BY DARA BLOOM
Editor, TMCnet™

Get Help Without Getting Up:
Remote Access Help Desks

Sometimes it pays to be a nice guy. This is certainly true when you're trying to flag down the harried MIS team in your office as they scramble to put out one fire or another -- while your own conflagration is burning away your work day. If your previous experience with MIS ended in you screaming that you'll take your revenge out on their first born if they can't get your e-mail working RIGHT NOW, you might be waiting a while before your current problem is addressed.

The rules change when you work remotely. The only person streaking around your home office is you, as you rant to no one about the latest technical glitch that renders your PC useless. If you work from a laptop, you could pack it up, head to the main office, and then try to flag down MIS using the hit or miss procedure above. Using a desktop unit? You might be able to get tech support out to your home, but not on your timetable. If you're lucky, though, your company has planned for this sort of inevitable emergency by implementing a remote access help desk.

Simply put, a help desk is a basic set of problem resolutions used to either internally support employees, or externally support customers in a customer service environment. We're familiar with the call center as help desk -- for example, you buy a Dell computer and call an 800 number when you have problems getting the PC to recognize a peripheral. Internal help desks, on the other hand, are built just for employees, and are specialized to suit the technology infrastructure of a specific company. Whether you work on-site or remotely, internal help desk software speeds up problem resolution and therefore ups the productivity of both tech staff and employees with feverish PCs.

Two announcements this week allow an internal help desk administrator to take control of your PC remotely, diagnose your problem, and (hopefully) fix it -- without you or the techie leaving your own desks.

BindView Offers Remote Control For NT And Novell
BindView Development Corp. introduced a new remote control module called NETrc. [Click here to read the press release.] NETrc lets help desk administrators remotely manage all the PCs (clients and servers) on a network, and therefore cuts down on visits to individual workspaces to troubleshoot from the recalcitrant machine itself.

The integration of NETrc with NETinventory (BindView describes NETinventory as its "tool for tracking and managing network assets") lets MIS or help desk admins control remote nodes from within the familiar interface of Microsoft Windows NT or Novell NetWare file servers on their own PCs. NETrc users can then diagnose and fix problems, reconfigure or reboot units on the network, and monitor devices such as file and print servers all from their respective computers.

BindView's integration of NETrc with NETinventory also allows administrators to proactively maintain all the PCs on a company's networks -- LAN, WAN, and remote access nodes -- from one computer. BindView can claim a wide range of companies as clients -- from Bass Breweries to Rockwell -- visit BindView's Web site for more information on whether NETrc could work for you.

Symantec Joins Forces With Remedy
In a similar vein, Symantec announced its pcANYWHERE32 v8.0 can now be integrated with Remedy's Help Desk solution to provide remote help desk support. [Click here to read the press release.] The integration of the two products boosts both help desk and end user (employee) productivity by allowing remote access to an employee's client machine from within the help desk server application.

All of Remedy's products are based on foundation software Remedy calls its AR (Active Response) System. pcANYWHERE32 and the AR System are connected with an interface program that creates and launches remote data objects using the name or IP address of the remote employee's computer. The software searches for an available TCP/IP host if no IP address is available. Once the remote data object is launched, pcANYWHERE32 connects the help desk PC to the remote employee's computer. Voila! The admin now uses the interface of the help desk software to troubleshoot the remote system as though they were physically sitting at the employee's malfunctioning PC.

Want to try Remedy's Help Desk for yourself? You can download a free copy of Help Desk Express at www.remedy.com/express/.

Where This Leaves Traditional Tech Support
Internal help desks may currently have a higher penetration in larger enterprises where remotely managed tech support is critical to maintain normal productivity levels. Still, it's an area that will continue to see growth as the number of employees working off-site, as permanent home office workers or part-time telecommuters, increases.

Will this be the end of the beleaguered tech guys ignoring your pleas for help as they reboot this PC and Alt-Ctrl-Del the next? Certainly not. Start stroking now...you never know when the next Blue Screen Of Death will appear.

Dara Bloom welcomes your comments at dbloom@tmcnet.com.