Hello Users!
Written on the second day back at work from holiday and I find myself amidst this partially uncharted territory during the Summer!
Digital Signage
Whilst this isn’t necessarily an unfamiliar concept, managing it from an Administrator perspective for end users is proving a disaster. Although my colleague has taken the helm for this project, I am gaining insight through discussion, observation and
browsing through the admin control panel. The software management we are exploring is web-based (SignageLive) and the 55″ and 65″ screens that were purchased are hooked up via Ethernet.
To create a presentation for the screens, a combination of three features are provided. Playlists, assets and layouts. A layout is essentially to map out where everything (text, backgrounds, widgets etc.) will be and the basic design features behind them. A playlist is one or more layouts that will be played on the screen and their durations. An asset is the information in widgets or custom RSS feeds that fill the features in the layout.
Whilst it is a lengthy process and highly tedious to navigate through, it is negligible after working with the software for a while.
Printers (& PaperCut)
Our print server has swiftly gone from physical to virtual and the printing management server (PaperCut) has been upgraded. I aided in the finalising of this process by creating the new networked printers with their new shared name and PaperCut port. We were also looking at the best method of deplyoying them throughout the network since about 2 months after I had started working at the school. In the beginning, we settled with Group Policy deployment although the management of them quickly became a whirlpool of disasters. There was a delete all and a mapping function in place in our default policy (which applied to every Organisational Unit (OU)) which assigned defaults through order and reinstalled/deleted every printer on each log-on.
No good.
After trial-and-error, multiple drivers and techniques, I offered the idea of creating group policies for every computer OU instead and mapping out each printer that way. This worked, although the delete all function was hindering log-in speeds. Printers began to accumulate as users logged around the school which installed every separate log-in. Finally, my colleague conjured scripts for each OU which was then compiled into one large log-on script which targets the OU, adds default printers as OU-specific and adds the main printers.
After much headache and a combined, lengthy effort, they now appear to work quickly and efficiently.
Other things that myself and my colleague frequently tackle with printers/the management thereof during school time tends to be:
- Manually fixing printer issues (if we can) – typically paper-jams, toner refilling, stapler cartridge refilling and other miscellaneous errors before logging it with our printer support.
- Adding printers – amending lost printers and diagnosing network issues for them. Assigning certain printers to certain computers if there is a change in environment or circumstance etc.
- Management through the web interface – managing user credits for printing, departmental accounts for printing, etc.
Let me say now, printers are a pain!…
VoIP Telecommunications
Written after a few weeks back at work.
Although handled in Easter term, this is definitely worth mentioning.
As my colleague was away, my peer and I began installing VoIP phones across the school in an effort to save money for international students (we are a boarding school which holds at least 150 international students). I did not take part in the installing of hardware or setting up of the virtual server, but I was around to aid in the manual installation of each phone (totalling approximately 110 phones) and tagging them on the relative switches virtual local area network (VLAN).
Furthermore, I was also engaged in the management of the phones through a Mitel web interface such asassigning of names to extensions, assigning certain key functions (in example, a busy lamp which indicates a highlighted button whilst a person is on the phone), basic call re-routing for situational circumstances (setting the reception phone to forward to a bursary ring group when their is heavy traffic), general pass-code resetting for voicemails and other miscellaneous tasks.
Support Helpdesk
The Helpdesk assignments are varied in severity and levels of support although they are taken upon ourself voluntarily and usually accepted by whichever technician is most available (between the 3 of us – myself, my colleague and our manager). We use Spiceworks to manage the tickets and spend a great portion of our day dealing with end-user problems and troubleshooting. This can be both student and staff queries.
For examples, I will brief you all on my last 5 tickets and my solutions (some details have been obscured to preserve identities):
“Please add <name>’s printer to my printing list as Summer Club is in for the next 3 weeks!”
To solve this, I simply added the unnamed user’s printer into the script (seen on the fourth line below):
Case “OUname”
WshNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection “\\printservername\printer1”
WshNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter “\\printservername\printer1”
WshNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection “\\printservername\requestedprinter”
“Hi guys,
When I save the attached word doc as a pdf it is saving over itself (see pdf). We had this problem before but unfortunately I have had to amend some of the details on the original and need to create a new pdf. Are you able to help me please?
Thanks,
<Name>”
[Attached.pdf]
[Attached.docx]
A peculiar issue where converting to a PDF from a Word .docx created overlapping text. Solved by finding the overlapping text in the PDF, returning to the .docx, CTRL+F to use the ‘Find’ function and search and delete the overlapping text. Possible cause is a broken template as it is not the first time it has happened although it was not consecutive.
“The phone in the office – extension XXX – is flashing a message. <Name> thought the code was 2222 but it says this is invalid. Could you let me know what I should be putting in. Thanks.”
Logged onto the phone management web interface, found the device configuration management page for the extension, reset the passcode to its default number and rang to inform the user.
“Check each cab for the presence of fibre. For instance, there may be two switches in a cab but only fibre to one of them. Check with me for more info.”
– Posted by my manager to spare confusion.
Fairly straight forward, carried out the instructions and made notes of the presence of fibre.
“Hi team,
Could I please have computer and WiFi log in for the Summer Club? Staff arriving Monday
Thanks”
I went onto our wireless web interface management (Ruckus), logged in and generated a WiFi pass for multiple users for the duration of summer.
In-addition, I created a user account to be used by all of the Summer Club staff in the Active Directory by replicating a normal staff user (to copy the home-share and profile paths and save time) and allocated them the correct security groups. From there, a few log-in/outs to configure the account and replied to the ticket with the credentials for both the WiFi pass and the account information.
As you can see, we cover a vast territory at this school which includes a great ordeal of knowledge which I am still eager to learn!
– Max
Maxwell Brotherwood 