Hi, and welcome to our brief tour
of the Mobile Control application for NetSupport Manager
available for iOS and Android tablets and smartphones.
As you can see on the screen in front of us,
we have a range of NetSupport applications
and today we will be viewing the Manager app on an Android tablet to highlight the key features.
So let's select the Manager app and begin.
This is the main UI for the NetSupport Manager Control app and, as you can see, it is broken down into
two key areas: on the left, we have the navigation UI.
This is a tree view allowing us to view all computers, recently-connected computers,
browse and discover new computers across the network,
as well as selecting and viewing just active computers.
Subsequently, we can also configure Gateways for connectivity of computers over
the internet. At the bottom of the screen, you see we also have our Settings and
PIN Connect features. Settings, we will cover in detail later on this
presentation
and PIN Connect is a new feature that allows us to quickly
handshake with remote devices. So, on the right hand side,
we have the main view window which allows us to show you the icons
(or real-time thumbnails) of each connected device. By selecting a particular PC,
you can automatically connect to that remote PC and the icon colour changes
to denote
an active connection. At the bottom of the screen,
you will see we have our main feature toolbar allowing us to select whether we want to
view the screen of the remote PC, chat with the PC,
send it a message, capture an inventory, disconnect that PC
or ultimately remove it from our known list of computers.
Once that device is connected, it will appear in our
Active section (denoted by the number one in the count record).
We can also select multiple devices by pressing and holding an icon - and then
we can select multiple devices
(as we can see here). As each is highlighted, we can then apply
with a single action: connect or disconnect. In this case, let's
connect to all of those computers.
OK. So now we are connected to our remote computers,
let's go to our Active view. We can see a small thumbnail
that is being displayed in real time for each of the remotely-connected devices.
We can adjust the size of those thumbnails to make them more visible
by using the right-hand menu as shown here. We can adjust the slider to scale
the thumbnails
to utilise the space presented to us. So here, we have adjusted and we are showing fairly
large thumbnails
on the screen for each of our remote devices. We can fine tune this
depending on the number of connections. So let's make them slightly smaller
so we can see all six computers in real time on the screen.
Now we've got those computers and we are remotely monitoring them,
of course, we may want to actually interact with a selected computer. So let's pick one PC here
and, by selecting it, our View menu at the bottom is displayed.
Now we can select to "view". When we get the view option,
you see we are given a quick guide as to the key gestures that are required when using
remote support from our tablet.
And once we go into that PC, we have a
remote Windows 8 computer that we are currently now remote controlling
from our tablet. You will see the chevron marker at the top of the screen -
when we select that, it will drop down the NetSupport Manager menu
with our range of supported features. So, first of all, we can control the
colour depth of the information being sent back to our tablet PC.
This is particularly useful over slow mobile connections where we want to minimise the
amount of data sent.
Next, we have the functionality or our "Actions" menu
- the most important being the ability to send the Ctrl+Alt+Delete
keystroke combination through to a remote PC
for login and logout, as well as initiating both
chat and message sessions. Then we have our Control Mode dialog
which allows us to switch our modes between watching the remote screen;
sharing (where both parties have interactive capabilities on the desktop);
or Control mode, where we lock out the remote computer.
While viewing the screen, you see we have the ability to interact with the
typical
pinch and zoom approach being simulated on the screen here.
So, using finger gestures, we can pinch and zoom in
and zoom out, as well as panning and moving about the remote display.
OK. So now we have finished remote controlling our Windows 8 device (in this case) -
but, of course,
it could be a Mac or Linux desktop as well as a Windows PC. Let's access the menu
and select the "X" button to return to the main view. With that PC still selected,
let's access one of our new features: inventory. The inventory report will
be generated for a version 12 (or later) client.
For earlier clients, it will take longer to generate that inventory report.
As you can see on the screen, we have a quick overview of the key information regarding
that PC.
