Features
NetSupport Manager continues to offer the very latest in remote access, PC support and desktop management capabilities and includes a wealth of supporting features to make remote support as simple and flexible as possible.
From a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone, you can support PCs, servers, smartphones, robots, and a range of Windows IoT devices!
The remote control solution recommended by PC Pro! Read the latest review here.
“The perfect on-premises support solution with a wealth of valuable features”
Remote control
Monitor
Support tools
Connectivity
Remote working
Security
Robots and Windows IoT devices
Training and onboarding
New features
Browse, locate and connect to all systems across your LAN, WAN or over the internet.
Fully integrated remote deployment utility: Quickly locate machines local to the Control and send a Wake on LAN command to machines not turned on.
Watch, Share or Control the screen, keyboard and mouse of a workstation, irrespective of colour resolution, network protocol or operating system.
As our dependency on technology grows, so does the operational impact of system downtime, or simply the time lost by not having instant access to key systems.
NetSupport Manager continues to offer a unique proposition for desktop remote control: one solution – available from your desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone – that allows seamless and secure access to workstations and servers across your enterprise, both locally when in the office, and remotely when on the move.
Control
Monitor the screens of all connected systems with real-time thumbnails. Mouse over a selected PC to zoom your view.
Remotely launch applications on remote computers.
Optimise the Remote Control colour quality when managing systems over very slow connections.
Scan multiple systems, cycle through one or multiple workstations displaying their screens on your Control console.
Show your screen, a selected monitor/s or selected applications to any number of connected computers for real-time instruction.
Annotate your screen with a range of drawing tools during a Remote Control session or Show session to highlight areas of focus for an end user or to aid in your presentation or training.
Capture screenshots during a session for future reference.
Record screen activity to a video “replay file” for training or security.
To aid both training and the effectiveness of support, a Whiteboard feature is also provided from within a chat session.
Communicate
Within NetSupport Manager, a user can conduct a two-way chat session between any number of selected users in either text or full audio mode.
Should the Chat recipient not respond, an audible alert can be sent to each workstation. The Chat progress can be sent to late arrivals using the “Send Discussion History” feature and, of course, the contents of a Chat session can be stored for future reference. A user can also send a text-based message to one or more chosen PCs, or even broadcast to all PCs on the network – ideal for alerting your users about an impending server shutdown or similar.
NetSupport Manager’s extended audio support allows one-way talk, listen or full bi-directional audio conversations (both within and outside of a remote control session), as well as seamless streaming of the remote PC’s audible application sounds. Audio support is available over all LAN/WAN and internet-based communications.
End users can also, when enabled, send help requests directly to your helpdesk when they need assistance. The help request can either be sent to all available operators, or directed to specific operators based on user-defined accounts. Incoming requests are displayed within the NetSupport Manager Control user interface.
Auto-grouping of remote systems
Instant overview of IT infrastructure using ‘tree view’, which can be hidden or minimised via Compact Mode
Group remote systems based on pre-defined criteria such as operating system or PC type.
All devices auto-grouped by NetSupport Manager so you can see if any devices need updating.
Create custom groups to reflect your company structure.
Quick access to a ‘recent’ list of connected devices.
Geolocation
When a user connects to a remote PC, if enabled, the location of the device will be calculated based on its external details.
This information allows NetSupport Manager to provide an approximate location of each remote device, displaying the town, state and country (with supporting flag) within the Control application. Devices are automatically grouped by country for easier management. The feature can be enabled or disabled at both the Control and Client or simply managed via Group Policy.
This view can be switched to Icons Mode, where all known devices are listed and overlaid with optional OS icons, location flags, WiFi and battery details – and more.
This unique feature allows a user to keep a constant eye on target systems and immediately identify whether intervention is required. The view also provides key visual information such as OS type, network address, WiFi signal strength and battery life (where appropriate), the current logged-on user and the computer name for easy identification. Users can even choose to view a selected monitor from multi-monitor systems.
File transfer
A user can transfer files between their PC and a user’s workstation using a simple drag and drop interface – even drop a file directly onto the desktop when viewing a remote machine. Plus the downloads folder appears in the Tree view, allowing you to directly transfer in files quickly and easily. Folders that need to be accessed regularly can be added to a ‘Favourites’ folder in the Tree view.
Directories can be automatically synchronised on two workstations and appropriate file types can be edited. NetSupport Manager utilises intelligent Delta File Transfer to reduce data transfer times when overwriting files that already exist, by checking individual blocks of data within a file and only transferring changed data.
Moving files from one PC to another may be useful, but the real benefits come with NetSupport Manager’s ability to copy files from one PC to many in a single action – or “File Distribution”.
A user can distribute files or folders from their PC to multiple Client PCs simultaneously with the minimum of effort. Using this feature, files can be distributed to all connected Client (end user) PCs, selected PCs or a pre-defined group. Files can also be quickly dropped onto the desktop or ‘My Documents’ folder.
View a list of files that the Control has recently worked with (the last 20 files are displayed) and send these to a Client in one click.
NetSupport Manager also features live folders. When initiating a file transfer to a remote PC, the path to any open folders (Explorer windows) on its desktop is displayed at the top of the file transfer view to ease quick selection.
Files on the Client machine can also be seamlessly opened and edited at the Control. Simply double-click the Client file to upload this to the Control machine, make the required changes and it will be copied back to the Client machine.
Remote inventory and system information
A user can obtain a real-time view of the hardware and software installed on each remote PC workstation directly from within their NetSupport Control. NetSupport Manager collects over 80 items of information, specifically about the hardware or environment of each PC.
In addition, a full software inventory of current installed applications is provided as well as all installed OS hotfixes.
To aid further in remote support and diagnostics, a user can also remotely view and, security permitting, control applications in memory, all processes running and currently installed services.
