Citrix refines online support tool

Features enhanced management tools

Access infrastructure specialist Citrix has released a new version of its online technical support tool GoToAssist, featuring enhanced management tools.

The company said that the new edition will enable IT staff and IT service providers to offer cheaper and more seamless technical support to users.

Experts said the system, which lets IT staff remotely access machines to make modifications, will be particularly attractive to firms that need to support mobile staff or remote branch offices.

A key enhancement of GoToAssist 7 is a dashboard that allows IT staff to monitor queries as they come in, and the activity of teams of support staff. This could ensure that if there is a sudden rush of requests it is handled promptly.

An agent-to-agent session transfer feature enables the seamless, direct transfer of a support session from one support team to another, which allows managers to allocate staff to tasks more productively, according to Citrix.

Speaking at the company's annual iForum Global user event in Las Vegas, David Jones, vice-president of business development for Citrix, said the new functionality would enable faster, more reliable support services.

"As hardware prices continue to fall, the real cost [to firms] is now people and time," he added. "What really kills the IT budget is support staff costs and their travel time [for onsite checks], and these are the things [GoToAssist] can alleviate."

The product will particularly appeal to helpdesks that have been outsourced to third-party service providers, according to David Friedlander of analyst firm Forrester.

"While there are tools on company WANs and LANs that can do the job equally well, once outside the company perimeter it becomes difficult to make these tools work properly," Friedlander explained. "GoToAssist is really without equal for over-the-internet support and it has always been particularly appealing because its service model requires no infrastructure."

Separately, Citrix also announced new certification programmes for
its Access Suite 4, which it said would enable network and system administrators to familiarise themselves with parts of the system through e-learning courses.