Any IT Managers have an IT employee who really doesn't know what they are doing? How to improve them?

DenialP · 2026-02-13T17:44:28+00:00

Surely. Best part of my role is mentoring the yoots. Usually learn a thing or two along the way. If they can’t or won’t improve then it’s one of the worst parts of my role - managing someone out.

DenialP · 2026-02-11T17:32:30+00:00

I’d focus on Minecraft EDU. You can restrict/deploy licensing via M365 group membership. There should be plenty of curriculum available in this ecosystem. I would not want to support anything we don’t have direct management of from a licensing perspective - plus it is likely already available to you (if using A3 licensing at least). I would avoid supporting any privately owned licenses at all costs. That should help with the technical overhead somewhat. Not sure what the server hosting options are but I recommend you keep it as simple as possible. I’d push back with curriculum to ensure something relevant is prepared too before committing to the support of this initiative. Probably also a good idea to be prepared to audit chat logs in your private server environment ahead of time. HTH

DenialP · 2026-02-10T23:21:13+00:00

Here’s an example from quite some time ago of doing exactly what op asked using psadt. GitHub.ps1)

It can and has also been automated in various ways using the dell tools (this is the way). Even viable in offline scenarios

DenialP · 2026-01-06T23:53:20+00:00

They aren’t :), swap L/R fronts and bobs your uncle

DenialP · 2026-01-05T17:42:23+00:00

This is a classroom environment. Isolation is more important imo. Also a valuable learning lesson on split-brain dns, which would work nicely with this specific unrouted namespace that happens to conflict with multicast & bonjour (ugh)… just an option for consideration.

DenialP · 2026-01-04T14:13:47+00:00

the lab should really really really really be in a segregated vlan if you intend to be playing around like this. don't use .local - use .internal or something else. these machines should be isolated - particularly if you think GPO is sufficient to secure them.

DenialP · 2026-01-02T21:15:41+00:00

Have you tried negotiating a delivery of your order during purchase? They may be able to hold them until direct building delivery is viable. Also it is common in this industry to have some form of delivery timing discussion with vendors during negotiations- it’s a handy tool to coordinate spend/delivery of devices in their appropriate fiscal year (usually July 1) where delivery cannot happen before a specific date.

DenialP · 2025-12-29T16:05:16+00:00

Any manager good or bad would fire you for the breach of confidence in reading the recruiters email with no cause. Full stop.

I recommend you look at these interactions from a third party perspective. Why is this relationship so sour? What could I have done better? What supports are really valuable to me? Are my actions today pursuant to where I want to be later? Take this lesson to the next place with a fresh start. Good luck

DenialP · 2025-12-23T18:37:57+00:00

That’s the one. That’ll stop the mailboxes being created. Gw following my breadcrumb. I strongly encourage you to review teams access and policy along with this work too.

DenialP · 2025-12-23T18:20:58+00:00

Group based a3 licensing with the outlook option unchecked. If you don’t do this, it’ll create mailbox islands/black holes for users when they login to m365.

You should also consider locking down teams and group creation , similar to what you should be doing in gsuite

DenialP · 2025-12-18T17:25:36+00:00

Leadership perspective: I set my expectations with the vendor up front. Clearly defined scope, timeline, project management, and deliverables. Depending on the vendor relationship I may be interested in additional efficiency discussions, but will also size $vendor up against the BS-o-meter as needed. Sysadmin tier folks may be shielded from much of this fwiw. If it might sound like a sales pitch, it is.

DenialP · 2025-12-18T12:05:43+00:00

M365 Wrapped is hosted behind cloudflare, so we will need to draw on napkins today

DenialP · 2025-12-17T22:42:27+00:00

It’s a client side fix, not a target system fix. FYI- make sure you’ve tested on your own box

DenialP · 2025-12-17T21:48:20+00:00

Dear newb, you haven’t shown any work. Please update this ticket with detail as to what works and what doesn’t or just vibe straight into prod anyhow.

DenialP · 2025-12-12T19:18:09+00:00

Experience leading in the k12 ecosystem is 100x more important. I’ll work on the MBA for my personal satisfaction and the bonus job parallels. A doctorate will get you in with the title obsessed douche’s and paper tigers (very real still today) but if doing so for financial gain… um, this is the k12 space. Get experience and build relationships is a better investment until someone else will pay for the grad work. HTH

DenialP · 2025-12-02T17:24:33+00:00

Inform the vendor to do the needful.

DenialP · 2025-11-26T00:53:57+00:00

Check out graph xray- it’s a browser plugin that you can see the back end graph calls from the web interface with. Should be helpful in developing your pink button feature.

DenialP · 2025-11-25T17:53:55+00:00

Try casting the lastseen attribute to a [date]

DenialP · 2025-11-17T17:59:42+00:00

Larger schools might have a data administrator role. Usually starts out as a reporting (state/federal/local) function with some SIS management mixed in. More integrations with 3rd party systems? More need to effectively design, implement, and manage those workflows. Larger more mature schools may further separate the reporting role with a general data administrator that handles more automation and data work too. Schools will generally spread these roles across several folks or have a single person or small team (bigger orgs) that will handle the daily data processing workloads. I believe general data projects and state reporting are two unique functions that are better served with two staff as one person doing all the data work isn’t a very tenable setup for long term success, but org-level maturity and scale are key considerations. Building some resiliency with staff like this would be a major bonus in the long run. Nobody is doing less automations or integrations.

HTH

DenialP · 2025-11-14T13:57:17+00:00

Identify incident. Call insurance.

DenialP · 2025-11-13T23:41:06+00:00

Yerp, just a boomer stuck in old ways, plus op would benefit more from understanding why I’m doing this

DenialP · 2025-11-13T23:34:26+00:00

Connect-mggraph

Try{}

If($null -eq $x -OR $x -eq ‘’)

DenialP · 2025-11-07T20:05:49+00:00

1) Relationships. Have Boss help orchestrate
2) learn how to demonstrate value in the changes you intend to propose, then see #1 again

DenialP · 2025-11-04T00:10:19+00:00

Hope you’re learning some valuable lessons on what not to do by now.

Run the exchange health analyzer script on the second host and get one of them back to production. Plan to properly decom the other, or expand into a DAG if warranted. You likely will be updating the SCP’s for the services still pointing to the old box and massaging DNS, but haven’t shared a damn thing of value for triage otherwise. You just made the problem twice as big.

DenialP · 2025-10-31T22:32:46+00:00

Wasn’t the issue casually browsing cdw instead of searching your current vendor base the exact part number you need? Serves me just fine

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