This is an overview of the NetSupport DNA management console. As you will see, the screen
is broken down into a number of distinct areas. Along the top, on the left-hand side,
we have the main component selection toolbar, starting with our home screen and
moving through each of the key components included in the product. To
the right of the main toolbar, you will see we have a date selection box which applies
to activity-based components, such as application and internet metering and allows
us to customise the information displayed on the screen to meet a
particular date requirement. As well as the dates presented here, the
advanced mode allows us to select specific time date and time filters - down to things such as for lunchtime working
hours or out of hours. On the left-hand side, we have the organisational hierarchy view. Here we can see our top
licence - in this case, a test sale key - so you can drill down to see departments within the
organisation.
Within a department, we can see individual PCs and alongside them, we have an indicator for
their platform type. As well as this key information, the display can be customised using the drop-down
menu to allow us to see information such as just the PC name - the PC name and PC owner and the
last logged on name, and so on. So we can customise the view to meet our requirements.
In addition, we have two overlay badges that we can apply to this tree: one to
identify any machines that have an outstanding alert, and the second to
identify any machines that have an outstanding request for a USB memory
stick to be authorised for use. Below the company hierarchy, we also have dynamic
groups. These are pre-supplied within NetSupport DNA, but can be added to using
the custom query editor.
Dynamic groups are simply criteria-based groupings - so a good example will be
as presented here: all machines that have a 64-bit operating system.
If we expand that, you will see it is a combination of machines from many different departments
around the enterprise. We have similar groupings for Android, iOS - machines with a
certain amount of pre-installed memory, machines that have Office installed and so on. Again, the key with our
dynamic groups is these can be customised and added to to meet your own requirements.
Finally, in the main view, we have our display window that, by default, shows us a high-level overview of
activity across our enterprise. As we move between our tabs, you will see this data changes to reflect
particular component-based information. [Let's return to our Home screen]. You will see for each of these menus, they are broken
into two parts. The top part of the menu allows us to quickly access a component;
the bottom part allows us to access features or fine tune the information that we wish to
display on the screen. You will also note, along the menu at the top here, we have a separation between PCs, users, devices
and discovered items. So, by default, NetSupport DNA is presenting us with a
company hierarchy showing all PCs that have been discovered and are managed on
our network. Instead of looking at our enterprise from a device by device
basis, we can switch to our user mode which allows us to drill down and see users that have been
identified in the organisation. Then we can track their activity, even if
they've been working on multiple machines across the enterprise. So this
allows us to adapt and adjust our usage, depending on our own requirements. So we can pick a user and
we can see what activity, if any, that they have had on the system. Our next tab,
Device, allows us to identify and manage SNMP-enabled devices. So, in addition to
discovering and managing PCs on the network, we can also within the DNA
environment identify network switches, network-enabled printers and more.
And, once discovered, we can manage, drill down and see specific information -
in this case, for the Cisco switch. We can see information against each interface, and so forth.
As you'll see, as we move between the components, the colour scheme in the DNA console changes and our active
menu changes to provide us with the options relevant to that component.
Our final tab, Discovered, is currently empty. This is a new feature in DNA which allows the system to constantly
poll the network and here will present any new machines that are being added to the
network (or discovered) and present the operator with the opportunity to add
them to the DNA database and deploy an agent automatically onto them. So between these four
modes, we have a complete view of all PCs that DNA is managing - all users and
their activity on the network, all additional devices that we've discovered
across the network and any new PCs that have been added to the network but, as
yet, are not part of the DNA enterprise. There are some extra bits that we can do to fine tune our view.
You will see we have our departments here. Selecting an individual
department will highlight the colour - so we can see who we are working with. We can also
right click and select our properties. You will see we can now customise the properties and details for a
department, including changing the department colour scheme to suit our own
requirements. As we are sat here at the moment on the Hardware Inventory tab, you will also notice that clearly as I moved between
my departments, the data presented adapts accordingly.And, for each component, the
right-hand side of the toolbar changes to reflect that component-specific
functionality. So, in this case, for Hardware Inventory, you will see we have an
inventory-specific component. We have some criteria that we can apply to
customise our view. Do we want to see hardware or contracts on the page? And
what kind of chart do we want to display? And, finally, we have a filter for the Hardware Inventory. So currently we are looking at
CPU, but maybe we'd like to look at memory stats, BIOS information and so on. And as we move to Software Inventory, you will
see this display changes to meet the criteria. If we move to a date-based
component (such as metering components), you will see our date-based filter appears again as before.
So throughout the product, no matter which component we select, we will always have
quick access to key functionality on the right hand side of the main toolbar.
We also have some options that sit at
the very top of the screen. By default we are on our Home screen, but we can switch to our Tools menu and,
as you will see, this presents an entirely new view, summarising a number of the key
features that we need within NetSupport DNA as supporting tools. They are grouped and broken
down into key areas. So, we have our Query tool, which allows us to create custom
views for accessing data; we have our system settings, which is important in
terms of our ability to first set up the product and ensure we can access all
of the key components and enable them for activity. We have our operator management that allows us
to create - during our evaluation or ongoing use - our
operator roles. For any operator, we can view the operator information
and we can give access specifically to each and every component in the product
at a very granular level. In the main section under "Tools", we have tools that allow us to either
manage our database - and stores our database maintenance, query scheduling and so on. We
also have some supporting components including our ability to manage and
deliver Acceptable Use Policies, discover and deploy our agent technology on other
user machines, and to create and print barcodes for easy asset management.
Our supporting remote tools include access to our remote control software, (NetSupport Manager),
messaging and chatting. And finally we have a status window that
allows us to monitor in real time the activity of our DNA server and system or additional
components. If we select the system, you will see a menu appears on the right hand side as a view that allow us
to see in real time: systems status, memory usage, the size of our queue, what
current operators are online and if our SNMP servers are functioning. And, as
before, we can simply jump back along this menu to our Home screen. Thank you for viewing this tour. Please visit
www.netsupportdna.com to find out more or, if appropriate, download a free 30-day trial.