Blog 4: Qualys & Job Deployment Tracker

Qualys & Job Deployment Tracker

 

Problem Statement:

- Difficult to remember daily deployed jobs

- And details of jobs like patch title, patch version, release date, targeted assets, deployment date, number of assets, excluded assets & etc.

- Customer or lead or senior manager comes up occasionally with questions about deployment or they want to know the status of on ground activities related to jobs & mitigation's.

- And it’s very difficult to find a particular job on the basis of required detail (refer point 2). from Job tab in Qualys. Sharing screenshot of Job tab from Patch Management module in Qualys.

- Root cause of many escalations.

Solution:

- To Develop tracker or database of job deployments, where everything related to job will be recorded.

- With this, we can solve small problem (root cause) which is making big impact (unsatisfied customers).

- Tracker / Database has been created on excel as of now, as we’re not allowed to create any software or web application in customer’s production environment. It’s the game or matter of database & accessing the queried data whenever required, so I understood this prior, excel will be helpful at scratch level. And for query we can use excel filter feature.

- Listing down all columns below with description:

Sr. No	Column Title	Description
1	Sr. No	Serial Number of records
2	Job Name	Title of the job
3	Job ID	Job id, which we get from Qualys post job-creation
4	Deploy Date	Date of job deployment (patch push date)
5	Software Name	Name of the software targeted
6	Process	Name of process/group of department/target group of users
7	Patch Title	Patch title of software
8	Job-Status	Current status of job (created, deployed, ongoing, completed)
9	Publish Date (mm-dd-yy)	Patch publish date
10	App Type(3p/MS)	Type of software (is it 3rd party (means Non-Microsoft) or Microsoft)
11	Asset Count	Total number of assets targeted
12	UAT/Production	Phase of deployment (Testing Phase or Production Phase)
13	Tag	Tag name of grouped assets
14	Remarks	Any remarks from user for future reference
15	Patch Window	Time duration of patch deployment
16	Reporting Date	Date of job completion; i.e. we used to submit job report on that date to customer
17	Job Created By	Who created the job
18	Deployed By	Who deployed the job. i.e. After job creation we need approval for enabling job for deployment

 

- One of the solutions which I thought will help in future & escalations will minimized.

- Sharing the glimpse of excel sheet, which I created with all necessary columns & few data, for reference.

- After creation of this, I’ve discussed with team lead, requested for implementation for a week & then, I’ll present execution of my idea & results to my senior managers.

- Initially it had few columns, while using daily, I felt somethings is still missing. It needs more columns, so I added. Within a week I reached to final destination, where I felt, now this is perfect.

- After a week one fine day, shared this idea with my senior managers, told as much possible pros (basically I’ve reduced their & every team member’s headache & attempt to minimizing escalations), they’re happy with it & I got approval.

- Now it’s been a 9 months, since we’re using this tool.

- Escalations never repeated & all queries of customer has been resolved, whenever they came up.

Conclusion:

- Requirement has been fulfilled.

- Minimized escalations & problem of remembering daily patch & job deployments

- I’ve observed some problem which being on project & implemented solutions.

- It saved lots of regular manual efforts & time.

- All I did, because it was the business requirement. Business needs solutions.