Messenger service is no more in VISTA, Alternatives?

Does anyone know of any good alternatives to the messenger service..
IE: the ability to send broadcast messages to multiple PCs, vista
included?

Perhaps something other than Office Communicator, maybe a 3rd party
app I'm not aware of?

As an admin, the broadcast message is vital to communicating
information that is timely related to systems down time etc...

Thanks

"markm75" <markm75c@msn.com> wrote in message
news:1170863684.161002.137460@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
> Does anyone know of any good alternatives to the messenger service..
> IE: the ability to send broadcast messages to multiple PCs, vista
> included?
> http://get.live.com/messenger/overview
This should do the "trick" :-)

On Feb 7, 1:38 pm, "BobC" <rmc2k@acworthcablenetdotnet> wrote:
> "markm75" <markm...@msn.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1170863684.161002.137460@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...> Does anyone know of any good alternatives to the messenger service..
> > IE: the ability to send broadcast messages to multiple PCs, vista
> > included?
> >http://get.live.com/messenger/overview
>
> This should do the "trick" :-)


Certainly msn messenger would be one way, but this requires everyone
to have sign in account names.. Not to mention, there is no real way
to auto sign in names after they would install the clients (IE: their
login info already be there).. and if your using MSN messenger, this
uses hotmail or other outside sources for sign in information.

Currently (Shreek) I'm actually thinking of just using LCS 2005 if I
can find a way to autopopulate the sign in information as the client
gets installed.

With net send.. there was never a need for software or login
information on every machine..

NET SEND isn't a very good admin communication tool. Totally best effort
delivery with no way to validate if someone received a message or not
and if they logged into multiple places no clue which place *might* have
received the message.

I would recommend go hunting for notification software or writing
something that will do it. Basically the tool simply has to watch a
given server for a file or something like that and when it is updated,
broadcast it to the user community.

--
Joe Richards Microsoft MVP Windows Server Directory Services
Author of O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition
www.joeware.net


---O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition now available---

http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm


markm75 wrote:
> On Feb 7, 1:38 pm, "BobC" <rmc2k@acworthcablenetdotnet> wrote:
>> "markm75" <markm...@msn.com> wrote in message
>>
>> news:1170863684.161002.137460@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...> Does anyone know of any good alternatives to the messenger service..
>>> IE: the ability to send broadcast messages to multiple PCs, vista
>>> included?
>>> http://get.live.com/messenger/overview
>> This should do the "trick" :-)
>
>
> Certainly msn messenger would be one way, but this requires everyone
> to have sign in account names.. Not to mention, there is no real way
> to auto sign in names after they would install the clients (IE: their
> login info already be there).. and if your using MSN messenger, this
> uses hotmail or other outside sources for sign in information.
>
> Currently (Shreek) I'm actually thinking of just using LCS 2005 if I
> can find a way to autopopulate the sign in information as the client
> gets installed.
>
> With net send.. there was never a need for software or login
> information on every machine..
>

If you really have a need to remotely manage systems you should consider an
enterprise management system, like SMS. They can do the messaging and a lot
more.

"Joe Richards [MVP]" wrote:

> NET SEND isn't a very good admin communication tool. Totally best effort
> delivery with no way to validate if someone received a message or not
> and if they logged into multiple places no clue which place *might* have
> received the message.
>
> I would recommend go hunting for notification software or writing
> something that will do it. Basically the tool simply has to watch a
> given server for a file or something like that and when it is updated,
> broadcast it to the user community.
>
> --
> Joe Richards Microsoft MVP Windows Server Directory Services
> Author of O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition
> www.joeware.net
>
>
> ---O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition now available---
>
> http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm
>
>
> markm75 wrote:
> > On Feb 7, 1:38 pm, "BobC" <rmc2k@acworthcablenetdotnet> wrote:
> >> "markm75" <markm...@msn.com> wrote in message
> >>
> >> news:1170863684.161002.137460@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...> Does anyone know of any good alternatives to the messenger service..
> >>> IE: the ability to send broadcast messages to multiple PCs, vista
> >>> included?
> >>> http://get.live.com/messenger/overview
> >> This should do the "trick" :-)
> >
> >
> > Certainly msn messenger would be one way, but this requires everyone
> > to have sign in account names.. Not to mention, there is no real way
> > to auto sign in names after they would install the clients (IE: their
> > login info already be there).. and if your using MSN messenger, this
> > uses hotmail or other outside sources for sign in information.
> >
> > Currently (Shreek) I'm actually thinking of just using LCS 2005 if I
> > can find a way to autopopulate the sign in information as the client
> > gets installed.
> >
> > With net send.. there was never a need for software or login
> > information on every machine..
> >
>

On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 15:45:17 -0500, Joe Richards [MVP] wrote in
microsoft.public.windows.vista.security:

>NET SEND isn't a very good admin communication tool. Totally best effort
>delivery with no way to validate if someone received a message or not
>and if they logged into multiple places no clue which place *might* have
>received the message.
[snip]

Ah, Microsoft knows best, eh? If I want to use NET SEND in our
particular environment (or if Backup Exec wants to use it), that's not
possible under NT6?

I have a Group Policy (NT5.x) which makes all our clients run the
Messenger service automatically - that's the only thing I have to do. No
hunting for a suitable 3rd party solution and its implementation and
distribution - simple and *it works here*.

We have quite a few administrative tasks which notify users. That's all
down the tube? Well, not only "heaven can wait", so can Vista, too.

