ActionPacks is a catalogue of PowerShell examples, not a tool you install

A gallery of runnable snippets rather than a distributable package

The repository describes itself in one line as a public PowerShell script gallery for ScriptRunner, and that framing is the single most important fact about it. There is no build manifest, no module manifest, no package definition and no versioned release, and the whole top level of the repository is a set of directories with one documentation file each. What you get is a body of working code organised by problem domain, maintained by the vendor of the automation tool it is written for. The audience is Windows and Microsoft platform administrators who either use ScriptRunner or want to see how an experienced vendor approaches a common administrative task. It is also useful to engineers comparing automation surfaces, because the set of directories is a fairly honest inventory of what this particular product aims to cover. What it is not is a library. Nothing here has an install step, and the scripts reference the ScriptRunner action model rather than exposing a stable API you can pin a version of.

Eighteen directories that map an enterprise Microsoft estate

The catalogue is broad and worth reading as a coverage map. The named areas are Active Directory for managing users, groups and computers in on premises AD, Azure for Microsoft Azure, Exchange Server for mailboxes, distribution lists, resources and services on premises, Office 365 for users, groups and services including Azure AD, Exchange Online, MS-Teams, PowerApps, SharePoint Online, Skype4Business and MSOnline, MS Graph, Hyper-V and VMware for the two virtualization platforms, Citrix, Database Management Systems, User Management, and Windows File and Storage Management covering file servers, access rights, reports, storages, disks, partitions and volumes. Windows Print Management handles printers and print servers, WinSystemManagement covers system settings on Windows Server and Windows 10 clients, and there are three supporting areas rather than product areas: PowerShell SecretManagement, a ScriptRunner add-on collection, Reporting, Statistics for analysing usage and time savings of ScriptRunner actions, and Templates for script development. Read together, that list describes an organisation that is mostly Microsoft, mostly on premises, and heavily oriented toward identity, mail and virtualisation.

The examples are coupled to ScriptRunner's action model

The ScriptRunner directory named after the product itself makes the coupling explicit, and it is the reason these scripts cannot simply be lifted into an arbitrary automation pipeline. ScriptRunner provides a way to run PowerShell actions against remote systems, so the examples show how an action is parameterised, how credentials and sessions are supplied, and how results are surfaced back to a user interface rather than to a console. That is the value in the gallery. A script that reads an Exchange mailbox and does something sensible with the result is a good deal harder to write from scratch than it looks, because the plumbing around the script, remote execution, error handling, transcript capture and reporting, is where most of the effort goes. The Statistics directory points at the same priority, since measuring usage and time savings of actions is a product concern rather than a scripting one. If your team already runs ScriptRunner for delegated administrative tasks, the gallery saves you from reinventing the surrounding conventions. If you do not, the scripts are still readable PowerShell, but you will be reading them as examples rather than as something to invoke.

No install path, no release train, no stated licence

Three things that a normal dependency would give you are absent here. First, installation: the project documentation does not give a package command, a module install or a download step, so there is nothing to run to obtain the scripts, and the only way in is to browse or clone the repository. Second, versioning: the repository has no GitHub releases, so there is no version to pin and no changelog of released artefacts to diff against, and the default branch is master rather than main. Third, and most consequential, licensing: the licence field for the repository is unstated, and unlike a project that ships an MIT or Apache file, there is nothing here to point at. That is a fact about redistribution rather than about reading, since the code is plainly visible, but if you intend to copy a script into a commercial product or a customer deliverable, the permission question is unanswered and needs to be settled with the project owner rather than inferred. The absence of a package also means no dependency updates, no security advisories pipeline and no compatibility promises, so anything you copy is a fork you own.

Where a plain PowerShell module is the better answer

The honest alternative to a vendor gallery is the ecosystem around PowerShell itself. For most administrative tasks, the work is already done by well known modules, each of which is versioned, published to a repository, and installed with a package manager, and the difference in approach is in how the script is delivered rather than in what it does. A vendor gallery hands you a solution written against one product's calling conventions, which is efficient if you have that product and misleading if you do not, because the script looks complete but the surrounding execution model is not present. A general module gives you a function you call from any script, inside any harness, and with dependencies you can see. The third option, plain remoting with the built in cmdlets, is what the gallery is in effect a wrapper for, and it remains the fallback when neither a module nor a product covers the case. The test that separates the three is simple. If you already operate ScriptRunner, the gallery shortens a task. If you do not, a module with a published version is usually a shorter path than adapting a vendor example.

Activity is uneven and the last push is the only signal

The repository is not archived, and the last push landed on 2026-08-20, so the project as a whole is receiving work. That single fact does not say much about any individual directory, and in a collection this broad that gap matters. A directory that receives occasional fixes and one that was written years ago can look identical in the tree listing, and the project does not publish per directory change history or a release note that would let you tell them apart. A second limit is scope. The catalogue stops at the edge of the Microsoft platform: there is no Linux, no container orchestration and no general cloud platform other than Azure, which reflects the product the gallery belongs to rather than a judgement about the wider automation field. The topics attached to the repository reinforce the same picture, naming fido2, active directory, azure, citrix, exchange, hyper-v, office365, print, vmware and windows along with powershell and scriptrunner. For anyone planning an estate-wide automation layer, the useful conclusion is narrower than the directory count suggests: this is one vendor's coverage of a Microsoft and virtualisation world, not a general purpose script library.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt ActionPacks as a source of patterns and proven snippets for Windows and Microsoft platform administration, and as an accurate map of what one vendor's automation layer covers, if you are evaluating ScriptRunner itself. Do not treat it as a module to add to a build, since nothing here is packaged for that, and do not copy a script into production without checking the licence position, which the repository does not state. Before you rely on it, confirm the licence terms directly with the project, check the activity of the individual directory you need, and read the script you intend to use end to end rather than assuming the gallery's structure guarantees a supported contract.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. Project website
3. README
4. scriptrunner/ActionPacks on GitHub