SurfLog – A Browser Metrics Plugin for LabTech

Websense, Inc. the makers of a leading Internet management solutions announced that “Internet misuse in the workplace costs American corporations more than $178 billion annually in lost productivity, this translates into a loss of more than $5,000 per employee per year.”

Squidworks wants to help companies regain a hold of some of this lost time and revenue. They have released SurfLog version 1.1.1 out to the public today after months of work updating and streamlining the plugin. A new site has been launched with this new version to help support and promote the use of SurfLog in LabTech environments.

Some of the new features include plugin permissions, improved graphs and charts, admin controlled collection schedules and much more. Now built and ready for LabTech 10.5 and Cloud hosted platforms so every MSP using LabTech can take advantage of this great tool.

Get the Metrics

Metrics provide a insight into mass amounts of data making it easy to understand the ebb and flow of the clients users browsing patterns. Compare information on browser types, surfing volumes at different times of the day and user patters as the compare to other users under that client.

Raw History

When you need the raw data, it is available to you. You can export this data out to Excel for use in any number of 3rd party programs or to provide to human resources.

How do I get it?

Visit Http://www.plugins4labtech.com for more information and to download a copy to try for yourself.

Near Real Time PerfMon Plugin for LabTech

We have created a simple tool that we query the counters on a Windows device and return that information back to the system console in near real time. In our current version we pull Disk IO, CPU, Memory and Network usage stats every few seconds until requested to stop or you close the console. With each refresh you will get the request count and current request time followed by the counter statistics for the selections you made. This application will poll for the counter and continue to refresh the information displayed every couple of seconds and will allow you to jump to other tabs and back without losing a beat. Leave the window up in the back ground and it will give you continuous counts until stopped or closed.

Version 1.0.2

Enjoy

Cubert

Patch Remedy WUA Manager Plugin for LabTech

Patch Remedy is a tool used to help manage the Windows Update Agent. Microsoft’s Windows Update Agent (WUA) is an agent program that works in conjunction with Windows Server Update Services to support automated patch delivery and installation. Labtech uses this agent to help determine what patches are needed by each Windows system and deploys them. Microsoft often updates the WUA which increases the detection of missing patches more current than the installed version of WUA. This can cause you to get a perception that your patching is up to date when in actuality you are massively behind.

That’s where we come in, Patch Remedy automatically scans all windows systems for their current WUA versions and OS type and stores that inside LabTech. It uses that information to perform automated updates of WUA for Windows 7 and 2008 R2 systems. It also takes a look nightly at the number of recent failed hotfixes and updates.

We offer several manual tools to help manage problems seen with WUA.

There are several lists of data about how WUA versions are deployed across your environment. In these lists you maybe able to operate functions to resolve common issues with WUA. There are 2 types of repair for WUA, Normal and Aggressive and there are 2 types of Updates for WUA, Latest and KB3083324.

Repairs: (Normal and Aggressive) Based on KB971058 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/971058.
Normal Excludes step 4 and Aggressive includes Step 4 of KB

Updates:(Latest and July 2016 Rollup)
Latest: Can be run on any Windows 7, 8, 2008 or 2012 system and will attempt to update the WUA to the most current versions available.
This update is run silently and with the /noreboot switch so should be safe to run at anytime without affecting end user.

PatchSuccess

We have several automated tools to assist with keeping WUA up to date and the patch push status cleared on over attempted patches and hotfixes.

Auto Update: looks for online systems that have earlier versions of WUA and tries to update them to 7.6.7601.18979

Clear Pushed: The “Pushed” status for a patch means that LabTech has tried twice to install the patch and it didn’t succeed, so it’s not going to try to install it anymore. This function will clear the “pushed” flag from [hotfixes] out so that LabTech may reattempt them.

wuaVersion1

We also provide some insight into what is going on with WUA so you can visually see problems with your WUA environment. Get graphs and charts that show the different deployed versions of WUA and how effective your patching is.

Overview1

Patching alone is not going to keep your clients up to date, adding Patch Remedy to your LabTech patch management system will improve your numbers hands down. Get the most out of your LabTech system with Patch Remedy.

We want to thank BGags of Easthampton, MA for his inspiration and help with plugins concepts. To get more information on LabTech and WUA from BGags go visit his blog post at

http://www.labtechgeek.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123

The automated services are on a 4 times a day schedule of 8 am , 12 pm, 4 pm and 8 pm. After installing the plugin and restarting the DBagent service on the LT server you will need to allow time for this service to kick in and run the scans. Once completed you will see the data in the plugin.

