Common tasks of script developer

Hello Scripters,



I'm working on an article about development productivity. I'm trying to
figure out common daily tasks of script developer and Windows administrator.
Probably some one can share information about his tasks with me.



Beforehand thanks,

Alexander.

Al
Wed Sep 14 20:44:42 CDT 2005


"Alexander Fedorenko" <sashaf@devplanner.com> wrote in message
news:%23NQ7ABRuFHA.3628@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> Hello Scripters,
>
>
>
> I'm working on an article about development productivity. I'm trying to
> figure out common daily tasks of script developer and Windows
> administrator. Probably some one can share information about his tasks
> with me.

One of the admins in my shop has included "eat cheesies" in the list of
objectives on which his performance will be judged.

But seriously, while I do develop scripts and do administer windows, many of
my day to day tasks relate to other business responsibilities, so am as a
loss as to how best to answer your question.

/Al

GAZ
Thu Sep 15 07:40:09 CDT 2005

An Active Directory migration can be made much simpler with some
scripting. OUs can all be created with a script rather than typing
them all in.

You can also use it to add users or groups to the local admins group on
workstations.

I have used scripts to automate tasks like deleting files older than a
certain date, changing passwords on local workstations, changing or
reading a registry value on numerous hosts, etc.

Generally, I don't create scripts for daily things so much as those odd
repetitive tasks that would require hours of manual intervention in a
repetitive fashion.

HTH

billy
Thu Sep 15 13:33:45 CDT 2005

the scripter's job is to make the complex simple.

first and formost there are the logon script(s). when you log onto a
domain computer, you want your drives mapped, your printers mapped,
audit run, etc. - all of this without the user hitting a key.

in my environment, management set a policy that "desktop support"
personel were supposed to check a dozen things and fix them if
nessessary. they sent out a 10 page document on what to check and how
to fix. not supprisingly, most of these things were not getting done. i
came up with a script that could do all of the checks and apply all the
fixes. this became the logon script for desktop support.

there is AD migrations (as someone already mentioned), and AD changes.
if your domain is large, it is inconcevable to make mass changes (like
changing the home drive letter for a list of 1000 users) by hand.
scripts handle this kind of job very well.

in my environment, user account creation is fairly complex. accounts
created by hand take about 10 minutes or so and have an error in them
about 25% of the time. accounts created by script are always correct
and are created in less than 1 minute.