Tachytelic.net

Initiating a Gradwell call directly from a custom Internet Explorer Context Menu

Paulie — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 21:14:56 +0000

I 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.

SPA Call Manager Pro Released!

Paulie — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:15:48 +0000

I’ve been working on a project for some time to enhance the usability of the IP Phones that we use internally. Namely the Linksys SPA 942 and the Cisco SPA 504g. The product is called SPA Call Manager Pro and it enables you to control the phone directly from your Windows desktop.

I’ve written a few little tools for the SPA series of phones but this one required a lot more effort. We’ve been using it internally for while now and it really does make using the phones so much easier and quicker.

It took me a while to figure out how to control the call functions of the phone, but I am very pleased with the results. Here is a screenshot of the main application window:

The program has a number of features to make working with the Linksys SPA 942 and the Cisco 504g easier, such as autocomplete dialing from the phone and applications personal directory and the ability to directly dial any number stored in the phones Dialed/Answered and Missed call logs.

We’ve also added the ability to dial any number stored in your windows clipboard, really handy when you are web browsing and just want to get hold of someone quickly without having to look back and forth between the phone and your screen.

You can import numbers from your own databases via the CSV import utility and easily build up your own contact database within the application and then export it for use on collegues machines.

We have put together a dedicated website for the application, if you use one of these phones I urge you to check it out to make your life easier!

SPA Call Manager Pro

Outlook: Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Paulie — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:59:42 +0000

Had 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

Paulie — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:53:40 +0000

Last 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.

Knitted cover for my Amazon Kindle

Paulie — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 14:13:23 +0000

It was my birthday recently and I was lucky enough to receive an Amazon Kindle, if you haven’t seen or used one of these I’d highly recommend it, it is actually quite an amazing little thing.

I also got the Official Amazon Cover for the reader but I really did not get on with it. It is high quality and durable, but it makes the device so awkward to read that I always end up removing the Kindle anyway. It is also quite heavy and I generally leave the Kindle in my laptop bag and can do without the extra weight.

My girlfriend, who knits constantly made me a Kindle Cover which fits the reader perfectly and provides surprisingly good protection. She has made the pattern available freely on this post on her blog.

Updated Linksys SPA Personal Directory Manager

Paulie — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 14:40:59 +0000

In response to the comments posted my original post I have put together a new version of the Linksys SPA Personal Directory Manager.

This version has had some cosmetic tweaks, includes a proper installer and has the ability to upload the directory to many phones.

There is a small charge of £1.95 for this software.

This has been tested and works with:

Linksys SPA941 Linksys SPA942 Linksys SPA962

Update: 13/08/2011:

Support has now been added for the Cisco SPA504G. It may well work with other new phones from this series but I do not have the phones on hand to test.

Be very interested in any feedback or feature requests. Click on the Paypal link to purchase:

Updating the RecipientContainer of a dynamic distribution group in Exchange 2007

Paulie — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 11:27:51 +0000

After 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’

HP Direct PDF Printing and Printer tray control

Paulie — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 09:37:24 +0000

HP Direct PDF printing is a great cross platform driverless printing mechanism which I have used for a number of customers with great results.

A common problem with Direct PDF printing is that it is not possible to include any printer control commands such as tray calls within the PDF and lots of people have been asking how to do this – I checked with HP Technical support and was told it is not possible.

It is possible however to setup a print job with PJL commands and include the PDF documents within that job. The key being to set the printer language/personality to PDF and then using the UEL (Universal Exit Language) command to issue more control commands. After a bit of trial and error I found that this is actually quite straightforward, and thought I would post the code as I was not able to find any working examples:

ESC%-12345X@PJL @PJL JOB NAME = "paultest2.pdf" DISPLAY = "Printing & Stapling paultest2.pdf" @PJL SET OUTBIN=OPTIONALOUTBIN1 @PJL SET PROCESSINGTYPE="STAPLING" @PJL SET PROCESSINGOPTION="LEFT_1PT_ANGLED" @PJL SET MEDIASOURCE = TRAY3 @PJL ENTER LANGUAGE = PDF

After setting up the job with the above, you can then add the PDF code. After the PDF you either need to end the job or specify more further printing control. In my example I am printing another PDF document right away within the same job but from a different tray, like so:

ESC%-12345X@PJL @PJL SET MEDIASOURCE = TRAY4 @PJL ENTER LANGUAGE = PDF

Then follow this with more PDF data and then end the job like this:

ESC%-12345X@PJL @PJL RESET @PJL EOJ NAME = "paultest2.pdf" ESC%-12345X

In this example the two PDFs are also being stapled together and the status display on the printer is also updated to show what document is being printed.

All of the above was tested using a HP Laserjet P4015N with a 500-Sheet Stapler/Stacker(CB522A). Although it contains no references to PDF printing, the best reference I have found is this document from HP:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/bpl13208/bpl13208.pdf

In production I am doing all of the PJL wrapping via a korn shell script which I’ve tested from IBM AIX, Ubuntu and Sco Openserver 5.0.7.

