Home worker productivity software

[Cookie]

Bonjourno

Strange request from a manager here. He's contemplating hiring someone to work for him, they'll work a few days a week from home. He wants a way of measuring their productivity, ie he wants to see how many hours a day a certain application is the active one.

Does such a software package exist? For parts of the discussion it seemed like he was talking about trojans

 

[Magic Johnson]

What application will he be using?

There's bound to me a license monitor. But then, that'd only tell you if the product was open, not if it was being used.

 

[Cookie]

Lotus Notes/IE

Tbh, I may just tell him that there's nowt out there, and he can just monitor how many emails they send

 

[Magic Johnson]

Do you not have a proxy? You could check his internet useage to make sure he's not pissing about I suppose.

 

[Cookie]

Do you not have a proxy? You could check his internet useage to make sure he's not pissing about I suppose.

They'll be working from home, not the office. No proxy on their internet connection, funnily enough

 

[Magic Johnson]

/facepalm

Sorry Tel.

 

[m4rkie23]

Infraction for being stupid.

 

[Magic Johnson]

Noooooo. /o\

 

[DMS]

Would "Work Examiner" do what you need?

 

[McBunny]

They'll be working from home, not the office. No proxy on their internet connection, funnily enough

why not ? ours do

 

[ChrisR]

Would be easier if you were supplying the machine to be used at home (as you can install what you like then ), or if they were remoting in to a terminal server/citrix from home.

If you've got SCCM you might be able to do something with the internet client management + software metering.

You'd need to install a few bits on their machine but wouldn't be too bad, plus you could blag it saying that it's to ensure that their machine is up to date patch wise etc for security reasons or something (more so if they will be vpn'ing in).

 

[iain187]

They'll be working from home, not the office. No proxy on their internet connection, funnily enough

Get them to VPN in?

 

[Sym0n]

why not ? ours do

Same here through SRAS.

 

[DMS]

Another solution that may work (although it'll cost)... Citrix!
Get him to connect through a CSG to XenServer and rather than publishing a desktop, just publish all the applications he'll need to do his job. You can then compile reports on how often each app is used and how long for. Running multiple published apps at the same time is no problem either.
Negates the need for third party software, no VPN required and there's no reason why he can't use his own computer rather than saturating company property with p**n and MyFace.

 

[Cookie]

The laptop would be work provided, and they'd be VPN'ing in (CAG). VPN here can't be used in conjunction with the proxy.

Tbf, for one person it's way too much work

Sent the manager a link to Work Examiner, cheers Darren.

 

[DMS]

Yup. Be cheaper for your boss to have a sneaky drive round there one day and see what he's up to, catch him on ChatRoulette in his pants etc...

 

[ChrisR]

The laptop would be work provided, and they'd be VPN'ing in (CAG). VPN here can't be used in conjunction with the proxy.

Tbf, for one person it's way too much work

Sent the manager a link to Work Examiner, cheers Darren.

You use sccm don't you? If so then stick client on the work laptop you give them, they get connection to the server so it can upload the software metering data according to your schedule when they vpn in

 

[Cookie]

We do use SCCM, but we barely scratch it's surface tbh

At the moment it's only used for rolling out machines

 

[Magic Johnson]

If the worker in question had any brains, he'd have a second PC to toss about on. As long as the work gets done, I don't see the problem really. Your boss is a c**t.

 

[ChrisR]

We do use SCCM, but we barely scratch it's surface tbh

At the moment it's only used for rolling out machines

Software metering is piss easy, even you could do it no problem without so much as uttering the word c**t

It's not as in depth as an app designed to monitor what people are doing, but it'll log whenever an application is started, and how long it's used for.

Best bit is, unless you've actively turned it off, it's already doing it for you. SCCM picks the 50 (I think it's 50, might be 100) most used apps in your estate and automatically creates metering rules for them.

Then it's just a case of configuring/tweaking the web reports, or if a standard one does the job even better, to get the info you want.

So do you only use it for imaging? That's the only thing I won't/don't use it for as it's always been crap compared to other solutions, although I really should give it another go.