July 14th, 2011
Blogs
May 18th, 2011
May 12th, 2011
September 8th, 2010
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I’m a firm believer in “What gets measured, gets managed.” In our office we have a 42” dashboard in portrait mode attached to an HP Netbook at the end of our main hallway just outside my office and across from our service manager’s desk. This monitor has the a number of gadgets on it from the current time, date, weather, traffic, and a number of metrics from ConnectWise. The bottom 75% of the screen shows the Zenith dashboard.
Unfortunately, the main Zenith dashboard cannot show everything. Several other views from the “Quick Access” tab were needed to complete the picture (ie. Servers, Veritas Backups, and ITS247 Backup). So we could purchase 3 more 42” monitors to have all of the this data visible or we could implement the following PowerShell script to step through each of these dashboards every 15 seconds on one monitor.
Several outstanding problems got addressed the first week we implemented these additional views on our dashboard: servers that where not being patched, backups that where not completing, alerts that had gone unnoticed, etc.) What gets measured, get managed AND gets done.
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Yes, that is $20 taped to the bottom of the monitor. It’s all about accountability, even for the owner. Here is a close up of the note. $10 was just not enough pain. And yes, I have given the $20 away several times. But my first question to the staff member that points out my error and asks for the $20: “Is your time up-to-date?”
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To get this PowerShell script to run, you’ll have to do a few things.
1. Edit the script to contain the correct login and password
2. Set the Powershell execution policy on the machine to RemoteSigned Start Powershell as administrator Run: Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned Enter Y to confirm 3. Copy to script to a local drive on the machine. 4. Setup startup shortcut to run the script. Open Startup folder Right-click, New, Shortcut… Enter the location as: powershell –f “c:pathtoscriptZenithDashboard.ps1″ Next Enter a name for the shortcut Next Right-click the shortcut, click Properties Set “Run” to “Minimized” |
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# Settings:
$URL = “https://control.itsupport247.net/” $Seconds = 5 # Number of seconds between refreshes $Username = “xxxxxxxxxxxx” $Password = “xxxxxxx” # End Settings
# # Innovative Systems, Inc. # 11219 Financial Centre Parkway # Little Rock, AR 72211 # http://www.isi.cc # info@isi.cc # (501) 217-8484 # Stop on error
$ErrorActionPreference = “Stop” # Function to wait for IE to not be busy after clicking a link
function WaitOnIE { while($IE.Busy) { Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 100 } } # Function to find a link based on it’s text, then click it.
function ClickLink($LinkText) { # Find all A tags with InnerHTML containing the $LinkText. # In the case that there are multiple found, only select the first one. $Link = $IE.Document.getElementsByTagName(“a”) | ?{$_.InnerHTML -like “*$LinkText*”} | select -First 1 # Make sure the link was found. Clicking $Link if it was null would throw an error if($Link) { $Link.Click() } WaitOnIE } # Create IE ComObject, navigate to URL, and make it visible
$IE = New-Object -ComObject internetexplorer.application $IE.Navigate($URL) $IE.Visible = $true WaitOnIE # Fill login and submit
$IE.Document.getElementById(“user_txt”).Value = $Username $IE.Document.getElementById(“user_pass”).Value = $Password $IE.Document.getElementById(“Submit”).Click() WaitOnIE # Comes up to dashboard, so sleep before starting the loop
Start-Sleep -Seconds $Seconds # Loop through screens
while($true) { # Click Quick Access ClickLink -LinkText “Quick Access” Start-Sleep -Seconds $Seconds # Click Veritas Backups
ClickLink -LinkText “Veritas Backups” Start-Sleep -Seconds $Seconds # Click ITS247 Backup
ClickLink -LinkText “ITS247 Backup” Start-Sleep -Seconds $Seconds # Click Dashboard
ClickLink -LinkText “Dashboard” Start-Sleep -Seconds $Seconds } |
Published: 9/8/2010 10:39 AM
Attachments: http://www.isi.cc/files/2011/01/ddcc0fee0e5fb843.jpg
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Published with permission from Robert Lindley. Source.
