As we mentioned with 10.2.8, if you are currently running a previous major version of Bomgar, such as 10.1.x, please be sure to contact our Support team today to discuss any prerequisites that you may need to meet prior to upgrading.

New Features and Enhancements:

• The Customer Client window can now be resized when in “normal” mode
• The Comments field has been added to the Jump Client search in the Rep Console
• Added the ability to configure the Customer Client’s Customer Agreement timeout under Public Portals -> Customer Client -> Display Options -> Acceptance Timeout
• Added a new “Prompt for Elevation Credentials” option on the Jump Client mass deployment page, which improves the Jump Client mass deployment installation on Vista

Issues Resolved:

• Administrative Interface
  • Changed “residentialPerson” to “inetOrgPerson” to be more in line with default eDirectory installs
  • Resolved an issue where some check boxes would not update until after clicking somewhere else when using IE6 or IE7
• Representative Console
  • Resolved an issue where multiple Settings and Logout windows could be generated from the systray icon menu
  • Resolved an issue where certain Control Panel apps were not being displayed in the Special Actions menu
  • Resolved an issue where the Rep Console’s chat window and side controls were not preserving their state when leaving full screen mode
  • Resolved an issue with the Jump Client search in the Rep Console would display an entire group instead of an individual Jump Client
  • *Resolved an issue where Team Managers’ and Team Leads’ Rep Consoles would sometimes close in specific scenarios
  • *Resolved an issue where company code was not being displayed in the Rep Console when using Public Portals
• Customer Clients
  • Jump Client install and uninstall messages now support all available languages
  • Resolved an issue with installers not executing correctly on Ubuntu 9.0.4
  • Resolved an issue with mobile devices downloading the wrong customer client
• Miscellaneous
  • Resolved an issue where modifier keys could get stuck, mainly the ctrl, shift, and alt keys
  • Resolved an issue where the Customer Client may not remove all files after a session has ended.  Now if the operating system will not allow the files to be deleted, they are marked for deletion upon the next reboot

* These issues only apply to Enterprise licenses

Issues Resolved:

• Click-to-Chat
  • Resolved several issues with the Click-to-Chat client not properly handling specific SSL configurations.
  • Resolved an issue with the Click-to-Chat client not always reconnecting after a network service interruption.
  • An error message is now displayed if a Click-to-Chat client cannot connect to the Bomgar Box.  This message includes an option to download the full Customer Client.
• Representative Console
  • Resolved an issue where Jump client searches would display an entire group instead of a specific Jump client.
  • Resolved an issue where Jump client searches were not searching the Comments field.
• Miscellaneous
  • Resolved an issue with Jump clients not starting if they had been pinned from a session initiated by a Bomgar Button.

Note - this release has only been certified against appliance base version 3.1.0 for the B100, B200 and B300.  It has been certified against version 3.1.1 on the B300v.

The highlights of this release are listed below.  To learn more and to request your upgrade, visit the Bomgar Support portal.

Requirements for 10.3:

• This version of Bomgar requires appliance base software version 3.1.0
• The customer’s Click-to-Chat interface requires Adobe Flash Player 9 or later

New Features and Enhancements:

• Management Enhancements
  • Automatic Failover* - automate the failover procedure between your Bomgar boxes to provide seamless support and business continuity
  • Embassy* - now you receive external support by giving vendors remote access to your network without compromising your security
  • Access Sponsor* - this new feature allows less-privileged representatives to request help from their senior counterparts, and it gives higher-level representatives the ability to grant (or deny) access to their junior counterparts
  • Integration Client Alerts* - if a scheduled task within the Integration Client ever fails, an alert can now be sent to the specified administrator for quick recourse
• Support Enhancements
  • Fast User Switching Support - Bomgar now allows you to support Windows machines that make use of Fast User Switching
  • Improved Windows Vista Support - support representatives are now able to send a remote Ctrl+Alt+Delete key sequence to remote Windows Vista machines
  • Command Shell History - this enhancement gives support reps a configurable amount of command shell history when supporting remote Windows machines
  • Canned Scripts - now you can create custom scripts that can be used within the Command Shell interface
  • Improved Mac System Information - support representative have a much more comprehensive view of remote Mac systems in Bomgar 10.3
• Customer Client Enhancements
  • Bomgar Button Enhancements - the Bomgar Button just got better by no longer requiring you to download the customer client once it’s deployed
  • Click-to-Chat - this new feature gives your customers the ability to chat immediately (via a Flash-based chat interface) with your support reps (via the Bomgar Representative Console)
  • Logged Customer Agreement Acceptance - this enhancement allows you to log any customer agreements acceptances that you have configured for your customers
• Jump Technology Enhancements
  • Proxy Jump - Jumpoint administrators may now configure their Jumpoints so that target machines requiring proxy credentials can be Jumped to
  • Concurrent Representative Access to Jump Clients - multiple reps can now access a single Jump client simultaneously
  • Restricted Jump Client Uninstalls - this enhancement keeps users from accidentally uninstalling Jump clients from their machine