The plugin has a master off switch that you will need to turn on before scans will start. you can use this switch to turn off all automated functions on this plugin if needed.

We have added some basic permissions to the plugin. Super Admins and “Patch remedy” class users can open and manage the consoles. Add the User Class “Patch Remedy” to any user in Labtech to allow them access to the management console.

Current Version can be found at http://w ww.plugins4labtech.com

Enjoy

Cubert

Announce Maintenance Plugin For LabTech

Cluck Like a Chicken

Do you have to remind your clients to keep their systems on for maintenance and patching to run each week? Yes me too, I almost have to remind them every week before they go home. Do you know how many hours on the phone that would be if I had to call each of my users to whisper “Hey, Don’t forget to leave your computers on!” I would have to say way too many to count, so I made the Announce Maintenance Plugin to do that for me.

Let me explain how it works.

In you LabTech Console’s main menu select [Tools] menu and slide down to [Announce Maintenance] sub menu. That will launch the configuration manager to allow you to create the message, set the time of day you want it to launch (Window) and the Title of the Message Box. You can then turn it on or off for all clients by selecting the On /Off switch.

The announcement will only run once in or around the Window time (+/- 6 minutes) the “Eve” before the “Workstation Patch Day” and only for Locations that are set to “Enable Patching Workstations”.

If you have your patch day set to Thursday and your Window set to 3PM then on Wednesday Afternoon at 3 PM the announcement will go out to all “online” workstations at that location.

Enjoy

Cubert

Version 1.0.0.2

Application Delivery – The challenges a MSP faces as they expand service offerings to keep up with changing markets

Challenges With Application Delivery

The MSP marketplace has exploded over the last 15 years and with that growth comes a more diverse marketplace and greater offerings to help attract clients. The need to provide even more services that have a real impact to the client has been at the forefront of this boom and drives the market for improving themselves over the simple “Geek Squad” mentality of let me fix your PC. The rapid pace of technological developments in the MSP space has introduced wrinkles to this paradigm that has left many businesses shackled to old methods of application delivery even as new means of application delivery offer a path forward.

shannon2

Shannon Anderson, Sr. Systems Engineer and Application Developer with MainSpring Inc. has over 20 years of experience working with and managing MSPs. Shannon is an advocate for automation. His vast knowledge of services provided by the MSP market makes him uniquely qualified to discuss the Pros and Cons of Application Delivery; what is evolved; whom the players are and how to come out on top with proven methods.

Application Delivery, What’s That?

Application Delivery is the ability to provide and push any software title to any end system using automation. When you start asking questions about Application Delivery, you will get a lot of different answers on what that entails. Many people tend to associate it with Application Maintenance which is not accurate. The key differences are being able to provide software to your clients when and where they need it. Maintenance presumes that you have some key software that needs to be maintained. Application Delivery is being able to provide software that can be pushed out to the MSP’s clients through automation and policies.

There are several services available to MSPs that allow them to provide application maintenance to their end customers. These product provide access to a limited number of common software titles and are geared towards providing updates automatically for those software titles as a service. They are not really designed to deploy applications, but, to maintain a select set of them after deployments. Application Delivery is designed to deliver and maintain unlimited software titles to the end system through automation and policy. This process allows MSPs a more granular approach to how they expose their clients to deployment of technology and how to maintain consistency across a client and the MSP as a whole.

What’s Involved?

Application Delivery is a bit more involved than Application Maintenance and is one factor that separates the inexperienced MSP from the veteran MSP. Application Delivery requires a lot more involvement from the engineering side of the MSP but in return adds diversity and manageability to the MSP’s offerings. Unlike application maintenance where a vendor pre-qualifies a few updates, Application Delivery needs to account for thousands of applications and their updates which is a much larger responsibility to own.

What are the Pro’s and Con’s

This is arguably the most queried subject with Application Delivery in a MSP environment. What does it do for me? What is the catch? Application Delivery should not be taken lightly. There is a lot of work to do to make sure things run smoothly and that your clients get the best use of the services you offer. To deliver application efficiently today you need a deployment framework that allows for the hosting; security; versioning and deployment of a large amount of applications. There are several frameworks being developed or used to provide this functionality to end systems. In the Unix world you have frameworks like Yum or Apt-get. Likewise, in the Windows world you have NuGet and Chocolatey.