Dell Openmanage Server Administrator (OMSA) Email Alerts for Linux

Paulie — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 22:53:05 +0000

Earlier this year I posted a script which sends email alerts from Dell servers using the alerting system built into Dell Openmanage. However, that script will only work on Windows systems.

A visitor to the blog called Steve has kindly posted some code on that post which enables the same functionality in Linux and I think it is worthy of its own post.

Before attempting to use the script you will need to download this perl script called sendEmail and that you have unix2dos installed.

The script accepts two arguments, which are setup or show.

“setup” will set the alerts action to the value of $alert_script which should be the full path to the script itself.
“show” will print the current alert settings for the system to the screen.

The code of the script is as follows, or you can download from here:



#!/usr/bin/perl

########

#

# Alter these setting to suit your system

$alert_script='/opt/asx_scripts/send_alert.pl';

$argument = 0;

$argument = $ARGV[0];

$omreport = '/opt/dell/srvadmin/bin/omreport';

$omconfig = '/opt/dell/srvadmin/bin/omconfig';

$sendemail = '/opt/asx_scripts/sendEmail';

$toname = 'name';

$fromname = 'name';

$domain = 'domain.com';

$tmp_path = '/tmp';

$mail_gateway = 'ip or name of mailgate';

$unix2dos = '/usr/bin/unix2dos';

#

#
if("$argument" eq "setup"){

        set_available_alerts();

        exit;

}

if("$argument" eq "show"){

        display_set_alerts();

        exit;

}

if("$argument" eq "help"){

        print "If you need some help read the code\n";

        exit;

}

unless($argument){

        $desc=`$omreport system alertlog 2>/dev/null | grep "Description" | head -1 | cut -f2-9 -d: | sed 's/ //'`;

        chomp($desc);

        $date=`$omreport system alertlog 2>/dev/null | grep "Date and Time" | head -1 | cut -f2-9 -d: | sed 's/ //g' | sed 's/://g'`;

        chomp($date);

        $host=`$omreport system summary 2>/dev/null | grep "Host Name" | head -1 | cut -f2-9 -d: | sed 's/ //'`;

        chomp($host);

        $tag=`$omreport system summary 2>/dev/null | grep "Chassis Service Tag" | head -1 | cut -f2-9 -d: | sed 's/ //'`;

        chomp($tag);

        $attach="$tmp_path/$date.log";

        `$omreport system alertlog > "$attach"`;

        if( -f "$unix2dos"){

                `$unix2dos "$attach" 2>/dev/null`;

        }

        $send=`$sendemail -f "$fromname\@$domain" -t "$toname\@$domain" -u "System Error: $host SvcTag: $tag Time: $date" -m "$host SvcTag: $tag Error: $desc Time: $date" -a "$attach" -s "$mail_gateway"`;

}else{

        print "If you need some help read the code\n";

        exit;

}
sub set_available_alerts {

        $alert_list = `$omconfig system alertaction 2>/dev/null | cut -f2 -d"<" | cut -f1 -d">"`;

        chomp($alert_list);

        chomp($alert_list);

        @split_alert_list = split(/\|/, $alert_list);

        foreach my $alert (@split_alert_list){

                $set_result = `$omconfig system alertaction event=$alert execappath="$alert_script" 2>/dev/null | head -1`;

                chomp($set_result);

                if("$set_result" eq "Alert action(s) configured successfully."){

                        print "Set Action:\t$alert\n";

                }else{

                        print "ERROR Set didnt return expected value ($set_result)\n";

                }

        }

}

sub display_set_alerts {

        $currently_set = `$omreport system alertaction`;

        print "$currently_set\n";

}
exit;

A good way to test the script is to temporarily set the “Temperature Maximum” to something low like 12 to trigger an alert.

Unfortunately all of my Linux machines are virtual machines so I cannot test or modify this script, so if anyone wants to give me SSH access to a server running OMSA, be my guest.

Again, big thanks to Steve for posting this and I am sure it will be useful to lots of people. This has also inspired me to make some improvements to my original Windows version.

Sage Instant Accounts is very slow when running Trend Worry Free Business Security

Paulie — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:04:04 +0000

Had a situation with a customer who is running Sage Instant Accounts version 15 being extremly slow to respond after the installation of Trend Worry Free Business Security.

The problem is most noticiable when switching between modules within Sage, which was taking around 20 seconds.

Adding all the recommend exclusions did not make any difference, but using the Trend Micro Performance Tuning tool fixed the problem instantly.

The tool can be downloaded from:

http://esupport.trendmicro.com/Pages/Identifying-and-resolving-performance-related-issues-caused-by-Behavior-Monitoring-and-Device-Control-features.aspx

Simply add “SBDDesktop.exe” to the exception list and see if Sage runs at normal speed.

Add SDBDesktop.exe to the exception list to speed up Sage

If the speed of Sage goes back to normal speed you must now add an exception to behavior monitoring within the WFBS dashboard:

Go into Security settings and then behavior monitoring and and then add the full path to SDBDesktop.exe to the exception list, in this case the path was:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Sage SBD\SBDDesktop.exe