Report generation automation in PowerShell - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Report generation automation

📖 Scenario: You work in an office where you need to create a simple report of sales data every day. The sales data is stored in a list, and you want to automate making a summary report that shows only sales above a certain amount.

🎯 Goal: Build a PowerShell script that creates a sales data list, sets a sales threshold, filters the sales above that threshold, and then prints the filtered report.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of sales with exact values

Set a sales threshold variable

Filter sales above the threshold using a loop or pipeline

Print the filtered sales report

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Automating report generation saves time and reduces errors when working with daily sales or other data.

💼 Career

Many jobs require automating data filtering and reporting using scripts like PowerShell to improve productivity.

1

Create the sales data list

Create a list called $sales with these exact values: 120, 75, 200, 50, 300

PowerShell

# Create the sales list with exact values
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use @( ... ) to create an array in PowerShell.

2

Set the sales threshold

Create a variable called $threshold and set it to 100

PowerShell

$sales = @(120, 75, 200, 50, 300)
# Set the sales threshold to 100
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 100 to the variable $threshold.

3

Filter sales above the threshold

Create a new list called $filteredSales that contains only the sales from $sales which are greater than $threshold. Use the Where-Object cmdlet with a script block that uses $_ -gt $threshold.

PowerShell

$sales = @(120, 75, 200, 50, 300)
$threshold = 100
# Filter sales greater than threshold into $filteredSales
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the pipeline | and Where-Object to filter the list.

4

Print the filtered sales report

Print the text "Filtered sales above threshold:" and then print the $filteredSales list on the next line.

PowerShell

$sales = @(120, 75, 200, 50, 300)
$threshold = 100
$filteredSales = $sales | Where-Object { $_ -gt $threshold }
# Print the report header and filtered sales
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use Write-Output to print text and variables.