Tech console feature overview, Manage – Faronics Insight Tech Console User Manual

Page 45

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Tech Console Feature Overview

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Insight Tech Console User Guide

Tech Console Feature Overview

Tech Console includes a number of features designed to provide IT and Tech Coordinators with
tools to help them accomplish their daily tasks. All of the features are grouped under one of four
menu items: Manage, Monitor, Restrict, Communicate, and View. The most commonly used
features are also accessible by selecting one of the toolbar buttons.

Manage

Inventory

View the hardware components and installed software of the discovered user machines.

The first time the Tech Console is launched, a background scan process begins that connects with
each user machine in the discovered list. It queries the device for its specific hardware and
software data and gathers that data in a file that is stored on the Tech Console. This process can
take several minutes to gather from the client machine. Once a scan is completed, however, the
data is quickly displayed in a pop-up window in the console when Inventory is selected from the
Manage menu or the toolbar button.

If a Report Server has also been installed, Tech Console will post that data to the Report Server for
each machine in the User List. After the initial scan is completed, the Tech Console checks the
machine once a day for new information and re-posts that data to the Report Server.

Multiselect is not available for the Inventory feature as the data is, of course, unique to each
machine. As the quantity of data gathered per device is quite extensive, you can also search this
information to quickly find data in a specific category or field. The inventory data is aggregated in
the Report Server, so you are able to view summary information such as how many devices have a
certain application installed or what number of machines are running a particular operating
system. You can also find the time that a machine was last scanned by looking at the Last Update
column in the Computer List report.

Security

Compare a machine to the “Healthy computer” definition, and remotely modify those settings for
the security categories determined.

Tech Console provides a default definition of a Healthy computer based on recommendations by
Microsoft and Apple for their respective operating systems. This definition “checklist” is available
in the Security tab of the Preference item in the Manage menu.

The Security tab lets you configure the settings that define a “Healthy computer” in your
environment. Each user machine is compared to these settings and if the setting on the user
machine matches this definition, then the machine is determined to be “healthy” and a green
shield will be displayed in the User List. If even one category doesn’t match this definition, then
the shield will turn red.

For example, if you were to check every box in the Security Preferences tab, all machines would
always be displayed as healthy as every possible choice would be covered, i.e. Anti-Virus
protection could be present or it could be absent, but that case would be true for every machine.
Alternately, if you cleared every setting in this dialog, all user machines would always be displayed
“unhealthy” or “At Risk” with red shields in the User List. This is because no machine could both
have and not have Virus Protection at the same time.

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