Remote IT Support

Atera provides you with the ability to deliver Remote IT Support to your clients without even needing to actively take over their remote PCs. Through the Atera UI you can stop and start services, tasks and programs, uninstall applications, run scripts, install patches and with the Command Prompt access, run almost any command. All this and more is at your fingertips with the Atera UI allowing you to effortlessly provide Remote IT Support for your client base.

What kind of remote actions can you take?

Let’s take a look at some of the Remote IT Support actions you can perform on your clients’ endpoints that are online and have an Atera Agent installed on them.

Stop and Start Services: At any time, you have the option of stopping and restarting services. So for example, if your client complains of a hung service that is causing their computer to be stuck, you can hard stop this service from the Atera UI and then restart it again at a later point in time.

Stop and Start Tasks: You can, at any time, choose to stop and restart tasks that have frozen or are not responding. This dialog box shows you the Pid of the task and the amount of CPU it is using up, so that you can stop a task that, for example, is using too much of the CPU. You will probably get an Alert telling you that the CPU threshold has been passed and/or a phone call from the end customer complaining that his computer is frozen. You can easily view the list of tasks and see which is the problematic one and close it down.

Uninstall Programs: You can view details on programs and even uninstall certain programs that you feel necessary to delete to solve various issues. Some examples of unnecessary programs that your clients might have on their PCs include annoying browser toolbars, various PC cleaner apps (which are either useless or might even be harmful), various junky programs from the Manufacturer and modern Apps Bloatware.

Install Patches: You can see a list of available patches to be installed and you can directly install patches on the Agent as necessary.

View Logs: Via the Event Viewer, you can view in-depth information on logged events in areas such as Application, Hardware Events, Security, etc.

View User Activity: In a situation where there are lots of users working simultaneously on a Server, you can see a list of all the users currently working. This might be useful in a situation where let’s say, you want to perform a maintenance check and need to know which users to contact to stop working temporarily on the Server.

Command Prompt: The command line lets you string together hundreds of Unix building-block utility programs. Each of those programs does one little job–such as listing your files or searching for particular text. The command line gives you the glue to put these programs together in an almost infinite number of ways. It allows you to perform thousands of operations with efficiency and speed and is a useful alternative to the UI. Many of our MSPs use the command line for easy programming.

Run Scripts: You can select and run a script on the Agent. Examples of useful scripts that you can choose to run include Installing 7Zip on the computer, Restart Windows Spooler, etc. Note that you can also use the IT Automation Script to utilize scripts and get feedback through the IT Automation reports.

Logout/Restart/Shutdown: You can control the endpoint by shutting it down, restarting it and even logging out the end client. You might want to do this in a situation, for example, where the end user has unexpectedly gone home and left his computer running.

Empower your Clients

Allow your Clients to Open Help Desk Tickets: Activate the HelpDesk agent on the end user’s workstation and then your client can open support tickets and have access to their very own Customer Portal where they can view their tickets and any replies you make to their tickets. The ability for them to open tickets on their desktop via the HelpDesk agent is best practice as the ticket contains information fields for the client to fill out which will greatly assist in you being able to troubleshoot and solve their problems. In addition, you can also provide them with a shortcut key (Ctrl + F12) which pops up the ticket form with a screenshot of the screen they were currently viewing.

Use Webroot to Take Control

All the above remote IT Support Services are available through the Atera UI. In addition, via integration with Webroot, you can actually take control of the end user’s workstation and work on their computer as if you were the user. This is useful for those situations where the problem is slightly more complex and it is too time consuming to navigate the client through a maze of windows and clicks. Instead you can simply take over control of their PC and troubleshoot yourself.