Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

ServiceDesk Plus = Track-IT replacement?

If you've been following this blog you know that last December we finally gave up searching for the ultimate helpdesk solution and went with Track-IT.  And you may recall my frustration at it's lack of email thread capture which we've determined is a must have.

So we've been keeping our eyes and ears peeled for a good replacement for Track-IT ... tonight I think we may have found it!

ManageEngine Service Desk Plus

"ServiceDesk Plus is a completely web-based Help Desk and Asset Management Software. It offers an integrated package with Request management(Trouble Ticketing), Asset Tracking, Purchasing, Contract Management, Self-Service Portal, and Knowledge Base at an affordable price point."

Does it do email threading?  According to the documentation - YES!!  It captures the complete conversation thread between the requester and tech ... can I get an AMEN!  And it has much of the extra functionality that Track-IT has (most of which we're not yet using).

We're already using 2 ManageEngine products - OpManager (we're using the free version which lets you monitor up to 20 network devices) and WiFiManager (still evaluating the trial version).  So adding another ManageEngine module into the mix is a no-brainer ... and it can tie into OpManager ... sweet.

So on paper it looks like a potential winner for us ... now to kick the tires.  You can play with the online demo here ... I'm digging the way the screens are laid out and the dashboard type views.

There's a free version which appears to be limited only by the number of assets it can manage (25) or you can install a full blown 30 day trial.  Cost for the full blown is based on # of techs ... $495/yr for 2 techs ... $995/yr for 5 techs ... etc.  For comparison based on 5 techs, we could get about 5 years of ServiceDeskPlus for 1year of Track-IT ... doh!  I'm not sure if they offer non-profit discounts, but I'll find out.  I'll also find out exactly what is crippled in the free version ... we're planning to use SCE2007 for asset management so we may be able to just use the free version ... wouldn't that be swell.

We'll get the trial installed and put it through it's paces ... I'm optimistic given what I've seen so far that this will be our new helpdesk solution ... please let it be so!

I'd highly recommend checking out all the free ManageEngine products - some great stuff that is free for smaller shops and low cost for bigger shops.

UPDATE:  Heard back from a rep about my questions on pricing and free version.
Yes - they offer a 10% discount for non-profits.
The free version is limited to one technician and a max of 25 workstations that can be managed ... so we'll need to pony up for the full version which is still a heck of deal assuming this fits our needs.

Church IT TalkCast - Dec 1 @ 2pm Eastern

Mark your calendar for our next Church IT discussion - Friday December 1st at 2pm Eastern.

NOTE:  I'm dumping SkypeCast and moving over to TalkShoe (thanks for the tip Matt).  TalkShoe has the features I was looking for that SkypeCast does not ... threaded chats, auto-record and publish mp3 of the "show", listen to the live show without needing to download any software, etc.  TalkShoe simply blows away SkypeCasting.

So ... if you want to just listen in you don't need to download nothin' ... just click the TalkShoe icon at the bottom a little before 2pm Friday and click the listen icon.

If you want to participate in the discussion you'll need to create a TalkShoe account and then download the TalkShoe application (both mac and windows).

The TalkShoe app has a nice built in chat engine where you can interact with both the host and other participants.  Threads are color coded for easier tracking.

THE BIG DIFFERENCE between skypecasting and talkcasting, is that with TalkShoe you have to dial in if you want to voice chat.  There is no extra charge aside from what it will cost you to make a call to the (724) area code.  If you're too tight to make a call, you can still call using skype (which is free) ... but, for better audio quality I'd recommend using your phone.

Click this icon to go directly to the Church IT TalkCast Friday afternoon.  You can sign-in 5 minutes before the event starts.

Topics to discuss?
Leave a comment if you have suggestions.  I'd like us to each briefly talk about one or 2 of our favorite tech tools.

Another Church IT Blog - Trace Pupke

Here's another Chuch IT blog to add to your RSS reader:  Trace Pupke is the IT Director at Seacoast Church which has multiple sites across SC, NC, and GA.  I don't envy Trace for having to support IT across 8 some sites!

Welcome to the blog-o-rama Trace!

Spam volume on the rise globally!

Spammers have been majorly ramping up their efforts over the past few months.  Our anti-spam solution provider, Postini (www.postini.com), released a recent sobering report on the recent spike in spam activity … for reference Postini is used by 35,000 businesses protecting 9.1 Million email accounts!

                Spam Skyrockets 59 Percent September to November; 91 Percent of All Email is Now Spam

·         Postini processed nearly 70 billion email connections from September to November, and saw a 59 percent spike in spam over that period. Unwanted email is currently 91 percent of all email, and over the past 12 months the daily volume of spam rose by 120 percent.  Read the full press release at http://postini.com/news_events/pr/pr110606.php

Check out these global spam stats from Postini ...

