A few weeks back I blogged about using UltraVNC for remote support. Since then I’ve used it a few times to troubleshoot problems for clients in Arizona, Chicago, etc and it works great. A picture truly is worth 1000 words. No more dialogues that go like this:

Client: I’m getting an error with the system.
Developer: What error message are you getting?
Client: I don’t know, it’s just blank.
Developer: Which part of the screen is blank?
Client: The system is blank, like I just said.
Developer: Hmm. Ok…can you send me a screenshot?
Client: How do I do that?
[5 minutes of screenshot tutorials go by, ending with the developer getting several blank emails but no actual screenshots]
Developer: Well, let’s skip the screenshot for now. Can you go to the page with the error and copy and paste it into an email for me?
Client: Ok, here goes.
[a few minutes later, a blank email arrives in the developer’s inbox]
Developer: That didn’t come through, can you try selecting more of the system and pasting it into an email for me?
Client: *sigh* Ok, I’ll try again. Here it comes.
[a few minutes later, an email containing the system’s URL arrives in the developer’s inbox]
Developer: Hmm. Can you just copy and paste the entire browser window into an email?
Client: Isn’t that what I just did?

…and so on, ending in a frustrated client, an exasperated developer, a broken system, and world suffering. Of course, the issue will turn out to be an empty dropdown or something, which you could have found out in 10 seconds if you could actually see the client’s computer screen.

So, if you have remote clients whose desktops you need to see for troubleshooting, software installation, diagnostics, & whatnot but you’re too cheap to pay for WebEx, et al. you should check out UltraVNC SingleClick. I had some instructions in my previous blog post, but let me know if you want me to put up a step-by-step tutorial on setting it up.