Project ideas for your IT department
Posted by: David
What can my IT department do to improve?
I think a lot of issues that IT has is with the stakeholders that aren't directly involved with any projects. Basically, most issues IT has to deal with are typically from the IT users, either internal or external users of systems. You will want to create a system that can help you manage your own department better so that you can better handle the issues from the IT users.
How can I do that?
I have a couple of ideas that small to medium sized company's can overcome easily. Larger companies may even be able to try this project if they have the spare time to devote to it, unless they feel like they should make it a priority.
IDEAS:
- Inventory Management - How many printers do you have? Where are they? What are their IP addresses? What types of paper will they print? All of these are great questions that you will see very often. The idea of a project with inventory management would be to inventory your Printers, and all information you can about them and then place them on a map that your support staff can view and interact with through a web based module. This can be done with some very simple php, mysql and javascript.
- Expand on your inventory - Don't just stop with the printers. Try to keep your computer inventory up to date as well through the same method. This will take a lot more time and effort but if you can get a system up and running and keep it up to date then you will be glad you put them time into it.
- Priority ticketing - Find a way to create your own ticketing system, or integrate with another one to create a very well organized priority chart. This system could work similar to an outlook calendar and schedule times for certain events, and reschedule things with different priorities. Just have things automatically reschedule themselves if the tickets aren't closed on time.
Here's what I did
I did an inventory of all of my company's printers one week. There were about 50 laser printers that were shared on the network and located in several different buildings. To take the inventory I went to each printer and marked it's location on a map. I then took down information about the printer such as its hostname, FQDN, IP, number of trays, tray paper types and whether or not it had an envelope feeder.
With all of this information that I needed, I created a mysql database with appropriate relations to put each printer into a different building. This step was very simple, buildings in one table, and printers in the other. The printer table would have a foreign key of the building ids which that printer is in. I also went beyond that, but I'll get to that soon.
Once you created this simple database, input your information. Create your PHP scripts to show the information as you please about the printers. Now that you can see a list of your printers and their information, how do you know where they are located? Now you work with your printer locations you marked down.
Find a copy of blueprints, or a layout for your buildings and open it on your computer with some software (MS paint) that can help you find the coordinates on that image. Now add a field onto your database for the coordinates located on the image for your printer. Mark the printer location on the map with the printer's ID in the database. Once you have all the printers marked on the map and the coordinates in the database you can code your php to show the map you marked with locations. To top that, you can use the coordinates to create an imagemap that, with javascript can display a popup with some brief information about the printer and perhaps a link to that printers page for more detailed info.
Go even farther
Create a another table in your database for your printers page counts. This table with have the printer id as the foreign key.
Now, create a php script that will pull out the printed page counts for each printer. Most printers in businesses now have web based interaction that you can use to pull this information from automatically. Set up this script to run every day at midnight and you can keep track of just how much particular printers are being used, and if they need to be moved, gotten rid of, or have more purchased.