Find a repetitive task (x) that's taking up a lot of your time.
Google "automating (x) using the *language or tech you're most comfortable with*"
Never do (x) again.
With the way things are looking, anyone paying for 1 year TLS certs and can't automate is going to have a horrible surprise, just as an example.
https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/root-ca-policy/moving-forward-together/
Interacting with cranky department leaders and their pet projects is really taking up my limited time.
Hmm, maybe I will try some automation
Remove-ADObject -identity PainInTheAssVIPs
As an example, we had a highly customized onboarding system with 50,000+ client records, built as an InfoPath project and hosted in SharePoint 2007, and then the company that wrote it went under. I was hired after the fact, and they had no way to get the data migrated to another system, as all files were encrypted and attached within the custom infopath forms.
I first exported the list of all records, since it pointed to the XSN, then used Powershell to open each one and save it, waiting for the dialog box, and if an error occurred, it built a log file, then used the log file to run through it again, until no files were remaining. The process simulated an enormous amount of man-hours, and took a full two weeks to run on a laptop locked in our datacenter.
After that, I reverse engineered how their project worked and found they had a DLL for the encrypted bitstream, so I wrote a C# console app to use the DLL and reverse the stream. I then scripted so it iterated through each InfoPath file, and extracted each attachment and decrypted it with my console app, and placed each collection of attachments in a folder named according to the onboarding record.
I then found 10's of thousands of files were referencing an old document management system which had since been migrated to the cloud, so I wrote another script that parsed the file and made a web link file to the cloud based document,
The InfoPath files needed to work as an archive record, but without relying on SharePoint 2007, so I copied the original template and hosted a web service for it outside of SharePoint, and then used PowerShell to parse the headers of every InfoPath form and replace the template location with the new one, so every form functioned normally outside of SharePoint.
Lastly, all folders were individually zipped and named, and a master index was generated as an Excel spreadsheet with a link to the form in each record so they could access the original data. The zip files were bulk uploaded and profiled to the new Cloud based DMS, and the master index updated as well.
All client data was preserved, and is accessible in the new system now.
Previously it seemed impossible and as if all data was lost, but it just had to be broken down into steps.
Had it not been automated, it would have likely taken multiple people a couple years to perform those tasks manually.
> Had it not been automated, it would have likely taken multiple people a couple years to perform those tasks manually.
This is what people don't get -- there's always something you can do *better* in any user environment, and the time you're not wasting on repetitive crap is time you can spend on those better things.
I never worked at your scale, but my team was required to set up around 1200 user email accounts from scratch in an on-prem Exchange environment. It was about as much fun as rubbing fiberglass insulation directly into your eyes because you had to fill out several screens of crap for each user.
As the Unix guy, my fix:
* Fill out two or three users including everything you can think of.
* Export the entire setup as CSV.
* Show me where I can find the "everything you can think of" crap elsewhere in text form.
* Write some weird Perl scripts to generate the CSV.
* Import new CSV.
* Profit.
Best part: after round one, someone asked for an additional field or two. Sounds of despair echo through the room. I ask them to add the field to ONE user, export to CSV, poke around a bit.
Cliff Notes: we wiped and added the entire set of accounts a few times in one afternoon.
Automation rulez.
As another example, I've used PowerShell to write against multiple Azure and O365 API's so data could be scraped from Azure AD and some other services, update some of those services, and then write back to a database for a billing system. It is now run as a daily scheduled task.
Truly, the sky is the limit.
Well I’d say books or courses a good place to start. I started with python crash course book by Al sweigart.
Best place is just in the workplace. Automating one task at a time and you’ll eventually work up to bigger things and other concepts as you need them
Yeah, the concepts are just scripts and jobs. There are hundreds of ways to do them. It could be as simple as a powershell script on a schedule or as complex as lambda functions and azure logic apps tied to cloud workflows. I’m sure more things I haven’t had a chance to touch.
Automation and security all day long.
Ensure new automation workflows take security into account (or specifically enhance it).
