Tech Forum

Technology Manager v2.0 is now released. The new TM (https://tm.lds.org) allows users to view and manage both network firewalls and satellite receivers. For satellites a Stake Technology Specialist can change receiver language pairings and mute video, and Facilities Managers can activate, reassign, replace and deactivate satellite receivers. For firewall management the tool includes an enhanced firewall history log, the ability to name and enable/disable individual wireless access points, and an updated user interface. With TM 2.0 users can view and manage both firewall and satellite networks with one tool. Enjoy!

Hmmm. A few interesting observations:

TM is now using a different login screen. Is the church switching to a new single-sign on?

It strikes me as a bit counter-intuitive that one must click on "search" on the left side to get anything on the right.

For the satellite, what is the benefit to "muting" the video?

For the firewall, at what point will we be able to change the filter type? Any details on those settings?

I like the idea of being able to attach labels to the APs, but how would we identify them? The MAC address presented to the wired network is different than the one presented to the wireless devices. The best I can think up at the moment is to stand under one AP and then look at the list to see if that's the AP my phone has connected to. The alternative is to start unplugging them to see what unit lights up and appears in TM.

russellhltn wrote:I like the idea of being able to attach labels to the APs, but how would we identify them? The MAC address presented to the wired network is different than the one presented to the wireless devices. The best I can think up at the moment is to stand under on AP and then look at the list to see if that's the AP my phone has connected to. The alternative is to start unplugging them to see what unit lights up and appears in TM.

That's the difficult part, identifying which AP is which so that you can label them. You could try to disable all but one AP. After you've identified which AP it is and labeled it, you can move onto the next.

russellhltn wrote: TM is now using a different login screen. Is the church switching to a new single-sign on?

... For the satellite, what is the benefit to "muting" the video?

For the firewall, at what point will we be able to change the filter type? Any details on those settings?

I like the idea of being able to attach labels to the APs, but how would we identify them?

1. There is no change in login technology.
2. "Muting" satellite video disables the video feed but not the audio portion of the satellite feed. Users should be careful not to toggle the control repeatedly (since doing so sends on/off commands to the controller which could be detrimental).
3. The firewall "filter type" is for information. At this time it is undetermined whether a firewall filter could be changed.
4. A technology specialist could either identify access point locations visually, or they could enable WAPs individually and use handheld tools to locate the strongest signal location. Then the specialist would accordingly label each WAP.

CleggGP wrote:1. There is no change in login technology.

That's odd, because I was already logged in here to access the forum and when I opened a new tab in Firefox to load TM, it asked me for my login credentials again. Doesn't act like "single sign-on" from my perspective.

THANK YOU for normalizing the timestamp to my local timezone when viewing the history details. That makes it a whole lot easier than dealing with UTC.

One observation, when hovering over a point in the usage history chart, it gives the date, but all zeros for the hour/min/sec fields.

Mikerowaved wrote:

CleggGP wrote:1. There is no change in login technology.

That's odd, because I was already logged in here to access the forum and when I opened a new tab in Firefox to load TM, it asked me for my login credentials again. Doesn't act like "single sign-on" from my perspective.

Different URL and different look. So it appears to be a "isolated" (non-single signon), but what he may be saying is there's no change in the Church's SSO system. The URL looks like this is a separate login by design.

Mikerowaved wrote:THANK YOU for normalizing the timestamp to my local timezone when viewing the history details. That makes it a whole lot easier than dealing with UTC.

I missed that. That is so much nicer. In the old system I had to put it in a spread sheet to keep myself from going crazy. The column labels look improved as well, but sure about the direction of "BW In' and "BW Out". Is that as in "Incoming" (from the Internet) and "Outgoing" (to the Internet)?

Mikerowaved wrote:One observation, when hovering over a point in the usage history chart, it gives the date, but all zeros for the hour/min/sec fields.

Not to mention a 1-week gap from 10/4 to 10/15. Not a big deal, and a non-issue after a couple of months, but something that did give me cause for concern. I didn't think our system was down for that long. <grin>

I noticed the "tag" next to the firewall S/N. "MTG" appears to mean a "Meetinghouse" configuration. "INS" is for "Institute".

I think this is an old problem, but at a number of buildings, the AP that's part of the firewall isn't showing up in the AP list.

russellhltn wrote:The column labels look improved as well, but sure about the direction of "BW In' and "BW Out". Is that as in "Incoming" (from the Internet) and "Outgoing" (to the Internet)?

Yep, that's correct.

One more observation is it seems the response time for each mouse-click has been improved for most areas.

Is there a limit to the number of APs TM will display? Because I'm only seeing 10 out of the 11/12 units. The missing AP seems to be functioning normally. I can connect to it and access TM that way.

I tried TM on my phone and walked around the stake center to update the labels. A few usability issues:

• The black banner at the top takes up too much room. Especially on a small screen in portrait mode.
• Once you click on the "?" next to "Custom Label", nothing short of a page refresh seems to make it go away. Very annoying since it goes overtop of everything.
• Every so often, I'd exit the AP pop-up to come back to the main AP page to find it grayed out. I'm guessing it timed out.

russellhltn wrote:Is there a limit to the number of APs TM will display? Because I'm only seeing 10 out of the 11/12 units. The missing AP seems to be functioning normally. I can connect to it and access TM that way.

There is no limit to the amount of APs that TM will display. Every 10 minutes the firewall "phones home" information about the network. This includes the number of APs it is able to identify. We use that data when displaying the APs in TM. This is the same method that the previous version of TM used. If they are working properly, it may be just that the firewall doesn't "see" or recognize them as a Cisco AP. If you continue to have issues contact the GSC so that they can help you troubleshoot.