- Do you need a robust remote assistance platform to support users connecting to your Remote Desktop Services, RemoteApp, Citrix, or Azure Virtual Desktop deployments?
- Do you need to delegate rights to your help desk and support staff so that they can shadow and manage user sessions, without giving them admin rights on your terminal servers and connection brokers?
- Do you need to troubleshoot RDP disconnects and other connection problems on Windows clients?
- Do you need a consolidated RDS Event Viewer allowing you to quickly retrieve events relevant to Remote Desktop Services to troubleshoot your environment?
- Do you run Remote Desktop Services or Citrix in a highly regulated environment that requires continuous monitoring of user session activity, without notification or user consent?
If so, pick up a Premium Management Features subscription for Remote Desktop Commander today.
Starting at only $114.99 per named admin/help desk user per year (or $11.49 per named admin/help desk user per month), a Premium Management Features subscription allows you to extend the functionality of the management features already included in our Remote Desktop Commander Lite and Remote Desktop Commander Suite solutions. It’s also a perfect little “Micro RMM” for your support staff without the big ticket price of other RMMs in the market.
A Premium Management Features subscription provides you with access to:
- Our SuperShadow™ tool, which greatly surpasses the default shadowing capabilities in the Microsoft client (MSTSC), and provides a multi-session monitoring platform for highly regulated industries. SuperShadow works with RDS desktop sessions, Citrix sessions, AVD desktop sessions, and RemoteApp sessions running in RDS or AVD.
- Our Client Connection Analyzer™ tool, which quickly helps you troubleshoot RDP disconnects and other connection problems on the client side, due to Windows updates, registry settings, or client network issues.
- Our consolidated Remote Desktop Services Event Viewer, that helps you quickly review the most relevant events logged by your RDS session hosts and RDS infrastructure servers.
- Our RDS Management Delegation Wizard, which allows administrators to quickly delegate specific Remote Desktop Services management tasks to support staff on all Remote Desktop hosts, without needing to make them administrators on those session hosts or on connection brokers.
- Our WVD Management Delegation Wizard, which allows administrators to quickly delegate specific WVD management tasks to support staff on all WVD hosts in tenant host pools, without needing to make them administrators on those hosts.
- Our Citrix Management Delegation Wizard, which allows administrators to quickly delegate specific Citrix management tasks to support staff across all Citrix app or desktop hosts, without needing to make them administrators on those hosts. This delegation works on all versions of Citrix, not just at the highest Citrix licensing tiers.
Use SuperShadow To Support and Monitor User Sessions Running Full Desktops or RemoteApps Inside Remote Desktop Services, Citrix, and Azure Virtual Desktop Environments
Our SuperShadow tool greatly extends the native shadowing capabilities in Remote Desktop Services:
- Admins, help desk staff, and managers can shadow multiple user sessions at the same time in a single window.
- Admins and support staff can shadow all user sessions connected to a single terminal server at the same time with a single click.
- Admins and support staff can shadow multiple user sessions from different session hosts at the same time.
- Shadowed user sessions stay in a “Mini-View” until expanded to Full View.
- Admins and support staff can rapidly switch between shadowed sessions to help or observe other users.
- Users with multiple monitor sessions can be shadowed successfully by disabling scaling. This allows admins and support staff to scroll and navigate to the monitor of interest.
- Shadowing RemoteApp sessions is fully supported.
- Shadowing all remote and console sessions on Windows Server 2012 R2/2016/2019/2022 AND Windows 8/Windows 10 are completely supported.
- Rapid reconnect support allows support staff to reconnect back to a user session if shadowing is interrupted due to a network issue. Admins can also switch easily between View and Full Control mode.
- NO extra agent software must run or be installed on the target terminal server or workstation – only the existing Microsoft shadow “plumbing” is used to initiate the connection.
- Connection quality metrics from the shadowed session(s) are displayed to the admin / support staff user, so they can determine if the user has a poor connection into the environment.