Notes:

• Features with an asterisk (*) require an Enterprise license.
• Non-English translations for Bomgar 10.3 will be available in an upcoming maintenance release.  If you need to provide remote support in a language other than English, ask our support team about Bomgar 10.2.8, our latest translated release.

This is a 5 minute tour of the Bomgar support representative console. In this demonstration video, the sales engineer is offering remote support from a Mac to a Windows PC.

The video will show you how support reps can

• answer a customer’s request for remote support
• chat with customers
• transfer files to/from the remote computer
• view the system info of the remote computer
• control the remote pc with screen sharing

Note: Please contact Sales@bomgar.com, not support, if you have questions about this video. The narrator accidentally said “support”.

New Features:

• Added EU Portuguese translation
• Added an optional watermark indicator to be displayed on the customer’s screen whenever a Representative joins a session. This is enabled via the administrative interface.

Feature Enhancements:

• Added a timestamp to the Status column of the Jump client listing to display the last time a Jump client either connected or disconnected
• Jump client banners now update when modified
• Improved the mouse control of the Mac Presentation Attendee Client (i.e. when an attendee controls the presenter’s screen)

Issues Resolved:

• Administrative Interface
  • Language Support
    • Resolved an issue where the Jump client Deploy button was not properly displayed with Portuguese and Chinese translations
    • Resolved several display and spacing issues with Dutch translation
  • Failover
    • Resolved several display issues that appeared after a failover event
    • Resolved an issue where the failover history allowed the status page to grow very large; now limited to 100 entries
  • Security Providers
    • Resolved an issue with Group Policies where stacking teams to establish roles was not working properly
    • Resolved an issue where deleting a Group Policy could leave users as members of teams
  • Syslog
    • Resolved an issue where several Syslog events were reported as UNKNOWN.  These events are now logged correctly.
  • Misc
    • Resolved an issue where session recordings were not viewable in FireFox 2.0
    • Resolved an issue where session data (session recordings, chat transcripts, etc.) was unavailable under certain conditions
    • Resolved an issue in the Reporting API where the “Conference Owner Changed” event types weren’t returning the correct destination types
    • Resolved an issue with downloaded Presentation reports showing the wrong timestamp format
• Clients
  • Mac
    • Resolved an issue with the Representative Console redirecting to an invalid URL when login credentials have expired
    • Resolved an issue with the Option key getting stuck
    • Resolved an issue with incorrect characters being sent to the remote machine with Caps Lock enabled
  • Linux
    • Resolved an issue where URLs were not correctly launched from the Customer client on KDE4
  • Mobile
    • Resolved an issue where the uninstall message box on some Windows Mobile devices would not close properly
  • Presentation
    • Resolved a clock skew issue between the Bomgar Box and the Presentation scheduler
  • Misc
    • Resolved an issue with some desktop effects not being restored properly after an elevated session ended
    • Resolved an issue on Vista where the customer exit survey was not being displayed after an elevated session ended
    • Resolved an issue where the shift, control, and alt keys could get stuck
    • Resolved an issue with sorting Jump clients in non-English languages and Jump clients with numeric leading characters
    • Resolved an issue with Jumpoints caused by browsing large networks
    • Resolved an issue where the Accept Session prompt was not displayed if transferred from another Rep

Known Issues:

• When using the Privacy Screen feature, transparent windows on the remote computer may not be displayed to the support rep (e.g. the Office 2007 ribbon)
• Customer exit surveys may display after jumping to elevated Vista machines

A handful of minor issues have been resolved in this latest maintenance release.

