Active Directory/Documentation/Monitoring Lab Usage

Purpose

Have you ever needed to know if anyone is currently working in one of your teaching labs (i.e. before you initiate a complete lab reboot using the Specops tool)? Or have you ever wanted to know in real-time the names of the individual users who are currently using a public lab in your college? Is so, take advantage of the script provided below!

Implementation

To create the list of computers for the lab you specify the script performs an ADSI query of your .laptops and .desktops groups. The script then individually 'pings' (your lab machines must allow ICMP traffic) each lab computer (to determine if the computer is on), performs a WMI query to determine the logged on user, and lastly connects to the campus LDAP server to look up the users full name.

The script provides options for directing output to either the console or a to a file. You can also specify three different formats for the output: text, csv, and html. The file is generated in the current working directory and is named using a combination of your specified college prefix, department prefix, and lab name.

• Note: The script assumes you are using the default WolfTech OU layout for your teaching, public, and research labs, including the .desktop and .laptop groups containing your computer accounts.

Usage

• Note: To query a lab you must be able to 'ping' the respective lab computers and run the script with an account that has the necessary authority to remotely connect to the lab computers.

view_lab_usage.vbs

 [/output:<console(default):file>]
 [/format:<text(default):csv:html>]
  /college:<college abbrev>
 [/department:<college dept>]
  /lab:"<lab name>"
 [/type:<teaching(default):public:research>]

Ex: view_lab_usage.vbs /college:COE /department:ECE /lab:"EBII 1020"