Tuesday 25 November 2014

Gmail filters can save your job

I am working with IT infrastructure support team. We have got several branches in which I have to provide support to the users. I encountered the escalation so many times when user sent any email and I was not able to reply on them because I was not aware He/She was sitting in the same location where I have been deployed. This is usual because my sitting in any branch is very sudden. Always I had this in mind If get to know which user is sitting around me and whenever he or she sends any email I get to know. Thus I found the solution using Gmail feature of filtering the user emails and give them label. Then I collected the all user email IDs and created one filter and give them label as my users. After that whenever I get any email from them I get to know as my users in Gmail and I reply to them with no delays.

To create the filter Lets have two email ids. gaurav@abc.om and manish@abc.com.

1. Go to Gmail search option put their email like this















2. Click on create filter with this search and select the label you create like the one I have create in create in my case as My Users and also check apply filters to matching conversations as given below.













3. Once you will click on create filter, Every email coming from the user will be seen as My Users. and then you can recognize that you have received email for follow up.

Please comment if you are facing challenge in configuring Gmail filters.


Regards, IIS

Sunday 23 November 2014

Install Windows Drivers Offline

Today, I would like to talk about task every IT support person encounter now and then and also for those who have recently installed the windows and worried of its drivers installation. It is very time consuming to install the driver one by one. However there is other way around using which one can install all drivers at once if he has setup files.

1. Download all driver at one place.

2. Extract each of them in their folder.

3. Go to the device manager by typing devmgmt.msc in Run.

4. Go to Scan hardware changes and click on it.




5.  Go to any driver and click on update driver.


6. Go to browse my computer for driver software.




7. Browse a place where you have saved your extracted drivers.




8. Going forward click on Scan for hardware changes and it will automatically pick all drivers from the path you had extracted your drivers in.


If you have centralized location where you keep all your drivers and it is a UNC Path. Same can be achieved by mapping the shared drive and providing as browse for folder path. Windows will install the same from network path.

Regards, IIS







Friday 21 November 2014

Mistakes Managers Make

Today, I thought of writing about something I experience every now and then. There have been instances in which we see things wrongly communicated and misconducted. It is because there are many mistakes a manager does while handling his/her job.I am citing some which justifies my point.

Assignment of Work

When a manager assign the work among his team members without any specification or type results less productivity because every team player think that the other member of the team also has the responsibility of working on that and thus would avoid taking things seriously.

Believe on one blindly

As it gets longer for an employee in the organisation a manager start believing on that employee blindly thinking he is here for long because he is doing everything right. However, on the contrary when a person work for long period in the organisation he takes his/her job less seriously as he is aware of it that everybody knows him very well and would think many a times before taking action against him.

Hardly interact with his team

A manager who interact with his team hardly is not aware of the quality of his team members and can not utilize them as per their skills.

Believe on Hearsay

A manager forget one thing that one hides his mistakes by just telling the mistakes of the others and there are many team members those who have enough time on bitching about others and less time to finish his assigned tasks. He does this so that he can divert his attention from him to other team member.

Issues in team

Biggest problem arises when a manager is involved in solving the issues of others and forget that these issues came across because of providing less support to the team itself. For example, He would expect you to solve the issues on the floor but will forget the issues you had shared with him and he never took them seriously.

Feedback

Feedback are very important as if they are important those can be implemented and if these are not he can still solve the confusion of the one who has given them.

Regards IIS





Tuesday 18 November 2014

Personal Info is being stolen by computer threats

In the recent days where everybody tries to access everything through Internet forget that the way we can not trust every person we meet similarly we can not trust every website, every application, every file we open. There can be numerous ways of taking advantage of the things we do online and offline.There are several things that can help you to stay safe online as well as offline.



Antivirus

There are many antivirus online that claims your computer security however only few do actually. A good antivirus keeps updating its database with latest threat and notify its users through emails or notifications as soon as it finds anything similar to what it has in its database it acts right then. Microsoft has recently started providing security essentials along with package or windows updates which may remove suspicious content however they are not focused on latest threat and their database is not fully updated that of other top antivirus companies.

Email Attachments

Mostly hackers gain access to your computer using infected attachment because of the connectivity limitation therefore we should be more sensitive to the attachment we receive they seem to be simple documents however has  suspicious files attached which is not seen at first go. We need to only open attachment coming from authenticated sources.

Online Banking

These days everybody buys some or other thing online due to lack of time or reasonable price However not every website keep your financial data safe so just don't just go by what is written on their website. Only websites running over https and having certificates from authentic sources should be used for transaction. Key loggers records the keys pressed and mouse movement and share with who has created them over the internet thus one should use virtual keyboard displayed at every bank site because it keeps changing its letters at every log in which does not let a hacker know that which number was entered.





Sunday 16 November 2014

Trend Micro Office Scan service keeps stopping

I come across an issue today where Windows 8 got stuck at restarting and had to shut it down forcefully. I observed that in the service span trend micro service was trying to stop itself however got stuck at stopping.



I did it manually but had no luck. I tried SC command to stop it however it will not get displayed as installed service because Trend micro has started malfunction.

Solutions - 
I had to re install the trend micro to get rid of the issue and post that everything seems to be working as expected.

Regards, Baij

Sunday 2 November 2014

Manage Engine Service Desk Issues

Every organization needs to know about their IT team performance and reports of the issues that mostly affects the users therefore they need a software that can create a database of the issues which can be fetched at the time of IT review.

Considering the requirement we have lately introduced Manage Engine Service Desk and came across several options which led us to so many limitation. Here are some of the challenges that we faced during its testing.





1. No auto merge options available in the tool.

2. Default search options are worst while looking for the same kind of tickets using subjects or content or users which leads to unnecessary tickets unassigned.

3. Operating Hours in the settings can only be set to Organization and not for technician. Hence business rules can not be applied on the basis of Working hours.

4. Missing a link through which user can open the ticket. But has a very poor way by only replying to the email. If user has to say thanks to the technician then also it gets open.

5. It does not have keyboard shortcut to merge tickets. One will have to scroll down/up till the end to click the merge button which is quite frustrating.

6. We found out that emails coming from external sources also raises the tickets which is actually needed no attention.

These are very serious concerns for an organization working 24x7. Therefore would be not recommending to anyone looking for solution using this tool.

Regards, Baij

Windows 8 Sucks

Windows 8 addresses the spinning issue by implementing a smart approach. The developers have ensured that the operating system will not restart until all background services have stopped and all running programs have closed successfully. In the event that a service fails to stop or a program fails to close, Windows 8 will get stuck at the spinning dots animation during both startup and shutdown processes.


Some of the issues are very frequent in windows 8 which needs serious attention.

1. Service gets hanged at starting or stopping.
2. stuck at restarting
3. Unable to install any application due to system files corrupt.

Solutions

Check if there is any service which is in stopping state and having difficulty in stopping.
Check if there is any programs which is stuck while restarting.
Check if Antivirus is malfunctioning or outdated.

Which worked out in my case is to Uninstall the Trend micros office Scan Antivirus will solve the issue.


Regards, IIS

Install Multiple Software with a Click