Lets talk about some of the Con’s

Unlike with Application Maintenance where the vendor provides a vetted set of software application to update like Java, Flash and Adobe Reader, Application Delivery can provide any software you want to create packages for. This at first, would look like it should be part of the Pro’s list ,and it is, but it is also a Con for a lot of MSPs. By being able to provide unlimited software titles and unlimited version updates means there is less likely that a package has been vetted. This can bring up security concerns when delivering 3rd party software to your end client. If you use the public software repositories as your main distribution point then vetting the software and the providers is key in maintaining security over the software you install. Not doing so would invite elements into you managed networks that are undesirable. This means that you must do your homework; identify the resources that provide valid products; pre stage deployments and verify integrity.

The Pro’s on Application Delivery

When done right, the Pro’s are many indeed. The one that stands out most to me is being able to control the deployment of approved applications consistently across our MSP. The selections of software titles can be vast depending on the repositories you use. Chocolatey boasts that over 2500 applications and updates are hosted on the public repositories which dwarfs and maintenance vendors repositories. The delivery of applications are not just limited to freeware software. Repositories often offer 3rd party paid software deployments and updates making the deployment of new hardware very easy and consistent with deployment policies. Another really great Pro in my opinion is the ability to host your own repositories providing another layer of security to your delivery processes. When building and creating your own deployment packages you have ultimate control over the software and the options enabled inside the package. Another Pro is that you are not limited by the software vendors available. Install software from Microsoft;Adobe; Apple; Google; Piriform; Kaspersky and Oracle to name just a few.

Who are the players?

When it comes to Application Delivery there are just a few names out there. More are available for the Application Maintenance market place. We named a few of the frameworks available to use for Application delivery as doing a search on Google may not produce much to help the average MSP. Both Kaseya and LabTech are offering to the MSPs that use their platforms a set of functions to maintain some applications. You have 3rd party products like Ninite. Then there is Squidwork’s Chocolatey For LabTech which harnesses the Chocolatey framework to provide true Application Delivery.

Come Out On Top!

MSPs that succeed have one thing in common, that is they continue to push the edge of product service offerings expanding the level of service provided to their clients. Application Delivery is one way a MSP can make its mark on it customers and delivery exceptional services which will help retain and grow their business.

Plugin Innovation can be found in the most absurd places

The Domino’s Pizza Plugin

This last year, Squidwork’s Geek, Shannon Anderson, a Sr. Systems Engineer; software developer and RMM platform Integrator spent several days at the LabTech Synergy boot camp where he was immersed in the operations of the LabTech platform as part of an integration overview. The idea, LabTech wanted Integrators to come away with at this boot camp, was Integration can come in all forms. With Integration we can have a great impact on the business we support.

This was never more apparent then when during day two of the boot camp they had a pizza luncheon with the Sr. Development team from LabTech and the attendees at the Synergy boot camp. The organizers had miscalculated the amount of pizza a room of technical engineers would consume and so they found themselves a little short on substance.

Innovation can come from some of the oddest places and for the most bizarre reasons. Not having enough pizza to go around a room of engineers started discussions about how innovations could solve problems like this. The room of engineers threw out different ideas that reached across the spectrum of possibilities, even for pizza. It then came down to “There should be a Domino’s Pizza Plugin for LabTech” , not just a web page on a tab but a more analytical approach to pizza delivery.

The question arose, how can a RMM platform make a better “mouse trap”, or, in this instance a better pizza delivery service? You could look across the room and see the “gear heads” toiling with the idea as they started spewing out different features this plugin would need. It had to be automated; it had to be simple; it needed to calculate and understand how much pizza would be needed; and it should follow up with management to provide some layers for determining progress of the pizza to be delivered.

The Domino’s Pizza Plugin was born. This plugin would use the RMM platform to calculate how many people at a client’s company were actively logged in to PC’s to determine the gross pizza that was needed to be ordered. It would then send out a notice to each workstation requesting feedback as to the toppings and then take that feedback to determine how to slice up the orders so that everyone got the toppings on the amount of pizza they were to consume. It would then need to order the correct amount and to pay for it via the corporate credit card. It should calculate the distance the driver would drive to cover the tip as well. There would need to be a scheduler that could be used so that if the company opted into a “Pizza Friday” this could be scheduled automatically. There would need to be a manual launcher provided that would allow “one off” orders for these special occasions that prompted for a pizza lunch and the ability to add offline users to the order. We had to take in mind, that a company is not always at the same location. The plugin would need to determine all company locations and the amount of active employees at each location to carve up the order so that each location received the allotted amount pizza. Of course, we would need some metrics sent back to the management team like costs per order; number of orders per month and year; the most popular toppings ordered; and how much each employee consumes regularly. The plugin should show how its ROI is doing and the amount of man hours it has saved the company by automating all the duties of coordinating a mass pizza order for the company. Now we could see the untold hours each year it would save a company who otherwise would have to take on such costly tasks, and of course, all the happy employees with full bellies.

