-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
Future Development Ideas
This page collects planned or considered features that haven't been implemented yet - not commitments or a schedule, just a place to keep ideas from getting lost between sessions.
In networks split into multiple VLANs/subnets, the server currently needs direct reachability to every segment for:
- The Console feature (port 8080, server -> workstation, see Client-Server Communication)
- SNMP queries to network printers/devices (port 161)
For heavily segmented networks, this could mean opening many ports across many firewalls/routers. Idea: a lightweight "relay" BigLan instance deployed per segment, which:
- Only needs one outbound port open toward the main server (instead of the main server needing inbound access to every segment)
- Forwards collected data (heartbeats, events, SNMP results) to the main server's Notification Center / event pipeline
- Could buffer data locally (its own small database, or a simple queue/buffer file) if connectivity to the main server is temporarily lost, then replay it once reconnected
This is a significant architectural addition - it would need its own client-server protocol between the relay and the main server (separate from the existing workstation <-> server protocol), and a decision on whether relays are trusted with a scoped API Token or a different auth mechanism entirely.
Currently, workstation data covers hardware, OS, and a few specific tracked applications (AnyDesk, TeamViewer, VNC, as security-risk flags only - see Client-Server Communication). There's no general installed-software inventory.
Idea:
- Client collects a list of installed applications + versions (Windows: e.g.
Get-WmiObject Win32_Productor registry uninstall keys, already used as a Console script example; Linux: distro package manager listing) - Server-side: a way to check whether a newer version exists for tracked applications - would need either a curated list of "known software -> latest version" sources, or integration with something like
winget/vendor update-check APIs (implementation approach not decided)
Toner level and print-count history is already collected (NetworkPrinterStatistics, snmpQueryPrinter() - see Network Printers), but there's no reporting UI over it beyond the 30-day view already on each printer's page.
Idea: a dedicated report page where an arbitrary date range can be selected, and the result exported as a PDF - the [PDF skill/tooling used for other document generation in this project] could potentially be reused for the export step.
Similar idea, for workstations: a dedicated export (PDF/CSV) intended specifically for physical inventory/audit purposes - inventory ID, serial numbers, location, assigned user, purchase/age data already exist per-workstation, but there's no single report that pulls them together across many machines at once.
The current Knowledge Base search is a plain keyword match. Ideas to make it smarter (not yet decided which, if any):
- Full-text search (e.g. MySQL
FULLTEXTindex instead ofLIKE-based matching) for better relevance ranking - Search across article content, not just titles/tags
- Basic typo tolerance
Add new ideas here as they come up - doesn't need to be polished, just enough detail that it's still understandable a few months later.