- Managers in highly regulated industries can monitor the live activity of multiple users at once with or without requesting user consent. This also works in Citrix environments!
- Unlike other popular Remote Assistance platforms, no invitation URLs have to be sent. Admins and help desk staff simply locate the user(s) to shadow in the Remote Desktop Commander client, select them, and then invoke the SuperShadow menu item.
Use the Client Connection Analyzer to Rapidly Troubleshoot RDP Disconnects and Other Connection Issues When Users Call In With Problems
Our Client Connection Analyzer tool makes short work of troubleshooting RDP disconnects in Remote Desktop Services:
- You copy and paste an invitation to download an applet from our website into an email and send it to the user with RDP connectivity problems on their Windows system.
- They download the applet in their browser and run it – no admin rights or installation is required!
- The applet quickly collects Windows update information, Terminal Services Client registry keys, as well as translated RDP disconnect codes, and then it prompts them to email this data back to you in an encrypted file.
- You then open the file they send back in the Client Connection Analyzer, and quickly figure out what is causing issues with their RDP connection. Could it be a bad local networking device on their end? Recently applied (or lack of applied) Windows updates? Or a local Terminal Services Client registry policy or other registry key that changes how MSTSC.EXE works?
- You can do further research on any items you find (Windows updates, registry values, or translated disconnect reasons) with a click of a button, which starts a Google search session.
Use the Consolidated RDS Event Viewer to Rapidly Troubleshoot Issues Happening in Your Remote Desktop Environment
Our Consolidated RDS Event Viewer is a huge time saver, helping you retrieve, analyze, filter, and search for pertinent events from your RDS session hosts and other RDS servers (e.g. brokers and gateways). With this special Event Viewer, you can:
- Choose to view errors & warnings from a broad set of event logs that are typically relevant to RDS, errors & warnings from only RDS related event channels, or all event types from RDS related event channels,
- Select the specific time frame you’re investigating (in order to whittle down the number of events returned and make it easier to find the root cause of problems),
- Customize the specific event logs our software gathers events from,
- Easily group, sort, and further filter these events however you want. Maybe quickly group things by provider, and then by level, so you can see what’s happening within each event family. Perhaps you want to keep all of the events ungrouped, and then search for a username, so you can trace their connectivity through your RDS infrastructure onto a session host. You are in complete control of the grouping, sorting, and filtering and, best of all, our Event Viewer remembers your most recent settings when you summon it again,
- Research the events you’re finding online by clicking the Research Online button, as this will often provide you valuable context and recommendations for potential fixes on technical message boards,
- and much more…
Use the RDS Management Delegation Wizard to Allow Help Desk Staff To Manage Specific Remote Desktop Tasks- Without Making Them Administrators on Session Host Servers, Citrix App or Desktop Servers, AVD Hosts, or Connection Brokers
Larger organizations are often frustrated by the inability to delegate management tasks to support staff when deploying Microsoft Remote Desktop Services. Our RDS, WVD, and Citrix Management Delegation Wizards make this trivially easy to fix.
- Administrators can create a group in Active Directory that will contain all of the Remote Desktop Services / Azure Virtual Desktop (formerly known as Windows Virtual Desktop) / Citrix support staff.
- Admins can then choose the rights they want that Help Desk Staff group to have on their terminal servers, AVD, and Citrix hosts (e.g. shadowing, logoff/disconnect users, send messages, etc), by setting those permissions on a single session host that acts as a template server.
- Admins can also grant that group the ability to query the Connection Broker or the Windows Virtual Desktop broker to obtain up-to-date lists of RDS collections / AVD host pools and the servers in each collection, as well as allow members of the group to read key diagnostic performance counters from the terminal servers.
- Finally, admins can elect which session hosts from specific collections to apply these management policies to. Management permissions from the template server are then cloned to these session hosts.
- A status report is then generated as the RDS/WVD/Citrix Management Delegation Wizard runs.
