Step 6. Run Reports

Now that you're observing and controlling the drones, you'll learn that it takes a rare breed to sit at a console all day long trying to catch people downloading porn and illegal movies or engaging in excessive chatting and other dilly-dallying on your corporate dime. Save your sanity: Run reports to find out what those slackers really do all day, any day—or to find out what's consuming all of the disk space on workerbee #9's machine, or who's pinching company secrets on a USB flash drive. Don't forget, Mister or Madame, that you're liable for any pirated software, illegal downloads, and other contraband on company hardware - find and remove it before the goon squad comes knocking. Select Macs in the observation screen and click Reports. Then select the category you want from the pull-down menu and pick specific fields from the list. Select which Macs you want to run reports on from the lower list and click Get Report.

The ARD administrator sees all and knows all - but has anyone done a background check on him?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Step 7. Go Hands-On

Watching and reporting are one thing, but taking over (or sharing) a user's keyboard and mouse is the kind of power that can really make people hate you, so use it responsibly. Select one client from ARD's observation deck and click Control to load that Mac's screen into a new ARD window - when you roll your cursor into that window, you assume control of the other Mac. Who gets priority is up to you; open Remote Desktop > Preferences > Control & Observe and opt to either share control of remote Macs or seize it outright.

Here we're tweaking ARD's preferences on the admin Mac while watching one of the chair-warmers waste time online. Watch us make rude posts from his account!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Step 8. Geek Out in Bulk with Unix

Unix isn't so intimidating when you've got ARD's point-and-click access to a stable of common commands for tweaking the network and system setup, and other miscellany to keep your clients happy and well adjusted. Plus, if you have a favorite command, you can save it to the list - ARD calls them Templates, for no good reason that we can tell. As with Reports, select the target Macs in the observation window, click the icon (Unix this time, obviously), then pick your poison from the pull-down menu, tweak any available parameters, and verify which clients you want to hit.

Don't know Unix from a eunuch? Command Templates make using Unix point-and-click simple.

More...