A common question we get is “How Do I Get To The Windows Taskbar In Coherence?”. (We’ll answer that, we swear!) Accessibility is a major factor that brought the term “ease of use” to modern technology. The Mac Dock and Windows Taskbar were even remarkably named “Access Hubs.” As you may already know, Coherence view mode in Parallels Desktop […]
The post How Do I Get To The Windows Taskbar In Coherence? appeared first on Parallels Blog.
Guest blog by Support staff: Paul Christopher Nathaniel Looking for a faster Parallels Access performance? Sometimes you need access to your Windows on the go—whether you need to send some file, or just want to edit something on the fly. But network connection drops again and again when you are right in the middle of […]
The post How To Tune Parallels Access For Faster Performance appeared first on Parallels Blog.
Today we can’t imagine our life without information technology. Access to all this data wouldn’t be possible the actual network connection. Almost all the modern devices nowadays have a way to connect to the the network. Your Mac and Parallels Desktop virtual machine are no exception! There are several network modes in Parallels Desktop which we covered is one […]
The post Network Troubleshooting your Parallels Desktop VM appeared first on Parallels Blog.
Guest blog by Sylvester Sebastian Nino, Parallels Support Team Set the default platform for your browser and email Lets speak some truth: We all have our favorites, but there isn’t a perfect browser on the market – they all have “perfect” elements, but are scattered among many browsers. While Safari makes sharing easier, it hasn’t completely sorted […]
The post Set the Default Platform for Your Browser and Email appeared first on Parallels Blog.
Spiceworks has announced a free cloud-based one size fits all Help Desk system for enterprises. It promises to give IT professionals a custome made system with unlimited admin and end-user seats, no hosting or storage costs, constant updates, free support and access to a community of millions of peers.
This plan is to for IT professionals to waste less time on mundane tasks and more time supporting their organisations, says Spiceworks. The system has custom dashboards to give instant overviews of help desk operations and rapid analysis of events within the cloud. Auto-assignment helps IT professionals automate their help desk system with rules that assign tickets to specific technicians. This could speed the process of fixing faults and cut the time spent managing tickets, says Spiceworks.
User portals will allow end-users to submit help desk requests through a website instead of email. The option for customised user portals could help improve usability by personalising help desk experiences for end-users and clients, says Spiceworks.
“We have four IT professionals using Spiceworks’ cloud-based Help Desk system to support 27 company locations across Arkansas and Missouri,” said Galen Ransone, IT technician at Greenway Equipment. “It’s already proved effective in supporting employees who need technology assistance. The fact that it’s free makes it even more enticing.”
Spiceworks also introduced a new beta version of its mobile application for road warriors who might want to manage their cloud-based Help Desk through Google Android and Apple tablets and smartphones. Spiceworks has also launched new features and functions for its Network Monitor and cloud-based Help Desk solutions for IT professionals, which keep tabs on server and network devices in real-time.
Nicole Tanzillo, director of help desk product marketing at Spiceworks, explained that the initiative is in response to demand from clients. “IT professionals have spoken and they want great tools designed for them that work,” said Tanzillo.
The vast majority of businesses now use cloud computing but most feel ripped off, according to a study.
Research firm Vanson Bourne has canvassed a sample of 200 chief information officers (CIOs) for their feedback on cloud computing. The results show that almost all (186 out of 200) use the cloud in some form. However, almost as many of them (160 of the 200 CIOs) agreed that ‘ripped off’ was the multiple choice answer that best described their feelings over support services.
If the survey was statistically significant and was representative of industry wide sentiment, then 80 per cent of British businesses feel they are paying a high premium for basic support on their cloud services. While the penetration of cloud computing is high, with 93 per cent of businesses now using ‘some form’ of the service, some 84 per cent of the total sample said that it has not met their expectations on reducing support.
The most common problems presented by the survey were: slow response times to customer service queries (which was identified by 47 per cent of the sample), call handlers lacking technical knowledge (41 per cent), over-use of automated phone lines (33 per cent), complicated escalation processes (28 per cent) and a lack of 24/7 cover (19 per cent).
The results suggest that support from service providers is poor, according to Richard Davies, CEO of service provider ElasticHosts, which sponsored the independent study.
Companies adopt cloud in order to remove the headache of managing IT and the burden on in-house IT staff, so they expect to provide less support themselves, Davies said. For precisely that reason, the cloud service provider must not run a skeleton support service, Davies argued. Too often, according to Davies, companies have to pay a high premium to get the same level of service they got from their internal support.
“When using any service, you want to be able to ask questions, whether to learn how to configure a server or to query a bill. You should be able to do this without having to pay a hefty premium,” said Davies.
Asking a cloud service a technical question frequently involves a long wait and a call that is re-routed through an automated service. Ultimately a human call handler will admit they don’t know the answer, according to Davies.
“The industry should be doing more to help customers,” said Davies, “the first contact for support should be an engineer with strong technical understanding of the service.”
Guest blog by Dhruba Jyoti Das, Parallels Support Team Your home may be packed with more than one Mac plus other devices, but if you’re like a lot of other households, you have a central “family” Mac. This is the computer located in a high-traffic area such as the living room, kitchen, etc. Each family member […]
The post Sharing Your Parallels Desktop Virtual Machine Between Multiple Mac User Accounts appeared first on Parallels Blog.