One Wrong Move Can Kill A WebEx

I was excited, I was es-static, I couldn't wait for the Web Ex. I was going to see the new Cisco product line offerings which I think could really be helpful here with my job.

Then at noon I suddenly realized I missed it.

I was perplexed, I had accepted the meeting invite from Cisco, it was on my calendar. How could I have been so busy to notice something popping up and interrupting my work?

Then I found it. The invite sent out from Cisco had NO reminder set. So when it came time for the 11AM meeting, nothing popped up on my computer or my phone. Nothing yelling at me to "join now!", just silence.

You can easily kill your sales pitch by doing everything right and one thing wrong.

Measure twice and cut once. You don't want to miss out on a million dollars because you rushed your invite.

Crucial Data for IT Tickets

When you start designing a from scratch Ticketing system for your IT Department things a be a bit overwhelming. There are many programs out there that do the same thing but seem too busy, complex or just too expensive to implement.

Over the past year I have been working with contractors to deploy an in house ticketing system for our IT requests. For us third party options were too complex for a extremely small help desk to utilize, and ones that were free (i.e. Spiceworks) were too busy with unnecessary information for us. We went about creating the ticketing system however had little idea of what data we needed to capture in the system once it went live to users.

We started with the basics:

1. Issue
2. Due(Priority)
3. User
4. Category
5. Response Method

We found that users don't chose category's like we do so we hid that field for them and left the others. Due responses always defaulted to the slowest time (for us it was "within a week"), and the user field auto populated with the user who was logged into the web page. This could be changed but most users just wanted their name in there.

From their your case my differ, but its a good start to gathering data from your users via a ticketing system instead of phone calls and stop by's.

Mac Profiling Services - Are They Worth It?

For the better part of my IT career I have been around Windows environments (for better or worse, your call). With Microsoft being so enterprise centered Active Directory has always been a staple in most environments large enough to need some control, and for the most part it works very well.

The comes the first Apple devices on your network, and control becomes a four letter word. Going through this experience over the past year has been challenging but I think I have finally figured out a few things that if you know before going in will help the transition that much easier. I'll keep these brief and to the point, hoping they help you out.

1. A Mac Server with Profile Management is no Group Policy for AD. It's clunky, messy, and a pain to setup

2. Control will be limited so be prepared have to limit your options.

3. Some preferences don't have all the controls that are on the client machine. So if you can only check a box and the users machine shows a check box and a timer option, you'll need to manually set the timer option before pushing out the profile. (Fail on Apple's part)

4. You will loose some hair in the process. I had to wipe our server twice and get a contract IT company to deal with Apple over the phone to setup the Trust Profile because I couldn't waste any more time on the darn thing.


Just be prepared, take your time, and test it out long before you deploy your first Apple machine and you might just make it through without going bald. It is worth it, if for nothing else than setting one option: screen timeout / password prompt. Security is worth every penny these days, and a basic feature like screen timeouts are an easy way to start.

Nexus 4 and Android 4.4 Bluetooth Issues

Usually I am pretty quick when it comes to updates. I like having the latest (just short of beta testing) and don't get bothered by the small stuff when it doesn't work. With Android it happens more often than not and even with having a Nexus device you can feel the priority level from Google with so many devices that have those lingering problems.

After updating to Kit Kat (4.4) I came across one of the few times that I actually regretted updating a device, and I haven't been the only one. Many people have even created a Google group surrounding one glaring issue in 4.4 (Link HERE) pertaining to Bluetooth and its reliability. I for one use it in my car daily, from streaming Pandora or making calls to family on the way home it's an easy and safe(ish) way to accomplish my tasks. Once I had upgraded to Kit Kat though it was another ball game entirely. From my phone crashing weekly, to being unable to turn on or off my Wifi or Bluetooth, to finally having my Bluetooth cut out every 30 seconds or so during phone calls drove me mad.

Like most people I went to Google and instead of doing a technical support call for help I searched for my issues instead. It lead me to the group (linked above) and after reading 8 pages (then) of user responses I came to two conclusions.

1. Google doesn't see the issue as high priority enough to fix out of cycle from another main release.
2. The only sure fire way to remove the problem was to flash back to 4.3.

I read up one some pretty helpful posts on flashing an older rom onto my Nexus and took a night to work through it. Though the page linked for instructions was lacking in some ways I was able to trail and error through commands and files from my Windows machine and flash the phone back successfully. After setting up my phone from scratch (I have it back up but never use it) I tested it out in the car the next day. All the issues I had were solved and found myself back in the land of peace and tranquility. I do miss some features of Kit Kat but none of which are more important to me than a working Bluetooth connection. Big thanks for everyone who posted and the mounds of solutions tried. Google never chimed in once, but like normal the Internet is there to save the day.

Meeting Industry Security Standards for Information Technology

Just remember that meeting industry standards for security in your IT Department is much like how the Titanic met shipping standards for life boats back in 1912.

Test Your IT Monitoring Tools Regularly

Most IT Departments have active monitoring tools to make sure you are notified in the event that something goes wrong, right, or is starting to look sketchy (much like a bad NHL trade). These systems are put in place with the mindset of a set it and forget it mentality because hey, its supposed to alert us right? Well if you haven't heard it before I am saying it now. No. Is that a complete sentence? Probably not, but it gets my point across. Monitoring systems and devices are only as good as their trustworthiness and much like your gradual trusting of friendships must grow by testing the tools on a regular basis.

I will use our power monitoring/temperature monitoring device in our server closet as an example. In the event of a power failure, or A/C unit failure one of two things will happen. In the first scenario, the unit alerts us by calling my cell phone to notify me that power has been lost and the unit is running on backup power (this unit is a cellular one). In scenario two the device calls my cell and alerts me to a high temperature reading, possibly caused by a malfunction in the A/C unit. If I never test the unit by pulling the power plug then I have no faith the unit will successfully call me in the event of a power outage, and if its not regularly tested then I have no faith the battery is still holding a charge inside the unit and will stay alive long enough to make the call needed through our vendor.

Testing these units regularly should be on your IT calendar and should be as often as you or a colleague can test it. (For us, quarterly should be our testing cycle).

Having faith in these systems to work correctly when needed can help an Administrator sleep at night knowing a trustful partner is always watching and thankfully never needs sleep.

Intel WiDi Stops Lync 2013 from Recognizing Audio Devices

We have used Lync 2013 for a while the company I work for and overall with little issues (amazingly). However the other day I attempted to join a conference call and utilize my built in webcam/mic but found that Lync couldn't see any audio device at all. This was strange considering it was showing up in the computer management console, and in recording devices. I could even use the microphone and record with windows built in recorder so that was odd too.

I attempted first a repair of Lync 2013, but no dice. Then I re-installed my Dell audio drivers, but no luck there either. A bit of Google searching lead me to just a few articles stating that Intel's WiDi application caused some problems with audio devices. Sure enough one of the posts in particular was on Lync specifically so I decided to give it a shot and uninstall. After a quick reboot Lync was perfect again and I was without one more useless program (to me at least). Dell (from whom we buy our laptops) has components in most of their laptops which include this application, however I have never used it. Uninstalling it did not show any unknown devices in computer management or prompt for driver installation every time the machine booted up so I'll be making sure to uninstall this from all new deployments of laptops within the company.

I never could figure out the "why"behind the failure for the applications to not play nice, but what's fixed is fixed.