Winpopup thingy?

[Tuxguy]

Hi,

 

I've been asked to look into some sort of staff-to-staff winpopup type thingy. Want to keep it all in school (not wanting to rely on external servers (internet link goes down occasionally..)), so at first looked at Jabber and Gaim, but then moved on to simpler solutions more like good old winpopup (what happend to that?) and found "Fomine Net Send GUI". Seems to do roughly what I want - in-house, user selection, controlled access, pop-up message - although not actually integrated into the OS. Before I go and deploy it has anyone else used it and got + or - comments? Or know of a good (free) alternative?

 

Teachers wanted to use Skype...

 

Cheers,

 

Ian

 

Fomine link

[_Bob_]

I wrote a VB app tha put a GUI onto the net send command a while ago for this sort of thing. You need to remember though, that the messenger service has been disabled by default since sp2.

 

[Tuxguy]

The Fomine Net Send thing seems to work ok, using its own protocol, apparently not using messenger or its ilk; I'm just looking for anyone with experience of it.

 

Going through an RM package install routine - package then deploys and installs ok, but auto-starts with any user logon - I just want auto-start on staff logon - may have to control at machine level - that's ok. Problem with firewall settings though... application (exe) allowed, but sending 'not allowed'. Sorry, thinking aloud. Hmmm...

 

Ian

[Geoff]

What's wrong with email?

[Tuxguy]

Email is good, but in this case we want to pop up a stay-on-top message window that can say things like "You're wanted in reception right now." - we have very few telephones on site, and most teachers don't use email much, so we used email there'd be too much delay. If I can get it done for free then that's a winner.

 

Problem with RM auto-install of NetSend - if the user is not the original installer then the utility doesn't allow messages to be sent or the utility to be closed. This may be an advantage if one-way comms is enough (but I suspect not!).

 

Ian

[plexer]

I know you said you'd looked at jabber but:

 

http://www.jivesoftware.org/wildfire/

 

The stuff from jive is really easy to setup.

 

Ben

[Geoff]

You could also consider a VoIP solution like Asterix?

 

http://www.trixbox.org/

 

 

That'd help out with the lack of phones too.

[Tuxguy]

Hey, plexer, that Wildfire looks really cool 8) and useful! If the Spark client can do pop-ups then we may be on to something there. I'll run it up tomorrow and have a look see. Don't you just love open source??!

 

Geoff, I think VOIP, as wonderful as it is, is not really suited to this sort of thing, especially in a classroom where confidentiality is important (many teachers don't have a separate office either). Also bit of a drag unless we get the pukka handsets as well. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

 

Cheers,

 

Ian

[Tuxguy]

Hey, that is a neat in-house IM solution - works a treat! If I can just integrate it into the RM LDAP/AD system and restrict usage to staff only then could be on to a winner here. Only downside could be that the pop-ups are not as 'in yer face' as is necessary sometimes, but early days yet. Thanks for putting me on to this, Ben. :thumbright:

 

Cheers,

 

Ian

[tickmike]

Hi .

This sounds like some think I could use.?

I been thinking of a simple way the three staff in the school could send a simple message to my screen at home via a wifi network link I'm setting up to run the network etc. from home.

Once I get this new domain set up and running ok, I will try one of the above .

I thinking if it could be set up so the staff can only use it from there profile, but if they log off would it disappear from my screen .?

Michael.

[Tuxguy]

Hi Michael,

 

From what I've seen and understood so far I believe either system will leave a message on your screen after they have logged off, so, from that point of view, I think they are the sort of thing you are looking for. However, unless you have a wireless link direct from the school or are running a VPN then you won't be on the same domain, so I don't think they'll be able to contact you directly. I'm looking at these solutions as being in-house only to avoid the need for external links and to keep things reasonably secure. In your case would email not be good enough? Or a dedicated MSN-type channel?

 

Cheers,

 

Ian

[plexer]

@Tux: From the setup Mike is trying to acheive his home pc's will be behind a smoothwall box with a direct wireless link into the school so it should be ok as he'd just connect to the wildfire server within school.

