Dell SOAPbox was a small application I created when I was working as a Jr Sys Admin to track warranty information of the Dell computers that we had in rotation.
What does it do?
Dell SOAPbox allowed you to open up a CSV file of all of the computers we had on file. Our naming convention was DT-serviceTag for Desktops and LT-serviceTag for Laptops. When SOAPbox read in the computer names it would strip the prefix, send the service tag to Dell’s servers with a SOAP command which would then return system information on that tag. The SOAP commands were really quick, so we could feed in about a hundred computers and have results in under a minute. The output would be a nice speadsheet view with easy to see system information. If the experation date had passed, the column would be red. If it was approaching within the next four months, the collumn would be yellow. Computers that were good to go were colored green. There was also a few export options like Excel and PDF format.
Why was it created?
We were previously tracking service tags manually. Every month I’d be tasked with going through all of our computers and check the expiration date. To save time, I created Dell SOAPbox and was able to export the document and present it to upper managment. What would normally take a few hours each month now was done within minutes with a nice presentable view with machines sorted by warranty information.
Unfortunately, Dell SOAPbox was lost to time. I never did back it up before leaving that job. It may be something I revisit one day because I think it could help a lot of people out.