Extract Timer Job History Using PowerShell

Applies To: SharePoint 2010, PowerShell

I was tasked with finding all timer jobs that ran in a given time period. Some quick searching turned up a pretty cool solution by Glyn Clough using PowerShell. I took his script and modified it some to account for UTC times and it works great. Although I’m presenting my modified script, the bulk of the work was done by Glyn and I’m really just tweaking it a little.

The Script


if(!$StartTime) {$StartTime = (Get-Date).Date}
if(!$EndTime) {$EndTime = (Get-Date).AddDays(1).Date}

$StartTime = $StartTime.ToUniversalTime()
$EndTime = $EndTime.ToUniversalTime()

$TZ = [System.TimeZoneInfo]::FindSystemTimeZoneById(((Get-WmiObject win32_timezone).StandardName))

Get-SPWebApplication | foreach {
	$_.JobHistoryEntries |
		where{	($StartTime -le $_.StartTime -and $_.StartTime -le $EndTime) -or
			($StartTime -le $_.EndTime -and $_.EndTime -le $EndTime) } |
		sort StartTime |
		select	JobDefinitionTitle,
			@{Expression={[System.TimeZoneInfo]::ConvertTimeFromUtc($_.StartTime, $TZ)};Label="Start Time"},
			@{Expression={[System.TimeZoneInfo]::ConvertTimeFromUtc($_.EndTime, $TZ)};Label="End Time"},
			@{Expression={($_.EndTime - $_.StartTime).TotalSeconds};Label="Duration (secs)"}
} | Out-GridView -Title "Timer Job History"

You can copy the above script save it in a text file with a ps1 extension and run it from the console. Assuming you’ve named the file JobHistory.ps1 you can run it in a couple of different ways:

No Parameters:

Running it this way will return the entire history for the current day starting at midnight.

Specify Start Time:

This is especially helpful if you’re just trying to find the most recent history since this will give you the full history starting at the specified date/time to now.

Specify Range:

Doing this will return all history entries for the given range. The date/time parameters can be entered in a variety of ways since powershell is converting the string to a date you can enter the date/time in a format that matches your culture/locale.

The Output

The results are funneled to a GridView which requires the Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE) to be installed. On a server this is as simple as opening Server Manager, selecting features, Add Features, then choosing the Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment and installing (This did not require a restart).

There are many benefits to using the GridView. The best is the filtering, but I also like the sorting and copy/paste functionality. I often filter on job status or sort by duration to catch problem jobs. Then I can copy those rows and paste them directly into Excel if needed.

The above script also outputs histories for every web application (And will immediately show the GridView when the first is done and then slowly add the remaining ones). This could be changed by modifying the above script and adding a parameter, but this was unnecessary for me. You can also use the GridView filter to show only the web application you need.

Obviously yours will show the WebApplicationName and ServerName without my sloppy black bars