I'm interested in hearing about the scripts, tools, or processes you've set up that have significantly reduced the time you spend on certain tasks. For instance, automating user onboarding really streamlined my workflow and eliminated many headaches. I'm looking for more examples of clever automations or fixes that have made a noticeable impact on your day-to-day tasks; feel free to share your experiences!
8 Answers
I automated the password reset process by having a script run each week that checks for accounts about to expire, delaying calls from users in the middle of the night by 90%. This was a real lifesaver!
At my last job, we had a recurring server issue that required nightly reboots. The team had been dealing with this for years until I set up a simple scheduled reboot script. It's saved countless hours of downtime and unnecessary troubleshooting!
Automated onboarding and offboarding processes have been a game changer. Now, what used to take several days can be done in an hour thanks to Power Automate and some clever scripting!
I created a system that queries all of our network switches via SNMP, tracks MAC addresses, and then uses NMAP to gather IPs and hostnames. The script updates an SQLite database and gives me a web front-end to see everything plugged into each port, along with descriptions, VLANs, and operating speeds. It's super helpful for troubleshooting and has another PowerShell script that wakes up users' workstations automatically when they need to log in. It's made my job so much easier!
That setup is impressive! I'm curious, how long did it take to build everything, and is maintenance a hassle?
I put together a script that gathers all patch statuses and AV logs, generating a clean PDF report for each client at the end of the month. It went from a full afternoon task to just 10 minutes!
My biggest time-saver is a Network Multi-Tool I built. It manages around 18 sites and is packed with features like MAC address lookups, VLAN tracing, and remote port cycling. It literally takes minutes off my daily workload!
I wrote a script to automatically delete old logs from our servers, which has reduced Zabbix alerts about disk space and saved so much hassle in managing file sizes.
Using PatchMyPC has cut down my workload dramatically. No more manually creating .intunewin files! I've also automated server patching with Ansible, and it generates easy-to-read reports after each run. Azure Arc is pretty handy too, as it can hot-patch Windows servers without needing to migrate live VMs.
Totally agree with Azure Arc! It used to be an all-night job for patching, but now it's a breeze.
PatchMyPC sounds great but it's a bit pricey for smaller teams. Are there any good alternatives?
That's really clever! I'm sure users take it for granted, but your work really optimizes their experience. Well done!