Getting started with Remote Actions
Last updated
Last updated
The Remote Actions module allows you to execute remote actions on employee devices. Remote actions provide a number of possibilities for the prevention and remediation of issues encountered by employees, as well as for gathering additional information from devices. A remote action is an executable script that can accept parameters and optionally return outputs to be stored in the data layer.
The way you use remote actions depends on your purpose and the trigger method you choose. Nexthink has identified four main scenarios or use cases:
Assisted service
Self-help
Self-healing
On-demand data
Additionally, Remote Actions utilizes an API to programmatically launch remote actions, extending their availability to third-party products, such as self-service portals or ticketing systems. Refer to the Triggering Remote Actions Via Their API documentation for more information.
Use remote actions to help support teams provide assistance to employees.
When support agents with access to the Nexthink web interface receive an incident or detect an issue on a device, they can manually trigger an appropriate remote action to fix the issue. Support agents can also trigger remote actions from the list of results on the Investigations page by querying devices and triggering a remote action from the Device View page.
Refer to the Granting permissions to Remote Actions section to have the appropriate permission
Use remote actions to help employees solve issues without requiring external intervention from support.
Run remote actions in conjunction with Nexthink Campaigns in self-help scenarios. Use campaigns to notify employees about issues and ask them to take action.
Define a remote action to be automatically triggered when a known issue is detected on an employee device. Once the system triggers the remote action, a connected campaign is sent, guiding the employee on how to resolve the issue.
Refer to the Manage remote actions and Trigger a campaign documentation for more information.
How you run self-help remote actions depends on whether the script payload requires administrative privileges. Run the remote action:
In the context of the current active user, if the action requires no special privileges.
In the context of the local system account, if the action requires administrative privileges.
Use remote actions to fully automate the remediation of specific issues on employee devices, avoiding human intervention.
Define remote actions to be automatically triggered when a known issue is detected on a device, and execute a remediation script that does not require employee interaction. Consider the frequency of execution of these kinds of remote actions.
Refer to the Manage remote actions documentation for information on how to create and edit remote actions.
Use remote actions to get additional data from devices and incorporate it into Nexthink.
Schedule remote actions to be periodically executed on specific devices to gather additional information that Nexthink does not collect by default.
Refer to the Manage remote actions documentation for more information on how to execute remote actions on demand using Nexthink Query Language (NQL).
Create and schedule remote actions to prevent and remediate issues. Schedule them to run automatically on one or more devices using Nexthink Query Language (NQL). Monitor the success of remote actions with sophisticated remote action dashboards.
Refer to the Roles documentation for a detailed description of Permissions, View domain options and Data privacy granularity settings.
To enable proper permissions to execute remote actions as an administrator:
Select Administration > Roles from the main navigation panel.
Create a New Role or edit an existing role by hovering over it.
In the Permissions section, scroll down to the Remote Actions section to enable appropriate permissions for the role.
The table below shows what users with full and limited View domain access can do, assuming the necessary permissions are enabled.
| Permission | Full access | Limited access |
|---|---|---|
Execute all remote actions | ||
Manage all remote actions | ||
View all remote action dashboards |
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