The office after hours

A good deal of IT work happens when nobody is at the desk. Updates are installed at night. A server is restarted on a Sunday. A shop's till computer is fixed before the doors open. For all of that, there is nobody to click Accept.

Unattended access is the answer, and it deserves a plain description, because it is also the feature people worry about most.

It is off until the owner turns it on

A new installation of Vukalink cannot be reached unattended. The owner of the computer has to open the program, switch on unattended access and set a password. Until they do, every connection needs a person at the screen to accept it.

Each computer sets its own rules

The settings live on the computer being reached, not on the technician's. The owner decides whether it is allowed at all and can change the password or switch the feature off at any time. A technician cannot grant themselves more than the computer permits.

It still shows

An unattended session is not a hidden one. The same banner and coloured frame appear on the screen, so anyone who walks past sees that a session is running and who is connected. Sessions are written to the history on the technician's side as well.

Waking a sleeping machine

Paid plans include Wake-on-LAN, for starting a computer on the office network that has been shut down. It can save a journey.

How many

The Free version allows two unattended computers, enough for your own office and one more. Premium allows 100 for each technician. Enterprise has no limit, and adds tools for managing many machines at once, such as a command console, services, installed programs and inventory, some of which work without sharing the screen at all.

A word of advice

Choose a long password that is used nowhere else, and switch unattended access off on machines that no longer need it. The feature is safe when it is treated as a key to the building. We have tried to make the program behave that way by default.