When to pull out of dying technology?
Posted by: David
When is it appropriate to give up on a technology that is still being used?
The answer obviously can vary, but it is important to choose a certain way to look at things in this situation. For this writing I will consider looking at when to stop dealing with a technology from the consumer standpoint. It is pretty simple for Company's to decide to change their technology (Not enough ROI? Ok, lets do something else).
What is there that will replace what you have?
You don't necessarily need to be an early adopter to recognize a new technology that will surely catch fire. Pay attention to websites that pride themselves on being the first on addressing new technology. (Gizmodo and Engadget are fairly adept at this). You will never be certain what technology will catch fire next and become the new standard, but being aware of it could certainly help. Staying up to date with the latest in technology news will allow to be aware of any new ways of doing what you currently do.
Ok, so you've seen something that can replace something you already own in the future - how do you know when to quit investing in your current setup and move into the newest technology. Here are a few keys to consider.
- Make sure the new thing offers considerable benefits - there is no reason to move horizontally with your technology
- Make sure the new thing will work as intended - you don't want to invest in a new technology that isn't polished enough to work to where it does the functions it was intended to.
- Make sure the new thing will become a standard - ever bought an HD DVD player? If you have I bet you feel rather foolish.
There is no way to tell if a new technology will catch on and last for a while, because newer technology is already being worked on to replace it. Let's take an example.
Example: Blu-ray media
Blu-ray media offers the ability to offer High Def movies in a physical format. Many, but not all people will consider HD quality a substantial benefit, and it also has already proven to work as intended, and also it has beaten out HD DVD to become the standard high capacity portable disc media for movies. So, why would we consider dumping blu-ray already? I mean I just bought my first PS3 last year, I can't afford to buy more equipment to watch my movies!
Well, there are already efforts to develop more advanced lasers to store more media on a disc than even a blu-ray. These new media discs could possibly contain an entire collection of movies in HD. Well, if that is the case you would probably be tempted to go ahead and buy this new laser disc reader/player as soon as possible right? Well, no. You should definitely wait until that technology becomes a standard for the industry.
Things are different in today's world though. You don't have to choose between CD, or cassette. Now you can choose to listen to your music in a variety of ways digitally, and we are just stepping into the world of streaming movies. While this isn't directly in line with the past progression of technology of playing movies (VHS->DVD->Blu-ray on physical media), it takes a step to the side and will start a new progression of technology.
Part of knowing when to quit using a technology is to know when it is becoming obsolete. Blu-ray is by no means obsolete yet, but very well could become replaced by most homes with streaming movies soon. With such improved bandwidth availability to most homes, it will become easier and easier to view your movies using a completely different technology.
Personally, I think in 3 years most people will be watching HD quality movies through streaming services such as Netflix. Blu-ray will still be a great choice for watching movies on the go, such as our current portable DVD players. As cell phone coverage and capability increases though and data becomes more available wirelessly there will be less and less a need for physical media. Eventually we will all be able to watch our movie collection from anywhere in the world.
Using spiceworks to see old comments from a particular person and or from a particular day
Posted by: David
Possible problems that might have you thinking about finding old tickets
- Someone is trying to see if they worked on a particular day
- You are trying to see what anyone said on a particular day
- You are trying to find out what someone has been saying
- You want to know what Public or Private comments someone has been using in tickets
Solution:
- In spiceworks click on the reporting tab
- Click on New Report
- Make sure "Build this report using SQL" is checked
- Type in the following code....
To find comments from someone on a particular day
SELECT tickets.id as Ticket, comments.body as Note, strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%m', comments.created_at) as Day FROM users, comments, tickets
WHERE tickets.id = comments.ticket_id
AND tickets.created_by = users.id
AND comments.created_by = '12'
AND strftime('%Y-%m-%d', comments.created_at) = '2009-09-09'
ORDER BY tickets.id DESC
LIMIT 0, 500
The code above will find ticket comments by (users.id='12'), that were created on 9-9-09 (strftime('%Y-%m-%d', comments.created_at) = '2009-09-09'), and they will be displayed in descending order by the ticket number an limited to a number of 500 results. To find the comments made by a particular person you will have to find their user id in the database.
To find comments from anyone on a particular day
SELECT tickets.id as Ticket, comments.body as Note, strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%m', comments.created_at) as Day FROM users, comments, tickets
WHERE tickets.id = comments.ticket_id
AND tickets.created_by = users.id
AND strftime('%Y-%m-%d', comments.created_at) = '2009-09-09'
ORDER BY tickets.id DESC
LIMIT 0, 500
If you notice, this is the exact same code as before, but without the users.id='12'. The code above will find all comments dated 9-9-09.
To find only private comments by someone on a particular day
SELECT tickets.id as Ticket, comments.body as Note, strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%m', comments.created_at) as Day FROM users, comments, tickets
WHERE tickets.id = comments.ticket_id
AND tickets.created_by = users.id
AND comments.created_by = '12'
AND comments.is_public = 'f'
AND strftime('%Y-%m-%d', comments.created_at) = '2009-09-09'
ORDER BY tickets.id DESC
LIMIT 0, 500
The code above is the same as the first code but with the addition of AND comments.is_public = 'f'. This means you will have all ticket comments by a particular person (12) on a particular day (9-9-09) that were false as to being public (aka private).