Integration
NetSupport Manager has been designed to work both standalone and as a key component within existing systems. With that in mind, it provides a command line interface, feature access using command line “switches” and support for variables to ensure that, no matter what your environment, NetSupport Manager can be accessed and utilised directly.
Additional support tools
Capture and redirect the remote computer’s print queue to the Control PC.
Launch commands: A local command prompt from a remote system on your PC and a PowerShell window to execute commands at a selected client.
Remotely Power On/Off, Log On/Off or Reboot a Client PC
NetSupport Manager provides a range of connectivity methods to ensure devices are accessible no matter where they are located. First and foremost, NetSupport Manager requires the pre-installation of a “Client” component on any device you wish to connect to, and a “Control” component/app on any device you wish to initiate a remote control connection from. You can remotely deploy a Configuration file containing specific settings for a Client or Control, and use the search facility allowing you to easily locate the settings you are looking for.
Local or Wide Area Networks
Browse and locate computers over a LAN or WAN using TCP/IP or HTTP (legacy support for IPX and NetBIOS).
Store all discovered devices in a company hierarchy, use auto or manually defined groups, either locally or stored centrally.
Define a range of subnets for extended network browsing capabilities locally.
Connect directly to known computers by PC name, DNS name or network address.
Discover and connect to any number of devices in real time across differing environments.
Optimised performance for both wired and wireless connections.
Utilising the internet (The Gateway)
When you want to deliver seamless Remote Control between PCs that may be in different geographic locations and behind different firewalls, then the NetSupport Manager Communications Gateway module provides a stable and secure method for NetSupport-enabled systems to locate and communicate over HTTP. The Gateway module needs to be installed on a PC allocated with a static IP and accessible to both Control and Client PCs, even though both the Control and Client systems can be securely located behind their respective firewalls. The Gateway will only allow connections from computers using the same Gateway Security Key and is used to support staff or customers across different sites or where staff on the road need access to office resources. The Gateway is not needed for LAN/WAN-based communications.
To help ensure that all data sent across the Gateway is encrypted, SSL/TLS certificates can be used. These also allow the Clients and the Controls to verify that the Gateway they are connecting to is genuine. Customers can use their own certification details or allow the Gateway to create and use Let’s Encrypt certificates that automatically renew every 30 days, thereby reducing the danger of out-of-date details creating a security risk.
Two-factor authentication (2FA) is also available for operators connecting to the Gateway to start a remote connection. This extra layer of security uses time-based OTP (TOTP) or DUO Push to authenticate the operator for up to 12 hours. RADIUS authentication is also available and can be used in combination with 2FA, according to the level of verification required for a specific Client.
Load Balancing Gateways
Load Balancing Gateways are now available to help make networks more resilient. To avoid a single point of failure, Client connections can now be automatically spread across multiple cluster member gateways. When connections occur, the main Gateway will either accept them or automatically allocate them to one of the other load balancing gateways using a round robin method. Customers can specify the capacity of each load balancing gateway and if, in the event that one of them goes down, connections are automatically redistributed, thereby minimising any disruption.
The NetSupport Manager Gateway module provides:
Seamless remote support between secure, firewalled networks and computers.
No requirement to make any changes to your existing network or firewall security.
Secure encrypted communications.
Support for up to 6,000 simultaneous Client connections per Gateway.
Load Balancing Gateways to proactively manage Client connections across multiple gateways.
Security key access control.
Ability to filter the Gateway’s list of clients by name, username, address and description.
User-authenticated access control.
Multi-gateway redundancy, removing a single point of failure for your connectivity.
Full transaction logging.
Data in the Connectivity Server Console can be exported to a .csv file for further analysis.
Export Function can create a file showing all connected clients to boost security.
No dependency on an external third-party service.
Intel vPro support
NetSupport Manager can be configured to browse for and locate PCs that have Intel vPro capability, enabling a variety of remote tasks to be performed, even where a NetSupport Client is not installed.
These include the ability to power on, power off and restart the remote machine when performing out-of-hours maintenance; view and reconfigure BIOS information; and, if necessary, boot from a remote operating system image.
When plugged into AC power, the above can be performed wirelessly on a notebook system.
PIN connect
A technician can locate a user anywhere across the enterprise instantly, simply by both parties entering a matching and unique PIN code. Rather than browsing to discover the user’s PC and needing to know their PC name, address details etc, the PIN process allows both parties to handshake seamlessly. The PIN server module can run alone or alongside the Gateway module and is included as standard with NetSupport Manager.
Set up in 5 minutes!
Regardless of where your critical systems, servers and IT users are located (and the platforms used), NetSupport Manager’s award-winning secure remote control tools make it easy for IT teams to quickly respond to IT issues across multiple sites in any geographical location. Useful in scenarios where staff are suddenly forced to work from home, NetSupport Manager also allows them to remotely access their work PC as if they were sitting in front of it. Best of all, it only takes 5 minutes to set up!
Despite its title, NetSupport School isn’t just for schools; it’s a flexible, fully-featured instruction and collaboration solution that is suitable for learners of all ages in all kinds of environments – and included for FREE with NetSupport Manager. It provides a wide range of possibilities for collaborative instruction, assessment and group working – as well as allowing tutors to guide and present directly to trainees’ devices. For greater engagement with the session, NetSupport School also offers tools to allow trainees to interact, question and assess any information presented. It also provides each student with a journal of session content for them to refer to afterwards – for maximum retention.
Optional components
IT Management and Tracking
Mass Notification and Alerting
ServiceDesk and Ticketing
With NetSupport DNA you can track, monitor and manage your IT assets and endpoints, ensuring they are maximised and being used appropriately, whilst identify cost savings and any security threats – all from one comprehensive toolbox.
