Wow! What a great response to my question yesterday about keeping track of endpoints. Thank you to everyone who took the time to comment. If you are considering this same problem, be sure to read the comments to see the variety of solutions recommended.
GoogleDocs
I thought maybe you’d like to know what I decided. I ended up with a Google Document (not a spreadsheet!). I made one for each district, because my notes include district wide comments such as what kind of firewall they have, what their bandwidth situation is like, when they allow me remote management of the endpoints, whether I can load a directory on the endpoint, etc.
It looks something like this:
School Name
School Ph: |
Capabilities
|
Settings DONE
|
Known Issues
Maintenance Contract Status: Updated in CAPspace? |
Below that I have a notes section that has the most recent comments at the top and all of the notes are dated. The notes include installation information, trouble tickets, the channel for their TV, etc.
This is a morph from my “at a glance” paper sheet that I had before. I like to see all the info about a district and their endpoints at a glance. (None of my districts have more than 7 units.) This way when I test, upgrade, or connect one of the units, I know what the issues might be.
I can also color things red that need to be fixed/addressed. During the school year, I’m so busy with connecting and facilitating events that I can only jot down problems. Then in the summer I have to plow through all my scribbles to figure out what needs to be done. This way it can be right on the district page instead of all over the place.
Tandberg Management Suite
Several comments mentioned a management suite. We actually have a TMS box, it’s just been off for 3 years due to my frustration with it randomly assigning conferences when I need some calls to just dial into a straight IP on conference 1 (see here and here).
However, next week we’re going to get it up and running again and get some training on it. So for those of you who thought I should be using a management system, I will soon! But I still need a place to write notes, and some of my districts have their firewall configured so I can’t manage their untis. So my Google solution seems to be the best so far.
Thank you!
I think that post yesterday generated the most comments I’ve ever received! I’m so grateful for each of you who took the time to answer. I hope that the comments are useful to all of you reading this blog as well to me. Thanks for being part of my PLN.
Am laughing at this known issue
* they tend to break cameras; not sure why
We had a school that dropped a unit and called to say the camera did not work. 45 minutes after Shane had worked with them, they mentioned that it had been knocked off the cart a couple of days before. Now, we ask if the unit has been dropped before we troubleshoot any cameras! 🙂
Yeah, I thought I’d leave that there. It’s a great example of notes I like to keep!
Your TMS issue seems like an unexpected feature in earlier versions of TMS, but the latest revision 12.2 should resolve it.
TMS can manage endpoints outside a firewall, you can set the discover mode to SOHO and set the endpoint to “behind the firewall”.