Solutions
Assisting Others with Application Access
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is yet another layer of compliance you may be required to address. PolicyPak’s Group Policy software can help you seamlessly fulfill your legal obligations by offering solutions to the issues surrounding application accessibility. Here’s how:
Employees who require special assistance with their computers (i.e. speech readers, eyesight enhancers, etc.) want to be productive when they first start using an organization’s equipment and software. You may need to provide this application accessibility under the rules governing ADA. Unfortunately, most applications are not automatically configured (using Group Policy software or not) for disabled users – even if the software itself supports these features.
Drowning in Images
Many corporations have individual desktop management images (whether administered through Group Policy or not) for desktops, laptops and shared computers – a variety of different images across the spectrum of one organization. It's also common to see "derivative" images from these original images. That is, images that set specific applications with specific settings. So, even though everyone in the company gets Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat Reader, there's a special image for various workstations because they each have their own special application access settings embedded within those images.
What does PolicyPak do?
PolicyPak locks down applications so your users can't mess up their desktop. Whether it's application users constantly manipulating settings and preferences, or just the occasional slip of the mouse, PolicyPak is there to perform a lockdown using Group Policy and ensure compliance based upon the desired configuration state of your desktop applications and operating system.
New User Woes: Suffering Without Desktop Management Services
How fast do you want new company team members up and running? If you can remember the experience of the first several days at a new job, you'll remember how difficult it was to find the cafeteria and supply closet, let alone configure your application access and desktop management security settings so you could be immediately productive. This part of the new user experience shouldn't be underestimated. Users can spend days, weeks or even years in a sub-optimal state, until an IT application expert helps them configure their application security properly.
Today's Plan: Do we have to fight more fires?
In Greg Shields' "5 Rules for Managing Users' Desktops" (REDMOND Magazine, full article here) Greg outlines five "Laws" to ensure that IT departments (not end users) are really running the show. While we want to empower the application user to be productive, we want to ensure that users' settings are always set.
PolicyPak's Desktop Management software is uniquely equipped to address all five of these rules. Let's examine them now.
