Technology Advisor

Want to know the most fascinating way to discover things you never knew your computer could do? Give the keyboard and mouse to a small child for just a minute or two.

My wife IM'd me last week to tell me that our 18-month-old had climbed on the desk and stomped on the keyboard, "and now everything on the screen is small. Can you fix it?"

Not long ago I would have tried to help with suggestions like, "Do you see a little button thingy with a plus and minus...or maybe arrows. It should be on the top menu...maybe."  But instead, I logged in, saw what she was describing, and fixed it (BTW, hold down Ctrl and scroll your mouse wheel to resize web pages).

So how was I able to become such a technological hero in my wife's eyes (just go with me on this)? I was lucky that the folks at Citrix Online had recently given me a login to try out their new product.

Citrix Online is a Sage partner and the maker of GoToAssist Corporate, which is the tool our Customer Support team uses to provide remote Peachtree support. They recently launched a simple, more affordable version of their Corporate product called GoToAssist Express.

Remote desktop sharing is nothing new. It's been around for quite some time in various forms, but the first thing I noticed about this particular product is the simplicity. There are no unnecessary clicks between you and a new support session. The interface is uncluttered, with buttons and menus that display in distinct colors when available, making navigating to relevant options very intuitive. And the GoToAssist Express team clearly leveraged the nifty screen-sharing and routing technology of their other products to make performance quite fast.

If you're a support provider, you can connect with your customer's computer by clicking the GoToAssist Express icon in your system tray and selecting Start Support Session. You then tell your customer to go to www.fastsupport.com and type in the support key you read off your screen. Seconds later, you're looking at your customer's screen, just as he sees it. What's really nice is that the remote client is not required to download or install anything (which would be just another step you'd have to blindly walk them through).

If you sometimes provide scheduled support that doesn't require your customer to be sitting at his computer (possibly maintenance tasks that have to be done after hours), GoToAssist Express' Unattended Support feature gives you 24/7 access to the computers of anyone who has granted you permission. This is great, for example, for remotely installing upgrades for multiple clients at the same time. While testing this feature I tried the Reboot option and found that my connection was automatically restored as soon as the client computer came back on line. Very slick.

If you're a good multi-tasker, you'll appreciate the multiple session capabilities. Let's say a customer calls while I'm running reports on the machine of Customer #1. I click New Session and immediately start a connection with Customer #2. Thumbnails of the screens of both customers appear at the top of my control panel, allowing me to quickly switch between them and up to a total of eight customers. And when I'm done printing those reports to PDF, I use the built-in file transfer tool to copy them to my desktop.

While GoToAssist Express is a "light" version of its Corporate sister product, it's definitely not light on features. There are more than I can cover in this quick review, but my favorites include multi-monitor support, chat, remote diagnostics, and session reports that are particularly handy if you bill for your support services, but aren't necessarily diligent about tracking your time online. Those reports can include the notes you take on each session.

The bottom line is that this is one of those products that get its high marks because it just works. If you're a support provider, you know it doesn't take many extra steps or minutes for your customers to get frustrated with a sub par remote support solution. GoToAssist Express is simple and fast. Take a look at the free trial they offer, then come back and tell us what you think.

Mike Savory

Peachtree Product Manager