July 26th, 2010
May 6th, 2010
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Innovative Systems had a good year in 2009 despite the economy. We have continued to grow and added a service coordinator and two consultants in the last 6 months. We have been blessed with a staff of 10 dedicated employees who find our office a fun and challenging place to work with great benefits. Unfortunately, our office administrator resigned a couple of months ago and we need to fill this position as soon as possible.
Do you know our next office administrator?
Our next office administrator will be responsible for bookkeeping, human resource, marketing, and general administrative duties. He or she should have a good knowledge of Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, and Intuit QuickBooks and have a bachelor’s degree in business administration or equivalent.
Please drop me an email, forward to an appropriate candidate, or call me if you have any questions.
Category: ISI
Published: 5/5/2010 7:25 PM
Published with permission from Robert Lindley. Source.
April 13th, 2010
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ConnectWiseTV: What Gets Measured, Gets Managed Join us this Wednesday April 14th at 12 noon Eastern for an informative ConnectWise TV show with Robert Lindley, President of Innovative Systems, Inc. and 2009 Partner Summit presenter. Both of Robert’s breakout sessions at the summit were maxed out and voted the session that partners most wanted to see but couldn’t. Robert will review some of the materials from his breakout session and share additional metrics he has developed in the last 6 months to run his managed services practice. He will also discuss how he has implemented some of the concepts learned from keynote speaker Verne Harnish at the summit. Are you getting all of the information you need to run your business from ConnectWise reports and dashboards? Is that information allowing you to make decisions regarding your business today that are not based upon last month’s or last quarter’s data? Have you set your top 5 priorities for your business this year? How will you measure your performance? How often will you review it with your staff? And do their top 5 priorities line up with yours? In this session, Robert will review how he is using Microsoft Excel Pivot Tables, SQL Reporting Services, SharePoint, and Software F/X PowerGadgets to measure each staff member’s performance and their alignment with ISI’s overall business objectives. Presentation materials including a whitepaper and example pivot tables, reports, gadgets, etc. will be made available for download after the show, on our University, with the recording of the show. If there are any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We will be recording this live show and posting it on the ConnectWise University soon. We are committed to helping you build your business! |
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Category: ConnectWise
Published: 4/12/2010 8:15 PM
Published with permission from Robert Lindley. Source.
March 23rd, 2010
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WES36PAL: Four Plans That Can Change Everything
Wednesday 3/24/2010 12:00 AM EST
Learn about the importance of planning for your business, leadership, life and legacy. Understand the value of integrating the quarterly planning into how you run your company and your life, and the true meaning of the saying, “He who fails to plan, plans to fail.” These are proven and valuable planning tools that will help assure success if you use them to drive business and personal growth through execution. Partners will receive 4 planning worksheets that walk them through the steps of creating these four plans.
Category: HTG Peer Groups
Published: 3/23/2010 8:33 AM
Published with permission from Robert Lindley. Source.
March 19th, 2010
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RISK more than others think is safe
By getting out of your comfort zone a little bit, it helps you grow personally and professionally. Each time you do that, it does two things for your life.
CARE more than others think is wise
More than anything else, the time spent with people that you care about that will matter to you when you are sitting in your retirement easy chair. It is not the day-to-day successes that matter in the end, but rather the quality of the relationships you share with family, friends, neighbors and co-workers that will define how happy you are with your life. As you take your life journey, take the time to nurture the relationships in your life.
DREAM more than others think is practical
Life will consistently offer you small opportunities to take if you want to. Each opportunity that you take builds on your previous experiences. Having big dreams helps you to see the opportunities that may fit with your goals. Remember to take a risk when you see them come along.
EXPECT more than others think is possible
Dreams become expectations by writing them down as goals, both professional and personal. If you take a few minutes to write down some things that you expect to see in 5, 10 and 20 years and look at it once a month, you will be amazed at how fast you will get there.
Category: Quotes
Published: 3/19/2010 1:31 PM
Published with permission from Robert Lindley. Source.
