GLPI in a small organization, part 2. Basic functionality and features of its use

In the first part of the GLPI article, written back in October 2016, I described the typical and typical for a small organization deployment of this system, pointed out some features of the installation of related products, and a kind of best practice used by me personally.

In the second part of GLPI, I plan to highlight the most used functionality of this system and tell readers about the intricacies of working with it. All who are interested, you are welcome under the cat.

1. GLPI as a computer equipment management system

It's no secret that in small and medium-sized organizations often the system administrator performs several roles: technical support, system administration, designing information systems, maintaining a fleet of equipment and software in a usable condition.

GLPI allows you to make data about the equipment used and store them statically, until the next change by the administrator. However, it is more convenient to work with GLPI using some plugins , for example, Fusion Inventory. You can read the documentation and download the latest versions of the Fusion Inventory Agent on the official website .
')
Fusion Inventory is an excellent plugin for collecting and updating information about the PC park and software. For information, we use agents that are written for all popular operating systems, and, in fact, the Fusion Inventory plugin for GLPI itself.

Developers offer many ways to install agents on Windows, including use GPP and VBS script, more details here .

Personally, I prefer the installation method through Windows group policies using the VBS script.

A group policy has been created for computers belonging to a specific group, say “Computers_for_GLPI”, where a VBS script has been added as a startup script.

You can view all available scripts and select the appropriate option for your infrastructure.

After installing the agents and starting their work, information about the hardware and software begins to flow to the GLPI server.

All information on hardware and software falls into the "Hardware" section, but some reports and additional options are available through the "Add-ons" section, the "Fusion Inventory" item.

A system administrator with this system-based approach to work can obtain data on the equipment and software used, including filter by CPU architecture, type of memory used, operating system, and much more.

As a result, he will be able to upgrade or replace outdated equipment and software, which ultimately should increase labor productivity and information security of the system as a whole.

2. GLPI as a management system of the information technology department

GLPI, as I mentioned in the first article , has long been a powerful combine that can make life easier for a system administrator, TP specialist, or head of IT.

Consider some plug-ins and built-in functionality that will help in the activities of the IT department.

The functionality of IT department management is located in the “Management” and “Tools” sections.
Unleashing all the power of this functionality is impossible without using the system described in the first paragraph of this article. So, what we can manage:

• With software licenses, the list of which will be loaded by Fusion Inventory agents, you will only have to add terms, users (which can be quickly retrieved from AD), versions and other information. It is possible to systematize disparate software licenses for a company and to always have up-to-date license agreements and the number of licenses at hand. Awareness of IT specialists about the number and type of licenses will eliminate or critically reduce downtime for reasons of shortage or expiration of software licenses.
• Contacts, everything is quite simple here: we enter and systematize information on external contacts and some internal ones. In my humble opinion, at least 2 contacts must be entered for each external service. Such high accessibility =)
• Service providers, here you can add previously made contacts, add information on common means of communication, attach documents and contracts.
• With contracts, you can accumulate under current, past and future contracts, which will allow you to extend or terminate contact activities in time.

GLPI includes a notification system that will alert you in advance of expiring contracts.

In general, the members of the Suppliers, Contracts, Contacts trio should be inseparable, regardless of the way documentation is kept. This allows in case of questions to follow the chain: service - contract - contacts, which speeds up the solution of the problem.

In the "Tools" section, from my point of view, the items "Knowledge Base" and "Backup" are important.

Redundancy: it is quite convenient to reserve equipment used only within the IT department through this functionality. Test laptop, server, switch - please. Added equipment, indicated the terms of reservation, and forward to new victories!

In today's corporate environment, Microsoft has the well-known Exchange Server product. In my opinion, for reserving equipment and premises, its functionality is much more convenient and easy to use. If you have an Exchange Server, you have shared equipment and rooms, and you do not use the functionality of equipment boxes and room boxes - take a look in his direction, perhaps this will help avoid conflicts of use and increase productivity by eliminating the time for a call to the secretary to search for free meeting rooms or disputes with a competitor on a corporate laptop for presentation at the exhibition. See here for more details: equipment box and room drawer

The knowledge base is much less convenient than the classic wiki system, but its presence frees up from having to accompany another system if there is not much information for the Knowledge Base. Here you can manage the visibility of articles, which will allow you to publish step-by-step instructions for users, and hide from them information about the intricacies of setting up switches in remote branches, for example.

3. GLPI as a user support system (TP)

I happened to use GLPI as a TP system in several organizations.
For a small organization, the use of GLPI as a combine to help the IT department is fully justified, and as a result of this use, the TP system on GLPI arises.

Most of the TP functionality is located in the Support section.
For the normal functioning of the TP system, you will need to configure and start using another part of the GLPI functionality:

• Need to configure User Authentication. To do this, we create a user in Active Directory or another LDAP who can receive information about users; for this, “Read Only” rights on the containers with GLPI users are sufficient.
  
  Add a new LDAP directory, specify username and password for the user.
  
  More details here .
• It is necessary to configure the mail receiver so that the scheduler can connect to the mail system box and pick up letters intended for TP from there.
  Its setting is located in the "Settings" - "Receivers".
  Setting up is not difficult: we specify the type of connection to the mail server, its address, the box for connection and some security settings.
  For Exchange Server, the final receiving string is usually: {exch_server / imap / novalidate-cert / tls} INBOX
• Need to configure user notifications. This is done in the “Settings” - “Notifications” section. Here you can configure the notification templates, the sending server and the type of notifications and their obligatory actions in the application. For more information, see the GLPI documentation (French available).
• An important tool for automating applications is the Business Rules for Applications. The documentation of information about business rules was in French, remembering the school course, I mastered the general information link . In general, for redefining parts of applications, for example, containing the “mail” keyword directly to the Exchange administrator, the logic of business rules is easy to understand and use. In addition, it is possible to change the priority of the application, which allows you to process applications from key specialists of the company faster, which ultimately saves their time.

The most frequent rules in my practice are redefining applications for groups of specialists by keywords, for example, “1C”, “mail”, “jira”, “project”. Thus, applications immediately get to the right specialist, bypassing the specialist engaged in the primary processing of applications, redefining the importance and priority of applications from company managers and key specialists, reducing the priority of applications from certain departments to medium, increasing priority to high, etc.

Thus, the GLPI-based TP system has the full functionality of other paid and free TP systems: various application methods (mail, web interface), business rules for applications, the ability to track and comment applications by mail and web, ranking and processing by influence , urgency and priority, the ability to create subtasks for applications, attachment of equipment and specialists to applications, the possibility of observation.

The possibilities of sorting and ranking tasks are fully accessible to both TP specialists and administrators, thanks to a wide range of filters when working in the “Support” section - “Applications”.

In addition, for the web interface of the TP, you can edit the application template, overriding the required parameters, which will ensure that users must add the direction of appeal (mail, 1C, remote access, etc.), urgency, influence.

Conclusion : I talked about the basic functionality that I used in those very “typical” organizations of small and medium size (up to 400 users).

It is the wide possibilities of GLPI and its openness that made this system quite popular, which in the future should bear fruit in the form of good documentation, a developed community and an increase in the number of talented developers able to extend and improve the functionality of GLPI.

In addition to the functionality described above, a good set of plug-ins and the ability to customize the appearance of many elements are available for the administrator, including notification messages, login pages, reports, etc.

In the third part of the planned cycle of articles on GLPI, I want to consider the functionality and use of the most common plug-ins and my vision of their use, as well as some nuances of fine-tuning some of the functions of GLPI.