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Archive for Technical Posts
Initiating a Gradwell call directly from a custom Internet Explorer Context Menu
Posted by: | CommentsI recently read some documentation on the Gradwell website which detailed how to initiate calls via the web:
http://www.gradwell.com/support/kb/article.php?id=159
I wrote a powershell script to test the system and it worked well, but I didn’t really have a practical use for dialing from the command line. Yesterday I was by chance reading about Extending the Internet Explorer Context Menu.
I decided to put together a quick bit of code that would allow me to initiate calls directly from Internet Explorer to my Gradwell extension, and it works really well! I ditched the original Powershell version in favour of javascript because it made the solution much neater.
To make this work for you need to setup an authentication token for your extension on the Gradwell VoIP control panel first. Make a note of your extention and authentication token.
Download this HTML File (right click - Save Target as) and store it locally somewhere on your machine. Open the file for editing and modify with your own extension number and authentication token:
Now we just need to create the internet explorer context menu, create the following registry key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MenuExt\&Gradwell Call]
@=REG_SZ:”C:\some\path\to\View\DialGradwell.htm”
Contexts=REG_DWORD:10
You will need to change “c:\some\path\to” to the actual folder where you saved “DialGradwell.htm”.
Open Internet Explorer again and highlight some text or a link and right click and you should now have the option to call the number directly from your browser:
If you have done everything right, simply click on the “Gradwell Call” context menu option and your phone should start ringing right away. Answer the call and you’ll hear the ringing of the destination number right away.
I might see about doing the same thing for Chrome and Firefox.
Outlook: Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.
Posted by: | CommentsHad a problem with a customer today sending an email and instantly getting a response that the message was undeliverable, with the message:
Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.
Subject: FW: Offer
Sent: 20/09/2011 10:33
The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:
‘user@domain.com’ on 20/09/2011 10:33
None of your e-mail accounts could send to this recipient.
This problem is caused when the email address has been pasted into to the to: field with the mailto: portion still intact.
Go into the sent items and open the email that failed to transmit and then choose “resend this message” and then double click on the email address you will probably see something like this:
As in the picture the “E-mail type:” is set to MAILTO. Clicking on the Internet type button will reset it back to SMTP and should be able to send the message.
Sometimes the incorrect address can also get cached into your NK2 file, so you will need to remove it from your autocomplete cache to make sure that you don’t get the problem again.
Dell Openmanage Server Administrator E-Mail Alerts – Powershell & VBScript versions
Posted by: | CommentsLast year I posted a script written in VBScript which enables email alerts from Dell OMSA without the need for IT Assistant. This script has proved to be very popular, but a number of users have not been able to make it work because it depends on CDO, which is not included in Windows Server Core.
So, I have rewritten the script in Powershell and it should now work on any system which has Powershell installed. The new script is easier to read and includes support for SMTP over SSL, making the use of a Gmail account for sending the alerts very straightforward.
The whole process is very similar to the previous script, so if you used that one, this will be immediatly familiar.
Installation:
After you have downloaded the Zip file extract it to a folder on your server, e.g “C:\Script”
You will then need to edit the variables at the top of the script to make them appropriate for your environment:
If you do not specify an SMTPServer, it will default to localhost. If you do not specify an SMTPPort it will default to port 25.
If you intend to use the script with a gmail account set:
$SMTPServer = “smtp.gmail.com”
$SMTPUser = Your gmail account name (without the @gmail.com part).
$SMTPPassword = Your gmail account password
$SMTPPort = 587
$EnableSSL = true
Test Email is functional
Now that you have the script installed open up a powershell prompt and run the script with the “testemail” parameter e.g:
c:\script\dellalerts.ps1 testemail
If everything is working properly you should receive a test alert in your inbox.
Setup Alerts from OpenManage
Once the email function has been tested you can go ahead and setup the script to run from open manage, simply run the script again with the “setup” parameter, and you should see something like this:
Testing
There are a few easy ways to test the script in practice with a real alert generated by OpenManage:
- Pop the side off the server casing, this will generate a chassis intrusion alert.
- If you have a dual powersupply system you can pull the power to one of the supplies and the server should report the power loss.
The problem with these methods is that you have to be in the same place as the server. So I prefer to trigger a tempreture alert like this:
Just set the warning threshold to be a couple of degrees lower than your current reading. Warning: If you have a thermal shutdown action configured, this could trigger that process off and shutdown your server. Once you have received your test emails, set the tempreture wanrings back to default values.
Please let me know of any issues you have with the script and I will work on them as soon as possible. I have installed this updated version on a number of systems and it is working well.
The download includes both the new version and the older VBScript version.
Updating the RecipientContainer of a dynamic distribution group in Exchange 2007
Posted by: | CommentsAfter moving users to a different organisational unit you may find that you are unable to e-mail them using a dynamic distribution group. If the group was created in powershell you wont be able to edit it in the managment console either. It shows a message saying:
This Dynamic Distribution Group was created with the Exchange Management Shell. You can use the Exchange Managment Shell to modify the filter.
And all of the controls are disabled.
To update the recipient container from the Exchange Management Shell run:
Set-DynamicDistributionGroup -Identity DistributionGroupName -RecipientContainer ‘containername/ouname’