ISL Light By RemoteDesktopSupport.com (06-09-2005)
Introduction:
Did you ever have one of those days where customers or co-workers kept calling you asking for assistance on an application? They all know you, you?re the ?expert?, and you feel an obligation to help them because they came to you. Now comes the challenge. You have to close your eyes and imagine what their screen looks like. Click start, then run, then this, then that. The less competent the user, the harder the task. Then comes the error message with all the binary code or cryptic characters and the user reads you the whole thing, in its entirety, one character at a time. ? Been there right?
So you think to yourself that a remote control application would really help you fix these things quickly and easily. Sounds easy at first, then you realize that installing and maintaining all those remote control applications becomes a nightmare.
Microsoft?s own remote desktop locks the PC so the user can?t see or show you anything.
With other remote control application you realize often that you are on the other side of a firewall. Foiled again! Seems you?re so close to having your ideal support solution but you just can?t get there. Well until now that is.
ISL light promises to be the solution to you problem.
What is it good for?
ISL light is perfect for the software company or the IT helpdesk doing remote support. It provides the user with a simple light weight application while it gives the ?desk? just the right amount of tools to get the job done. It allows the Desktop support person the ability to access any PC anywhere in the world, any time though any firewall without the client having to ?install? an application.
How does it work?
This is where the real Magic is. This remote solution utilizes the peer to peer technologies that have been the pain in the network manager?s side, and turned them to a truly valuable purpose. The architecture is like this.
The ISL Client:
The ISL Client is the end users interface into the application. It is a really small application (only 733k) and can easily be put on a website for download. It can also be renamed and e-mailed to a user if necessary.
When the user downloads the application they ?invite? you into to work with them. This part of the application is real simple. The ISL Client interface tells the user the firm that is licensed to use this software and a ?session number? line for the user to enter when the support person supplies it. This session number is used to identify the encrypted connection.
The ISL Conference Proxy:
The ISL Conference Proxy is the back end hidden communicator in the whole process. It is the middleman that tunnels the communications between the client and the desk. It keeps track of the source and destinations of the connections and deals with the firewall and NAT issues as well as the encryption. It also tracks the usage and time on the system and provides a wealth of logging information about the connections.
The ISL Desk:
The ISL Desk is the support person desktop application. This application talks to the ISL Conference Proxy, and asks for the session key and then waits for the client to invite the connection to take place. Once this connection is initiated, the chat screen presents itself to both sides to start collaborating. The Desk application then provides crucial tools to communicate with the client in a number of ways. First you have the view only option. The Desk can click on spots on the remote users screen and small arrows will appear to overlay indicating the place the user should look or click. Also you have the pen tool to circle or draw on the users screen in order to highlight different things. Lastly, if the user again ?invites? the Desk to control by pressing F12 then the Desk supporter can take control of mouse and keyboard input to control the session for the user.
The Desk application also supports drag and drop file copy support when the user presses F11.
All of these features provide a wealth of options when dealing with a user on the other end of the connection. One last option the Desk support person has is to show the remote user his or her desktop.
Easy installation procedure:
Installation is a snap. Not the traditional MSI package. The three parts are obtained from the website and customized for you right there. After you enter the required information the files are compiled and provided to you for download.
First, the client application can be branded in order to make it look more integrated in the application. This is done on the remote desktop support website. The web GUI is easy to deal with and provides the user with all of the options of interest. You can include your own company logo as well as user messages important to the remote users as they log in. also you include the public and private address of your ISL Conference Proxy server. This hard codes the address into the client so no user intervention is required. After you download the program from the website, simply e-mail it to the user or post it on a webpage for them to download it from.
Next, the ISL Conference Proxy server is downloaded. Simply download it and unzip the two files contained. One is the program and the other is the license. The .exe file is actually a service that runs on the server. To install, simply put the two files in a folder of your choosing and type the excutablename.exe ?install and reboot the server. Make sure the two files are kept in the same folder.
Configuration of the ISL Conference proxy is done through a web interface. The administrator will login to http://localhost:7610 and enter a username and password and then various options can then be changed to suit your needs. I found that no changes were necessary from the default. One thing to be mindful of is port 80. Make sure that the IIS server is not running on port 80. The last step to perform is to create usernames and passwords for all of the support personnel that will have rights to use the system. This information will be required for the support Desk to obtain a session ID number.
Negative points:
I had to search real hard to find anything negative about this software. The only issue I would change is the client logo location. Anyone purchasing this software is going to brand it with their own company information. The logo space is only 80 by 80 pixels. That?s just not enough for a horizontal logo. This is only a cosmetic issue.
Positive Points:
There are too many to name. The software just works! Every system I tried it on through every firewall was a successful connection. (And God knows a tried a few)
Conclusion - Overall opinion:
For years I have been struggling with PC-anywhere, VNC, Timbuktu, Netop and other remote control applications but the ISL software is just one of a few that I have ever worked with that just works as stated 100%.
ISL Light is fast and secure yet simple and reliable ? I LOVE IT.
Truly, simplicity is the key to success with this. It may have been designed by engineers on the back side but the user interface has everything you need. Nothing more and nothing less.
I liked this software so much I bought it myself to support all of my customers.
Get ISL light at www.isllight.com and I can guarantee you the same success I had.
Final note:
If you can?t or don?t want to run your own ISL Conference Proxy Server, RremoteDesktopSupport.com offers a very fast load balanced ASP subscription model hosted on their servers or even a PayPerUse coupon.
