Got a question from Mary this week:
“Once in a while we need to let users know we are going to take a server down, or need to do maintenance on the network. In the old days we would use ‘net send’. But it seems now with Vista, and Windows 7 things have gotten a lot harder. Is there any way you know of doing this that works across all versions of Windows?”
This is a popular question. The problem started back in the old days when people left their computers wide open.
The bad guys would use the messaging system within windows to show popup messages on their computer. To fix this, Microsoft hardened this system – making it more difficult to send legitimate messages.
To display a message on a remote computer, you need to use the system that MS provides (unreliable across different versions) or put together your own solution.
Our answer to the problem was to add a plugin to Network Administrator.
This was not a simple task, since you can’t just execute a program that will show the message – First you need to find the console user, get their session number, and finally execute a program that will display the message.
No worries. You don’t need to any of the heavy lifting. Just get a free copy of Network Administrator, and pick the instant message plugin:
Once you pick it, you can set the title and body of your message:
Within moments users will get your important message:
One other nice thing about our message box is it tries really hard to be the top most window. That way your important message will not be hidden by another application.
Get your copy of Network Administrator from our downloads page:
http://www.intelliadmin.com/index.php/downloads/
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks Steve,
This is a great addition.
Thanks Steve,
Just made portable & added the updated version to my list of tools. The plugins don’t seem to update through our proxy so I just have to download the installer every update.
One thing I did notice though is in the message you can not use the character “&” = ampersand.
No…it is not your proxy. We have the automatic update built into Network Administrator, but it still needs some work before it can go live….we are working on that
Steve,
Great addition to a great tool. This is really a simple thing, but such a time saver. I always need to call around to different locations to get people out of this app or that app. This is perfect since it gets the message directly to the person sitting at the keyboard.
Will be using this friday for an upgrade we have planned. Bet it will cut the number of calls I need to make way down.
So at present there is no point in me scripting the automatic update to run before the main application in my portable app.
So I gather it’s only free until the trial version expires. Then you would need to buy a license.
No, It is free. No trial expiration. The only limitation is you can only send to 3 computers at a time.
Steve
Hi Steve
This works great. Thanks for keeping a free edition around. Perfect for a little company like mine.
is there a way i can permanently disable “past items” so that i do not have to manually del. it every few days
Hello Anil,
What are ‘past items’. Do you mean messages you sent before?
Hello,
Is the character limit of the message a Windows (client?) limitation? Any chance that this tool can be tweaked so that it will only accecpt what can be displayed on the client, or the character count is shown?
Will this be a stand-alone tool?
Thanks!