What is seen by this demonstration in engineering prowess is that Innovation can be found in the most absurd places, they can also have the most impact. The next time your company orders pizza ask if there is an APP for that.

Shannon Anderson

a.k.a Cubert

Network drives fail to connect error 1208 and System error 2148073478

We had a problem where a Windows 2012 R2 Domain Controller would not browse the shares of another Windows 2012 R2 WorkGroup Server. We kept getting error 1208 and then we tried to force a mapping to share and received System error 2148073478

This problem is caused by the “Secure Negotiate” feature that was added to SMB 3.0 for Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. This feature depends upon the correct signing of error responses by all SMBv2 servers, including servers that support only protocol versions 2.0 and 2.1. Some third-party file servers and other Windows Systems not on a domain may not not return a signed error response. Therefore, the connection fails.

We had this issue with a Windows 2012 R2 Domain Controller trying to connect to a Windows 2012 workgroup server share.

The Domain Controller had the local network set to Public and not Private, We had to change this by running a few PoSh commands.

Get-NetConnectionProfile

This gives us the index numbers for each interface then we find the interface marked public and change it to Private by running the PoSh command

Set-NetConnectionProfile -InterfaceIndex 10 -NetworkCategory Private

Change the InterfaceIndex number to the number of your interface.

Next we need to low the security level for SMB so that we can allow the connection to complete.

To do this we Edit the registry and change the value of RequireSecureNegotiate to zero

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters" RequireSecureNegotiate -Value 0 -Force

Once that has completed you will now be able to access your network shares on other NAS servers or Windows systems.

Hope this helps someone out there, Enjoy!

Cubert

Chocolatey II Plugin Reviewed

The New Chocolatey II Plugin

Cubert has been going gang busters with the new Chocolatey II plugin and now he is ready to show everyone a little of what he has been doing. So without any further adieu let me introduce to you the new Chocolatey II Plugin for LabTech!

A little history about Chocolatey Nuget

Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows (like apt-get or yum but for Windows). It was designed to be a decentralized framework for quickly installing applications and tools that you need. It is built on the NuGet infrastructure currently using PowerShell as its focus for delivering packages from the distros to your computer. Chocolatey is like apt-get, but built with Windows in mind (there are differences and limitations). For those unfamiliar with APT/Debian, think about Chocolatey as a global silent installer for applications and tools. It can also do configuration tasks and anything that you can do with PowerShell. The power you hold with a tool like Chocolatey is only limited by your imagination! Chocolatey is the brain child of Rob Reynolds, a passionate developer and technology guru.

How is Chocolatey different than Ninite?

Great question, see Chocolatey vs Ninite.

The Chocolatey Plugin for LabTech

Squidworks has harnessed the power of Chocolatey and brought it into the LabTech RMM platform. This allows MSPs to control mass amounts of Windows systems and software applications in a very simple to use interface. In fact, managing software applications could not be easier when using the Chocolatey plugin for LabTech. As you read further I will go over the plugins functions and how you to can harness this power for your MSP.

The Master Control manager

The Master Control manager provides the on and off controls over whole system. The configuration tab of the manager incorporates licensing and the common settings to control auto installs and auto updates.

ViewMenu-Configuration

Approved Apps

This is where you setup your application list, we recently added the ability to set a repository for each application you want to control. This allows a MSP to pick and choose where they get each application. We also provide a “seed” button that will auto populate the list with the most common apps used like Java, Chrome and Adobe.

Global Excludes

You can control who is allowed to install applications at a global level, make quick work of allowing or denying installs across clients. This was completely rewritten after Beta 6 release to be more accurate and faster.

Global Graphs

See what applications are being distributed across your MSP, monitor the versions of Chocolatey installed across you client base and see the current daily install activity.

Now we move to the Client Level

Client Configuration

Here you can include or exclude a client directly or select any set of apps to exclude from the client as a whole.

Client level – System bulk management

Here you can select systems and applications from the approved apps list and manually install them, update or delete them. Everything is reported back to plugin in real time so you get to see what is going on as it happens.

Computer Level Management

Computer Configuration

We provide very granular control over who, what and when applications get installed. You can control down to the PC level if apps get installed and what gets installed to provide a very low level of control for the distribution of applications.