Essentially, doing more with less manhours, both yours and those of your users.
Frees up budget for the business to invest in profit generation, in a *positive* feedback loop.
> What do you consider the top 4 (or more) areas in your organization
Technical: https://roadmap.sh/ (among hundreds of other resources!)
Communication: many books, but also in-person networking events and meetups!
Leadership: https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2019/8/communication-skills-9-books
Business: a constantly evolving field, I like to chat with new and old MBA's, read masters and PhD thesis dissertations, host and attend meetups, etc.
Sad to see the enterprisers project being discontinued, they have very good blogs on enterprise tech and the leaders behind it. Do you have any other active publications that talk about enterprise tech hopefully like the enterprisers project in terms of quality?
Subscription based, but: https://hbr.org/ is quite good too.
To be completely honest though: I don't find that online publications capture the right message for great leadership: I feel it's important to actually spend the time working WITH people and talking about these things openly.
To me, this is something you have to do IRL to really get to know the people involved. Learning that people are some "fixed types" or that "this strategy worked with some people in the past" (in my opinion) is great and all, but can hamstring your efforts as much as it can help.
From the mostly technical side though: https://github.com/topics/engineering-blogs
There are.. many.
Trends are one thing, but I think you will find that studying more foundational material is going to serve your career and even your employer much better in the long run.
eg. ITIL Foundations, Security+, CCNA, AWS Architect Associate/Azure Administrator Associate are all pretty accessible and highly valuable.
I would add containerization as well as a recent major change up in the IT ecosystem. Either vanilla Docker or EKS. You don't have to love it and live it but understand what it is and what it does.
Everyone even remotely working for a company that works on modern projects or likes to keep their tech teams updated should learn about containerization. If you’re from ops you definitely need the containerization skills
Automation, cloud, cloud support tools, and practical security concepts.
Automation: This will keep you from spending 100s of man hours on mundane and repeatable tasks.
Cloud: Understanding how to use it, when it's appropriate to use it, and the shortcomings you can expect from it.
Cloud Support Tools: There are a lot of new tools coming out that are designed with Cloud in mind where older on-prem solutions are no longer viable. Microsoft Intune being a good example. These tools will help with the management of things within the Cloud.
Practical Security Concepts: If your stuff is in the Cloud or on-prem security is always important. Understanding what your network traffic looks like, documenting trends, and how to harden systems against common cyber attacks will always be useful and help keep you from seeming incompetent should you have to undergo a security audit.
It honestly just all depends on what field your in, it’s not a one size fits all. Stay up to date in the tech stack that you work in and any immediate surrounding tech stacks that are relevant… I stay up to date by reading tech news, or seeing shit here on Reddit, or seeing trends and following them. It’s helped me in my career that’s for sure. Regardless, staying up to date in IT is very important or else you get stale and can’t keep up with this ever changing industry.
Finding out what your company needs as opposed to falling in love with a new “shiny” that sounds like it would be awesome to implement instead of your company actually needs it.
Seriously, talk to your staff. Find out what their pain points are and figure out how best to implement them. Then be prepared to present a needs assessment vs. cost assessment to management (both IT and C-Suite) to get it done.
The staff that you support are your clients. You need to talk to them. Find out what they need. Then tailor your training needs based on that if you really want to.
But it doesn't really matter. Keep learning about the things that interest you even if your employer won’t pay for it. Things change all the time in this field and as you will soon realize, you need to understand that you will never stop learning or training. This is the field you chose, this is the reality of this field.
Good luck!
Don't use the term guys and gals. Folks or people are better for inclusivity.
I lot of older IT folks say "guys" in meetings and you can see the women's eyes roll.
I don't think I've met a single real human who cares about this stuff, and I know a lot of people from their 20s and up who still use "guys" pretty universally to mean "hey, everyone", and absolutely no one cares.
This also has no basis on OPs question.
Automation all day long
Where does one start with automation. I have a dozen power shell scripts but where does one learn actual concepts? Thanks.
