Business Software & Enterprise Resource Management
Making the most of your business softwareArchive for Communications
Accessing User Sites Remotely
Remote communications technology for accessing your business software has become relatively commonplace these days. And the usual method of choice tends to be Remote Desktop connecting to Microsoft Terminal Services.
Although there are some justifiable gripes out there relating to printing functionality,Terminal Services is good fast software for accessing your business information off site. It’s so good in fact that users generally don’t notice if they are accessing data off site or locally. Terminal services can also provide superior performance, in many cases, when compared to traditional LAN access. This is because business software, which is essentially database software, doesn’t have to shuffle lots of data across a LAN connection.
And another benefit is the ability to provide on-line training and technical support when users run into difficulties and require troubleshooting and other forms of technical assistance.
However, in situations where remote access using Terminal Services has not been set-up–usually at smaller sites where there are cost issues or lack of access to local IT personal to do the work–locating and solving problems for users can become difficult, and on-site visits costly–especially if an interstate flight is involved!
So what is to be done in situations like these? Fortunately there are now a number of different web service based options to choose from that can get users connected to your technical staff without the expense or technical expertise involved in setting up a terminal server.
One good suite of products designed for different remote access functions are provided by LogMeIn. They have software for remote backup, on-the-fly access (users receive an email and click on a link that installs remote access for them automatically), IT Management, and for other purposes. The IT management tool for example, has great features for monitoring the health of a PC remotely or for transferring files from your desktop to the remote desktop. (Features, actually, that are not found in products such as Terminal Services). However, some of these products are costly. LogMeIn has a free version, but I’ve found the free version difficult to install. It is not a good solution for a non-technical user who needs immediate tech support.
Web conferencing software such as WebEx or GotoMeeting are also good at what they do; permitting you to view and operate a remote user’s desktop as well as communicate via various tools to assist with over-the-net training. Again a downside of these tools is that they have a corporate orientation so subscriptions to them can be be costly.
Which brings me to the product CrossLoop. This is a free product that’s easy to install. Send your client an email link or direct them to the website, and they should be up and running in around a minute. When CrossLoop starts, a unique identification number is generated and your client forwards this to you. Type this into your side of CrossLoop and within moments both of you are connected. You can operate the user’s computer remotely and both of you can see what is going on, making the software ideal for over the phone and net training. CrossLoop doesn’t have a lot of features, but it does what it was designed to do quickly and easily.
Making Fax As Effortless As Email
Up until fairly recently, integrating fax into your business application, whether general purpose accounting or ERP, was not a trivial undertaking. There are lots of good network based fax applications around, and one of the better ones is GFI FAXMaker. If you’ve got the technical skills onboard and have the phone lines already, this is a good product to go with. It can act as a printer driver or ‘route’ your email and convert your attachments into documents suitable for faxing automatically.
The downside of products such as this is that they are not necessarily easy to set-up, and there is a cost involved in maintaining them. New machines get added to a network as older machines get retired, and extra work has to be done to get the faxing working. And then we’ve also had clients who have had mysterious problems with fax hardware cards, and issues of that sort. (In other words, the usual sorts of problems people experience when managing a technical environment.)
A greatly simplified approach is to farm off the duty of faxing documents to a web service. We use UTBox but there are others to choose from and they generally work in similar ways. With a web service such as this, you email them what you want faxed, and they handle the technical details of converting that email into something a fax machine can understand at it’s intended destination. If the fax doesn’t make it to it’s intended recipient, an email is sent back to you notifying you of the problem.
The way this works is that the fax number is placed in front of the UTBOX web address like so:
but other than that, faxing is no slower, and certainly no more difficult, than sending a regular email.
You can also use the same web based fax service to receive faxes. In this case, they arrive in your email outbox as scanned documents.
One thing to consider is the pricing for such a service. Usually the service provider will charge a relatively ‘flat’ 6 monthly or annual fee, but that will typically cost considerably less than a monthly dedicated fax line rental. One thing to watch, though, is there is usually a small fee charged per page send. So if you are in the habit of sending out faxes that are a dozen or more pages in size (such as catalogues) this may not be an economical way to go. But if you typically send faxes that take the form of invoices or statements of 1 or 2 pages, then the cost per fax sent usually turns out to be modest.
The other important factor to consider is whether your accounting software or business application is aware of web based faxing services and can provide some internal support for them. For example, using our CAPITAL application suite, you define a ‘fax server’ send string like so:
$fax$@fax.utbox.net
and then when sending faxes, you only need to enter the fax number. Using the above codes, CAPITAL will reformat the number into the format required by the fax service automatically. Just tick ‘Fax’ instead of ‘Print’ and type in the fax number–if it’s not retrieved from your customer or supplier record by default, although normally it would be.
Keep in mind that a fax based web service may require you to include both the country code and the local area code in front of the fax number. For example, CAPITAL can make this easier by allowing you to specify a default international country code for all your numbers.
But even if the business software you are using, or your email software, doesn’t support any of these enhancements, typing the fax number plus the UTBOX web address manually, will still be faster than walking over to the fax machine!
