Like many SharePoint folk, I sometimes go for STSADM commands before I think to use PowerShell.  

But, there are so many more great things you can do with PS.

For example, I have an error with a workflow – mentioning that a certain feature isn’t activated – this is a Nintex Workflow that is creating a site within a different site collection – very cool indeed.

To work out with feature isn’t activated, my old-school thinking was to do “STSADM –o enumsolutions”.   This lists the WSP’s for the SharePoint farm – but not the features within those solutions.

AND – there actually isn’t an ‘enumfeatures’ – sorry to say.   

If you Google for that, you might find some custom STSADM commands that do it – but you don’t need to worry about that !   

PowerShell to the rescue…

I found a great post from Alpesh Nakars – detailing the get-spfeature statement – in PowerShell.

Check the original post for more details – but here’s what I was needing :

• get-spfeature | more     (paged view)

       

• get-spfeature <GUID>

       

• get-spfeature <GUID> | ft DisplayName     (get the full DisplayName – was truncated initially…)

       

NB.   “ft” is format-table, in which I’m just returning the DisplayName column – cheers to @mrhodes for that – he’s a PowerShell guru…  Srsly !

Now – I can go and activate the specific site collection feature – and it works (my Nintex Workflow)…

Thanks Alpesh – great article…