I've mostly been using vbscripts to accomplish various system administration tasks. It's a good tool for automating tasks. While you can get nice message- and input boxes with vbscript I've been missing a real graphical user interface though. A while ago I stumbled upon something called HTA (HTML Applications), and thought it sounded interesting. I didn't have time to study it any further at the time, though, so I just added the site to my favorites folder, where it's been sitting dormant for some months now. A couple of days ago I found it again and took a closer look, and WOW! That's cool. Microsoft has a really nice little two chapter introduction to this here.

I've created a small and simple helpdesk application for our users in just a couple of hours. The hta does some basic diagnostics (Checking if the computer is on the network, checking that e-mail servers are available, checking CPU load, etc.), shows basic computer information (Computer name, make, model, memory, hard drive, serial number etc), and allows the user to send support requests to the support team. The nice thing with this method of sending support requests is that the hta can automatically add some relevant information to the support request (such as computer name and IP address), that the user doesn't necessarily understand to add themselves.

I may be posting the hta here if someone requests it, and more importantly, if I have the time to tidy it up a bit. For now the application is in English only, but I just might add different languages (Swedish, Finnish, German).