Service Desk Digest 5/16/2017

Student Meeting on 5/18

Most of you are scheduled to attend a mandatory meeting this Thursday from 5PM-7PM. We will record the meeting so that anyone who is not able to attend can catch up later. Food will be included (pizza).

The agenda so far includes the following:

  • Richard Turk – Computer lab support overview
  • Chris Evans – Beaverprint overview and troubleshooting
  • Nathan Power – Citrix XenApp overview and troubleshooting
  • Jason Appah – Exchange troubleshooting and road map
  • Josh Crowl – Wireless network troubleshooting
  • Andrew Wheeler – IS and Client Services strategic plan and direction
  • Max Cohen – Time off and scheduling procedures
  • Kirsten/Max/Andrew – OSU-Cascades tier 1 support
  • Jeff Bonnichsen – Reminders about ticket updates, professionalism
  • Kirsten/Max – Congratulations to graduating students

Appointment Ticket Troubles

Pat has been reviewing all on-site appointments and has been seeing the following issues repeatedly. Please make sure you are following proper process when creating appointments:

  • Ticket type still set to service desk / intake. This should be set to the type appropriate for the appointment.
  • Responsible not set for field technician. Responsible needs to be set so on-site techs can find their tickets.
  • Calendar notes field void of ticket # or ticket URL. On-site techs need these details so they can prepare for appointments.
  • Requested placement time (length) doesn’t match calendar appointment length. This can lead to problems with overbooking. Please pay attention to the placement time notes in the ticket.

Steps to create an appointment are outlined here. If you need a refresher, please talk to Pat or Robin.

LAN Party Finals Week

The next LAN party will be Friday, June 16 at 6:00PM in the Milne Computer Lab.

If you would like to contribute towards pizza, please see Kirsten.

If you have questions about what games we will be playing or what tech to bring, talk to Thomas.

Security Items

If you are not familiar with common strategies for account phishing and identity theft, please read up. I will provide some training materials shortly.

We have had a handful of incidents recently where a Service Desk technician gave really bad advice to a customer. Please be aware of the following common issues:

  • Tech Support Scam. A customer is directed to call a support number due to vague “security problems” on their computer. The person on the call wants to remote into their computer and install software. THIS IS A SCAM. They may be attempting to compromise the person’s computer, gain access to their data, or encrypt their data in a ransomware attack. If a customer asks about an attack like this, tell them it is likely malicious, and not to call the number. If they allowed someone to remote into their machine, help them check for malware. If they are a CN customer, make sure to ask first if they handle PII (Personally Identifiable Information) such as credit card numbers or social security numbers.
  • Account Phishing. If a customer has received an email telling them their account is going to be deactivated unless they take some action, help them review the email. If it does not look like a notice from the ONID system, and/or directs them to a website that is not at OSU, it is most likely a PHISHING ATTEMPT where an attacker attempts to gain access to their account, usually to send spam and more phishing email.  A good technique is to mouse over any links in the email and wait for the URL to pop-up – it is is not an oregonstate.edu URL, they should not click on it. This is a good technique to train customers on.
  • If Unsure, Change the Password. As our CIO Lois Brooks said, if someone is asking whether they should maybe change their password, we should tell them to change their password. If a customer has clicked on a suspicious link and then provided their username and password, help them IMMEDIATELY CHANGE THEIR PASSWORD.  Please also ask them for details about the phishing attack and record that in the ticket. Notify ONID Support of the potential compromise so they can check the account to see if there is any suspicious activity such as open connections from another country.

Client Services Code Moved to GitHub Enterprise

Our code repositories are moving (have moved?) to an IS-wide GitHub Enterprise account. If you have questions, please ask in #sd-development on Slack.

Restricted Groups in Active Directory

For some groups we manage for CN customers, the customers have indicated they do not want us to make any membership changes without explicit approval from the group owner. In the past, we have had a few issues were we made changes to these groups anyway, without the customers’ permission.

To avoid this problem, the naming convention for these restricted groups has been changed to: RESTRICTED-Name-RESTRICTED

If you are asked to make a change to a group with this naming convention, please check the notes on the object. If you are unsure what to do, please check in with a full-time staff member.

Out-of-Order in the Computer Labs

If an item in one of the computer labs is out of order, please do the following:

  • Post an “Out of order” sign
  • UNPLUG THE DEVICE (otherwise helpful customers will turn it back on)
  • Make a ticket with Responsible set to Campus Labs
  • If urgent, post in #is-campus-labs on Slack for assistance

Citrix XenApp Cut-over 4/13/2017

This notice applies to the apps.oregonstate.edu service.

New troubleshooting steps have been added to the Citrix XenApp Service InfoSheet.

