This week we have seen a major release of ISL Light which comes with over 40 new features and improvements to your favourite remote desktop tool. This includes the improved grouping and sharing feature, which now allows setting different permissions for each member of a group.
Share computers and assign a role to each team member
When you have a long list of computers which you access remotely, you’d usually organise them into relevant groups to make your list more transparent and your work easier. Since remote support is often a team-based activity, you might share a group of computers with other users within your ISL Online account.
Step 1: Share a group with a user
Choose a group of computers. Click on the menu on its right. Select “Share”.
So, you have organised your remote computers into meaningful groups and shared them with other users to give them access. Now, with the recently released ISL Light 4.4, you can set different permissions for each of these users and determine who does what on your team.
Step 2: Assign a role to a user
When you add users, you can now assign them roles, which give them different permissions:
- Connect Only: A user can only connect to computers listed within a group and cannot move, edit, share or delete computers or groups.
- Computer(s) Manager: A user can connect to and manage computers listed within a group. That means they can move, edit, share and delete computers, but the user cannot edit, share or delete the group.
- Group Admin: A user can connect to and manage computers listed within a group, as well as manage the group permissions. That means they can edit, share or delete the group.
To add a user, check the box on the left, so it turns green and set permissions for this user. You can change the role of the user later on.
Computer groups can have multiple Group Admins, all of them can be degraded or removed except for the one who created the group.
There is another nifty novelty you might want to know about. You can now see the names of group members by clicking on the user’s icon.
Find a user’s icon under the name of the group. Click on it and the list of group member names will pop out.
What else is new in ISL Light 4.4?
Our production team, including developers, designers and the CTO have been busy programming and polishing the new ISL Light 4.4. Apart from the must-have remote desktop trends, it is our clients’ feedback that gives us most important ideas for new features and improvements of the existing ones. The list of the latest release is over 40 new features and improvements long, but let’s take a look at the most important ones.
Faster screen sharing
You can expect even better desktop sharing performance. That’s the result of a redesigned desktop grabbing functionality. Once you establish the connection, ISL Light sets the appropriate desktop sharing quality. You can then manually choose between extra fast or extra quality desktop sharing.
How do I adjust the screen sharing quality?
RSA 2048-bit keys are the new default
To establish a remote desktop support connection with a client, the helpdesk operator needs to start the ISL Light application, which now by default carries an RSA 2048-bit public key of the ISL Online server. Upon a successful RSA key exchange, the Diffie-Hellman cryptographic algorithm is used to negotiate symmetrical AES 256-bit end-to-end encryption.
This change applies to both, Cloud Service and Server License users, while the latter also have the possibility to configure their ISL Online servers to use 4096-bit crypto keys.
18 security measures remote desktop software should provide
Open chat transcript in a default text editor
While you’re offering remote support to your client, controlling their remote desktop, you can also chat with them in order to get or give specific explanations. Before you close the session, it might be a good idea for both, operator and client to save a chat log. Now you can right-click inside the chat window and open the conversation in your favourite text editor.
Right click inside the chat window and select “Open with text editor”. The conversation will open in your default text editor. It works on both sides, client’s and operator’s.
New flashing application icon won’t let you miss a chat message
If you’re in a remote desktop session with a client and the ISL Light application is running in the background, you will now see a blinking ISL Light application icon whenever a client sends you a message over a chat. This way you’ll immediately know there’s a new message and you will be able to reply to your client promptly. Once you open the ISL Light application the blinking will stop.
See when remote computers were last online
In your “Computers” dashboard you can now see when remote computers on your list were last online. This feature can turn out very useful if you want to lighten up your list by deleting all computers that were last online 5 years ago, for example.
To enable this column, right-click on the top grey row and check “Last online”. The column will show up beside the Status column.
Wake up a computer from ISL Light
Wake-on-LAN feature has long been a feature of ISL Online remote access software, but you had to log in to your ISL Online account on the web and wake up a computer from there. Now, you can send a Wake-on-LAN packet to one of your offline remote computers directly from ISL Light application.
The easiest way to wake up a computer is to simply click on an offline computer and the “Wake up computer” dialog pops out. Or you can click on the menu on the right side of the computer you would like to wake up and select “Send WOL”.
How to Access a Remote Computer Even If It’s Shut Down
To see a full list of new features, improvements and bug fixes, please read the Release notes.
Official ISL Online Blog 