How could I have made this Powershell script that executes robocopy code better

Question

I am trying to get better at Powershell and was wondering if I could get some advice on how to make this code more efficient/cleaner/anything.

This code is intended to launch three batch windows running robocopy at the same time with unique log names.

I looked into using a foreach loop but wasn't sure how I could do that with so many unique variables. Thinking back, I probably could have imported each source, destination and log name into a CSV though but this may have been cleaner/better because it's all in one file instead.

# sets the files to exclude 
$defaultDirExclusionSet = '"$Recycle.Bin" "System Volume Information"'

# setting the filename perameter so that we have some timestamps.
$filedate = "$(get-date -format 'yyyy-MM-dd-HH-MM')"  # we can remove the HH and MM later... have this on now for testing.

#options for robocopy
$RoboOptions = "/MIR /COPY:DATSOU /ZB /R:1 /W:5 /XD $defaultDirExclusionSet /NP /TEE"

#main fileshares
$source = "\\server1\D$\Shares"
$destination = "\\server2\D$"
$logname = "fileshare"

#Citrix User Store Shares
$source1 = "\\server1\D$\CitrixUserStore"
$destination1 = "\\server2\E$\CitrixUserStore"
$logname1 = "ctxusrshare"

#Citrix User Redir Shares
$source2 = "\\server1\D$\CitrixUserRedir"
$destination2 = "\\server2\E$\CitrixUserRedir"
$logname2 = "ctxusrredir"


##### launch all at once.  fix the first line before using.

Start-Process robocopy.exe -ArgumentList "$($source) $($destination) $($RoboOptions.split(' ')) /log+:c:\robocopylogs\$($logname)_$($filedate).txt"
Start-Process robocopy.exe -ArgumentList "$($source1) $($destination1) $($RoboOptions.split(' ')) /log+:c:\robocopylogs\$($logname1)_$($filedate).txt"
Start-Process robocopy.exe -ArgumentList "$($source2) $($destination2) $($RoboOptions.split(' ')) /log+:c:\robocopylogs\$($logname2)_$($filedate).txt"

Answer 1

• If you don't want an external csv file,
  use an internal one - simulated with a here string and ConvertFrom-Csv
• in a date format specifier upper case MM are for month, minutes are lower case mm
• the following script has several variable names shorted to keep line length down.
• the final command is only echoed / commented out.

---

## Q:\Test\2019\08\23\sf_226703.ps1
# sets the files to exclude 
$defaultDirExclusionSet = '"$Recycle.Bin" "System Volume Information"'

#options for robocopy
$RoboOpts = "/MIR /COPY:DATSOU /ZB /R:1 /W:5 /XD $defaultDirExclusionSet /NP /TEE"

# simulate external csv with a here string and ConvertFrom-Csv
$RCJobs = @'
desc,src,dst,log
"main fileshares","\\server1\D$\Shares","\\server2\D$","fileshare"
"Citrix User Store Shares","\\server1\D$\CitrixUserStore","\\server2\E$\CitrixUserStore","ctxusrshare"
"Citrix User Redir Shares","\\server1\D$\CitrixUserRedir","\\server2\E$\CitrixUserRedir","ctxusrredir"
'@ -split '\r?\n' | ConvertFrom-Csv

$RCJobs | Format-Table -Auto

##### launch all at once.  fix the first line before using.
foreach($J in $RCJobs){
    Write-Host -Fore Green "Starting job $($J.desc)"
    $Args = '"{0}" "{1}" {2} /log+:"C:\robocopylogs\{3}_{4:yyyy-MM-dd-HH-mm}.txt"' -f `
           $J.src,$J.dst,$RoboOpts,$J.log,(Get-Date)
    "Start-Process robocopy.exe -ArgumentList $Args"
    #Start-Process robocopy.exe -ArgumentList $Args  
}

Sample output without executing RoboCopy.

> Q:\Test\2019\08\23\sf_226703.ps1

desc                     src                          dst                          log
----                     ---                          ---                          ---
main fileshares          \\server1\D$\Shares          \\server2\D$                 fileshare
Citrix User Store Shares \\server1\D$\CitrixUserStore \\server2\E$\CitrixUserStore ctxusrshare
Citrix User Redir Shares \\server1\D$\CitrixUserRedir \\server2\E$\CitrixUserRedir ctxusrredir


Starting job main fileshares
Start-Process robocopy.exe -ArgumentList "\\server1\D$\Shares" "\\server2\D$" /MIR /COPY:DATSOU /ZB /R:1 /W:5 /XD "$Recycle.Bin" "System Volume Information" /NP /TEE /log+:"C:\robocopylogs\fileshare_2019-08-23-20-59.txt"
Starting job Citrix User Store Shares
Start-Process robocopy.exe -ArgumentList "\\server1\D$\CitrixUserStore" "\\server2\E$\CitrixUserStore" /MIR /COPY:DATSOU /ZB /R:1 /W:5 /XD "$Recycle.Bin" "System Volume Information" /NP /TEE /log+:"C:\robocopylogs\ctxusrshare_2019-08-23-20-59.txt"
Starting job Citrix User Redir Shares
Start-Process robocopy.exe -ArgumentList "\\server1\D$\CitrixUserRedir" "\\server2\E$\CitrixUserRedir" /MIR /COPY:DATSOU /ZB /R:1 /W:5 /XD "$Recycle.Bin" "System Volume Information" /NP /TEE /log+:"C:\robocopylogs\ctxusrredir_2019-08-23-20-59.txt"