Best Practices and Procedures for Remote Support Appointments

Be Ready for the Appointment 

When a user calls in on time for a scheduled appointment, the tech should be ready with the ticket open and be aware of what the user’s issue is. The user should not be sitting on the phone for two and a half minutes while you get acclimated. 

 

This is disrespectful of the user’s time, and makes us look disorganized.

Fifteen seconds is appropriate.

Do not tell the user you need a moment to “switch gears from another appointment.” The customer has the right to expect that when a tech gets on the call with them, the tech is focused on that person and ready to help them.

 

On the rare occasion when you have a back-to-back appointment, you can and should apologize to the user for the delay getting the ticket pulled up, as this should not be the norm; but there is no need (and it is not professional) to discuss previous appointments, or coming back from lunch, or any other explanations.

If the user calls in more than a few minutes late, then it’s understandable that you might have moved onto something else and need a few minutes to get on track. That is the only situation where that is appropriate.

Remote Access to Customers' Computers

There are various ways to access customers' computers and servers remotely. 

ScreenConnect

This is the primary method of remote access. The main purpose of ScreenConnect is to provide remote access for our techs as needed. 

(If you are remoting into a workstation you must have the user's permission, as we never want to "surprise" the user by suddenly taking control of her computer while she is working.)

If your ticket is in the "appointment scheduled - no user there" queue, then you don't need to request permission before logging on. However, if your appointment is in a different queue, then you should be on the phone with the customer and confirm that it's okay to connect. Generally, the user is expected to call in for a remote appointment. (We don't want techs wasting time chasing users down.)

The URL for SC is https://access.geekgirlsit.com./ 

You log in using your Azure AD (Office 365) credentials as our SC instance supports SSO. 

ScreenConnect is also useful for getting a quick idea of whether a computer is online. (This can also be checked in the Datto RMM portal.) 

The groups you will see in the SC dashboard on the left are dynamic. They are populated by applying specific rules to a group. Usually the rules relate to the company name field, so it's important to be consistent when entering the company name. 

Splashtop for Business Portal

If ScreenConnect shows an RMM computer as offline, you may want to verify the computer is actually offline and not just having an issue with ScreenConnect. for this purpose, you can attempt to remote in through Splashtop. For customers who have Splashtop as part of their plan (check Remote Access asset in IT Glue), log into our my.splashtop.com portal with your credentials.

Datto RMM Portal

For customers who don't have Splashtop installed, there are several remote access options in the Datto RMM portal. 

RDP

We have local RDP access to the servers. This means our customers' servers can be accessed from another machine on the network even if ScreenConnect is not working. 

Most of the servers also have iDrac for access if even Windows is offline. See IT Glue "LOM" flexible asset for more specific details on each customer. 

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