.ps1"
$trigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -Daily -At 2am
$principal = New-ScheduledTaskPrincipal -UserId "SYSTEM" -LogonType ServiceAccount -RunLevel Highest
Register-ScheduledTask -TaskName "NightlyCleanup" -Action $action -Trigger $trigger -Principal $principal -Description "Deletes old temp files every night at 2 AM"

This gives you an easy way to deploy tasks across multiple servers from a single interface.

🛠️ In the future, we’ll integrate scheduled task creation directly into Ohlala Recipes to make this even faster and more repeatable.

✅ Wrap-Up

Creating scheduled tasks with PowerShell is simple, powerful, and automatable—which makes it a perfect fit for modern Windows server management. Skip the GUI, skip the clicks, and manage your tasks like code. 💪

Have a task you want to automate across your Windows fleet? Try it with Ohlala Operations and see how zero-RDP server automation feels.