Lately I’ve had a couple of scripts that needed to run on a daily basis, in the past I used the task scheduler on a server for this but that would mean I had to mess around when passwords that expired, and all the other misery that is related to standard scheduled tasks.

To work around all the known limitatons I’ve created a new Azure Function App. Azure Functions allow you to run scripts at timed intervals which you set. To learn more about Azure Functions you can find information here

To create a new Azure Function App log into your Azure Portal and look for “Function App” and fill in the requested information:

Remember to choose the hosting plan “Consumption” if you are planning on only using it for minor and short running scripts, if your scripts run longer than 5 minutes you will need a paid plan. After the deployment is complete you can open the function menu and choose “Functions”, click the button Add and select PowerShell as the language:

Here you can choose the trigger, in my case I want to use a time based trigger. When selecting this it asks us to name the function, and give the format in Cron format. To get the schedule you want I suggest using this wiki to found out how to format the schedule. After creating it its a matter of copying or entering your script and hitting the save button.

Happy scripting! 🙂