Monitor Administrator Security Group In LabTech with ADMON

Who’s in and out of your Security Group?

ADMON is a LabTech plugin used to monitor and restore changes made to your local administrators group. Many viral attacks end up trying to add or change the users in the local administrators group of an infected PC. Sometimes these subtle changes go un-noticed and end up causes very expensive repairs and loss of data. ADMON will alert you to the changes, create tickets and if set to auto restore will add time to ticket and restore the admin group back as it was, before closing the ticket out. If your clients need to audit who has what privileges across the PCs in the network, you can use the simple export tool provided in the plugin to get a detailed list of computers and the users with admin rights into Excel.

Have a peek at what we are doing!

We provide a master on / off switch for easy control over the plugin and a control to set and manage the scanning interval for greater flexibility.

Each client has a “Admin Group” tab at the Client console level that displays key information on each PC scanned for that client. You have a master enable switch to enable each client you want to provide the service for. We provide the ability to monitor both additions and removals individually which will create alerts only, or if you add the ticketing box it the plugin will also create tickets for you. You can set the system to auto restore any changes as part of the monitoring (2 way monitoring needs to be set). If you opt to auto restore and also select ticketing, the system will open a ticket, add 10 minutes, auto restore the group and close the ticket completing the required repairs. Select any machine and right click to reveal a menu to manage alarms and to manage the Administrators group. Use the export to Excel tool to get the data out of LabTech and into 3rd party applications like Excel.

The View Alarms popup reveals who has fired off alarms and what was delivered (alert or ticket) Once a system has alarmed or has been ticketed no new alarms are sent until cleared. To clear double click the selected item.

Selecting a computer from the main screen and right clicking for a menu to manage the administrators group will lead you here. This tool allows you to add or remove users to the administrators group directly from LabTech. See the commands execute in near real time inside the console window provided.

Current Version 1.0.0.76

Download the DLL to install via LabTech Plugin Manager

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.

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

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

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.

PowerShell – Powershell plugin for LabTech

LabTech PowerShell Plugin

Squidworks has now released their PowerShell plugin for LabTech that will allow you to run basic Powershell commands on the remote computers under management. You no longer need to remote in to a server or workstation to run basic Powershell commands against that system. In this version we added a process to check to see if the computer is an Exchange server 2007,2010 or 2013 and if the system is a supported Exchange server then we will load up the exchange modules when we process your Powershell command so that you can take advantage of all the Powershell commands that the Exchange server provides. If we find the system is not an Exchange server we do not load any extra modules and run in a standard PowerShell.

*New – PowerShell Command Manager

Save and execute complex PowerShell commands with just a mouse click. There is no longer a need to try and remember hundreds of PowerShell commands you have crafted, with Squidworks PowerShell Command Manager you are able to create and save these little jewels so your entire team can use them on any PC console inside of LabTech. (Available on the [View] menu of your LT console.)

Version 1.0.4 available for download

Version 1.0.2 fixes
————————————————–

Fixed bug where pipe key would cause errors (|)
Added Multiline command box

Version 1.0.3 fixes
————————————————–
Added the ability to determine if we are an exchange server and what version, We will load Exchange Powershell modules if Exchange is found for that version.
Setup terminal to grow and shrink with size of window.
Changed colors to better reflect PS terminal
Changed formatting so it mirrors Powershell standard output.

Version 1.0.4
—————————————————

Added PowerShell Command Manager available via the [View] menu in your LT console
Added ability to launch saved powershell commands on any PC console

PassPort – Password manager plugin for LabTech

PassPort is a password manager for plugin LabTech that leverages several applications to query Windows systems for passwords saved in Web Browsers, Instant Messengers, Network (VPN) and Dialup accounts and local email accounts and imports the information back into the LabTech database. You can then access this information inside of LabTech under the computer console on each PC.

Version 1.0.1 now available for download

We leverage several apps from Nirsoft to collect the password information and include up to date versions with our zip file download. Nirsoft tools can be found here at http://www.nirsoft.net/

We use MailPassView:

Mail PassView is a small password-recovery tool that reveals the passwords and other account details for the following email clients:

Outlook Express
Microsoft Outlook 2000 (POP3 and SMTP Accounts only)
Microsoft Outlook 2002/2003/2007/2010/2013 (POP3, IMAP, HTTP and SMTP Accounts)
Windows Mail
Windows Live Mail
IncrediMail
Eudora
Netscape 6.x/7.x (If the password is not encrypted with master password)
Mozilla Thunderbird (If the password is not encrypted with master password)
Group Mail Free
Yahoo! Mail – If the password is saved in Yahoo! Messenger application.
Hotmail/MSN mail – If the password is saved in MSN/Windows/Live Messenger application.
Gmail – If the password is saved by Gmail Notifier application, Google Desktop, or by Google Talk.

We use WebBrowserPassView:

WebBrowserPassView is a password recovery tool that reveals the passwords stored by the following Web browsers: Internet Explorer (Version 4.0 – 11.0), Mozilla Firefox (All Versions), Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera. This tool can be used to recover your lost/forgotten password of any Website, including popular Web sites, like Facebook, Yahoo, Google, and GMail, as long as the password is stored by your Web Browser.

This utility works on any version of Windows, starting from Windows 2000, and up to Windows 8, including 64-bit systems. Older versions of Windows (Windows 98/ME) are not supported, because this utility is a Unicode application.
Currently, WebBrowserPassView cannot retrieve the passwords if they are encrypted with a master password. Support for master password will probably be added in future versions.
Currently, WebBrowserPassView cannot retrieve passwords from external hard-drive. Support for that might be added in future versions.
On Internet Explorer 7.0-9.0, the passwords are encrypted with the URL of the Web site, so WebBrowserPassView uses the history file of Internet Explorer to decrypt the passwords. If you clear the history of Internet Explorer, WebBrowserPassView won’t be able to decrypt the passwords.
On Google Chrome – passwords originally imported from Internet Explorer 7.0-9.0, cannot be decrypted.

We use DialupPassView:

This utility enumerates all dialup/VPN entries on your computers, and displays their logon details: User Name, Password, and Domain. You can use it to recover a lost password of your Internet connection or VPN. This utility works under Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003/2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. The passwords are revealed only if you log on to the computer with administrator privileges.

We use MessenPass:

MessenPass is a password recovery tool that reveals the passwords of the following instant messenger applications:

MSN Messenger
Windows Messenger (In Windows XP)
Windows Live Messenger (In Windows XP/Vista/7)
Yahoo Messenger (Versions 5.x and 6.x)
Google Talk
ICQ Lite 4.x/5.x/2003
AOL Instant Messenger v4.6 or below, AIM 6.x, and AIM Pro.
Trillian
Trillian Astra
Miranda
GAIM/Pidgin
MySpace IM
PaltalkScene
Digsby

MessenPass can only be used to recover the passwords for the current logged-on user on your local computer, and it only works if you chose the remember your password in one of the above programs. You cannot use this utility for grabbing the passwords of other users.