The Acrobat.com Blog: Take control (of another user’s screen, that is!)

August 1, 2008

Take control (of another user’s screen, that is!)

Posted by Suzanne Smith at 10:00 AM

Have you tried the remote control feature in ConnectNow yet? This useful functionality enables you to control another computer from your own desktop. You can be sitting at your desk in Chicago, logged in to your ConnectNow meeting room with your colleague from Tokyo, and, with permission, take control of your colleague’s computer.

Here’s a real example. I have a friend named David who works at a startup software company. OK, he IS the company: chief software architect, QA manager, documentation writer, and technical support engineer. David has created a good piece of software for retail businesses and he takes pride in being available to his customers around the clock for technical support. The problem is, his phone does ring and he spends too much time trying to walk people through troubleshooting procedures. I told him there is a better way.

David can get an Acrobat.com account and create his own ConnectNow meeting room. When a customer calls with a problem, David can send an email with the URL of the meeting room to the customer. Once they are both in the meeting room, David has the customer share their screen. Then, David clicks the Request Control button. The customer clicks a confirmation message to pass control. Now, here’s the beautiful thing – David now has complete control of the customer’s computer. The customer can watch as David fixes the problem and since they are still on the phone together, David can verbally explain what he is doing. This is an incredibly efficient and fast way to do technical support -- and boy are customers wowed.

As a personal example, my husband does the same thing with family members. As the resident computer tutor for our family, my husband received calls from grandparents, parents, cousins, nieces, and nephews to fix their problems. He frequently spent countless hours on the phone trying to help, shall we say, the more “technologically challenged” members of the family who lived far from us. If he had been able to go to their home, he could have fixed the issues himself in just minutes. Now, he goes into his ConnectNow meeting room, sends the family member the URL via email, asks them to share their screen, requests control, and BOOM, computer is fixed and family is once again impressed by his skills.

The remote control feature is one of the most powerful options in ConnectNow . Give it a try and let us know the creative ways you are using remote control.

To see a one minute demo of the remote control feature, go to the ConnectNow Quick Start Guide and click “Requesting Control of a Shared Screen.”

Comments

August 5, 2008
12:09 PM

Steven McClain writes:

Remote control works great - I support very remote sites using this facility. The drawback is when you are using an Apple Mac machine to control a Windows machine - there seems to be no way for me to send a right-click to the controlled Windows machine using my Apple's one button mouse.

The only overall drawback is the latency between clicking on the controlled computer and waiting for my view of the controlled computer to refresh - it can be difficult at times to tell if my click was really effective and I am just waiting for the refresh or if I mis-clicked entirely.

All that being said, Adobe's Connect Now is a true blessing for me. I understand that latency can't be helped so I would rather live with the latency issues than be without Connect Now altogether!!!

August 19, 2008
9:49 PM

Paul Dunn writes:

I heard about this from a friend and am excited to give it a look. Just battling with an "unexpected error" when trying to log in.

September 5, 2008
4:42 PM

Nanos Koolinksi writes:

Does ConnectNow use an encrypted link, between computers?

September 8, 2008
3:01 PM

Suzanne Smith writes:

Yes, all ConnectNow communications are protected using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v3) with 128-bit encryption. Encryption provides a layer of security for data, voice, transactions, and account management interactions.

September 12, 2008
7:32 AM

Anurag Bansal writes:

Yes, definitely, this is the best Acrobat product. ConnectNow rocks.
I have used it several times with my father on the other side of the earth.
He is not so hi-tech and sometimes faces issue with something or the other.
Other day, his Norton anitivirus expired and he was not able to reinstall/upgrade.
While connected thru ConnectNow, I could install Norton on his laptop in India from US. He was very happy. Only thing, he could say, "Anurag could come to India in no time and fix my problem."
Thanks guys for this great service.

January 26, 2009
7:47 AM

Greg Cortina writes:

I have to say finding this program for free was quite a surprise. The looks are clean and clear. I have used competitors "pay for" products and this is as good as any.

I would love to be able to do a "right click" function, that doesn't take me to a flash configuration popup. Maybe that could be an option? It eliminates my ability to let remote users learn by doing.