We'll get started using Apple remote desktop by covering some of the basic things in the interface,
on the left hand side is where you'll have your computers appear, your lists, your groups of lists,
your test server, active tests and the task history.
So, for example, you can go in here and create a new list of computers.
By default, all the computers that you can manage are listed under the global all computers list,
but you may want to break that down by department, by team, by computer lab if you're using this in
a school.
So we'll go ahead and just assume this is a computer lab.
So we're going to say lab one hundred.
Now, the other thing that you can do is group these, so if I can do a new group, I can say maybe
this is my main building.
And I can put all of my labs inside the main building and now I've got folders for multiple buildings.
I'll do another group for a secondary building.
And I may have lists of computers inside here as well.
The benefit of having lists is not only for organization, but you can also group tasks and apply them
to a full list at a time.
So you may want lists that are based on the group of computers in a department that maybe you need to
run a report on on a regular basis, or you may want to put them, like I mentioned, in organizational
groups around an area of a building where you may have similar computers altogether that need to function
the same way, where you may need to upgrade the software on a regular basis schedule and to restart
nightly or those kinds of things.
Next, we'll talk about the toolbar, the buttons on the toolbar separated by function, the first deal
primarily with remote control and observing remote computers.
The second set deal primarily an application installation, script, execution and copying files.
And the third set is set up for reporting.
You can customize this under view customized toolbar and add various other things that you might use
most often, such as sending a message to a remote computer, chatting with the remote user, or doing
various different power options like restarting the computers or waking from sleep or logging out the
current user to modify this.
All you need to do is drag and drop these things onto the bar and you can even give yourself some space
if you want to continue the pattern of separating them out.
Finally, let's talk about the remote desktop application preferences on the remote desktop preferences,
we'll give you a number of different options.
And I want to just talk about a few of these that are probably most important for you.
So a lot of the beginning ones really just talk about how you want it to look and the kinds of prompts
you may want to get.
Not really too concerned about that control and observe.
So there's some nice things here, such as scaling the screen.
If the remote device that you're controlling has a higher resolution than maybe the computer you're
on gives you the option of how to control the screen.
This one is particularly nice when controlling a computer, whether you want to share control of the
user, which is default or take complete control.
So if you want to fight with the user who's moving their mouse around and you're trying to do something
too, and that starts to drive you crazy, you can set this as default.
You also have the ability during the remote control session to change that live.
And I'll show that in a second.
And then test server we'll talk about a little bit later reporting, we'll talk about a little bit later
and then tasks and so on the test screen here, this is one that I like to uncheck.
Always change focus to active task.
I tend to be doing a lot at the same time.
I'll start a task, maybe an application install, and then I'll jump to another task.
Maybe it's a reboot of computers.
And what happens with this is that it will start to jump around and the application will, when one
one task completes the application, will try to jump over to that task history and show me that it
completed and takes me out of what I'm currently doing.
So I like to uncheck that makes my life a little easier if I'm multitasking.
And then finally, under security, you have options here to deal with encrypting data when you're copying
and installing packages, that definitely slows down the install.
And you may choose to uncheck that if you want to.
It's a little bit less secure, but what you're copying is not, you know, a secure file.
It's probably worth on checking those things.
And you also have the option here.
If you're going to have not administrative users using the application, let's say maybe you want an
instructor to log in as a basic user account and still be able to maybe remote control the computers
in their classroom.
You can go in here and limit those actions based on that.
So right now, it defaults to just these things.
But you could uncheck them and say, oh, the only thing they can do is observer control or share screens
with other students.
You have some options here to play around with that.
I'm going to leave these as default for our purposes in this video.
So that's the basic overview of the interface in Apple remote desktop.
Next, we're going to get some clients added in here and start interacting with some of these Macs.