 

Ben

[ind13]

just downloaded and tried wildfire

 

look pretty good,

 

anyone managed to connect it to AD?

[drjturner]

We use rolesoft, google it and you will find a download, I think it is free and works here.

[woody]

I've had a go at connecting Wildfire to Active Directory following their LDAP instructions:

 

http://www.jivesoftware.org/builds/wildfire/docs/latest/documentation/ldap-guide.html

 

So far, it's not worked, but I don't know if I've missed anything as I'm not exactly an expert with LDAP. For instance, I don't know if the LDAP.port should be something different to the default of 389???

 

As it stands, when I log in after restarting the server, it still gives me just the one default admin user in the Wildfire admin console.

 

If anyone else with a bit more experience in LDAP fancies a go at this I would be greatfull. It looks like it wouln't take 5 minutes to set up if you know what you are doing.

[ind13]

same with me,

i followed the instructions but no luck.

 

might just add the staff manually.

 

only planning on testing it with a few staff before i roll it out to the rest of them.

[Tuxguy]

Looks like the Wildfire site has a good and active community that would be worth tapping into. For example, here's a typical thread.

 

About to dive into the LDAP/AD thing myself.... gulp - wish me luck, Carruthers... :?

 

Ian

[russdev]

as garfied once said

 

"if not back in hour send an apple pie after me"

 

russ

[Tuxguy]

I'd rather have a crumble in the jungle, actually!

 

(Sorry, missing my lunch - thunderstorm has kept me in...)

[plexer]

hmm rolesoft.com which is supposed to be the homepage of that has died and been taken over by an add by the looks of it.

 

Ben

[woody]

Right, OK, with a bit of messing around and with some pointers from the Wildfire forums, I have got LDAP to work.

 

The following wildfire.xml works. All you have to do is change it to match your domain and group names. As a pointer, our domain is called 'NCTC' and the group of users it filters to allow access is called 'Staff'.

 

Hope this helps:

 

 
  
     
   9090  
   9091 
   
  
     
     
   mwood  
     
    
   
 en  
   
   
   
   
  
   localhost  
   389  
   sAMAccountName  
   displayName  
   mail  
   dc=NCTC  
   NCTC\admin  
   yourpassword  
       (&
   (objectCategory=Person)
   (memberOf=CN=Staff,OU=Staff,DC=NCTC)
   (sAMAccountName={0})
   )
   ]]>  
   cn  
   member  
   description  
       (&
   (objectClass=group)
   (memberOf=CN=Staff,OU=Staff,DC=NCTC)
   (member={0})
   )]]>
   false 
   
  
    
     org.jivesoftware.wildfire.ldap.LdapUserProvider 
     
    
     org.jivesoftware.wildfire.ldap.LdapAuthProvider 
    
   
   
  
   org.jivesoftware.database.EmbeddedConnectionProvider 
   
 true 

 

[edit for code tags- please use code tags thanks. tarquel.]

[Tuxguy]

Doh - been trying to get Wildfire to use LDAP/AD only to find, much to my surprise, that the server Wildfire is on is not Active Directory enabled! I guess as a web server no one thought that AD would be important there. No wonder I couldn't get it to work.

 

Now I have a choice - move Wildfire to an AD enabled server, or enable AD on the existing Wildfire server, or just stick to manual account creation? Think I'll stick to the latter solution and maintain control by hand - it'll probably be easier and quicker, at least for now.

 

Anyone noticed that the Spark client application takes a while to start up - like over a minute?

 

Ian

[Geoff]

Anyone noticed that the Spark client application takes a while to start up - like over a minute?

 

It's written in Java. Blame SUN for their crummy JVM.

[woody]

Anyone noticed that the Spark client application takes a while to start up - like over a minute?

 

Mmmmm, Spark loads up pretty quick for me.

[Geoff]

Does for me too, but I'm using Blackdown JVM on Linux so it's obvious why.