Computer Software

At the computer software level you can do one off installs of any software anywhere for some really extreme flexibility, any applications installed will be included in updates, they will get listed and version checked as part of the maintenance cycles. You are also able to update and delete software at this level making it very convenient for MSPs to manage software . Everything is reported back to plugin in real time so you get to see what is going on as it happens.

Behind the Scenes

Chocolatey Maintenance

This service checks based on your desired settings for systems that need the Chocolatey Application installed and also manages all versioning management of all software installed on PCs

Chocolatey Installer

This service monitors PCs for software installed and or approved and not yet installed and makes sure that the PCs get the new software based on the Maintenance cycles selected.

Chocolatey Updater

This service checks for and executes updates for both the Chocolatey application and all applications installed.

All behind the scenes services will run at least once every 24 hours and can be set to run as much as once per hour by adjusting the controls in the master control.

Now released and available at http://w ww.plugins4labtech.com

Thanks and have a great day!

Cubert

Cleaner for LabTech

We Empower the Global Management of CCleaner

CCleaner for LabTech is a CCleaner manager that deploys, licenses, analyzes, cleans, stores data inside LabTech, displays computer level and global level statistics of each PC and uninstalls (de-enable) CCleaner all from a simple set of consoles. Let me show you some of what we are doing.

This is the Computer level interface

With very simple controls, you can Analyze a PC which will do several things.

Checks for and processes old log just in case they had been missed by previous jobs
Verifies the licensed install of CCleaner and installs if needed
Sets system to Enabled in Global Manager
Analyzes system
Retrieves all log details needed and stored data into LabTech
Refreshes the results tab

Cleaning will do.

Verify CCleaner install
Clean system
Retrieves all log details needed and stored data into LabTech
Refreshes the results tab

Computer-DiskClean

The results tab displays the results from the last scans and cleans and displays that data in both graphical and dataset views.

Registry Cleaner will do

Scan Registry based on user setting
Create a full backup of the root registry keys
Clean selected results from registry

Computer-regscan

You can manage individual CCleaner cleaning directives using Bulk Config, each system managed can have separate sets of added rules to customize the cleaning experience for each PC under management.

Bulk Configurations will do

Add, edit and delete CCleaner configuration directives per PC

Computer-Config

Global Manager

The Global Manager is the heart of the system. This is where you configure the global settings for each computer, control the master on/off switch, manage your licenses, enable your computer systems for auto installs and auto cleans, deal with failed CCleaner installs and view the data from all clients combined.

ViewMenu-Main

The CCleaner engine manages the temp and junk files for hundreds of applications. In fact there is so many application that CCleaner works on that it was found to be impractical to try to stuff all that in a plugin. We still want to deliver that flexibility but in a simple and easy manner for you to manage. To do this we created a Bulk Configuration manager that allows you to add and remove any setting that CCleaner supports. These get applied to all clients enabled for CCleaner automation.

ViewMenu-Config

We have provided a Failed CCleaner Install Manager that will allow you to identify problem systems and from here you can reinstall and see the direct output of the efforts from behind the scenes.

ViewMenu-LicenseManager

We provide a 30 day look back window to see overall where and how the storage is being consumed and reclaimed.

ViewMenu-GlobalStats

ViewMenu-Graphs

We provide long term history views into several key aspects of the data being collected picking out the high end consumers by client, computer and application type for both the Analyzers and the Cleaners.

ViewMenu-Reports

Now let’s talk a little about behind the scenes, What you do not see is the back-end processes that are working to automate the entire process. When you turn Cleaner for LabTech on it starts a set of processes that manage the deployment, licensing scanning and cleaning based on your configurations. As Cleaner for LabTech starts its tasks it is ticketing its time spent and recording those results in the tickets. This adds the value and tractability to the work performed by Cleaner.

Now Available

Go Forth and Clean!

LabTech CCleaner Plugin

The Squidworks Garage is at it again and has placed CCleaner in it’s sites. It’s time that LabTech had a great interactive and automated CCleaner plugin so we are taking a stab at it. This plugin operates the CCleaner Business versions of the product and does require that you have purchased a license from Piriform or LabTech Software prior to using the plugin.

Here is some highlights of our Alpha and design version.

#1 Simple to configure

#2 Great Stats

#3 Easy to Analyze

#4 Easy to Clean

# 5 Easy Results

#6 Next item we will be adding is the ability to automate scans and cleans and enable by Client and by Computer that counts against a license count.

#7 Add more charts, system and client stats in the global view

#8 Adding history stats to client and computer levels

We will be posting out to the public an official release date as we get closer to completing the final touches on the plugin. Please stay tuned for more information on how you can get the new CCleaner plugin for LabTech.

Cubert.