We Got Served

Tweet! Tweet!  What will they think of next?  First. let me preface something.  I am not a fan of social sites.  No MySpace.  No Facebook.  I do have an MSN Live page, but that is only because I was curious.  Once.  IIRC, it cannot be seen by anyone.

Along comes Donavon West.  He writes this add-in for WHS called @WHSTweet.  I promptly looked away when I saw Terry posting the original WGS announcement about this add-in.

Oh, no! A social site add-in for WHS!  But I had to sneak back and check it out.  As I read through Terry’s and Donavon’s posts, I felt I had to at least try it out to see how it worked.

And it does have potential as a notification device for your WHS.

For my use, I simply created an account based on my online name, JC634.  I decided one account is enough and if I decide to actually use it, I might as well call it JC634, not JC634-SERVER.  Later, I may add a 2nd account just for my WHS, but we will see.

So, here goes.  First, one must create a Twitter account.  If you are reading this, I will assume you have one or know how to create one.  Even if you don’t, just go to www.twitter.com.

click on the green Get Started—Join! button and follow the directions.  If I can do it, so can you.

Back to @WHSTweet.

Installing the add-in is as simple as any other add-in.  Copy the msi installer to your D:SoftwareAdd-ins folder, open the WHS Setting Window in the console and install the software from the Add-ins tab, as shown below.

Reopen the Console, reopen the Settings window, and click on the @WHSTweet tab.  Enter the necessary Twitter account information,

click on the Test Tweet

and Fake Error Buttons

and then go to your online Twitter account to check out your Tweets.

There are a few options that one can set.  Per Donavon, these options do the following:

• Include Server Name – If you have more than one Windows Home Server (don’t laugh, several of my beta tester do), you may want to know which one caused the notification. Checking Include Server Name will prefix every tweet with the name of the server. This will allow you to use one twitter account for all of your servers.
• Ignore Warnings – Check Ignore Warnings and you will only be alerted for critical health notifications (i.e. ignore yellow warnings such as “New Add-In ready to Install”.
• Direct to – This will allow you to send direct messages (DM) to a particular user, likely yourself, instead of sending public tweets or protecting your updates. This is a more secure way to get notified of your WHS status.
• Enable Tweets – If you ever want to temporarily disable health status tweets (ex: you are doing maintenance on your WHS and don’t want the tweets to go out) you can do so by unchecking Enable Tweets.

Donavon has included an About tab, which I always appreciate when I need help with a piece of software.  And if you find @WHSTweet useful, there is a convenient Donate button in this screen.

Clicking on the Help button has a slight problem.  I assume Donavon will have that ironed out in his next update.

And that is that.  Get WHS alerts where ever you are direct from Twitter.  Which is a good thing!

So, yes, I do recommend @WHSTweet.  If only for the fact that Donavon’s add-in actually got me to sign up for a, ahem, “social” thingy.

Seriously, it does work quite well, except for the help link.  It performs a useful function.  Get it.  Install it.

Author: Donavon West

Version Reviewed: 1.2.0.969

Release: 10June2009

More info: Download | More Info