--
Michael Bednarek http://mbednarek.com/ "POST NO BILLS"

You likely have a smaller simple environment then. And yes, it does
*tend* to work *fairly well* in those situations but again, still
nothing is guaranteed for the delivery. In larger or more complicated
environments it can quickly become a train wreck because it depends on
things that aren't guaranteed. I was at one point a fan of the
capability too and actually wrote tools to leverage it better and
published them, but the feedback globally was wholesale and generally
quite bad on its overall suitability for what people wanted to use it
for, getting messages across in some form of guaranteed way and lots of
people felt that it was an issue with the utilities when it is actually
an issue with the underlying protocol and principals. I.E. If something
was on fire, they really wanted to get that message, not maybe get it
and maybe get it is the absolute best you can ever say with the
transport. This isn't new experience, this is from the 90's and early
00's. It never got better from there, in fact it got considerably worse
as people's networks got more complicated.

This last comment "*it works here*" is almost certainly more properly
stated as "we feel it works here". I doubt you would know positively if
it ever failed unless you were directly involved with every single
broadcast on both ends. Likely it has failed at some point and no one
noticed or someone just thought it was weird and resent or the programs
just resent until the desired action it was alerting on was handled. At
one point I had tools that centrally monitored all messages sent and
received and there wasn't a single network that the tools ran on that
didn't have dropout of messages which was positively validated by the
centralized mechanism in the background of the app. Even on my home
network of a single subnet and 15-20 machines there were occasional
dropouts.


Honestly if this is the worst issue you have with changes in Vista, you
will be lucky. There are a lot of changes and most I think are for the
better to produce a more stable, secure, and dependable OS. Is it
perfect or unflawed, no. There isn't a perfect or unflawed OS out there.
It is unlikely there ever will be as OSes are getting more complicated
not simpler. The more complexity you add, the more chance for issues as
the number of corner and edge cases starts going up that likely aren't
fully accounted for.


joe

--
Joe Richards Microsoft MVP Windows Server Directory Services
Author of O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition
www.joeware.net


---O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition now available---

http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm


Michael Bednarek wrote:
> On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 15:45:17 -0500, Joe Richards [MVP] wrote in
> microsoft.public.windows.vista.security:
>
>> NET SEND isn't a very good admin communication tool. Totally best effort
>> delivery with no way to validate if someone received a message or not
>> and if they logged into multiple places no clue which place *might* have
>> received the message.
> [snip]
>
> Ah, Microsoft knows best, eh? If I want to use NET SEND in our
> particular environment (or if Backup Exec wants to use it), that's not
> possible under NT6?
>
> I have a Group Policy (NT5.x) which makes all our clients run the
> Messenger service automatically - that's the only thing I have to do. No
> hunting for a suitable 3rd party solution and its implementation and
> distribution - simple and *it works here*.
>
> We have quite a few administrative tasks which notify users. That's all
> down the tube? Well, not only "heaven can wait", so can Vista, too.
>

On Feb 8, 2:37 am, Jesper <Jes...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> If you really have a need to remotely manage systems you should consider an
> enterprise management system, like SMS. They can do the messaging and a lot
> more.
>
>
>
> "Joe Richards [MVP]" wrote:
> > NET SEND isn't a very good admin communication tool. Totally best effort
> > delivery with no way to validate if someone received a message or not
> > and if they logged into multiple places no clue which place *might* have
> > received the message.
>
> > I would recommend go hunting for notification software or writing
> > something that will do it. Basically the tool simply has to watch a
> > given server for a file or something like that and when it is updated,
> > broadcast it to the user community.
>
> > --
> > Joe Richards Microsoft MVP Windows Server Directory Services
> > Author of O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition
> >www.joeware.net
>
> > ---O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition now available---
>
> > http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm
>
> > markm75 wrote:
> > > On Feb 7, 1:38 pm, "BobC" <rmc2k@acworthcablenetdotnet> wrote:
> > >> "markm75" <markm...@msn.com> wrote in message
>
> > >>news:1170863684.161002.137460@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...> Does anyone know of any good alternatives to the messenger service..
> > >>> IE: the ability to send broadcast messages to multiple PCs, vista
> > >>> included?
> > >>>http://get.live.com/messenger/overview
> > >> This should do the "trick" :-)
>
> > > Certainly msn messenger would be one way, but this requires everyone
> > > to have sign in account names.. Not to mention, there is no real way
> > > to auto sign in names after they would install the clients (IE: their
> > > login info already be there).. and if your using MSN messenger, this
> > > uses hotmail or other outside sources for sign in information.
>
> > > Currently (Shreek) I'm actually thinking of just using LCS 2005 if I
> > > can find a way to autopopulate the sign in information as the client
> > > gets installed.
>
> > > With net send.. there was never a need for software or login
> > > information on every machine..- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -


I already have sms 2003.. are you implying there is some sort of
notification system available and that will send messages to Vista
consoles?

I wasnt aware of one.

"markm75" <markm75c@msn.com> wrote in message
news:1170863684.161002.137460@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
> Does anyone know of any good alternatives to the messenger service..
> IE: the ability to send broadcast messages to multiple PCs, vista
> included?
>
> Perhaps something other than Office Communicator, maybe a 3rd party
> app I'm not aware of?
>
> As an admin, the broadcast message is vital to communicating
> information that is timely related to systems down time etc...
>
> Thanks
>


Sure, install your network viruses manually from now on.

--
Donald L McDaniel
Please reply to the original newsgroup and thread.
------------------------------------------------------