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Dear Spiceheads,

I am happy B/C i got a new job but…

There is no inventory in this place, no documentation, no standard hardware and/or software.

In your opinion where should i start?

I am thinking of making an standard image, sysprep but this would take a lot of time since almost everyone has laptops and different brands.

Any Ideas on where to start?

18 Spice ups
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You shouldn’t start anything unless you know where you are currently. I would start with some basic documentation. Its a new job so you need to know and understand how things are generally working.

3 Spice ups
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Documentation is where you start… Figure out what you have before you start doing anything. This is an opportunity to document all your new policies, too. Keep everything handy, its always nice to show management the changes you have made since being hired on.

2 Spice ups
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I agree with Matt, baseline first then you have something concrete to work from.

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Yep, documentation is where it starts… almost every job i’ve started, I’ve been in a similar situation… don’t worry, you are in good company, and the next person who comes will thank you for the effort. It is quite sad how some places are run.

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And … much time.
You probably have to do a lot of overtime to trace around at times when users are not at work.
If I can give you some advice, trying to plan the extent of these extraordinary and Submit your manager this need, profiling possible alternatives (such as a different turn by employees).
Even external aid extemporaneous might come in handy, if they are likely to spend about.
When you have caught on, Spiceworks will definitely be a good ally.

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Learn as much as you can about the environment before changing anything. Once you have an idea of what’s going on, you can identify the issues you need to tackle first.

If you just start changing things, it won’t be long before you have a few “Oh, so THAT’S why they did it that way!” moments as you scramble to fix something.

Establish a documentation system and go to town. A wiki is great for this in my experience.

Make sure you have all of the credentials you need to appropriate systems. Don’t wait until you need to fix something to find out you can’t access it. A password manager like KeePass can be used for this.

Talk to management and your users and find out what their biggest concerns are. You don’t need to fix them all right away, or ever, but if you can tackle some of them and improve their workday, you’ll make some allies out of the gate who will be more supportive of things you want to do down the line. You may even come across some issues with 5-minute fixes that have a major impact on productivity. At my current site, I resolved some DNS issues on the first day in just a couple of minutes which had a major impact on everybody’s ability to browse the web. This made me very popular with the staff.

4 Spice ups
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Agreed, you should know where you are before you can figure out where you want to go!

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I agree, start with documentation and inventory. Dig deep, find the skeletons.

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Inventory first. maybe deploy SW to help with that. document everything you do. start with basics like setting up a new user ect.

Been there done that twice. the second time is always easier. still writing process documentation as i come across little things that need to be done.

1 Spice up
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Definitely the docs!

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I am intrigued by your WIKI comment. I have never throught about doing that but it sounds like a great idea. Any suggestions on software or suggestions on how to get started?

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I use DokuWiki with the Pagelist and Tag plugins.

I really like the way it allows you to throw documentation together quickly and organically. If you have multiple people using it, everybody can make small corrections, updates, or add their own unique piece of knowledge about a topic.

I like the way you can write a page about a new topic and link to 5 or 6 other topics as they come up while you write, perhaps only 2 of which already exist. Then you know there are 3 or 4 topics you need to come back and populate at some point and can easily do so by just clicking the link.

One consideration we had for using DokuWiki was that it stores all of the information in flat text files. So in the event of a disaster, we didn’t have to spend a lot of time getting our documentation system running again (as you might have to with something that uses a more complex databse) before we could start working on rebuilding the environment. In a pinch, you can just read the text files directly.

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I agree with the Documentation and Inventory pieces that everyone else has stated. I would also like to reiterate that a Wiki is a fantastic idea to record any and all things that are happening on your network.

I’ve used MediaWiki in the past to do this and it worked very well. I was planning on doing something similar at my last position before I left.

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I’ve walked into consulting jobs where that was the norm. Their IT person quit and we walked in to do what amounts to fire-fighting and damage-control.

Start by mapping out all of the devices on your network.

If you don’t already have an LDAP directory service of some kind you might want to implement one. If you’ve got all windows boxes use AD and begin slowly using group policy to get some amount of standardization and automation.

Begin your inventory with what you can get out of spiceworks. Computer names, service tags, OS, Software, etc.

Now see if you can find license keys for all of the software this is installed on those undocumented machines. Is it all retail box software? Volume licenses? If you find that you’ve got the same license installed in more than one place document it and write up a proposal to rectify the licensing discrepancy. The options are uninstall illegal software, purchase more licensing or use free and open source products where possible.

Start creating a framework for all of this documentation. Use spreadsheets to start with because it’s easy to add columns and start keeping new information on each PC. Back-fill data as time allows. At some point a database might be in order.

Also, don’t underestimate the usefulness of good old fashioned manila folders to keep paper copies of your documentation such as licensing for each device.

Once you have this system in place life will get easier and when you move onward or upward you will be leaving behind something that the next person will be able to walk into and take over where you left off.

Good Luck.

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  1. Setup spiceworks as soon as you can. Use it for inventory and help desk.

  2. Walk around and get to know your users. Ask them what is the biggest obstacle they have right now from a tech perspective that hampers them doing their job.

  3. Be visible and approachable. You’ll score points with the staff and get to know people.

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I’m going to differ from most and say to check your backups first. If backup isn’t working and something dies while you’re in the discovery phase, you’re sunk.

3 Spice ups