From time to time you need to execute a given SharePoint timer job now. Sure you could go into Central Admin, find it and run it manually, but where’s the fun in that? Plus sometimes you need to automate this, say in an install scenario.

Luckily it’s dead easy using the SharePoint cmdlets

Heck you can do it in a couple of lines with some pipelining.

$WebApp = Get-SPWebApplication http://mywebappurl
$job = Get-SPTimerJob | ?{$_.Name -match $JobName} | ?{$_.Parent -eq $WebApp}

Or if you’d like to be a bit more robust and re-usable:

function StartJobOnWebApp
{
	param([Parameter(Mandatory=$true, ValueFromPipeline=$true, Position=0)]
    [Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPWebApplicationPipeBind]
    $WebApplication,
	[Parameter(Mandatory=$true, ValueFromPipeline=$true, Position=1)]
	[string] $JobName)
	process
	{
		$WebApp = $WebApplication.Read() 
		$job = Get-SPTimerJob | ?{$_.Name -match $JobName} | ?{$_.Parent -eq $WebApp} 
		if($null -ne $job)
		{
			Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow "Starting "$job.DisplayName
			Start-SPTimerJob $job
		}
	}
}