TTT:Hello Breevy

One of the more popular applications on the Mac platform is Text Expander.  This allows for the predefined creation of text replacements which can save on performing repetitive tasks over and over again.  

For example - do you find yourself writing some of the same things over and over again?  Do you hate having to fill out your address over and over again?  This is where Breevy (and Text Expander on Mac) comes in handy. For example:

Lets say you needed to fill in your address:  1254 Example Hilton Grace Snn Lane

That would get old having to type that often.  What if instead you only needed to type .adr ?  With Breevy running you would only need to type .adr (or whatever shortcut you decided on) and it would automatically replace the key words you defined with your full address.  This is just one example of what Breeby can do.  Its also useful for people in the medical field.  

The full example which Breevy has on their site is: 

If you can type it, you can abbreviate it with Breevy… and get it typed in a fraction of the time.

• Fill out those pesky, lengthy online forms in seconds:

  • nnam to Jonathan Smylie
  • aad to 123 Lawn Street, Beverly Hills, CA 90210

• Type e-mails faster:

  • tfye to Thank you for your e-mail regarding…
  • anyq to If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

• No more typos! Breevy comes with over 6500 AutoCorrect entries:

  • mischeivous to mischievous
  • definately to definitely

• Comes with over 13,500 abbreviations just for medical transcriptionists:

  • alho to a long history of
  • accl to acromioclavicular

• Abbreviate long or complicated words — perfect for those suffering from RSI:

  • cmpl to complicated
  • sth to shorthand

• Quickly give descriptive answers to frequently asked questions:

  • ?saf to To run the program in safe mode, simply…

?bat to To change the batteries in your RC vehicle, first you must…

I have used Breevy for my machine for a while - and found that it helps perform some similar tasks over and over again.  This is especially useful for anyone who works on a support desk.  I find that one of the more popular calls I get is the request to unlock a person’s active directory account.  Before Breevy I had to type - “Unlocked account, verified access” over and over again each time a person called in for this type of service.  Using Breevy, I shortened that down to .unl - once Breevy saw that shortcut the previous statment automatically was entered.  While that is just a short example, it was one which I do often and find the application more than helpful.  

There are many more features which Breevy offers (it can prompt for the data to enter in before it puts the information on screen - such as if you want to customize a replacement with a name, etc) so check it out at their website: Breevy The application is not freeware - but there is a free thirty day trial to work with to see if it works fo

TTT: Just use Foxit

Im done with Adobe pdf reader, as should you.

As pat of my job, I regularly have to use PDF files.  These files are not that complex, usually just scans of documents which were printed out.  They are non-interactive and should not produce any problems to read on the computer.  My computer, however, stutters when trying to scroll any amount of the pdf file.  The computer in question is running the latest version of Adobe reader, has a core 2 dual core 1.86GHZ processor with 2GB of ram and is running windows 7.  My entire computer should not freeze for a few seconds when trying to scroll from the top of a pdf file to the bottom.  Yet, it does.

This wouldn’t be bad if I only opened PDF files once or twice a week, but most days im opening 10-15 pdf files and having to scroll through them.  

Ive also been concerned over the security of Adobe’s PDF viewer. Recently the pdf viewer has had multiple exploits regarding the possibility for remote code execution.  I find this unacceptable.  I should not have to worry that a malformed pdf file that I am viewing could potentially infect and compromise my computer.  The pdfs that im reading are all from a trusted source, but most people will be reading pdf files from a variety of sources, some trusted and some not trusted.   

So based on that, I tested out a few PDF readers and found that the best one by far is Foxit Reader.  Foxit is small, lightweight, and does not freeze up your system when attempting to scroll from page one to page two of the pdf.  It also has been the target of less attacks, and has ben recommended multiple times as a alternative pdf reader by Steve Gibson of GRC.

Foxit PDF reader can be downloaded from Foxits site and is free.  Foxit does have some commercial software to purchase, but the reader itself is free.

TTT: Active Directory User Comparison - Quest + Powershell

When I joined the operations team for the company I work for, I quickly realized that account manual processes could be automated with the use of Quest CMDLTS as well as Powershell.  I set about to create a “toolkit” of various scripts which could be re-used over and over.  One such tool is a tool which can compare the group membership of two people and then outputs what the differences in the group membership is.

Anyone who has ever used Active Directory for Windows has come to a time where they receive a call that person A is able to access a resource, but person B is unable to access the same resource although they should be set up the same.  For smaller companies where there are only a few hundred AD groups and each user may have only a few groups in there accounts at a time, comparing two users is relatively easy and a tool may make it actually harder. Once you start getting into complex security setups, however, being able to quickly and easily compare the makeup of the AD group membership becomes essential for quick resolution.