Issues Resolved:

• Customer Client
  • Resolved an issue where the Custom Uninstall Message text was not being honored (i.e. only the default message was being displayed)
• Representative Console
  • Resolved an issue where, in rare cases, Jump clients were not enumerating correctly in the display list
  • Resolved an issue with high CPU usage on the Representative’s machine when a large list of Jump clients was expanded

New Features:

• The Jump client listing in the Representative Console now includes “Online/Offline since <date/time stamp>” status details
• The customer client chat now includes timestamps

Feature Enhancements:

• BlackBerry enhancements
  • BlackBerry screen sharing performance has been improved; especially noted on OS versions 4.3 and up
  • Improved support for BlackBerry Storm
  • When using the “Internet Browser”, the downloaded customer client attempts to connect via WiFi, then direct (i.e. carrier-specific); it WILL NOT attempt an MDS connection
  • When using the “BlackBerry Browser”, the downloaded customer client will attempt to connect via WiFi, then direct (i.e. carrier-specific), then MDS
• Representative Console
  • When supporting remote Vista customers, the Special Action labeled “Windows Security (Ctrl-Alt-Del)” is now shown only if the remote computer’s policy allows a Secure Attention Sequence to be remotely sent
  • When supporting a remote Mac customer and initiating full screen mode, support reps are notified that the  “Enable access for assistive devices” service is required for all Full Screen functionality to work properly.  This new notification only appears if the service is not currently enabled.
• Web
  • The “Upload Backup” section of the Management -> Software Management page is now hidden when a support site is in the backup role of a failover relationship

Issues Resolved:

• Customer Client
  • Resolved an issue that did not allow Representatives to lock remote NT4 computers
  • Resolved an issue where ClearType settings were not being restored on remote XP and Vista computers after a session ended
• Representative Console
  • Resolved an issue where Session Keys were sometimes not displayed in the Representative Console
  • Resolved an issue where CTRL, SHIFT and ALT keys would sometimes become “stuck” during a session
  • Resolved an issue with the Representative Console where Jump client search results were not correctly listed
• BlackBerry
  • Resolved an issue where pushing a URL to a remote BlackBerry device was not bringing the browser to the foreground
  • Resolved an issue with the customer’s chat message timestamps not reflecting their time zone
• Web
  • Resolved an issue with the Team Activity Report where certain Event Types were not shown
  • Resolved an issue with the Support Session Report where a deleted team would not show up correctly
• Misc
  • Added a Syslog message for changes to the permission, “Allowed to transfer to teams which they do not belong”
  • Resolved a proxy issue with PAC files not being properly applied in certain scenarios
  • Resolved an issue where the Exit Survey was not being displayed on remote Vista computers if the session was elevated

• The Bomgar Button - A one-click means of initiating a remote desktop control session
• BlackBerry Customer Client - We’ve expanded the product to include remote support for Blackberry devices
• Customizable Customer Portals - Create custom portals for different customers

Bomgar 10.2 Documents

• Bomgar 10.2 Enterprise Administrative User’s Guide (pdf)
• Bomgar 10.2 Standard Administrative User’s Guide (pdf)
• Bomgar 10.2 Representative User’s Guide (pdf)
• Bomgar 10.2 Syslog Message Reference (pdf)
• Bomgar Base 3 Syslog Message Reference (pdf)
• What’s New in Bomgar 10.2 (pdf)

You can also read the press release on Bomgar 10.2 and the release notes from our development team.

Customers will be contacted for our 10.2 rollout. Also, our trial system has been updated with Bomgar 10.2, so if you’re not a customer, you can sign up for a trial on Monday to get a preview.

We’ve also posted these with other documents under product documentation and support documents.

Issues Resolved:

• Resolved an issue where several Syslog events were reported as UNKNOWN.  These events are now logged correctly.
• Resolved an issue where client connections going through a proxy would fail
• Resolved an issue where SSL validation was not working properly for Mac OS X 10.3.9

Known Issues:

• Rep Console
  • The Representative Console does not always detect installed Bomgar Buttons
  • The Representative Console’s system tray right-click menu may not appear in Vista
  • When generated, Session Keys are sometimes not displayed in the Representative Console
• Administrative Interface
  • Exit Survey URLs are always displayed as the default site’s address
  • When upgrading, previous failover synchronization history information is removed; please make a note of this before upgrading (NOTE: this affects Enterprise licenses only)

New Features and Enhancements:

