Open for Voting

Export Sanitized Screenshot (Automatically Removes/Blurs Names, IP Addresses, & Locations)

I feel this feature request has been hiding directly in front of my eyes for the last, well, for the last forever now...

Over the years, I have posted a Plethora of screenshots, outlining how to do some sort of process or procedure, identify a bug or glitch, assist in troubleshooting, etc...

In almost every single instance of me posting a screenshot, I basically do the same things, in the same order.

I navigate to the page I want to capture.

I either use the windows snipping tool to take the screenshot of the page, or print screen and paste it into paint.

I edit the screenshot in paint, adding little black bars over all of my node names and IPs, when needed.

Then I save that edited screenshot, and upload it here on Thwack...

Wouldn't it be great if there was a core option, across all of the Orion products, that would automatically remove, blur, or censor that private info that you shouldn't be sharing with strangers...?

I believe this feature would be extremely beneficial for just about anyone here on Thwack, as it would make it so very easy to share screenshots safely, without HR and the Legal department knocking on the door...

#bumpsquad#mvps

  • I have similar feelings however I voted up as well. Although it would be great to have an option of copy/paste in Thwack or Customer Portal to paste screenshots directly from clipboard to message.

  • I'm for it.  I use GreenShot to capture images--it has an "Obfuscate" button that enables a person to drag across a section of names or addresses, a column or row.  But it's manual.  A built-in option in NPM to capture images and obscure private data would be mighty convenient.

  • tedwards​ Thank you for voting up, as well as explaining your point of view on the subject. While I had not thought about it in such a manner, after reading your comments, I was able to see your concerns, in regards to making good use of the developers time. That, in turn, got me thinking of a better, or different, way to accomplish the goal. What if the developers did not have to spend any time coming up with a way to do this? What if they just used simple, and already established way accomplish the main purpose of this request, to obfuscate the private data for a screenshot?

    Now, I am fully aware the workings behind the scene would not just come to be by flicking a switch. I know the simplistic explanation I am about to give will probably be insulting to the SolarWinds programmers, and I do not mean to take any glory away from them... Having said that, what if they could implement an alternate version of the displayed data?

    Example:

    "Internal Use": This is exactly how things are now, all data appears as it currently does in SolarWinds.

    The resources would process their queries to display all of the data, similar to:

    SELECT

    n.Caption AS NodeName

    ,n.IPAddress AS IP

    FROM Orion.Nodes AS n

    This would result in the resources displaying data similar to:

    AreaRouter1 192.168.0.1

    AreaRouter2 192.168.0.2

    AreaRouter3 172.17.0.1

    AreaRouter4 10.101.10.1

    "External Use": This would process the exact same information, only it would remove the important/sensitive data from the screen.

    The resources would process their queries, using only a slight modification to the exact same data points, similar to:

    SELECT

    SUBSTRING(n.Caption,1,3) AS NodeName

    ,SUBSTRING(n.IPAddress,1,3) AS IP

    FROM Orion.Nodes AS n

    This would result in the resources displaying data similar to:

    Are 192

    Are 192

    Are 172

    Are 10.

    Maybe there is a way they can apply some sort of filter on the page, similar to how the page processes permissions and limitations, that can just remove the text from the various types of fields...?

    Again, I know I am oversimplifying things here, and there would likely be far more work on the other side of things... I know there is way more to it, and my example would not simply just work... But, as a customer, it is my job to deman... err... expect (request?) the impossible from the vendor... And, I definitely agree with you, there are far more important things I would rather have the devs work on. But, for all I know (which isn't much), there could be a dev over there that knows how to make this thing work and can get it done on his lunch break...

    Thanks, again, for your feedback, and constructive criticism... I much prefer that to the alternative of down votes and silence.

    -Will

  • Against my better judgement, I voted this up.

    I agree that this would be a wonderful addition, but I feel it would take way to much development time for something like this and doesn't create sufficient impact to the end-product to ever get any traction.

    Secondly, having it blur the private data is not always desired (.e.g. Internal presentations), which means you would either have to build in the functionality to do it either way.... or you would need to use print screen, snippet, paint for when you wanted to keep the data visible and use the built in method to obscure the data.

    Just don't feel it is a good use of developers time, but I did still vote up emoticons_happy.png.

  • The good thing about that which I also do sometimes is it's available on every windows system.  The Screen Hunter free I use is nice because you can select any part of the screen and it can be saved in multiple formats to a file.  With screenshot you get the whole screen which sometimes you might not want... also Screen Hunter is approved for use by our security people (which is tough to get here where I work).

  • Great idea. It would save lot of time - definitely voting UP emoticons_happy.png

  • Nice one +1

    I am glad to see meech​ is on board with this!  Is it bad that I default to Screenshots and paint?

  • Greenshot became my love because of how it looks and all their dialog options from the second you hit printscrn. Screenshot straight to application? Done! Also has more languages available than most, which was a requirement on my last job.