Essential Goodies

[richard.thomas]

One of my primary schools has ordered a new server, and is due to receive it this week; The whole network is also currently being upgraded- was all on Cat5 but is moving to a fibre backbone. Now seems to be a good time to start rebuilding all the workstations (It seems it hasn’t been done since 2003).

I only spend 3 hours a day at the primary school as I’m based at a secondary school. I’ve posted this thread because I want to know your opinions on essential goodies to put on the server and workstations.
I am able to VNC into the workstations from the secondary school so maybe something to enable someone ringing me up can easily give me the IP for the workstation they’re having a problem with.

I currently run SpiceWorks, this will continue to run on the old server, and I’m planning on introducing the staff at the school to the HelpDesk. Does anyone know of a better helpdesk than SpiceWorks’ ? Preferably I’d like one that doesn’t require a user to login or enter their email.

Look forward to your comments

[K.C.Leblanc]

BGInfo is a free tool that can display all sorts of system info on the desktop. I'm pretty sure it can be configured to show the local IP address.

[webman]

With Liberum running under IIS - if you use integrated windows authentication and you're good with ASP you can modify it (free) to suit your own needs so a username is not required.

[plexer]

My Little Helpdesk from opsoftware Ozan use integrated authentication to automatically log the user in via their windows login id.

Ben

[strawberry]

i use bozteck nvc manager to deploy vnc to machines, also allows you to run scripts and other nice stuff. and i use java in an intranet page to give the user all the details they could need for a support call (ip, mac, machine name, username, system variables)