Marcus' Macro Scheduler Blog

By Jeff Frownfelter.

Background

My name is Jeff Frownfelter, and I am the Technology Coordinator for Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. I was employed here in 2003 for the purpose of deploying and supporting new technology for use by the students and faculty. I have worked in the IT field since 1985, supporting and managing within various types of organizations, including primarily Health Care and technology-related publications. My experience is balanced between technology and software development, although I started out as a hard-core programmer like many during the technology rush of the mid 80’s.

Established in 1847, The Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired is accredited by state and national certifying organizations. The school, which has an enrollment of approximately 179 students, offers pre-school through high school programs and related services, free of charge on a residential or day school basis, to the young people of Indiana who are blind and visually impaired.

The school provides students with instruction in the same coursework required of all school-aged children in Indiana. Specialized classes include orientation and mobility, adaptive physical education, independent living skills, vocational education, music instruction, Braille and specially adapted computer technology. Also available are experiences and opportunities to participate in recreational activities, on and off campus jobs, band, chorus, piano, scouting, creative dance, and ham radio, as well as involvement in competitive speech, track and field, wrestling, cheerleading and swimming.

After graduation, students enter the work force or continue their education at colleges or technical schools. Graduates of ISBVI are involved in such careers as law, education, computer technology, business sales, manufacturing, supportive employment and health services.

The Challenge – Life Before Macro Scheduler

Software, networked computers, and other devices here must be accessible, suited for students with varying levels of vision and other conditions. Computers here are initially installed from an image, but they must quickly be customized to suit the special needs of individuals or groups in terms of software. Re-imaging to perform installs and updates does not work well here for that reason, as that type of process AND the wide ratio of support personnel to devices is too unmanageable and creates more disruption than what is simply accomplished through updates.

The challenge is that much of the specialized software used here does not support unattended / quiet / over-the-network installations. It was originally necessary to manually install the software at each workstation. This was a huge time burner of course.

The Solution – Life After Macro Scheduler

Using Macro Scheduler and its compiler, I have been able to produce scripts and executables that I can include OVER needy software installations. These executables are applied to the standard startup scripts, and they are able to execute without logging into the workstation. Some of these OVER-installs use Macro Scheduler’s robust scripting to go as far as validate a proper installation, re-stage a retry after reboot (if needed), and even enter the application after install in order to modify the defaults directly.

We are also using Macro Scheduler to help facilitate the transition of our email systems from Groupware to Microsoft Exchange. Scripts manage the changes that need to be made to the email profiles. We even have Macro Scheduler scripts which collect POP3 email, parse the emails, make changes to the headers and insert them into the new email system. These scripts are very powerful and extremely reliable and run without problems continuously for days on end.

The Benefits of Macro Scheduler

A good example of how Macro Scheduler makes a positive impact on time here … So many bridges that otherwise would have been difficult (or impossible) to build during a major deployment this past summer, involving numerous software updates / additions AND user assistance upon first-time use –- Within a few weeks, a temporary tech was able to complete the deployment on all of our workstations. Prior to the automation courtesy of Macro Scheduler, 2 extra months or sets of hands would have been necessary. Likewise, this possibly would have been the case when staff returned from summer break. Difficulties were anticipated to be far greater without Macro Scheduler. Processes and wizards created with Macro Scheduler helped many users self-start with email and other applications that were affected.

By Guy Tanzer

My name is Guy Tanzer, and I live in the Raleigh area in North Carolina, USA. Nearby is the Research Triangle Park, with the highest concentration of IT people and jobs in the eastern United States. I’ve been working with computers since 1977 and been in the business since 1984.

In early 1997, I started a job as a computer-support contractor to the United States Environmental Protection Agency in the RTP. One of the first tasks our team tackled after my hiring was migrating our lab of 350 users to Windows 95. To speed the process, my managers wanted to automate all the application software installs down to “one-touch” processes, which we could pick off a menu. The other team members got Lotus 1-2-3, Freelance, Word Perfect, etc., and Netscape 3.01 Gold was handed to me.

Now, Lotus and Word Perfect products came with documentation on how to write scripts to do automated installs. With Netscape, all we got was the .EXE file, with no docs on how to automate the install. A search of Netscape’s website turned nothing up. A call to them revealed that they did indeed have a solution, and we could buy it for only US$10,000…..

Well, that went a mite over the contracting company’s budget for solving this problem, if you get my drift. I needed a product of some sort that could wait for a window to open and be able to click on buttons, fill in fields, and so forth – just as if a “ghost in the machine” were watching and running the process for me.

I searched high and low for several weeks and tried perhaps eight different products, with poor results, before by chance I found and tried Marcus Tettmar’s MACRO SCHEDULER, which had only just been released. It did the job, and fit the bill, as elegantly and reliably as any product I’d ever used on a computer. Since we were one of his very first customers, Mr. Tettmar generously let the EPA lab use it on all their machines for the cost of a single license – only US$40 at the time. In return, I pushed the envelope on Macro Scheduler and kept in touch with Mr. Tettmar, giving him tips and ideas.

I used Macro Scheduler for at least a dozen more software installs, combining it with DOS batch files and compiled Quick BASIC programs to give it an incredible degree of flexibility. (I’ve since left behind Quick BASIC – it doesn’t handle advanced file handling systems – but Liberty BASIC is very similar to QB and another very worthy software investment. I find Visual BASIC to be clumsy and poorly designed for the types of scripts and programs I write in comparison to Macro Scheduler and Liberty BASIC.)

ANY software install or process which doesn’t give you “hooks” into the process, or a way to script an automatic run, can be attacked and solved with Macro Scheduler – quickly and easily. As I said, it’s “the ghost in the machine” in a positive way. It can watch for a window to open, and react to it – filling in fields, clicking buttons, whatever is needed. All the commands are simple, self-evident and in English, without the clumsy VBA scripting commands like:

GoAroundYourAssToGetToYourElbowJustToPushADamnButton
("Cincinatti",13,X,,"The Larch",,,,-.2E33,,42)

The one real problem I ever ran into was very specialized, yet Mr. Tettmar addressed it quickly and reliably. The problem was with Microsoft (surprise!) Powerpoint Viewer installation. Usually one keeps track of progress in a procedure by keeping track of the title bar in each open window; most software installs have unique title bars for each window as it opens. With the Powerpoint Viewer install, three or four consecutive windows had the same title bar and Microsoft, of course, offered no way to automate the install themselves. I asked Mr. Tettmar if there was a way to check to see what text appeared INSIDE a window, since each step in the Powerpoint Viewer install had unique text inside the uniformly-titled windows. Within a week, he came up with the FindWindowWithText command which worked perfectly in every application I used it on – Word Viewer, Excel Viewer, and I don’t even remember what else.

The benefits of all of this? I saved a fortune for the EPA and my contracting company. I saved boatloads of time working with a simple scripting language that is actually written in something extremely close to English, doesn’t have complex syntactical demands, and works like a charm. Mr. Tettmar has stayed with the product for nine years now; he isn’t a fly-by-night operator. He’s a good man, friendly, willing to help with obscure issues and find fixes for them. We’ve been email friends as long as I’ve been his customer. If I ever make it to “that side of the pond”, I’m buying the fish, chips and brew.
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Thanks Guy. I’ll hold you to that offer!

If you have a Macro Scheduler Success Story I’d love to hear it. Drop us a line.