Now that your employees are working remotely, due in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic, they’re working in isolated home-based bubbles away from coworkers and all the in-person support they used to have access to in the office. That includes the IT help desk.

Breaking down these barriers is key for any business that wants to not just survive, but thrive, as we move from pandemic to plan. Specifically, employees need a fast and clear lifeline to your help desk.

That’s why Rescue offers not just one or two connection methods, but six, many with additional options on top of that. This gives your employees and technicians the flexibility to connect to remote support sessions in the ways that work best for them.

Rescue connection methods fall into two categories: sessions that are initiated by the end-user and sessions that are initiated by the technician to support a specific end-user. Let’s take a look at these different entry points in greater detail.

Employee-Initiated Connection Methods

1. Calling Card from Employee’s Desktop
2. Channel Link on Internal Webpage
3. Channel Form on Internal Webpage

These three options can all be branded for your company, so users know they’re in the right place for support. With phishing and scamming on the rise, adding your brand and logo to these connection methods builds trust and puts your employees at ease.

The calling card is a one-click lifeline to internal IT help directly from the employee’s desktop. They don’t need to call or Slack IT first –?they simply click the calling card, enter a description of the problem, and a tech will see the request come through in the technician console.

The channel link and channel form can be added to your company intranet webpage or support portal. The difference is simply how much information you ask the employee to provide as background for the technician. The channel form can include up to five fields of information.

These channel options are useful as an escalation point. When users attempt to self-service on the company knowledge base or support portal, a clear line to a technician is a click away.

Technician-Initiated Connection Methods

1. PIN Code with Calling Card
2. PIN Code with URL
3. Unattended Access

If employees reach out to IT via phone, email, or internal messaging like Slack or Teams, the tech can generate a PIN code from the technician console to start a session. Then, they can direct the employee to either a company-branded calling card located on the employee’s desktop or to a URL, which may be either the LogMeIn123 PIN page or your own self-hosted PIN page.

For calling card, Rescue is already pre-installed on the employee’s machine, so there are no downloads to start a session. For URL, the employee will need to download a simple applet, which you can customize with your branding to add familiarity and trust. You can even add extra security layers to protect against phishing and scamming. Many companies appreciate these extra measures at a time when cyber threats are heightened.

Techs can also leverage unattended access to work on issues during employee downtime. This helps maximize efficiency and minimize inconvenience.

These connection methods put you in control as your business grows and changes, especially during unprecedented times when you need to quickly pivot. Will you have the right connection methods your business needs for whatever happens next?

For more in-depth information, take an interactive tour of all the ways to connect your support team to your employees.

And check out our Pandemic to Plan video series that takes you step-by-step on how to set up a remote IT help desk to overcome today’s challenges and take you well into the future. We dig into the specifics of these connection methods and cover many more topics that companies like yours are tackling right now.