Author: Lisa

MetaSolv Solutions Service Request Search Status Buttons

I’m working on a project to automate the creation of work orders in MetaSolv – it was going well until I tried to find one of the work orders I created within the GUI. Aaand … they don’t show up. Before bothering sys admins with silly questions, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t somehow searching wrong. While most of the search dialog is easily correlated to the API XML input (responsible party is responsiblePerson from the XML, work order number is orderNumber, Description is description) … the little status buttons don’t have convenient tooltips to help decipher their meaning.

Ten minutes perusing the internal training documents yielded “select them all” which … yeah, I get. And it was nice to confirm that the “pushed in” button is selected. But that still doesn’t tell me what the little pictures mean.

So I searched the Internet, Oracle’s generally excellent documentation online, the F1 help within the app … nothing. Either these status values are so obvious to people who regularly use MetaSolv that it’s not worth mentioning or no one knows what these little buttons mean.

Which just made me more curious. So I performed a search limited to a single button, got a few work order numbers, and then looked the things up in the database tables. Numbering the buttons from left to right, I now have corresponding service_request_status values for each one:

Button # service_request_status
1 101
2 1
3 0
4 801
5 901

Fortunately, the back-end MSS documentation tells me what these status values mean:

0 – The service request has been entered and the tasks have been successfully generated and distributed to work queues.

1-99 – The service request is still being entered (tasks have not been generated and distributed to work queues).

101 – The service request has been electronically received but has not been processed.

801 – The service request has had its Due Date task completed.

901 – The service request has had all of its tasks, including billing, completed.

 

Scam Calls

Someone calls you, call them back. It’s easy enough to spoof an outgoing number (make my caller ID look like someone else’s), but intercepting calls to the 800 # on the back of my credit card or the local number on the Waterloo, MI PD’s website is near impossible.

When someone calls from “from my bank”, “about my credit card”, or “about my nephew who is in lockup for a DUI and needs money for bail and the impound lot”, I get the name of the company and call them at their Internet-published number. Real Bank of America can look up my account and figure out why they were calling me (they weren’t). Fake Bank of America? They push me not to waste time calling back in. It’s my time, and I’m happy to waste it. I assume the fake police and fake nephew are the same. And, yeah, fake nephew only gets this one phone call. *I* have unlimited calls, so we’re good.

At the last Trustee meeting, Chief Centner talked about fraudulent calls & said Township residents can ring up Hinckley PD for assistance if you get a call saying a relative is in jail. That is a great service to residents (and I’m having my parents check if their local PD would help too). I’ve never been sure if privacy restrictions would prevent the police from disclosing info about a family member’s arrest and bail. Luckily my nephew was like 2 when I got such a call. And I was pretty sure DUI wouldn’t have been the charge if my nephew had *actually* been arrested two time zones away from home.

Microsoft Teams Meeting Notes

The trick to understanding this is knowing that “Meeting Notes” are, for some reason, Wiki pages and not OneNote documents. There are two types of meetings — those held in a Teams channel and those held outside of a channel — and the ability to get a useful link to the Meeting Notes depends on which type of meeting you have.

Meetings in a Teams Channel:

When your meeting is in a Teams channel, you can use the ellipsis to grab a link to the Meeting Notes location in Microsoft Teams.

This link points to the “Meeting Notes” tab created in the channel. That tab is available without a link, too — so I can access the meeting notes just by going to the channel where the meeting was held.

Meetings Outside of a Teams Channel:

The meeting notes wiki file is stored in your OneDrive. You can find that file by searching your OneDrive for the name of the meeting. In this example, I have a meeting titled “Super Important”. You can right-click on this and select “copy link” to grab a link to the file.

The problem is that it’s an MHT (basically a self contained web page) file. I can give you a link to the file, but it’s not a convenient link to a OneNote page like you’d expect. For some reason, Chrome wants to save it as an EML (email) so the file opens in Outlook (or change the extension to MHT manually). Firefox keeps the MHT extension, and the file opens up in a browser so you can view the notes.

 

Identifying System-Only AD Attributes

This information is specific to Active Directory. MSDN has documentation for each schema attribute — e.g. CN — which documents if the attribute is “system only” or not.

For an automated process, search at the base cn=schema,cn=configuration,dc=example,dc=com with the filter (&(ldapDisplayName=AttributeName))and return the value of systemOnly. E.G. this shows that operatingSystemServicePack is user writable.

***Searching...
ldap_search_s(ld, "cn=schema,cn=configuration,dc=example,dc=com", 2, "(&(ldapDisplayName=operatingSystemServicePack))", attrList,  0, &msg)
Getting 1 entries:
Dn: CN=Operating-System-Service-Pack,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,dc=example,dc=com
systemOnly: FALSE;

You can also list all of the system-only attributes by using the filter (&(systemOnly=TRUE)) and returning ldapDisplayName

***Searching...
ldap_search_s(ld, "cn=schema,cn=configuration,dc=example,dc=com", 2, "(&(systemOnly=TRUE))", attrList,  0, &msg)
Getting 189 entries:
Dn: CN=OM-Object-Class,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,dc=example,dc=com
lDAPDisplayName: oMObjectClass; 

Dn: CN=Canonical-Name,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,dc=example,dc=com
lDAPDisplayName: canonicalName; 

Dn: CN=Managed-Objects,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,dc=example,dc=com
lDAPDisplayName: managedObjects; 

Dn: CN=MAPI-ID,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,dc=example,dc=com
lDAPDisplayName: mAPIID; 

Dn: CN=Mastered-By,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,dc=example,dc=com
lDAPDisplayName: masteredBy; 

Dn: CN=Top,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,dc=example,dc=com
lDAPDisplayName: top; 

Dn: CN=NTDS-DSA-RO,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,dc=example,dc=com
lDAPDisplayName: nTDSDSARO; 

Dn: CN=Application-Process,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,dc=example,dc=com
lDAPDisplayName: applicationProcess; 
...

