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Hello Members,

I Joined last week, when I was made an offer to become a one man shop at a very reputable non profit organization. Since i’ve been reading, and have learned alot of very helpful things. So thank you to everyone in advance that contributes to this community in any way, shape, or form.

I come from a team setting, where I also did everything from level 1 helpdesk, to Building and administrating the server and even some network devices.

So basically I am taking over this company, it has 1 HQ site with 70 users which is where I will be and then another 50-75 remote users.

What are the things that I should look at, besides the obvious inventory, budget, policies, and etc…

Any and all suggestions or advice is appreciated.

Thanks,

Emilio M.

37 Spice ups
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First off, congratulations. Just a couple off the top of my head:

  • Disaster planning
  • Backup & restoration policies (especially include testing)
  • Remote access (especially for yourself)
  • Logging and monitoring
  • Documentation
  • Purchasing guidelines
  • User policies (including what happens if someone steps out of line)
  • Level of responsibility and authority

the list could be huge, but there’s a couple to start with.

12 Spice ups
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One of the first things I would do is user accounting, figure out who has access to what and if they really need it. I know too many IT guys that give admin rights to users that shouldn’t have it. Also, what Ben said is good. Make sure you get the backup and restore down pretty fast (as that is one of the disasters that could happen). I would also look over everything and make sure that no one cut any corners and did patch jobs instead of fixing problems correctly, and that there is no illegal software. It would suck if they did have some and it came back on you if it was discovered. These are just a few things that come to mind.

7 Spice ups
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I came into a similar position at the beginning of this month. I am finding out quickly that you’ll have to get with the plan of backup and DR. I have an SBS2003 server that I have been trying to go P to V with before that hardware fails. the VHD is pushing 120GB and is a pain to move anywhere. They are using backup exec 10d with an old tape drive. I have to find another backup solution pronto. At least they have Mozy pro for their files.

Use Evernote or Google Docs to do all of your documentation until you get time to put up a wiki or until SW has it built in :slight_smile: I agree with the above sentiment. 1st thing to do is change the domain administrator password. The guy I’m replacing had printers wide open for customers on the internet…not cool. There is documentation for 1/2 of my router configs, So I’ll have to recover the passwords for the other half of them because even the old admin never knew them.

For me the biggest thing is coming in and not wasting time answering emails. Spend the 1st couple hours you get there on your projects.

4 Spice ups
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Great advice in the above posts. You will find that taking on a new organization has phases (all while fighting fires and resolving issues):

  1. Inventory and documentation of what you have, how things work. Things like Applications, servers and their roles, special software, special users, etc.

  2. Disaster recovery - What is being done, where are the gaps.

  3. Figure out next steps for the organization and fix the things that are broken.

  4. Make plans for the next steps and try to become proactive.

Good thing is that you have Spiceworks!!!

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This is all great and useful information guys, thanks.

I have a document that I’ve been working on, and I added most of what you guys said that I did not already have.

Dthraco,

I have SW the community, but im not sure if there is anything like this already in place. I dont think that there would be an issue with me wanting to install SW on the network.

Do you guys know of any issues that I MIGHT want to watch out for if wanting to install SW. Or could you say that its safe to say that I can install SW with no worries?

Thanks,

EM.

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Personally, I have never known SW to hurt anything unless you may give it write permissions to AD Active Directory and not realize that things are changing if you forget that you did that. The best way is to restrict it to read permissions only. This is the only thing I can think of that could happen that might be considered “bad”. But other than that I’d trust SW in pretty much any environment.

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Congratulations “E”

Just to add to your list;

  1. Time management becomes extremely important (Use a Calendar or event scheduler , which can be accessible at all place, and all time)

  2. Keep track and document any license agreements and warranty status for all critical services.

  3. Use a ticketing system to record your work ( I create ticket for almost anything )

  4. Do a short summary of major task completed (Daly or Weekly). it could be in bulleted listing (in Case 1 of the upper management surprises you, with random questions)

***As already mentioned by many of our friends here above, I will stress on Backup, recovery plan, and network management plus security.

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All suggestions are good and I want to add one thing and thats a helpdesk system which SpiceWorks have so that users can create tickets on request and issues that they might encounter on their PC.

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I’d say that, without wanting to rattle any cages too much, you’ll want to find a few areas where you can make a mark. Find some quick wins, set up weekly or bi-weekly meetings with the key people and give them an update on the state of IT, and more importantly get their feedback on the issues. While you’ve still got the goodwill of being the new guy, you can get in there and say we need to spend money here, here and here and you’ll probably get a good reception. Otherwise you risk becoming the goalkeeper - unnoticed and unthanked (is that a word?) - until you let something past into the net, and then you’re enemy number one.