On Thursday, 4/13 at 11:00AM-Noon, we will be cutting over from the College of Engineering Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop infrastructure to the Information Services infrastructure.

This is NOT an outage and should not impact any currently connected users.

With this cut-over, we will be upgrading from XenApp 6.5 to XenApp 7.12.  With this deployment; the Service Desk will gain access to two powerful tools to assist in troubleshooting customer issues when using http://apps.oregonstate.edu.  These two tools can be reached by connecting via remote desktop to nws-term4.nws.oregonstate.edu and launching them from the start menu.

Service Desk technicians have the role of “Helpdesk Administrator” scoped to “Campus Labs – Applications” and “Campus Labs – Virtual Lab”.   With these permissions you should be able to assist customers with various common tasks.

Broker: OSU-CTX-DDC-01.OREGONSTATE.EDU

Citrix Director

The Citrix Director tool is a perfect companion to XenApp for Service Desk employees.  When you log into Director you are immediately prompted about looking up either a user, machine, or endpoint.  Select User and then type in the customer that is calling in with an issue.  You will be presented with all of the details about all connections that the customer is using (there can be multiple applications, desktops, etc.) as well as the ability to restart, shadow, reset, or list the processes that my session is currently using.

 Citrix Studio

“Citrix Studio is the primary management console for administering XenApp and XenDesktop sites.  This console is used for tasks such as initial site setup, machine provisioning, and application and desktop publishing.” In your role as a Service Desk employee you won’t use this tool as often as Citrix Director but it still has important features that may be beneficial when answering questions for customers or assisting them with their support issues.

Search

The search window allows you to search for any items within the Citrix infrastructure that you have permissions to.  This includes Desktops, Servers, and Sessions currently in the system.

Delivery Groups

Delivery Groups are the set of resources (servers, desktops, applications, and users) that have been configured for a specific purpose.  Your permissions grant you the ability to see a “Campus Labs – Applications” and “Campus Labs – Virtual Lab” delivery group.  For now we can ignore the “Campus Labs – Virtual Lab”; that’s for XenDesktop that we’ll be deploying at a later date.  By clicking on the “Campus Labs – Applications” you’ll be able to see that it consists of 10 servers.  From here you can see all the details about delivery group configuration and which applications have been assigned to this delivery group.  You can also right-click on the delivery group and select “View Machines” or “View Applications” to see the resources allocated to this delivery group.

View Machines – You will see a list of the Windows 2012 R2 servers that we have configured to host the applications running on http://apps.oregonstate.edu. You can see the status of each machine (is it on, is it registered, and the number of sessions attached to it).  If a machine has sessions on it you can view the session, send a message to the customer, and log off those sessions (in the cases that the session is hung).

Note:  You also have the ability to put a server into “Maintenance Mode”. This temporarily stops new connections to a machine to perform administrative tasks (fixing problems, applying updates, etc.).  You should only do this if you are receiving calls from several users about a specific server.  You should immediately begin working with Endpoint Management to determine the cause of the errors and ensure a speedy return to service for that server.

Applications

The application section is where you can dig into the details about the applications that are deployed to XenApp (http://apps.oregonstate.edu).  You’ll be able to see items like who has access, who’s using it now, and is the application enabled (available for customers to use).

Configuration Settings:

The configuration settings won’t be much use to you as a Service Desk employee as they are site-wide and managed by the Endpoint Management team.  The Controllers section lists the servers that are configured as Citrix controllers for our environment.  We have two currently to ensure that Citrix continues to function should one of the servers experience an issue and/or to allow maintenance on one while still providing uptime.  The AppDNA and Zones sections aren’t really implemented at this time.

Citrix Universal Profile Manager

The Citrix Universal Profile manager is a tool that we are using to keep a central profile for customer interactions with Citrix.  This ensures that the customer experience between XenApp applications and XenDesktop desktops are kept synchronized.  The data stored in these profiles is not customer data; it entails the settings and preferences of the various applications and desktops in use.  This profile location is generally hidden and not visible to the customer and we’re hoping to keep the size of this profile very limited.

Profile Location: \\ctx-profiles.sig.oregonstate.edu

Profile Naming: \\ctx-profiles.sig.oregonstate.edu\profiles\username.domain\windows-os-version (e.g.: \\ctx-profiles.sig.oregonstate.edu\powern.onid\Win7v2) (versioning details).

Citrix Profile Folder Redirection

ONID customers that are logging into XenApp or XenDesktop sessions will have their standard Windows profiles redirected to \\onid-fs.onid.oregonstate.edu\profiles\username\Profile.  We are currently using folder redirection to redirect the Desktop, Documents, Downloads, and Favorites.  On the previous XenApp implementation this information was stored in \\onid-fs.onid.oregonstate.edu\profiles\username\Windows.Documents folder.  As of Spring Break 2017; customers will be pointing to the Profile directory.  If you have customers that need something stored in their old location; work with them to browse their home space and find the files (nothing has been removed).

