K2 has so many great features that we all know and love and they make a day in the life of us IT guys, better than ever, but did you know about our end-user portal and machine role features of Live Connect? This is a great way to show your users some love and give them the ability to perform some self-service before calling.
If the concept of a user portal account is new to you, you can find more information on creating end-user portal accounts under the Agent Tab in the Portal Access function, allowing you to create a username and password for an end-user to access your Kaseya server, where they’ll be driven directly to this portal interface for their assigned machine – allowing them to remote control to their desktop from anywhere.
Manipulating exactly what an end-user sees through this interface is important, as many of the more advanced features of the single machine interface or “Live Connect” are not really end-user focused.
This is where Machine Roles come into play, giving you the ability to fine-tune the interface delivered for end-users. Most often advanced features can be turned off. The out of the box settings for the Default machine role enable all functions, giving the end-user something that looks like this:
We can disable a number of functions to clean this interface up and simplify it. To start, we need to modify the ‘Default’ machine role. This can be accessed on the System tab under “Machine Roles”:
Click the Access Rights tab, then click Set Role Access Rights. You’ll see a window like this pop up:
Our goal will be to disable functions we don’t deem critical for an end-user experience. Expand out some of the options, and uncheck the things you want to hide, for example:
Once you’re satisfied, press OK.
The next time the portal is accessed, either via the system tray or if you’ve created portal logons for your users, you’ll see something like this:
You will notice some of these tabs are grayed out – these will only light up and become accessible if I am logging into the Kaseya interface as an end-user and remote controlling my assigned desktop. This particular screenshot was taken when loading the portal interface by double-clicking my Kaseya agent icon.
That wraps up this week’s tips & tricks! Speical thanks to Ben Lavalley for writing this one up for us.
Have you done something cool with your end user portal? Share in the comments!
