Hi, Basically I support around 40 windows machines and about 30 printers in a network at work and I work in a fairly large warehouse which inside is 3 units. Now I keep facing this problem where people are always chasing me around or coming to my office which is at the very end of the warehouse and it is causing alot of headaches for everyone. I was wondering if anyone knew of an application that i could put on my users desktop basically a big button that sent a notification when they are experiencing problems to my desktop in my office or even to my iPhone I have been looking all over the net but i don't think i have the right search terminology down. Would anyone of you perhaps know as i know there is alot of IT technicians on this forum. Cheers
diagnosing problems is hard to do as the issue may just be a user error (90% of the time) in which case the software or machine is perfectly fine. pretty sure windows server can report on system issues but again that only gets you so far. it sounds if i understand you that you need remote login ? you could use any of the following: Teamviewer (my fav choice) = quick, simple, easy to manage, iphone, andriod support however not free for commercial use. logmein = free for remote connection (not file transfer and other stuff), avg speed, easy to manage VNC = dont like this one but each to their own
Maybe you could set up a script that sent an email when double clicked, with the details of the machine location or ID?
Do they have an e-mail client on the machine? If so, here's an easy one: Make a new shortcut on the desktop. Point it to: mailto:test@test.com?subject=Support Obviously change the email to yours and change "Support" to whatever you want it to say. Now when they double-click it, it will create an e-mail from their account and fill in the To: line and subject. Then they just click Send and you get it. This is of course assuming they are all in constant positions. If not, they could just quickly type where they are in the body.
I don't need remote login, I need to know when they have a problem. The problems are usually a printer or application problem because we use a custom built web order management system. Each station prints around 1500 invoices a day so the output of one of our printers prints more in 1 month than the life expectancy of a normal laser printer. And because of this I have to fix alot of paper jams or fuser problems or what not. I can't fix this problem remotely and i already have a VNC software solution in place. I was just wondering if there was a application like a button or widget almost that i could place on the desktop which would send me a notification, I did have the idea of using some sort of script or email solution but there could be delays. What i thought was there could be an app that when press on the desktop sent a notification to my computer with the host name so I know who has a problem and that they don't have to find me. We don't use Windows for Active Directory or a Windows Server for that matter, i have setup linux servers which are servicing all the needs. FLOSS all the way! Thanks for the replies and suggestions.
im sure a very short and easy program would be able to send a string at one end, and receive and beep when it arrived at your computer... do you have any programming knowledge? if yes, im sure a bit of research and you'll be able to do it... if not then maybe someone you know can do it if it comes to mid june and you havent got anything, I could have a bash at knocking up something simple (yes i realise that ages away, sorry - quite busy atm)
That is what i was thinking, my programming skills aren't exactly professional but if i spend some time on it i am sure i could get something together. I was just hoping someone might have had made something already. Thanks for the offer but i will get out my programming books and start learning.
What's wrong with one of these? Otherwise a slim app would be easy peasy. Send the computer name and away you go.
Thats what I have to wonder. no cell phone? as for an application on the computer. windows messenger? I don't work in that kind of environment any more but when i have in the past we just called the tech guy to come fix the problem.
If you can imagine the computers are in a station and the stations are in the warehouse. think Amazon distribution centre so shouting is out of the question, also to put telephones at every station is not cost effective and not practical, we would only need a intercom like system and it would be a nightmare. Also the users of the machines are all very non technical. Thanks for the help any way guys.
Yeah besides creating my own little app i am thinking of something like this, might be the easiest solution.
How about a nice little web-app that emails you. Or a Siemens/Polycom DECT handset tied to a voip provider (like my company)
Maybe an IRC client or something would be better than a normal IM client, help avoid procrastination.
So i found a solution, I basically setup a XMPP instant messenging server up on the network. I used an open source Java based piece of software called OpenFire by Jive. It have got it to only work on the LAN, i control accounts. the set to the computers and not the person using them. It is working great, saving loads of time.