Since AD displays group membership in a list view, within a window which needs to be scrolled, it can sometimes be difficult to accurately compare the group memberships of two AD users without the use of excel, a checklist or other tool.  Although the group memberships are listed in alphabetical order, if there are any differences between the two that list is all of a sudden in a different order.  It also becomes difficult to accuratly compare nested groups since these are not exposed in the first list.  You will need to drill down to this other list and comare those lists.  For companies which use small amounts of groups, this is relatively easy.  The more groups you use, however, the faster the complexity of the comparison becomes.  

To counter this lack of being able to quickly and easily run a comparison I wrote into the toolkit we use at work a tool to compare the group membership between two individual users.  I have attached the powershell file with instructions for use below.

Download AD Group Compare Tool

A few notes for running this tool:

Powershell execution policy needs to be set to remote signed

You will need Quest Active Directory CMDLTS installed as well as powershell 2.0 and you will need access to Active Directory with your AD account

When you execute the script, you will see a window with two columns, one on the right and one on the left.  To use the program, simply enter the name or username into the top most text box on the left and hit the lookup button.  In the list box below, it will return a list of users or usernames which match the requested search.  From here you can click on the correct username you wish to work with.  When you click on the username, the information in the middle will update to reflect the information of the currently selected user.  Repeat the same process on the right hand side.  

Once you have done this, click on the Run Compare button at the bottom of the screen and the query will be executed.  The three text boxes will populate with the information related to their labels, showing you which groups(if any) each person has unique from each other.  

You will notice that there are three radio buttons at the bottom of the window.  A nested lookup will look at and compare all nested groups (groups which are a part of other groups which the member is indirectly a part of) or a normal lookup.  By default, a normal lookup is performed.  If you choose to perform a nested lookup, by the nature of how its looking, it will take a few mins longer to run and process, but it will complete.

So there you go, you no longer have to manually compare the groups of two people in AD, it can now be done automagically!

TTT: Powershell and Quest = a useful daily toolkit

At my last job, I was always known as the guy with the tool/script for the task at hand.  I continue to have a large library of tools at my disposal, and Im going to just start throwing some useful ones(even some which I have written myself and are used at work)

One of the tools which has become a quick favorite of mine is Powershell on Windows, especially paired with Quest Active Directory CMDLTS.  This was true when I was on the support desk, but when I moved over to my current job in the Operations department and started working with Active Directory I soon found that there are certain tasks which could befit from being run from a script in one step versus manipulating the account across multiple mouse clicks.

I had been playing with Powershell since the early Monad days, and watched as the feature set of the application slowly flushed out.  Powershell has, built in, the ability to manipulate content of files, manipulate registry keys, and report out the structure of files and directories on hard disks. Powershell does also have the ability, natively, to manipulate Active Directory with LDAP queries.  While LDAP is powerful, everyone is not an LDAP genius, and the learning curve for LDAP is quite steep for some people.

This is where Quest comes in.  Quest releases, for free, Powershell CMDLTS which you can install and use to work with Active Directory.  You can visit Quest’s download page here.  On the page there is not only the powershell shell, but also a PDF file explaining the use for use of each of the Quest commands.  The commands for quest are simple, fast, and easy to work with.

For example, to get a list of users from AD where all users have a title of Nurse I would run:

Get-Qaduser -title “Nurse”

Simple!

The output could then be piped out to another command for further actions, output, or refinement.

Get-Qaduser -title “Nurse” | out-gridview

This could further be manipulated.  If we wanted to get, from the previous list, the name of everyone we could run the following commands

Get-Qaduser -title “Nurse” | Select Name |  out-gridview

You now have a sortable gridview of names of everyone who has a title of nurse. 

This is just a brief overview of the commands and power inherint with powershell and Quest.  If you read Quest’s PDF file, you will be able to view all of the various parameters for the commands which can be used to search and manipulate users in AD. 

All of Quests commands are in plain english, reducing the learning curve of using the commands.  Some of the more advanced functions of Quest can be a little confusing at first, but after using them once or twice, the most complicated commands will start to seem simple.  For most of the commands, either looking for information or manipulating an AD user, it is usually a lot simpler and quicker to use Quest than use the native LDAP.

So if you work with Active Directory on a daily basis, you may want to look into Powershell and Quest.  While the commands themselves may not save you a lot of time doing password resets(although you can do password resets with Quest) the linking together of the commands into re-usable scripts is what makes powershell powerful. 

Next Thursday: Combining various powershell and quest commands to compare group memberships of two AD users