TeamDynamix v9.5 software update – April 15th, 2017

What

TeamDynamix is releasing a new version (9.5) of the software on Saturday April 15th.

When

During the release, the system will be unavailable on April 15th between 12 AM and 4 AM Eastern Time. TeamDynamix expects the upgrade to take 1 hour and the maintenance window to be 4 hours.

The items that will most impact you are below.

Added – 4/15/2017

Tickets from email, assigning to a group

As part of the 9.5 change, tickets from e-mail now require an automation rule to be assigned to the appropriate group.

Each ticket from e-mail will have an entry like the following.

“Changed Responsibility from “” to “Service Desk” as a result of applying the “service.desk@.o.e – e-mail to group assignment” rule.”

V9.5 Ticket Creation Process

With the new version, “form” replaces the “ticket type” selection. Select the “form” like you would have selected “ticket type”.

Eventually, forms will be configured to have “cascading/conditional” settings to help with easier ticket creation.

Step 1:  From the “+ New” menu select the correct  Incident, Problem, Change, Service Request or Release Form.

Step 2: Fill in the form but if at any time you determine that another request form is more appropriate use the type-ahead Form Selector to easily change the form without losing the data you’ve already entered.

Step 3:  Fill in the form, you may still apply a template, and save the request.

Specific forms can be pinned to the “New” button to allow quicker ticket creation for tickets that are created often.

“+New” Menu Changes – in a ticketing application – IT, Forestry IT, ROOTs IT, InfoSec Office, etc.

1. The “+New” creation menu has been simplified and shortcuts to commonly used ticket forms can be added.

2. Less commonly used setup items have been moved to the Gear menu.

A “form selection” will be at the top of the ticket creation window.

Ticket processing

  1. The previously assigned ticket responsibility gets added to the feed when responsibility changes.
  2. Native ability to open multiple tickets, and ticket creation windows at the same time.
  3. Ticket description and task description limits have been removed.
  4. Template field is now a type ahead.

Ticket reports

“Starts with” and “Ends with” filter options have been added to text based fields.

Knowledgebase

  1. Revision tracking for Knowledge Base articles
  2. Allow comments/feed on KB articles

Release notes/links

View the release notes (PDF )- TDx – 9.5 release notes

Release notes on TD site (requires TD community site) – https://solutions.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/KB/ArticleDet?ID=22797

TDx 9.5 webinar (1 hour long) – https://youtu.be/hBYypRHx-cM

Google Talk going away

The Google Talk service will be turned off on June 26, 2017.

As of March 2017, about 40 OSU users were still using this service. These users will be notified on 4/10/2017 via email that the service is going away, and will be told to contact the Service Desk for assistance.

Users may switch to Google Hangouts or another chat service.

Service Desk Digest 4/5/2017

Students: Check your WhenToWork preferences

We have had several people miss shifts already this week due to scheduling conflicts. Please check your WhenToWork preferences carefully to ensure you are not set as available to work during a scheduled class.

Remember: it is your responsibility to ensure your WhenToWork settings are correct.

Citrix XenApp update next week

The Citrix XenApp environment will be upgraded and cut-over next week from College of Engineering’s infrastructure to IS’ infrastructure. With this change, we will gain access to some very useful troubleshooting tools. Information will be added to the Citrix InfoSheet shortly.

OSU-Cascades IT phone number

Telecom let me know that the phone menu for the old OSU-Cascades IT number (22051) had been wiped somehow. Customers calling that number heard dead air and were not able to get through to the call center.
This number used to be on a sticker on all OSU-Cascades computers, but no longer is. We started phasing it out about a year ago in favor of the main number (78787).
Fortunately, I still had a copy of the script, so Telecom re-recorded it for us. I have asked that they reprogram it to redirect directly to 78787 and that may be happening next week.

Sierra and ScreenConnect

Call center techs are seeing frequent but intermittent issues with ScreenConnect misbehaving on Sierra machines, making remote control almost impossible in many cases.

We may be able to resolve this with a change to ScreenConnect, or with a different tool. Will keep you all posted.

Floor in front of Milne 201

We had a bit of a surprise this week with the floor being torn up in front of Milne 201 without any notice. Angela is in conversation with Facilities about when the reinstall will happen, and trying to negotiate it for a time the walkup is not open. If the install ends up producing a lot of fumes, we can close the walkup door temporarily. My apologies for the unintended excitement.