Of course that could just be the cynic in me speaking…

4 Spice ups
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Congrats on the new job. I am sure you will do fine. Just remember one thing, they don’t sell data down at Wal-Mart. Backups, Backups and more backups.

2 Spice ups
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Congrats & welcome to the world of one-man shops! Lots of challenegs, lots of fun. I have been doing the same since August. I came into a position where the predecessor left 2 years ago in disgrace & controversy. The job was accomplished with the use of volunteers. So I had a lot of “from the ground up” things. First I inventoried the user accounts, then equipment, surveyed the users to determine their problem areas, wants, and needs, established the “help desk” and then planned for future activity. At first I was just doing a lot of on the spot trouble-shooting, until disaster struck and I lost 3 drives on our 5 drive server. Yikes! It actually took us about 2 weeks to get up & operational (due to availability of equipment). That brought about the need to prepare MY OWN disaster plan, based on lessons learned. Overall, this has been a very rewarding job.

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E you sound just like me a year ago. New guy new organisation i wish i posted this my self. But this is stil helpful. Thanks SW users for our advice

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JustSayin wrote:

Congrats on the new job. I am sure you will do fine. Just remember one thing, they don’t sell data down at Wal-Mart. Backups, Backups and more backups.

Agree… backups, backups, backups. I had a user accidentally delete a network folder within my first few days of working. I know the previous IT person had backups in place before and I trusted they were setup correctly… how wrong I was :slight_smile:

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Really make sure there is no illegal software installed on the computers. I’ve been to a few non profits where they were using unlicensed copies of word and even a few OS’s. Also make sure there are no HIPAA violations…This one non-profit I was at was storing Social Security numbers in an unlocked database that anyone could access.

1 Spice up
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Congrats

As others ave said the ain priority is to document & audit everything, then you can plan what needs “fixed”

Also plan to reset all the admin accounts - not an easy job, but necessary if you’ve replaced someone that has left.

Also from day one you should start getting to know the business - what they really do, each department’s processes, which dept. needs what apps and why. Who are the best sources of knowledge about processes for each dept. Learning that sort of “non tech stuff” will make your life as a one man shop A LOT easier.

Also get to know how to access the building and lock up out of hours - you’ll probably be doing that too - hopefully not too often though :0)

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i can recommend a really convenient tool to get a good inventory of your system: Lansweeper by Hemocue. I don’t think Spiceworks inventory function is good enough so i use Lansweeper to scan my computers. Try it out, you’ll like it…

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Emejia wrote:

This is all great and useful information guys, thanks.

I have a document that I’ve been working on, and I added most of what you guys said that I did not already have.

Dthraco,

I have SW the community, but im not sure if there is anything like this already in place. I dont think that there would be an issue with me wanting to install SW on the network.

Do you guys know of any issues that I MIGHT want to watch out for if wanting to install SW. Or could you say that its safe to say that I can install SW with no worries?

Thanks,

EM.

I don’t foresee any problems installing Spiceworks. I have not seen a network that has been affected by its install yet, and can’t see how it really could ever cause problems. Their development team did a good job :slight_smile:

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Well done on your new job. Backups to me are one of the first things you need to address. Check to make sure the previous IT bods have implemented a decent disaster recovery plan and got a working backup solution which is reliable.

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Congrads.

I am in a Local Municipality and maintain 180 + network nodes on my ace, so things may be a little different.

I have a rather large list of draft policies you can look at. Please can you (or anyone else) let me know if you use any of these policies, and what improvements you have made.

The greatest enemy I have is time. And I have learnt that the best weapon you have is to USE your Spiceworks!!! Fill in everything; buildings, asset/serial number, time taken, products purchased, attach email correspondence to and from suppliers, categories, etc.

I only faults I attend to is a ticket from Spiceworks (except an email saying that a user can’t connect to Spiceworks - in which case I log a ticket once they are up). When you are attending the fault, open the ticket and log as many actions as you can. In this way, you can easily assess what assets or users are regularly giving you grief. Also, I have noticed that some of my users (those just smarter than a brick) go back to old tickets when faults re-occur. In this way they solve many faults themselves, freeing more time up for me to do important stuff.

The other powerful tool that you have is your Outlook (or any other calender program - esp one that can sync with your smart phone). Log everything that you do: 7:30 - 8:30 Check emails and post, 8:30 - 11:00 #149 Printer crumpling paper, 11:00 - 11:15 #205 Boss can’t send out emails, etc. If you or someone else needs more info they can then go look at #205, etc.

I know it sounds extreme, but try it for a week or two and then look back and see what is eating up IT staff’s time.

Turned out to be a great motivation in getting my management to send some staff on refresher courses.

Now I have time for a cup or two of coffee in the day…

Chris

Proposal_to_Camdeboo_-_CIS.docx (83.9 KB)