Working for a company in Australia where a majority of our customers are in a different time zone can be challenging. Specially when the system you’re working on is web based, so different type of configurations in operating systems, browser versions, caching etc can factor why a system does not function the desired way. We have the benefit though of having patient users who don’t mind helping us through the issues they have, but when I have a customer on the phone and they are telling me step by step what they’re doing, and I am on my computer following those steps word for word and our outcomes are different…. well… what do you do?? Jump on a 15+ hour flight across the pacific and physically try the process on the users computer? OK maybe that’s a bit far fetched… maybe if they’re using XP or vista we can enable their machine for remote desktop access? Yeah… we could… but then you need to have a user account on the machine, make sure their network is open for us to do this, make sure you don’t ruffle the feathers of their IT people…yuuuck… All I want is a quick 2 minute remote log in and watch the user run through the process, and after all this mess I don’t *think* you can watch a user using remote desktop.
Enter showmypc.com. I first found out about this site on lifehacker, its fast, secure and simple. Even the most un-tech savy users have been able to use this system and has saved me hours of extra work and troubleshooting. There have been some instances where it was the only way I could have possibly debugged a problem, for example there were toolbars installed on a browser that the user wasn’t aware of that was throwing off our system. I’ve shared this application with the rest of my development team, and in fact our whole company. I would say it gets used almost every day, and everyone loves it’s simplicity… and now I look like a super star for suggesting it (h).