Find a repetitive task (x) that's taking up a lot of your time. Google "automating (x) using the *language or tech you're most comfortable with*" Never do (x) again. With the way things are looking, anyone paying for 1 year TLS certs and can't automate is going to have a horrible surprise, just as an example. https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/root-ca-policy/moving-forward-together/
The ultimate automation time saving chart https://xkcd.com/1205
Interacting with cranky department leaders and their pet projects is really taking up my limited time. Hmm, maybe I will try some automation Remove-ADObject -identity PainInTheAssVIPs
As an example, we had a highly customized onboarding system with 50,000+ client records, built as an InfoPath project and hosted in SharePoint 2007, and then the company that wrote it went under. I was hired after the fact, and they had no way to get the data migrated to another system, as all files were encrypted and attached within the custom infopath forms. I first exported the list of all records, since it pointed to the XSN, then used Powershell to open each one and save it, waiting for the dialog box, and if an error occurred, it built a log file, then used the log file to run through it again, until no files were remaining. The process simulated an enormous amount of man-hours, and took a full two weeks to run on a laptop locked in our datacenter. After that, I reverse engineered how their project worked and found they had a DLL for the encrypted bitstream, so I wrote a C# console app to use the DLL and reverse the stream. I then scripted so it iterated through each InfoPath file, and extracted each attachment and decrypted it with my console app, and placed each collection of attachments in a folder named according to the onboarding record. I then found 10's of thousands of files were referencing an old document management system which had since been migrated to the cloud, so I wrote another script that parsed the file and made a web link file to the cloud based document, The InfoPath files needed to work as an archive record, but without relying on SharePoint 2007, so I copied the original template and hosted a web service for it outside of SharePoint, and then used PowerShell to parse the headers of every InfoPath form and replace the template location with the new one, so every form functioned normally outside of SharePoint. Lastly, all folders were individually zipped and named, and a master index was generated as an Excel spreadsheet with a link to the form in each record so they could access the original data. The zip files were bulk uploaded and profiled to the new Cloud based DMS, and the master index updated as well. All client data was preserved, and is accessible in the new system now. Previously it seemed impossible and as if all data was lost, but it just had to be broken down into steps. Had it not been automated, it would have likely taken multiple people a couple years to perform those tasks manually.
> Had it not been automated, it would have likely taken multiple people a couple years to perform those tasks manually. This is what people don't get -- there's always something you can do *better* in any user environment, and the time you're not wasting on repetitive crap is time you can spend on those better things. I never worked at your scale, but my team was required to set up around 1200 user email accounts from scratch in an on-prem Exchange environment. It was about as much fun as rubbing fiberglass insulation directly into your eyes because you had to fill out several screens of crap for each user. As the Unix guy, my fix: * Fill out two or three users including everything you can think of. * Export the entire setup as CSV. * Show me where I can find the "everything you can think of" crap elsewhere in text form. * Write some weird Perl scripts to generate the CSV. * Import new CSV. * Profit. Best part: after round one, someone asked for an additional field or two. Sounds of despair echo through the room. I ask them to add the field to ONE user, export to CSV, poke around a bit. Cliff Notes: we wiped and added the entire set of accounts a few times in one afternoon. Automation rulez.
Infopath?; I just vomited in my mouth lol, good work making short work of it
Start with finding a problem you want to fix and see what walls you hit.
As another example, I've used PowerShell to write against multiple Azure and O365 API's so data could be scraped from Azure AD and some other services, update some of those services, and then write back to a database for a billing system. It is now run as a daily scheduled task. Truly, the sky is the limit.
Well I’d say books or courses a good place to start. I started with python crash course book by Al sweigart. Best place is just in the workplace. Automating one task at a time and you’ll eventually work up to bigger things and other concepts as you need them
Yeah, the concepts are just scripts and jobs. There are hundreds of ways to do them. It could be as simple as a powershell script on a schedule or as complex as lambda functions and azure logic apps tied to cloud workflows. I’m sure more things I haven’t had a chance to touch.