We can scroll down to see motherboard information; specifics (as we can see at the
bottom part of the screen) for the network adapter,
including multiple adapters the machine may have at the current time;
and (as it scrolls down further) video adapter information
and beyond. The key point is to ensure that any mobile technician on the go
has quick access to all of the key information that relates to the remote
device they are wishing to connect to
and manage. Once you have your inventory report -
of course you might want to keep that or save it for future access -
so, within the inventory dialog (at the top right) you will see we have a Share option
that allows us to send a copy of that report to Dropbox, Google Drive,
email and so on. Or, if you have access,
to print via Google's new Cloud Print service.
So, back to the main desktop. You see we have our
range of connected PCs. We can pull up the same menu and start a chat session.
As you can see, we have a simple interface allowing us to
type in and enter some textual references
using the standard or supported keyboard on your Android device.
As we type our message, it is sent from our device (which perhaps
in this example we could have named slightly better) and where the remote user(s)
can textually respond to us within the conversation as well -
as you can see on the screen now. So, back to the main menu.
One of the areas we also want to look at is the config settings.
As you can see here, we can specify device name and display name
(which would have made my chat slightly more meaningful!) - follow that up with a display name.
Once these are done, that will make my device much more identifiable
for any remote device that I am connecting to.
You will also see on the screen that we have our key connectivity dialog,
allowing us to specify the port that we are communicating over
as well as the IP subnets that we want to browse.
So you will see on this extended dialog that has now been added, we can browse by a particular
subnet and address range or, of course, provide support for browsing
terminal server devices. If we scroll down further,
you will see we have our security option where we can specify a unique security key
and serial number (to limit connectivity options)
as well as setting our default view modes that we use within the product -
both in terms of remote control, the colour depth and, of course, the language
of the keyboard
that we intend to use for our remote control session.
So, back to the main menu.
We will see a new PIN Connect feature on the lower
left of the display UI. The PIN Connect feature
allows the operator and the remote user to identify and locate each other
simply by entering a unique PIN code to both ends of the connection.
So, on the screen in front of us, the mobile user can either enter
the PIN code that has already been generated by the remote end-user
(once they enter that, they will have the ability to connect to the user)
or, they can request one to be created by the PIN code server.
Once that has been created, they can share that with the end-user
and initiate a connection. In the example here,
we are going to enter a PIN code that has already been generated by the end-user -
and, as the operator enters the code in on the screen (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
and selects "Connect", that will automatically handshake and locate
and then connect to the recipient end-user PC.
Back on the main screen,
the final menu option to discuss is the Gateways feature.
The Gateway feature allows NetSupport Manager
to communicate with devices across the internet over a secure
HTTP gateway. There can be multiple gateways used by an individual or organisation. So,
each gateway
can be defined and specified within the control config,
as you can see here. For each unique gateway, we specify
a name, the IP address and a unique
security Gateway Key. In addition, authentication can be managed by unique
operator user names and passwords as well - for additional security.
On our
Android device, let's go to the desktop.
One of the new features is the ability to add widgets
for NetSupport Manager on Android. There are three different styles of widgets:
a single one for "quick connect" to a particular PC - and two that provide a summary
list of all
recent connections that you have undertaken with NetSupport Manager.
Once those widgets have been selected (as you can see on the screen here)
we have a quick access (using the Quick View widget) to jump to a target PC
directly from our Android desktop. So let us select "Quick View" -
Office PC - and you will see we are instantly connected to the remote PC
and directly onto their desktop, ready for active one-to-one remote control.
So that wraps up the tour of the NetSupport Manager Mobile Control app - provided for free
for existing NetSupport Manager remote control users.
Hopefully, this tour has given you a good insight into the capabilities
of our solution for Android and iOS-based devices
as well as a sense of some of the new functionality and, most importantly of all,
the one-to-many capabilities provided within NetSupport Manager.
For further information, please visit
www.netsupportmanager.com
for additional information, free evaluation copies and much more. Thank you for your time.