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Remote Support Question

E

epinez

Newbie
Hey folks.

I work for a fairly large corporation as Tier 1 support, and I've noticed that the phones that are company issue phones are an assortment of Android phones as well as iPhones. I'm doing some research in an attempt to be more efficient at my job. One of the issues that we deal with on an almost daily basis is helping end users set up their phones to receive their Exchange emails. Simple enough, and we have step by step instructions on how to do it on the various models. However, a huge majority of the people that get issued these phone can barely make phone calls on them, let alone follow directions on how to dig into the account settings and set up their email. Yesterday, I had a guy who after 30 minutes still couldn't figure out how to open his app drawer on his Droid X.

I got to thinking that it'd be supremely useful to be about to remotely support these phone. I know that there's an app called droid VNC server, and it works well. However, you have to be rooted to use that particular app. While I love having my phone rooted, I'm not going to waste my time presenting a method to my bosses that will void warranties, and cause more headaches than it will help. I was wondering if anybody knows of a similar app (pay or free) that will allow for us in the support center to be able to remotely support these phones. I'm not a very good programmer at all, so I don't have a clue on where to begin developing something like this.
 
I don't have the answer for you, but I agree that it would be a BIG deal for corporate IT guys to be able to do remote maintenance on these phones. You might check with your carrier. They might have a method available.
 
Thanks EarlyMon. I have Airdroid, I'll have to see if i can do what I'm thinking with it. I had forgotten about Logmein Rescue. I really like what I saw about Bomgar. I wonder how difficult it is to convince the carriers to allow remote support.

Thanks again!
 
Funny thing you bring this up because I was thinking the same thing not to long ago. We have been ScreenConnect for about 6 months now and I had the same question for them. Below is the repsonse I got from them, basically stating that no software can truely remote into an Android or iPhone because manufacturer and carriers limit it. But like you stated, jailbroken and rooted phones are the exception. I think with a couple of the remote support softwares you can configure email and wifi settings, but hardly worth the price unless you are using it across your whole organization for other issues.

From ScreenConnect the team
"iOS and Android both limit the ability for any tool to connect and show the screen. Some of our competitors have provided limited connectivity to the file system and various other diagnostics, but in my opinion they are useless for the most part.

Look at their sites, and they claim to support it, but it's all very carefully worded. Yes, you can control the screen, if the carrier or manufacturer allows it. Well, guess what? No carriers or manufacturers currently allow it.

With some tools you can support devices that are jailbroken or rooted. But how many of your customers have rooted their phones?

We'd love to add support for this, but for now our hands are tied."
Click to expand...
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You'd think that with a corporate account, they'd allow this type of support. Ask anyone that works in tech support. It's a big pain to try and step someone through a process when they can barely make a phone call on their phone.

Thanks for the posts folks. Maybe someday some CEO of one of the carriers will get pissed off while trying to be supported and make a change. Seems to be what it takes most of the time
 
Thanks for the input danaj. It looks, however, that Team Viewer does the reverse of what I'm looking for. I want to remotely control a phone from a computer. Like has been said, carriers/manufacturers block this access except for rooted phones.
 
I actually contacted a company called Rsupport. I got a free trial of their mobile support product its called RemoteCall. I could successfully connect with Android phones and tabs and they didnt even need to be rooted! When i called i talked to a guy named Jimmy and he set me up with a free trial. Its worth a shot!
 
Just to provide an update to this thread. ScreenConnect recently released an app for Samsung devices. I think some maybe LogMeIn can work with Samsung too. Anyway seems like remote support is finally breaking into the Android space as manufacturers open it up. I don't have much experience with it so far, but used it on my buddy's device a couple times and seems to work seamlessly.
 
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