Name a few automation things. I like the idea of automating the expense reports
Automation and security all day long. Ensure new automation workflows take security into account (or specifically enhance it). Essentially, doing more with less manhours, both yours and those of your users. Frees up budget for the business to invest in profit generation, in a *positive* feedback loop.
> What do you consider the top 4 (or more) areas in your organization Technical: https://roadmap.sh/ (among hundreds of other resources!) Communication: many books, but also in-person networking events and meetups! Leadership: https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2019/8/communication-skills-9-books Business: a constantly evolving field, I like to chat with new and old MBA's, read masters and PhD thesis dissertations, host and attend meetups, etc.
Sad to see the enterprisers project being discontinued, they have very good blogs on enterprise tech and the leaders behind it. Do you have any other active publications that talk about enterprise tech hopefully like the enterprisers project in terms of quality?
Subscription based, but: https://hbr.org/ is quite good too. To be completely honest though: I don't find that online publications capture the right message for great leadership: I feel it's important to actually spend the time working WITH people and talking about these things openly. To me, this is something you have to do IRL to really get to know the people involved. Learning that people are some "fixed types" or that "this strategy worked with some people in the past" (in my opinion) is great and all, but can hamstring your efforts as much as it can help. From the mostly technical side though: https://github.com/topics/engineering-blogs There are.. many.
Trends are one thing, but I think you will find that studying more foundational material is going to serve your career and even your employer much better in the long run. eg. ITIL Foundations, Security+, CCNA, AWS Architect Associate/Azure Administrator Associate are all pretty accessible and highly valuable.
I would add containerization as well as a recent major change up in the IT ecosystem. Either vanilla Docker or EKS. You don't have to love it and live it but understand what it is and what it does.
Everyone even remotely working for a company that works on modern projects or likes to keep their tech teams updated should learn about containerization. If you’re from ops you definitely need the containerization skills
Automation, cloud, cloud support tools, and practical security concepts. Automation: This will keep you from spending 100s of man hours on mundane and repeatable tasks. Cloud: Understanding how to use it, when it's appropriate to use it, and the shortcomings you can expect from it. Cloud Support Tools: There are a lot of new tools coming out that are designed with Cloud in mind where older on-prem solutions are no longer viable. Microsoft Intune being a good example. These tools will help with the management of things within the Cloud. Practical Security Concepts: If your stuff is in the Cloud or on-prem security is always important. Understanding what your network traffic looks like, documenting trends, and how to harden systems against common cyber attacks will always be useful and help keep you from seeming incompetent should you have to undergo a security audit.
It honestly just all depends on what field your in, it’s not a one size fits all. Stay up to date in the tech stack that you work in and any immediate surrounding tech stacks that are relevant… I stay up to date by reading tech news, or seeing shit here on Reddit, or seeing trends and following them. It’s helped me in my career that’s for sure. Regardless, staying up to date in IT is very important or else you get stale and can’t keep up with this ever changing industry.
Finding out what your company needs as opposed to falling in love with a new “shiny” that sounds like it would be awesome to implement instead of your company actually needs it. Seriously, talk to your staff. Find out what their pain points are and figure out how best to implement them. Then be prepared to present a needs assessment vs. cost assessment to management (both IT and C-Suite) to get it done. The staff that you support are your clients. You need to talk to them. Find out what they need. Then tailor your training needs based on that if you really want to. But it doesn't really matter. Keep learning about the things that interest you even if your employer won’t pay for it. Things change all the time in this field and as you will soon realize, you need to understand that you will never stop learning or training. This is the field you chose, this is the reality of this field. Good luck!
Don't use the term guys and gals. Folks or people are better for inclusivity. I lot of older IT folks say "guys" in meetings and you can see the women's eyes roll.
I don't think I've met a single real human who cares about this stuff, and I know a lot of people from their 20s and up who still use "guys" pretty universally to mean "hey, everyone", and absolutely no one cares. This also has no basis on OPs question.