Before COVID-19 accelerated remote work for almost everyone, IT professionals and the users they supported were often in the same workspace (i.e., the office), meaning an IT professional could simply walk over to an employee’s device and resolve a support issue on-site.

Those days are over and now help desks are working from home and supporting fully remote workforces at a time of social distancing, where working from home is everyone’s “new normal” (and where IT is increasingly supporting personal devices that can introduce even more complexity).

In today’s business landscape of ongoing uncertainty, remote support for a remote workforce is here to stay. Gaining remote access to user devices is a crucial factor for the success of IT support. The capacity to set up unattended access on a user's computer or server empowers IT to provide technical support at any time, even in the user’s absence (maybe during lunch or after-hours).

That remote capability also needs to be deployable en masse which is why I'm excited to announce the launch of Rescue Access Wizard. The Access Wizard enables businesses to mass deploy unattended access for Windows and Mac (coming in October) devices. Let’s explore this capability.

Who Access Wizard Helps, and How

Rescue Access Wizard will help both internal IT teams (such as help desks), as well as field service teams that own the devices they’re supporting. An important and frequently requested feature, Access Wizard will improve the ease and administration of Rescue by giving IT support the ability to mass deploy unattended access endpoints to devices.

In its previous incarnation, IT support needed more time to establish a remote session to set up Unattended Access, which resulted in an overall lack of scalability. For IT organizations, as well as support organizations that own/lease the devices they support, this friction of time and effort limited the widespread adoption and use of unattended access. Access Wizard resolves that friction, giving Rescue customers the ability to mass-deploy the Unattended Access service to multiple Windows and Mac OS devices at one time.

3 Major Benefits Rescue Access Wizard Offers

1. Scalability and time savings

Rescue Access Wizard gives customers the ability to push out unattended access to hundreds or thousands of devices through a single installer, which will save IT professionals hundreds of hours and ultimately enable them to get much greater value out of Rescue. Saving time and effort ultimately improves the effectiveness and engagement of IT professionals, while also allowing them to scale support and serve employee/user productivity.

2. Easier machine management in the admin center

Admins will be able to view the number of machines associated with each MSI they have created. They can easily share these machines with other groups and users within the admin center, if necessary. These improvements make transparency and collaboration around issue resolution easier (and, again, simultaneously enhances the productivity of end-users).

3. Flexibility

Each installer can be tailored to the requirements of the devices being supported such as for how long unattended should be available, times of day the device should be accessible, and who should have access. The installer can also be shared or deployed in multiple ways, such as by pushing it out in group policies or sharing the installer with vendors. With this level of customization, customers have more control and flexibility in how their UA devices are initially set up. At times of uncertainty, maintaining flexibility in how you support users has never been more important.

Rescue continues to add functionality and features like the Access Wizard to make it easier and more efficient for IT and technical support teams to support their end-users at scale. At a time when remote work has become the new normal, Access Wizard is an important and timely feature that improves the productivity of both IT professionals and the users they support.

Note: The functionality of unattended access itself has not changed. This release is simply (and importantly) providing a new deployment mechanism for the existing functionality.

For more information about Rescue Access Wizard and how it can empower support for your remote users/workers, reach out to us here.