EiS Secure Census

The project formerly known as IDK has been signed off and released as EiS Secure Census. As a component of Secure Census is based around the TrueCrypt source, the source code for IDK Encryption will be made available from this blog shortly inline with the TrueCrypt licence agreement.

Post conference news

EiSNet v1.7 was officially launched at our IT12 exhibition and its safe to say, it was a resounding success!

Feedback was extremely positive and a number of excellent ideas for future enhancements have been made, noted and don't tell anyone, but some have been implemented already!

Since the event we've done some intense deployment testing and packaging up so our build processes now has a fully deployable EISNet v1.7 network.

The source code is now locked which means no more additions, changes or improvements.

Our first school to have EISNet v1.7 is having it installed in early August.

13 months of hard work, head scratching and laughter is now at an end. Until the next project that is.

Device Status removal

In February we announced a new feature called Device Status. This would allow you to see if the device is on, or offline. Whilst extremely useful, it has proven to be highly unreliable and has been removed from  the first release. It is a disappointing change but we cannot allow the new version to be released with something we know to be buggy. Hopefully it will appear in a later release.

EISNet v1.7 official launch

EISNet v1.7 will be launched on June 14th 2012 at our IT12 Exhibition and Conference.

Mike and myself will be demonstrating the new version at the exhibition which is free! but whilst you'll there, why not book yourself into the conference where I'll be doing a talk on Windows 2008 GPO Extensions.

More details here (http://www.eiskent.co.uk/default.cfm?navid=7)

Couldn't resist one final improvement

Whilst finalising the demonstrations for IT12, I spotted a possible improvement and could not resist adding it in.

When a package is deployed, the end users will now automatically have the new icons appear on the desktop (or the start menu) once the installation is complete.

In addition, if you enable a package for a user or group, you can now force a workstation to update the user who may be logged on so that the icon automatically appears. This also means if you deploy a printer, update their wallpaper or map a drive for them, it will appear, on the fly.

Users no longer need to be logged off for the changes to be applied.

Change log

The following is a list of the final change log for EISNet v1.7

• Support SQL (means more than 128 devices now supported)
• Streamlined modern interface
• Support for roaming profiles
• Improved ClassChooser tool
• Archivist, Supervisor, Applications and Manager now wrapped into one Management Studio
• Re-written Package management and deployment
• Support for direct importing of users from SIMS
• Both users and computers can now be searched from with-in EISNet Management Studio
• Numerous bug fixes and improvements
• Inheritance now fully support for Printer deployment and drive mappings
• Global package deployment
• Advanced Support tools now built in
• Remote login rooms and workstations
• Much improved package status monitoring
• Advanced Shortcut management
• Web based (live) help
• Improved group membership management
• Shared folder management now built in
• Improved MyPage
• Major overhaul of speed and performance
• Ability to lock the management tool
• Alerts and history now logged
• Packages can now be imported and exported
• Packages can now be redeployed to a device
• Registry fragments can now be imported and exported
• Support for internet shortcuts
• Combined support for any package type regardless of whether it is CMD, BAT, MSI or EXE
• Packages can now have their own individual icons for use in Management Studio
• MSI files now support command line switches
• Packages now support description and version fields for easier management
• Remote execution including support for running under user or system context
• Remote execution now support in-line batch execution
• Stations can now be renamed either remotely from within Management Studio or on the device itself
• Wake on LAN now supported (Hardware dependant)
• Packages will automatically redeploy once a device is rebuilt. 
• Supervisor now integrated into Management Studio and shown based on group membership
• Management Studio can now run on multiple machines at the same time
• Upgrade engine now included for future releases

Woohoo! It's done!

Today marks the end of the main coding of EISNet v1.7. This means, other than major bugs between now and release, the code is now finalised.

The core targets for the v1.7 version have been achieved, and we now move into document writing and packaging.

Here is the final layout for the main window.