Tasty SPAM stats for GCC

We have 135 active email accounts on our Exchange email server

In the past 42 days…

·         225,000 email messages were attempted to gccwired.com email addresses … totaling 3.4GB of data

·         That’s 5357 messages per day

·         BOGUS account attempts

·         84,000 (37%) of the 225,000 attempted emails were sent to bogus gccwired.com email addresses … and thus denied.  Although they are certainly spam emails, I’ve not included them in the spam stats below as they do not speak to the effectiveness of our anti-spam solution.

·         LEGIT messages – messages actually making it into your inbox (some of these may still end up in your ‘Junk E-mail’ folder)

·         29,000 (20%) of all incoming messages were passed as legit!

·         That’s 690 messages a day being delivered to our inboxes.

·         Legit messages totaled 2.71GB … 63.8% of incoming data

·         I have no stats on how many of these messages ended up in your Junk E-mail folder

·         SPAM messages

·         112,000 (80%) of incoming messages were flagged as spam!!!

·         That’s 2,700 messages per day being flagged as spam by Postini

·         95,000 (88%) of those flagged were just flat deleted by Postini as “Blatant” spam

·         17,000 (12%) were placed into quarantine as probable spam and thus showed up in your daily quarantine summaries

If you include the bogus emails in our spam count the stats rise to 87% of incoming gccwired.com emails are spam!  Crazy!!  2 thumbs way up for Postini ... it rocks!  Review I did long ago here.  A year and a half later it's one of the best technologies we've ever implemented at GCC.

Messages	Bytes	Accepted (Acct) Msgs	Legit Acct Msgs	% of Msgs	% of Bytes	Blocked Acct Msgs	% of Msgs	% of Bytes	Quarantined Acct Msgs	% of Msgs	% of Bytes
224,942	3,396,334,566	140,818	28,947	20.6	63.8	94,941	67.4	28.8	16,930	12.0	7.4

Sharepoint ... no longer a pet project?

You may recall my prior post talking about our intranet pet project using the new WSS 3.0 beta (Windows Sharepoint Services).  [note: I incorrectly called Sharepoint Services MOSS in my prior post ... MOSS 2007 stands for 'Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server' which is the big daddy to WSS and is not free.]

Well, last Tuesday at 4pm Andy and John came up to chat with Ed and I (or is it Ed and me?) about Sharepoint stuff.  The gist was that higher up folks caught wind of this pet project ... and thought it might be a good option for some upcoming building campaign related project management.  That sounded all good until the timeframe was mentioned...

We'd need to have a fully functioning campaign subsite (not the whole intranet) ready to go within 2 weeks ... and a proof-of-concept ready by Thursday morning (that's only a day and half)!  After my initial thoughts of "who's been smoking crack?!" we got down to business ...

Could we pull this off well in such a short timeframe?  Both staff and volunteers would be accessing it from on and offsite ... so it needs to have seemless access for staff, easy access for volunteers from offsite, and of there's all the security issues.

After about 2 hours of discussion, uber volunteer and sharepoint whiz Dustin showed up and we hit Applebee's down the street for grub and more discussion.

By 1am we had completely rebuilt the WSS Virtual Server, tied it to our SQL database, and had a test site up and cranking along.  A master task list was created and we were on our way.  MEGA KUDOS to Dustin ... he knocked it out of the park! :-)  Now the handoff was to Andy and John to create a subsite design by Thursday morning for a little show-n-tell. 

The show-n-tell Thursday was well received and we got a list of functional requirements which WSS will easily exceed ... AND the deadline was loosened ... whew!  It's still not a for sure, but we've got a good proof of concept to build upon.

Now the tricky part ... non-staff access and permissions.  We're being told to plan for "several hundred" volunteers to be accessing this campaign sharepoint site for the next 2 years.  Zowee!  This tuesday we're going to nail down the next steps for volunteer access.  The leading idea at this point is to create their own OU in AD and lock the snot out of it.  We'll upgrade our ISA2004 box to ISA2006 which has nice hooks for offsite WSS access with forms based authentication.  Now to find a way for non-IT staff to be able to easily (via webpage?) add/remove users from the sharepoint OU.  Dustin says he has an idea for this.

Thankfully, Sharepoint Services 3.0 is now out of beta as of 11/17/06 ... get the final version here which is free for Windows Server 2003 owners.

Couple screenshots of our test site to follow.  Looks like we may end up with an actual Intranet sooner than anyone planned :-)

Spring Church IT Roundtable - Mark Your Calendar

Not too long after the successful fall '06 IT Roundtable had finished some initial thoughts for a spring roundtable began.  Spring in Indiana stinks so I suggested finding someplace warm :-)

Warm it shall be ... the Church IT Roundtable baton has been handed off to my good pal Tony Dye who's now firmed up some dates and location.  Having it at Tony's diggs fell through so the roundtable is headin' for ... Texas!

