In this quick session, Houston will review the Capture the Lab challenge event format, go over rules and requirements for participants, and go through a few practice questions to introduce the concept of finding flags and submitting them to the LabMan CTFd portal to earn points! Join us if you'd like to compete or if you just want to learn more about capture the flag!

The method utilized had the following components: evaluation of different levels of conversion to cloud-based application delivery; evaluation of vendor capability; methodology for application deployment; methods of faculty engagement with software selection; methods of monitoring the user experience; quantitative assessment of total sessions, total usage hours, and maximum concurrent user usage; quantitative comparison of those fields to the previously used Apache iteration; quantitative and qualitative evaluation of support incidents generated; and qualitative assessment of the user experience. Overall sessions increased nearly threefold, and maximum concurrent users quadrupled hours spent on the platform per capita decreased from increased performance, engagement with faculty in the application delivery process increased, and improved overall user experience.

The IT Lab Services department of James Madison University (Virginia) has developed a full featured integrated lab management system that has allowed the department to reduce student lab monitor staffing by 80% and become a near zero-touch shop managing over 1,200 endpoints throughout 60 buildings across the entire campus. The LabDash system integrates endpoint commissioning & decommissioning, imaging, non-persistence (freezing/thawing), real-time monitoring of multiple pulse indicators, live screenshots, remote control (including remote power cycling and hardware reset via AMT), equipment inventory, application usage statistics, digital signage integrated with room schedules, software request management, and image application inventories, all operated through a convenient easy-to-use browser-based interface. The system has been under in-house development since 2015 and is being considered for release to the public as an Open Source project. In this session, the software author will demonstrate the LabDash Dashboard and LabDashPE Windows Installer.

In this workshop, certified project manager Craig Kilgo will help participants understand the principles of project management through discovery and practice by examining the problems during construction of the Death Star 2 and how those problems were mitigated.

Data can be used to support diversity, equity and inclusion while optimizing IT resources. Adjustments to deployments can be made before the student experience is impacted. Data can also be used to verify expenditures support your institutional goals.

Since we last met, there have been a lot of changes. Customer needs have changed and the LabStats product has grown. Learn how we have provided remote access to on campus resources. How will remote access fit in with your processes in the coming years. How critical will it be to provide live computer availability to on-site students? What are the new options for more robust data analysis that have value beyond the LabStats portal.

In this combination-format presentation/white-boarding session, Houston (VCU) will present the years of effort leading to a culmination of user-centered design to deliver a dynamically generated desktop interface for academic endpoints that puts options at the fingertips of end-users by leveraging two widely popular open-source tools: RainMeter and Ubersicht. These desktop background overlay tools aren't often used in the enterprise, but can provide immense value. A white-boarding session will be part of the session to engage audience members in their most critical needs for communicating simply and effectively with end-users right at the desktop. If you're looking for a better alternative to generating static background images, using BGInfo, or simply not having the resources to offer any info on the desktop background aside from a logo, join us and see if these tools might help you enable this functionality for your end-users.

Zero touch deployments are the goal of every endpoint support team. At the height of the pandemic, no-contact deliveries of new systems for our faculty and staff forced us to to improve our rollouts and assume that we wouldn't have the luxury of seeing someone in person to get their system up and running. Our current process applies to Apple computers with both the Intel and M1 chipsets, and has resulted in a significant drop in service tickets for assistance with new computer setups. We have a similarly streamlined process in place for iPad deployments as well.

Topics within the presentation include: Account migration for named-user accounts, transitioning from serialized device licensing to shared device licensing, deployment and activation challenges, license request and fulfillment processes, cost sharing and automatic entitlement management solutions, and providing student licensing using Kivuto's OnTheHub webstore for easy subscription management. There will be time at the end of this session for questions and answers as well as a discussion of current challenges.

Deeper analytics will help understand resource utilization. How are computers and software being used, and what your demand-based deployment should look like. If you are now using or considering using virtually provided resources, the same data will help build a solid foundation for your virtual desktop and virtual software deployments.

In the blink of an eye, we all were sent home to work remotely for two weeks. Those two weeks turned into two months and then semesters or more. As I supported printing for my campus and always joking about job security because everyone wants to print, I then started supporting a few individuals to print at their homes. Why? And when we returned to campus, it was like people couldn't wait to hit ctrl+P. There has to be a better way.

In this presentation, we will provide one method to make macOS baseline configurations easy through the use of the macOS Security Compliance Project (mSCP). We will provide an overview of mSCP, the benefits of using mSCP, how you can customize mSCP and discuss how we’ve implemented it in our organization.

In this session, Nick will cover the story of the monitoring journey thus far at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, some common monitoring terms and methods (such as SMTP), popular platforms (such as Nagios), lessons learned, plans for the future, and at the end of the presentation, an open discussion to talk about what monitoring and what others are doing.

A look into what it takes to host the LabMan conference. During this presentation, Louis (IIT) and Houston (VCU) will provide valuable insights into planning, organizing, and hosting LabMan at their respective schools. This presentation will cover a variety of topics focused on effectively managing the conference such as: venue and vendor selection, soliciting content and promoting to potential presenters, attracting sponsors and partners, and of course all advertising and communications it takes to effectively get the word out. Join us for a peek inside the journey we've been through to keep LabMan running.

The past two years have resulted in changes of technology usage patterns. What will students and staff expect to continue upon a return to campus and what changes will they expect to be available moving forward? Returning to pre-pandemic deployment of resources will likely miss the mark.

Client Services spent many years seeking a solution to replace the outdated asset management system. The greatest obstacle we had to overcome was how to replace the system. We attended conferences, consulted vendors and identified new products specifically designed for managing assets but none of that information helped to address the how. HOW were we going to go from what we had and what we knew to something else? Even if getting data out of the old system and into a new system was as simple as importing records into that new system, what information was truly necessary and how did we need for it to be manipulated and maintained? Having finally answered these questions for ourselves, I am eager to demonstrate our solution for others who may be facing a similar challenge. As the session unfolds, participants will be taken on a trip of discovery a) demonstrating the asset lifecycle process upon which the IP Database was built, b) identifying the IP Database’s shortcomings in the modern day, c) identifying what we needed and wanted from a new system, d) identifying and understanding the modern asset lifecycle and its application to a new system and new process, e) demonstrating how existing tools such as Quest’s KACE System Management Appliance, Microsoft Lists, Microsoft Power Automate and Microsoft Power Apps have been leveraged to meet our computer asset management needs and f) explaining next steps and thoughts for expanding this process to the management of other assets.

Fear not! There is a serverless tool on the horizon that can save you vast amounts of time, so you can get back to what you love most.....documenting all the things you haven't had time to document. What's this? A tool that allows you to leverage Google APIs to collect data from end-users using web-forms, but also has an API to hit with scripts to POST data to directly? Sounds too good to be true! Come see what Ultradox is, how it works, and some examples of the tool being used in action at VCU.

Currently with PaperCut Software, Alan Morris tested the Windows print system from NT4 to Windows 10. Alan will discuss the history around Microsoft's balance between ease of use and security for the print environment and cover the specific defaults now impacting printing globally. Alan will also discuss solutions available from PaperCut Software.