IT Pro Tuesday #243
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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!
We're looking for your favorite tips and tools we can share with the community... those that help you do your job better and more easily. Please reply or leave a comment with your suggestions, and we'll be featuring them in the coming weeks.
As always, we’re updating the full list on our website here. Enjoy.
A Book
Automate the Boring Stuff with Python teaches you how to quickly write Python programs that do in minutes what would take hours by hand—with no programming experience required. Covers Python basics, its library of task-specific modules, input validation, tutorials on automating Gmail and Google Sheets, tips on automatically updating CSV files. Appreciation to telchii for directing us to an online version that's free to read under a non-commercial license.
A Free Tool
nsnotifyd monitors a set of DNS zones and will run a command when any of them change. Unlike cron, the script will run as soon as the zone changes instead of only at fixed intervals. dlangille finds it useful to "save the changes to subversion [when the DNS zone file changes]."
A Website
Silent Install HQ provides a nice library of info on silent installs and unattended command line switches. The site is the work of a 17-year veteran of application packaging, software deployment and desktop automation in the enterprise world. Includes detailed knowledge on best practices as well as practical how-to guides. mrcollin101 describes it as a "wonderful resource for getting apps pushed out silently."
Another Free Tool
Cryptgeon is an open-source, self-destructing note sharing service. Ensures security by storing data only in memory rather than writing to the disk and keeping the encryption key away from the server so it cannot be used to decrypt your notes. Kindly recommended by troubleshootmertr.
A Tip
SoMundayn shares news about an underused Office feature: "If you go to this link and turn this on, the portal will be populated (over time) with all of your Office versions, additionally showing workstations that are behind on security updates.
You don't need Intune for this either, I guess it works based on the UPNs logging into your tenant to the O365 Apps.
You can then also go into 'Servicing' > 'Monthly Enterprise' > and roll out the latest version to a set amount of PCs (or all) and set a deadline of, say, 1 day to get updated. You probably would not want to do that every month, but there is flexibility.
This may be old news, but I logged onto a dozen different clients and they did not have it turned on, so I guess not a lot of people know about it."
P.S. Bonus Free Tools
Tasks is a self-hosted, file-based task management board. The modern interface allows you to create cards, lists and tags and write cards as Markdown files. Features customizable light and dark themes synced with OS settings as well as support for subpath based reverse-proxy with an environment variable for base path. Kindly shared by its author, baIdissara, who explains, "It's still in early development, but I'm very happy with the few features it currently has."
Password Pusher is an open-source tool that allows you to safely communicate passwords over the internet. Provides you with expiring password links that will stop working after a specified number of views and/or a certain amount of time has passed. Can be hosted at pwpush.com or run as a private instance on your own server. Our thanks for this one go to supernova666666.
Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.