What:  Spring '07 Church IT Roundtable
When:  April 16-18
Where:  Sugar Creek Baptist Church in Houston, TX  Yeehaw!!

The thought this time 'round is to try a multi-day event.  Get some vendors to do presentations one day, have the Roundtable one day, and a Church Management Solution discuss one day.

If you have thoughts or suggestions please leave a comment here

So ... mark your calendar ... if you're not following Tony's blog I'll be cross posting information here with the latest news.

Today's Skypecast - cancelled

Sorry everyone ... an ultra high priority project today is going to keep me from being able to do the IT skypecast today :-(
I thought I might be able to swing it, but it's now very apparent I will not.

1000 apologies ... I feel like scum.

We'll get another setup very soon.

Onslaught of Betaware from Microsoft

Geepers ... Microsoft has so much software in beta right now it makes me dizzy. 

FWIW, here's a list of the MS beta stuff we're testing at GCC

Vista ... only on my laptop at the moment
Office 2007 ... several staff are beta testing as well as myself
Sharepoint Services 3.0
WSUS 3 (Windows Server Update Services)
SCE 2007 (System Center Essentials)
Forefront Security ... installing this tonight to begin testing

Most all of our beta implementation and testing is done on Tuesday nights with our volunteers.

Microsoft Forefront Security Software hits public beta

The public beta for Microsoft's new security software, Forefront, is now open.  Get it here http://www.microsoft.com/forefront/default.mspx

Microsoft Forefront Client Security delivers unified protection from current and emerging malware, so you can feel confident that your business systems are better protected against a broad range of threats. Through a single agent, Forefront Client Security provides real-time detection and removal of spyware, rootkits, and other emerging threats, as well as traditional attacks such as viruses and worms.

Uber volunteer Dustin said he'll install it for us tonight so we can begin testing.  One app tightly integrated into Active Directory to handle all malware ... sweet!  I'm going to assume that Microsoft will give us charities a nice discount once Forefront comes out of beta ... and thus we'll say farewell to Symantec and Webroot.  Actually, we're already saying goodbye to Webroot Spysweeper and switching to the free Microsoft Defender.  I was planning to dump Symantec in favor of AVG or Sophos next year ... but will now wait to see how Forefront pans out.

For home users I'm still recommending the free AVG anti-virus product and free Microsoft Defender.  I've installed that combo in many many homes and it works great.

I'm sure someone will comment about how macs don't get malware ... so let me just say that once it becomes profitable to infect a mac it will happen.  If/when we get a mac for our dept, I'll be looking for anti-virus software to slap on it.  Which raises a good question ... who are the leading anti-virus providers for the mac platform?

SharePoint coming to GCC?

"If you build it they will come" ... that's kinda the mantra I used when I started our initial video streaming pet project ... and now it's a vital part of our website getting thousands of hits each week. 

Here's another pet project of mine (and others) ... we need a good intranet at GCC.  It needs to integrate seamlessly with the tools, like MS Office, our staff use daily.  It needs to have enough hooks that staff will want to use it and of course the cost needs to be low.  We've kicked around various ideas over the past 3 years, but it's never been a high priority on anyone's list to do anything about it.  Uber volunteer Dustin has been showing us the Sharepoint Services 3.0 beta lately ... and it's sweet!  We've been running it on site for a couple weeks to kick the tires and the more I play with it the more I'm sold.  We played with the prior version of Sharepoint and it was just lacking in areas that the new version seems to have filled.

"If you build it they will come" ... I think this same mantra will hold true for Sharepoint ... if we build a good proof of concept our staff will embrace it.  It's easy to learn, has sweet integration into MS office, and costs nothing ... yes, nothing ... if you have Server2003 you can install and use SharePoint Services.  Aside from our own IT needs, we're going to "beta test" with our Tech Arts team.  This should really flesh out the capabilities and limitations of Sharepoint since a key requirement for their site is external volunteer access.  Our connections dept said they are very interested as well ... go figure connections folks would be interested in collaboration software :-)

Of course my brain has immediately gone into support mode ... suppose this, like the video streaming, becomes a hit!  Who maintains it?  Adding/removing sites, users, permissions, training, customizations, etc?  Very important questions to ponder even at this very early stage.

So I'm kinda excited to see what happens with this new pet project as it has a ton of potential ... problem is as a pet project it doesn't get much of my time.  If you've not yet looked into the new version of SharePoint Services 3.0 I'd encourage you to do so ... the price is right and the new features (blogs, wikis, recycle bin, version control, RSS feeds, workflow, permissions) are sweet.

PS ... here's another new acronym to learn MOSS = Microsoft Office SharePoint Services.  I should update the subject of this post to read "MOSS is coming to GCC?" :-)