Slashdot Mirror
Remote Management and User Consequences?
NNWizard asks: "I work in a large university in Belgium where the people in charge of university computer systems want to install LANDesk on every single computer connecting to the university network. The aim is to be able to manage software and provide centralized remote user support. In the old days, every department had computer guys dedicated to the department, and they knew all about the users and their needs. Now, they want to make the management of computer resources global. In most non-engineering faculties this is well accepted, however in the Applied Sciences Faculty the users are computer savvy -- they do not like the idea of giving out control of their computers to people they don't know. What experience does Slashdot have with such a situation? Was the deployment of LANDesk (or a similar software package) a good or a bad thing for the users? How were the privacy issues tackled? Were people still able to use their computers the way they wanted to use them?"
it's much easier to just get a view of their screen (think PC-Anywhere) than to keep asking them what they see now only to get half answers and useless replies
Absolutely. Nine times out of ten, when we ask a user over the phone to read the error message and title in a dialog box that pops up, we don't get the complete picture, even though we ask for the user to tell us EVERYTHING that is on the screen. That makes telephone troubleshooting annoying. It's why we use remote management whenever possible, and if that is not an option, we explain how to email screen shots. Either way, having a picture of the user's screen is EXTREMELY useful and saves us I.T. workers much time and therefore saves the company big lumps of change.