Message staff about - downtime and upgrades

I have to patch Sims again today to fix an issue that needs doing before the census can go.

Does anyone know of a program that can be used for one way communication to all computers on a network so that I can quickly let all staff know of the downtime.

(I will just be running round the school letting everyone know this time)

But for the future does anyone know of anything:

1) Preferably open source
2) Easily installed and run on a network
3) Will popup a message as soon as I send it to all computers that I choose

use net send - but be aware wont work if you have messenger service disabled

I use the message function in LanView3 to do this.

@siuko:

I have always left upgrading and patching of Sims to a time which is both convenient to staff and also to myself which is usually on a night after the staff have left.

I find that by sending out an e-mail the day before, the staff can then plan to get themselves away as soon as the school ends the next day thus allowing me to run Solus upgrade without having to run around telling everyone to log out of Sims etc.

To date and after 8 years it seems to work very nicely and the staff really appreciate it. :)

We found that as some of the classrooms dont have phones but most members of staff have access to a computer. I added borg chat to the staff start up group and the staff find it really useful.

BORGChat Homesite - Download

Might be worth a look at.

Sadly we have the messenger service disabled...

And Borgchat looks a little bit too much for what I need.

Just needs to be a really small utility that pops up a small message.

Cant you just reactivate the messenger service with your group policy?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by siuko

Sadly we have the messenger service disabled...

And Borgchat looks a little bit too much for what I need.

Just needs to be a really small utility that pops up a small message.

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I use a deputy head. :)

(He runs interference for me while I patch).

I'm obviously being very slow today (same as always really) :D

I just realised that I can just install Italc Client on all our staff PC's and use the text message function from there!!! :)

It will also centralise our remote support a little more than just using vnc!

(Now where is the slaphead smilie when I need it)

Thanks for everyones help!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sparkeh

I use the message function in LanView3 to do this.

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We use lanview 3 also, does the job nicely

Email,

another one of email - plus staff briefing normally does the trick for us

We run the SIMS shortcut though an AutoIT script which checks for any messages and displays them about downtime, checks if there allowed to run SIMS on that machine and check if we want SIMS disabled (for updating). Also if they’re running SIMS upgrades we know who is on and where and can throw them all out remotely.