• Customer Experience Enhancements
  • Bomgar Button - allow your customers to initiate a support session with a single click
  • Courtesy Message - reassure your customers during heavy workloads with a configurable automated on-hold message
• Management Enhancements
  • Administer Representative Password Recall - administrators can now require support representatives to enter their credentials to log into the Rep Console
  • Set Session Key TTL at Generation* - lets representatives determine how long a Session Key will remain valid
  • Pre-Session External Key Display* - sessions initiated outside of Bomgar now have their API key displayed in the Representative Console’s queueing interface
• Jump Technology Enhancements
  • Jumpoint Admin - administrators can now allow/disallow Jumpoint configuration per user
  • Jumpoint TTL* - configure a Jumpoint to activate and/or uninstall at a configurable date & time
• Support Enhancements
  • BlackBerry Customer Client - provide remote support to your BlackBerry users on their devices
  • Low Bandwidth Screen Sharing - give fast remote support to customers on low bandwidth network connections
  • Multiple Public Portals* - create multiple customized public portals for each of your customers
  • Team Isolation* - keep your teams focused by allowing them to work only within their assigned teams
  • Customer Client Language API* - allows API-initiated sessions to pass customers’ language selection to be displayed within the Representative Console’s queueing interface
• Presentation Enhancements
  • Presentation List on Public Site - active presentations can now be included on Public Sites
  • Give Control to Attendees - presenters can give control to an attendee during a presentation
  • Time Zoned Email Invitation - presentation email invitations now include the presenter’s time zone

Service desk Integration:

• BMC Remedy AR Server
  • Enables representatives to begin chat and remote support sessions from BMC Remedy AR Server
  • Measure performance and effectiveness by viewing Bomgar session logs and creating customizable reports within BMC Remedy AR Server

Notes:
* Features with an asterisk (*) require an Enterprise license.
Non-English translations for Bomgar 10.2 will be available in an upcoming maintenance release.

PracticeWorks is a timely customer to have presenting. They’re a dental practice software provider headquartered in Atlanta with over 700 employees. They make practice management, digital imaging, and radiology software for dentists, orthodontists, oral surgeons, and the staff who support them in over 37,000 practices nationwide.

I say they’re a timely presenter because PracticeWorks cut over $5,000 per day in support costs by implementing Bomgar’s remote support software. With the 2009 economy looking like it does, savings like that could help a lot! Take the time to watch this webinar before planning your support operations for 2009. An hour with Krista could save your support organization a bit of nail-biting next year.

The webinar is free! View it here. Here’s the abstract:

Top 3 Strategies for Successful Support Operations in 2009

Tuesday, November 18th
(1:00pm Eastern/12:00pm Central/11:00am Mountain/10:00am Pacific)

Facilitated by: Rich Hand, HDI Executive Director of Membership
Presenter: Officer Krista Ciccozzi, Director of Technical Support for Practice Works Inc.

Webinar Topic Description:
With uncertain economic times looming in 2009, have you been asked to reassess your help desk support operations and budget? Are you once again being asked to do more with less? Are you even able to do so? Determining your strategy starts with evaluating your budget and costs. Do you know your cost per incident? Can you become more efficient through improved process or better use of your human and technical resources?

Join HDI on November 18th for an informative webinar from an industry practitioner and HDI Local Chapter Officer, Krista Ciccozzi, Director of Technical Support for PracticeWorks Inc. Krista will share her thoughts and experience on remote support and other help desk-related subjects to help you be better prepared for a dynamic 2009!

• Know your Budget
• Understand your Costs
• Focus on Efficiencies

• Added Portuguese language option to the list of available languages

Feature Enhancements:

• Languages
  • Added translations to several strings that were not previously translated
• Mac
  • Press-and-hold key repeat functionality was added
  • The Mac customer client now only shows one dock icon during client installation & initiation
  • When the rep console is running in a logged-out state, a new “File” menu is now located in the menu bar with a login option
• Administrative Interface
  • Added new detail to several Syslog events
  • The Syslog Message Reference Guide has been updated for 10.1.5 and can be found here
  • Dashboard now has the ability to search for name, computer, platform, issue, company, details, and Jump client
  • Added functionality to the “Start Presentation” button to allow a presenter to select which applications to share prior to starting a presentation
• Misc
  • Added a slight performance improvement to screen sharing
  • When a URL is sent through the chat window http will be appended to the front of the URL if no other protocol is specified
  • Added URL verification to the Customer Client chat feature