 

A bad feeling

I used to want to work in the military intelligence field — data analysis, creating response playbooks. As a result, I learned the importance of taking the context of a report into consideration. Some counties have independent media — something bad happens in the USA, someone is bound to write about it. Now there are avenues for suppressing information — some content that will compromise national security is going to have more trouble getting out there than speculation on corporate fraud committed by a president. But other countries don’t. When I was studying history and poli sci, it was Russia that was a concern. And Russian media publications are going to provide state approved news. For something really bad to hit the Russian news, it’s going to be impossible to hide. Think Chernobyl — they’re measuring fallout in Finland. Everyone knows something happened.

And that’s why I get a bad feeling when China reporting “a cluster of pneumonia cases” — a stock the pantry, batten your hatches bad feeling.

Asus Router NVRAM Usage

I had a really strange problem with an Asus router — the port forwarding disappeared. And while I could use the UI and put everything back in, it didn’t stick around. Turns out the NVRAM was full — there wasn’t anywhere to put the port forwarding rules (vts_rulelist). Fortunately, there were a few old DHCP reservations I was able to delete and free up some space. For future reference, the following command reports what is using the NVRAM.

nvram show | awk '{print length(), $0 | "sort -n -r"}' | cut -d"=" -f 1

Timeline – Biden, Burisma, and the Prosecutors General

I’m trying to follow the logic of Biden corruptly using his influence to squash an investigation into a company that employed his son on its board.

Zlochevsky, former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources, is the majority shareholder in Burisma and may have gotten gas extraction licenses because of Zlochevsky’s former position. In 2012, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka began investigating Zlochevsky for possible corruption, money laundering, and tax evasion from 2010–2012. The British Serious Fraud Office investigates Zlochevsky for a possible money laundering scheme too. On 16 April 2014, the British blocked accounts held by Burisma’s majority shareholder for holding 23 million in possibly ill-gotten assets. They sent a letter to the Ukraine requesting documents for their investigation.

21 April 2014, Biden visits the Ukraine and promises aid to help the country avoid relying on Russia for petrol – aid which might have been used to increase domestic fuel extraction and benefited companies holding extraction licenses (i.e. Biden is committing funds that might farther enrich Zlochevsky). Burisma announced Hunter Biden joining the board on 12 May 2014.

07 June 2014, Poroshenko took office as the President of Ukraine; Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema was confirmed on 19 June 2014. Yarema opens an investigation into Burisma on 05 Aug 2014 for ‘unlawful enrichment’. 14 October 2014, anti-corruption laws are enacted in the Ukraine. In February, George Kent says he met with a deputy prosecutor from Yarema’s office and, in an action coordinated with the US Justice Department, spoke against having the case shut down. In December 2014, the American government is pushing Ukraine to help the British with their investigation. The British unblock Zlochevsky’s accounts on 21 January 2015 because of insufficient evidence to substantiate the claim. They weren’t getting help from the Ukrainians.

10 Feb 2015, Viktor Shokin replaces Yarema a Prosecutor General. But I’ve not seen any reports of Shokin picking up the Burisma investigation. Everything I’ve read says he had essentially left the case mothballed. In late 2015, Biden and the US government are still speaking out about possible corruption and specifically call out officials who failed to assist with the British investigation into Zlochevsky. Biden made a speech in the Ukrainian Parliament about rooting out corruption in the country and threatens to withhold a billion dollars in loan guarantees unless Poroshenko fires Shokin.

03 April 2016, Shokin is fired by Parliament for the slow pace of investigations and corruption allegations. 12 May 2016, Yuriy Lutsenko was appointed as Prosecutor General. And 13 May 2016 the US agrees to a billion dollar loan guarantee. Lutsenko is the one who investigated Burisma. A Burisma statement says the case was dropped in Sept of 2016. Burisma pays a couple million in taxes and fines in Sept of 2016.

The claim isn’t that Biden got Shokin, a guy who was investigating Burisma, fired. OK, yeah, that is the claim … but was there an investigation?! Kasko, Shokin’s deputy, says the office did nothing to pursue the investigation throughout 2015.

If not, the crux of this claim is that Joe Biden had some knowledge that the investigation was going to resume? Maybe the idea is Biden knew the popular sentiment in the Ukraine was to get a tougher prosecutor and used American money to ensure “you need to fire the Prosecutor General and appoint someone who will really root out corruption” was “you need a guy who roots out corruption and knows that company where my son sits on the board is totally on the up-and-up, so there’s no need to get back into investigating them”. Or “get this mothballed case opened and do as little harm to the company where my son sits on the board”. But that’s a lot different than saying he pressured the Ukrainians to fire a prosecutor who was about to bust his son (or the company paying his son).

Hopefully this will get cleared up in the Senate Impeachment proceedings. Because a much as I know the Democrats don’t want Biden testifying … I expect Trump’s defense to spend a lot of time promoting what exactly they claim Biden did wrong.