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

LabTech Plugin -> Office 365 UM keeps improving with new features.

Squidworks Office365 UM Evolves

“New Flash we are now at version 1.8.6 and have added many great features since the writing of this blog, come check out all the new stuff when your done reading.”

Today Version 0.1.7.0 is launching, the 7th release of the first plugin in Labtech to manage Office 365 in the cloud.

GM-O365UM

In the beginning

If you are in the Labtech community then you should know about Cubert’s Office365 Plugin but did you know that it has been evolving?

Back in the beginning our plugin looked a little like this:

In the first version publicly available V 0.0.11 you could only see your users and change their passwords but this was a big step. We were now using remote Powershell CMDs in Labtech scripting and bringing the collected data back into Labtech’s database. This was the first steps to building a plugin for Labtech and getting the data from the cloud into Labtech. We now had a method and a functional process to import data from the cloud and the possibilities opened up for all sorts of new things to come.

It wasn’t long before we were trying new commands and adding some features to our new plugin. Shortly there after we had release a new version that provided the ability to manage some basic permissions like Send As and Send on Behalf As. We started working on added the ability to setup a forwarding email address and full level permissions to allow access for users to other users mailboxes. Version 0.1.4 was released which added the final pieces to our Office365 UM or so we thought.

Moving Day

The Office365 tab’s face was full, no space left to really do anything new but the requests kept coming in for new features. Cubert can you do this was the common theme in the forums. We asked ourselves where are we to put all this new requested functionality? We were out of space and something was going to have to change if we were going to move this plugin any further.

In version 0.1.5.0 we introduced some tabs of our own:

We redesigned the face of the plugin giving us the ability to spread out our functions across different tabs. This gave us the space we needed to really start making this thing preform.We added some new features like adding new users to Office365 , deleting users and also restoring deleted users, converting user mailboxes to shared mailboxes and improving the data collection and error management on the back end.

Our look was getting notice

Cubert heads to Labtech’s Automation Nation 2014 for the second year to see whats in the pipeline in the skunk works at Labtech. Speaking with several people at AN2014 we discovered that there were people using the plugin and had some insight in to how we could make it better and we were determined to do just that.

Our plugin was starting to take shape and the download counts were starting to roll in but with the users comes the problems. The first real wide spread issues started to arise with how Labtech was executing Powershell scripts. This process did not always produce the same results. We found that across platforms that some users were experiencing execution errors with the Data Miner scripts we had designed. We decided a rewrite of the collector was needed, a design that would use the native Powershell application on the PCs instead of the one provided with the Labtech Agent.

We re-crafted the entire data collection process and called it of course “Collect Data” aka “Office 365 Collect Data” . The new method incorporates all user data mining in a single session and adds our newest feature to the Office 365UM Distribution Group Management.

Come and get it

So today we announce our 7Th release of the Office365UM plugin for Labtech available for download now at Squidworks Office365 Plugin for Labtech . We hope you enjoy our products and post here at Squidworks, your experiences with the plugin. This will help drive the development in the direction that is most useful to you and helps us build a better plugin.

Here is what we can do today:

Add, update and delete user accounts and email addresses
Manage Send As, Send on Behalf As and Full Permissions on Mailboxes for other users
Set and delete Forwarding email addresses for users
Restore soft deleted users (30 day limit on retention)
Convert User Mailbox to Shared Mailbox
Set/reset users password
License/unlicense user
Add and delete distribution groups
Add,delete and view group members
Add/Remove groups from Global Address Lists
View License counts and type

Thanks to everyone involved!

Cubert

WiFi Pineapple? More like a WiFi Grenade!

WiFi Pineapple discovery!

I came across this little jewel at a Kaseya Connect conference in Vegas in 2012, as a victim of this little bastard with my IPad ID up on display for all to see at the conference. I was intrigued . Yes Cubert logged on to a Kaseya Conference Free Wifi the day before and the IPad remembered the network and along comes this security guru guy, plays a little trick on the unsuspecting convention goers by dropping a Jasager WiFi Pineapple “Grenade” (Pineapple + Karma + DNS Spoof + SSLStrip + URL Snarf) in the middle of the conference main gallery. So there I am checking my mail and Ebay’ing for a newly used Harley RoadKing when it got really slow and the connection, all of a sudden seemed like the wifi signal started to suck. I poped open the available networks and found that I was connecting to the Kaseya SID but right beside it was the real SID the guru was using to acces his WiFi Pineapple but the Pineapple would answer for any SID you had ever connected to.

Cubert – “I’ve coined the phrase Pineapple Grenade, You take this this little bastard and lob it into the middle of a pubic room like a grenade and the results can be deadly! Facebook will never be the same.”

Holy Shit!!

Next thing I know I am one of many Vegas conference junkies that was on display for all to see. I will tell you I was bummed… I consider myself a… well an above average computer guy. Linux is an old friend, and I have worked on the platform for almost 2 decades. I remember building for fun over a weekend LFS (Linux from Scratch) when it was in it 1.0 series several times because my programming buddy at college kept formatting my build drive . The makeup of the Pineapple Mark IV is not foreign to me at all, I was so intrigued that I looked up Hak5 and ordered one as soon as I got home from the conference as many I bet did.. $89.00 dollars plus shipping of $6.00 for a total of $92 dollars gets me a nice prebuilt compact wireless linux box with tools to play man in the middle to any public wireless service any where? What a Deal!

Delivery Day!

So I crack open my package I received from Hak5 and there it was, my very own WiFiPineapple. Well I could not wait to jump in and start playing with all the neat things this little bastard could do. I read over the little pamphlet that came with it. It gave you the basic low down on what this this WIFi Pineapple does and a very simple explanation of how it works. That is pretty good, as a basic Windows Geek will have issues understanding a lot of the routing and backend modifications this basic OpenWRT linux wireless unit will require to make use of the product. With a nice little interface and several tools, the expectations that you have the knowledge to take it to the next level is required.

Warning, Be Smart!

So feel safe some what in he fact that not every kid with a PC has one but “before warned” it is out there and you will need to be mindful that there is no wireless AP that is safe or secure as a connection to the Internet. Never do any banking or other secure service over a free WiFi!! You have been warned! SSL is not secure and is meaningless to a device like this. They will own you if you are not paying attention. Be smart people!

For more information on the WIFI Pineapple Mark IV goto WiFi PineApple

I will be writing up my experiences and sharing the knowledge on how this works and what it can do so watch for my posts on the WiFi Pineapple Mark IV.

Until then,

Hola

Cubert 8-).

Category: Raves