Issues Resolved:

• Reporting
  • When converting large recordings, the “percent complete” status now shows a more accurate percentage
  • Resolved an issue where two support teams could be logged with the same support team ID
  • Resolved an issue where exit survey reports could incorrectly display front-end survey information
  • Resolved an issue with calculating the average number of sessions per weekday on the Support Summary report
  • Resolved an issue with odd characters being displayed in session reports involving Mac clients
• Administrative Interface
  • Users that are removed from a Group Policy that added them to a Team or Jumpoint are now removed from that Team or Jumpoint upon synch (i.e. when a GP is deleted/saved or a user logs in)
  • Resolved an issue with System Information not showing the current user’s information when the customer client was running in an elevated state
  • Resolved an issue where Team Leads and Managers could be incorrectly added to a subordinate’s support session
  • Resolved several web interface alignment issues with non-English translations
  • Resolved an issue where exit survey drop-down default values were not being set correctly
  • Resolved an issue where IE6 would display a blank page after completing an exit survey
  • Corrected the view that shows all applications when choosing to present or reverse connect a session
  • Resolved an issue with Representative Console automatic upgrades failing when the representative didn’t have administrative access to the local PC
  • Resolved an issue for “Open Location” when accessing a Mac client file system from the representative console
  • Resolved an issue with odd mouse behavior when supporting a Mac customers
• Mac
  • Resolved an issue with the Mac rep console not sending Control keys correctly to Ubuntu customer clients
  • Uppercase and lowercase use is now handled properly
  • Clicking the red close-window button no longer prompts the user to quit the application
  • After logging out or being disconnected, Apple-Q and “Quit” in the application menu now function correctly
  • Resolved an issue where two “Quit” options were present in the dock tile icon menu
  • Resolved an issue with the ‘Terms and Conditions’ incorrectly timing out
  • Resolved an issue with the message box appearing incorreclty when no representative is present
  • Resolved an issue with the presentation client closing after accepting the agreement
• Known Issues
  • In the Rep console, the “Settings->Support: Prompt when new customer enters personal queue” setting may not work correctly
  • Representatives may experience rapid mouse flickering when using Screen Sharing in the Rep console on Mac OS X 10.5.5
  • On some installations, Jumpoint time always shows up as UTC timezone

Capacity: While the physical B300 can handle up to 300 concurrent support reps, capacity for the virtual appliance is determined by your Virtual Infrastructure.

Redundancy: The same is true for ensuring a redundant environment. The physical appliance offers the following for redundancy:

• Dual processors
• Dual power supplies
• RAID 5 - three hard drives and one hot spare
• Hard drive failure notification
• Secondary B300 failover configuration

On the other hand, you can leverage your current virtual infrastructure to configure the virtual appliance for high availability.

Organizations with virtual initiatives already under way will find in the B300v a way to deploy Bomgar in their environment without adding another box.

Using VMware ESX, deploy the B300v™ as any other virtual appliance into your environment. Once installed, administrators have all the options a physical Bomgar B300™ provides for setting up security providers, ticketing integration, and virtual support teams.

We’ve had numerous discussions here at Bomgar around how best to visualize the B300v Virtual Appliance. What we’ve narrowed it down to is a minimalistic line drawing of the physical B300.

What do you think? Is this the best solution? I’d like to get our readers’ feedback on our image for the B300v.

A Bomgar sales engineer gives a brief overview of Bomgar and demonstrates how to install the support representative console.

Bomgar’s rep console gives virtual support reps a clean, easy-to-use interface for gaining remote desktop control. This video is an introduction to the rep console.

This video demonstrates how to use the Bomgar toolbar during a remote desktop access session.

This video how to use the tabs in Bomgar’s rep console during a remote support session.

Bomgar enables virtual support reps to escalate privileges on remote computers to administrative privileges. This Video demonstrates the same run-as-administrator capabilities on Vista.

Remote support reps often need to reboot the remote computer they’re troubleshooting. Bomgar gives support reps the ability to reboot the remote computer into Safe Mode.

Bomgar bakes remote access software into its core product. This video shows how to gain virtual access to remote computers using Bomgar’s Jump Technology.

Bomgar enables support reps to collaborate during support sessions. Tech support reps can invite other technicians to chat or share support sessions.