GAM
GAM – Add-ClassroomTeacherToStudentsClasses
Function to add a teacher as a co-teacher to all classrooms of a given student. Usage AD Objects with the SamAccountName parameter can also be piped to this function
Phones
BT SIP Media Gateway – Cable Wiring
Installing the SIP Media Gateway from BT, a box which replaces the older ISDN box, the cable which connected between the media gateway and the phone system’s ISDN port wasn’t wired like any cable I’d ever seen before. Wanting to replace the 3m cable BT provided with a short cable to jump the 1U from the gateway to the PBX, I decided to make my own. It’s not a standard crossover cable, however:
Powershell
RoboDelete
A quick powershell function to use Robocopy to delete a full directory. Deleting folders using Robocopy is a quicker, more robust method of deleting directories. It can also deal with the ‘path too long’ issue encountered by File Explorer’s directory deletion. Usage
Powershell
Powershell, Let’s Encrypt, Lansweeper & ISS Express
Looking at moving away from purchased certificate towards free Let’s Encrypt generated certificates, Lansweeper posed a bit of an issue when using ISS Express Following Lansweeper’s SSL instructions to automate the process, a certificate would need to be generated, installed and then it’s thumbprint added to a config file. The below Powershell script uses Posh-ACME with Cloudflare DNS verification to generate the certificate and then regex replaces the certificate’s thumbprint in the Lansweeper config file.
Active Directory
AD OU – Remove Protected From Accidental Deletion
When creating an OU in AD, ticking the Protect from Accidental Deletion box seems like a good idea. Until you go to delete the OU. Even more so if you have multiple nested OUs and just want to delete the top level one. Powershell to the rescue! We can use Get-ADOrganizationalUnit (note US spelling) to select all the OUs within a supplied OU and then use Set-ADObject and ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion Get-ADOrganizationalUnit -SearchBase “OU=NameOfOU,DC=ogs,DC=internal” -Filter * | ForEach-Object { Read more…
Powershell
GAM – Hide all users in AD OU from Global Address List
Fairly niche one this one. Needed to hide all the users in a specific AD OU from the Google Workspace’s Global Address List Powershell to the rescue. Pulling through all the users in a specific searchbase and iterating through them with the GAM gal off command. The script pulls the accounts in the specified OU, including their mail attribute, in to an object. It iterates through that object calling gam.exe, selecting the user by email address Read more…
Windows
AccessIt – Unattended Install
We use AccessIt for library management in several of our schools. Aside from running on JAVA it’s an excellent piece of software.In the past, we’ve always had to deploy it by having physical (or virtual) access to the machine. However, now have a process for unattended install.We use PDQ Deploy – if you don’t use it, have a look. It’s worth every penny Step 1. – Install JAVAThe installer will crash out if JAVA isn’t already Read more…
Windows
api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll
This has been a minor annoyance for a while now; how some machines work with a certain piece of software (Skype, Cura, Wacom Tablet Drivers to name some of the examples we’ve had) and some don’t. They all give an error of The Program can’t start because api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll is missing on machines running Windows 7. Some Google-Fu narrowed this down to VC++ components missing. Turns out you can install VC++ Redistributables to your heart’s content but if a Read more…
Concerto
Concerto Date and Time Format
Changing the time and date format in the Concerto signage system. By default, the date displayed on the signage screen is in American format; Month / Day / Year As one of the 2.8billion people in the world who use the DMY format, I needed to find a way of changing the date format on the screens. Concerto have some document ( https://github.com/concerto/concerto/wiki/Field-Configuration ) but for some reason the option was unavailable. Started by going to Read more…
Drivers
WDS, Windows 7 and USB3
For a while now we’ve been building machines using WDS, a master image and filtered drivers. Each machine model has a WDS Driver Group which is filtered by Model and Applicability set to Driver packages matching client hardware. For a long time, using this approach, USB3 drivers haven’t been installing at all. We tend to find that the USB3 Port driver is installed but not the USB3 hub. Finally, after a lot of reading up on this Read more…
AD
Slack LAPS Slash Command
Having implemented LAPS (Local Administrator Password Solution) on all of our PCs there became a need to access the password when in the field away from a PC with easy access to AD / the LAPS GUI. As we use Slack for primary out-of-office communications, it made sense to create a Slack Slash Command to return the LAPS Password. It is accessed by using /password PCNAME and returns the password to the user who requested it. Read more…
GAFE
GAM – Set profile photo of entire group to single image
For out students, we want a single image for their GSuite profile photos. Sadly there isn’t a way of preventing users from changing their photo, so we have to run a script regularly to remove any changes they may have made. #- Address of the group -# $groupAddress = “[email protected]” #- Location of image -# $imageLocation = “C:\Folder\image.jpg” #- Set the image -# .\gam.exe group $groupAddress update photo $imageLocation
Calendar
GAM – Give mail group calendar permissions
Had a need to add all the users from a GSuite group as editors on a Google Calendar. The script reads and outputs the current ACLs, gets the members of the group and then adds them to the calendar giving them the appropriate permissions. At the end, it outputs the new permissions. Different permissions can be given freebusy|read|editor|owner by changing the permission on line #23 The users receive an email from Google telling them that the user Read more…
Active Directory
Powershell AD – Output groups a user is a member of
We occasionally need to make a note of the groups a user is a member of. If they’re going on maternity leave, for example. This script does require the Active Directory Module For Windows PowerShell. $user = “username” Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership $user | select name