To find only public comments by someone on a particular day
SELECT tickets.id as Ticket, comments.body as Note, strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%m', comments.created_at) as Day FROM users, comments, tickets
WHERE tickets.id = comments.ticket_id
AND tickets.created_by = users.id
AND comments.created_by = '12'
AND comments.is_public = 't'
AND strftime('%Y-%m-%d', comments.created_at) = '2009-09-09'
ORDER BY tickets.id DESC
LIMIT 0, 500
To find the public comments just change the comments.is_public = 'f' to = 't'.
Tip for success
Don't limit yourself to the code that I have above to find the information you are looking for. Open up SQLlite and try playing around with it and adding different parameters to the query's.
Also, if you want to find your users ids easier than manually opening up your database just make an SQL report with the following code.
Select * from users
This will list all of your users with all of their information. Find the one you want to use and insert their user id into the code I provided above.
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.
Deleting from and editing the spiceworks database
Posted by: David
Why edit the spiceworks database?
- You need to correct an error you made
- You need to delete an old item
- You feel more comfortable navigating the database
WARNING
- If you don't understand what you are trying to do before you attempt to do this you might as well not bother. If you delete something in your database that was included as a foreign key for something else you could really mess things up. Be careful!
How to edit the database
- First thing you need is the ability to edit the database. The one prerequisite for this walk through is that you have Firefox. I find it hard to believe someone in IT wouldn't have this browser right now, but if not, download it.
- The next thing you need to do is open up Firefox browser and go to tools > add ons.
- After the Firefox add on window is up, search for "sqlite manager" and it should be the first result. Compare to the image below and hit "Add to Firefox".
- With Firefox you will get a confirmation window asking you to hit "install now" to install the add on. Do it.
- Once it is installed, it will ask that you restart Firefox. Do it. You can just click the "Restart Firefox" button.
- Once Firefox is restarted the add ons window should come back up saying that 1 add on had been installed. You can just close this window.
- Now you need to go to the Firefox menu bar and click on Tools > SQLite Manager.
- It might take a moment to load it, so be patient. Once it does load it should look like this.
- To view your data base click on File > Connect Database.
- Now you should see a file explorer asking you to find the database you want to open. The first thing you want to do is change your file type to "All Files" because you won't see the spiceworks database with the default selection. Next you will need to browse to C:\Program Files\Spiceworks\db and select the spiceworks_prod.db file and hit open.
- Once the database is open you should see this.
- On the left you see an expandable list of tables that contain your information. In this example I am going to edit the information in a ticket. Browse down the table list and click on the "tickets" table. Click the "Browse & Search" tab.
- The rows that are displayed to the right in the "Browse & Search" tab are the actual rows of information in your database. To delete a row, just right click the row and select delete. To edit a row, right click the row and select edit.
- To edit the information, change what you like in the text boxes and save your changes by clicking "OK".
- Now your information in the database has been successfuly manipulated. Congratulations.
Exporting a spiceworks database
Posted by: David
Spiceworks Logo
Export your spiceworks database
I've had a few search queries hit my site looking for information on the spiceworks database. Here is some key information:
- The database store all of the information you need for spiceworks
- You will want to stop running spiceworks before you attempt to export it
- Once you export the database, it should be exactly like the old one
- This will allow you to put a spiceworks database on a different server/computer with the same information it had before
What do you do?
In file explorer go to C:\Program Files\Spiceworks\db\ and find the file spiceworks_prod.db.
Make sure Spiceworks is closed and the service is not running. You don't want anything manipulating the database file while you attempt to export it.
Once you have made sure that Spiceworks is not running, copy the database file locally on the hard disk renaming it as you please.
Once you have copied the database locally, you can go ahead and start Spiceworks up again if you need to.
Now you need to put the copy of your Spiceworks database file onto some media that you can transfer it to the computer that it will be going on. Or just transfer it over the network.
When you are ready to use the database on the next computer you will need to already have Spiceworks installed. Make sure the the program is not running and the service is stopped.
Browse back to C:\Program File\Spiceworks\db and replace the spiceworks_prod.db file with the copy of your database from the last computer. You can do this by deleting spiceworks_prod.db and renaming the copied .db file to spiceworks_prod.db.
Start spiceworks and you should have all your settings and information copied over from the last computer.
It is that easy!
Tip for success
Make sure that anyone using or that is going to be effected by Spiceworks being down knows ahead of time that there will be a short down time in exporting a database.
Keep your stakeholders happy.
Export a device software list from Spiceworks to Excel
Posted by: David
Here is how how you can export the software list for a specific device to excel in Spiceworks.
- On the Spiceworks menu, go to the reporting tab.
2. On that reporting tab, in the reports window click on "New Report".
3. On the new report screen, click the image below to see how you should select the information on that screen.
You will need to build the report using SQL. Just replace 'devicename' with the name of the device you want the report for. The code for the SQL is below
SELECT software.name as Name, software_installations.version as Version, software_installations.install_date as Install_Date FROM devices, software_installations, software WHERE software_installations.computer_id = devices.id AND software.id = software_installations.software_id AND devices.name = 'devicename' ORDER BY software.name ASC
4. After you have built the report the way you have needed, hit "save and run".
5. After running the report you should see a list of the software from the device below. However to export the report to excel all you have to do is hit the export button and choose XLS next to the excel icon and save it or open the file as you see fit!
ENJOY