IAN GUIDRY
• Ian Guidry 2 min read

One Command per Ticket: Building a Help Desk Toolkit

A cross-platform command-line toolkit that turns the most common help desk tickets into one command and a clear answer.

pythonhelpdeskautomationprojects

Help desks hear the same tickets on repeat: “my computer is slow,” “the internet is down,” “I’m out of space,” “new hires start Monday.” I built a Python toolkit that answers each one with a single command, on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Code: github.com/eguidey/helpdesk-toolkit

The commands

Command Solves
sysinfo “What computer is this?” / “It’s slow”
netcheck “The internet is down”
diskcheck “I’m out of space”
procs “My computer is slow”
pwcheck Password resets
onboard New-hire accounts
report Escalations

netcheck: name the cause, not just the failures

It tests the network layer by layer (IP address, gateway, internet, DNS, web) and reports the first layer that breaks, in plain English.

The netcheck command testing each network layer and diagnosing a DNS failure.
Internet reachable, names not resolving: a DNS problem.

A 169.254.x.x address means DHCP failed. The internet test opens a TCP connection instead of pinging, since many networks block ping. And the gateway is only blamed when the internet is actually unreachable, so VPNs don’t trigger false alarms.

pwcheck: breach checks without sending the password

The password is hashed locally, and only the first 5 characters of the hash go to the Have I Been Pwned API. The comparison happens on the machine, and a unit test proves nothing more is sent.

onboard: new hires in one command

It turns an HR spreadsheet into usernames, emails and temporary passwords. Real output from the repo’s sample data:

┃ Name              ┃ Username   ┃ Email                  ┃
│ Ava Nguyen        │ anguyen    │ [email protected]    │
│ Adam Nguyen       │ anguyen2   │ [email protected]   │
│ Mary-Kate O'Brien │ mobrien    │ [email protected]    │

Duplicates get numbers, and punctuation is stripped. Passwords come from Python’s secrets module and skip look-alike characters (0/O, 1/l/I), so they can be read over the phone.

report: evidence for the escalation

One command writes a self-contained HTML health report to attach to the ticket.

An HTML health report showing overall status, a network diagnosis, computer details and system checks.
Everything the next tier needs, in one file.

Every check also returns an exit code (0 good, 1 warning, 2 failure), so scripts and monitoring can use it too.

Built to be trusted

68 tests, CI on Windows, macOS and Linux for every push, and ruff’s security rules in the linter.

What I learned

  • Diagnose, don’t just test. Naming the broken layer saves more time than a list of red checks.
  • Privacy can be a design choice. The breach check works without the password ever leaving the computer.
  • Design for the phone call. Small details, like readable passwords, matter as much as features.