I'm curious to hear about any scripts, tools, or processes that you've implemented that ended up saving you a ton of time each month. Personally, automating the user onboarding process has really helped me streamline things. I'm not looking for sales bots or anything, just some clever automation or fixes that have made your work life easier. What are some of your favorites?
5 Answers
Automating account creation using PowerShell has been a game changer for me in higher ed. What used to be a week-long process is cut down to an hour, and everything is formatted perfectly for our clinical agencies. Once I started automating, I just couldn’t stop finding ways to streamline tasks.
The efficiency you’re creating with automation sounds amazing! Keep it up!
For me, tools like PatchMyPC have been lifesavers. It eliminates the hassle of manually building .intunewin files for deployments. Plus, using Ansible for automated patching saves me hours when managing hundreds of servers. Azure Arc is also a gem for patching Windows servers with its hot patching feature, which is a game changer for Hyper-V hosts. Seriously, these tools have transformed how I manage updates.
Absolutely! Azure Arc has cut down my patching times significantly too. Now it’s just a matter of monitoring those updates rather than dreading the manual process.
PatchMyPC sounds great! But I heard it’s pricey—especially for smaller teams. Do you have any budget-friendly options?
I once found a failing service on a server that needed rebooting every night for a decade! All I did was set up a scheduled script to reboot that service, and we haven’t had to touch it since. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best!
That’s brilliant! Monitoring services and having backups can save so much time!
I've done similar with a different service. Just setting a proper recovery action would have worked, but at least you got it handled!
I created a system that checks all our switches using SNMP and correlates MAC addresses with IPs and host names via NMAP. It's a Perl script running on Linux that updates an SQLite database, and I have a web front end to access it. Now I can see which MAC addresses are plugged into each port along with VLAN info and speed. It saves me tons of time troubleshooting network issues! Plus, I have another PowerShell script that wakes up users' workstations if they log in remotely, so their PCs are ready for them. It’s a pretty slick setup!
That's some serious ingenuity! I bet your users have no idea how much effort you save them with that. Sounds like an elegant solution to common network issues.
I love the WOL integration idea! It must make remote access so much smoother.
I run a script that changes all user passwords every Sunday at midnight. By the time the helpdesk responds, they can get everything resolved—so I hardly get bothered until midweek! It’s a huge time-saver.
Genius! Keeping it automated takes away the hassle of resets.
That’s awesome! I also have some PowerShell scripts to manage users more effectively, but I'd love to see how you handle account creation.