Alerts: Sending a Windows Net Message

I am trying to get orion to send a windows net message to my desktop workstation when certain alerts are triggered. I have configured the workstation to receive the Net Messages sucessfully, but orion does net seem to be able to send them. Both Orion and my workstation are on the same network and are part of the same workgroup.

What am I missing?

Terry Pelley
Network Analyst
Ottawa-Carleton District School Board
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada

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iunderwo

Are you able to successfully send a message between the devices on the command line?

// Ian Underwood - Network Engineering
// Boston Stock Exchange

Network_Guru

Welcome back Ian - nice to have you back in these forums again!
Looks like you convinced your new employer to go with Orion.

-=Cheers=-
NG

iunderwo

NG! It's been awhile indeed.

The funny thing, is that my new employer has actually been running Orion for the last couple of years here. I'm sure my previous experience helped me in the door.

I have, however, convinced them to get me a beefier machine to upgrade the whole shebang onto, especially given the huge number of improvements up through and including 7.8.

Anyways, I've been looking into this particular question and as long as the messenger service is enabled (it's disabled in WinXP SP2), and there's an allowance through the Windows Firewall, then the message should go through. I cannot, however, test since I can't change my firewall settings.

// Ian Underwood - Network Engineering
// Boston Stock Exchange

Network_Guru

In order to send & receive Windows Net Messages, you must have both the Messenger & Alerter services running. Also your Orion server must be in the same Windows AD domain as the users.

As per Ian's suggestion, try this from the commandline:

C:\WINNT>net send administrator test123
The message was successfully sent to ADMINISTRATOR.

TIP: Use the Windows username instead of the Machine Name when configuring Net Send alerts. That way users will receive the message, regardless of which machine they are logged into (only the first PC will display the alert, and others which the user has subsequently logged into will not receive the alert).
I was getting angry e-mails from non-IT folks who were receiving alerts because they received one of our Network admins old laptop & I was sending the alerts to the machine name. Now they all go to the username instead!

-=Cheers=-
NG

tpelley

Thanks for the advice. I got it to work.

Terry Pelley
Network Analyst
Ottawa-Carleton District School Board
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada