Getting started with Remote Actions
Last updated
Last updated
The Remote Actions module lets you 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 basically an executable script that can accept parameters and optionally return outputs to be stored in the data layer.
Depending on the purpose of a remote action and how it is triggered, Nexthink has identified four main scenarios or use cases:
Assisted service
Self-help
Self-healing
On-demand data
Additionally, Remote Actions exposes an API to programmatically launch remote actions, extending their availability to third-party products, such as self-service portals or ticketing systems. Refer to Triggering Remote Actions Via Their API documentation for more information.
In the assisted service scenario, the goal is 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 may manually trigger an appropriate remote action to fix the issue. Support agents may 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.
You must have appropriate permissions to trigger remote actions. Refer to Getting started with Remote Actions for more information.
In the self-help scenario, the goal is to help employees solve issues by themselves, without necessarily requiring external intervention from support.
The self-help scenario requires the activation of the Nexthink Campaigns, as it relies on campaigns to notify the employees about the issues found and ask them to take action.
Define remote actions for self-help to be automatically triggered when a known issue is detected on the device of the employee. Once triggered, the remote action is connected to a campaign that guides the employee to the resolution of the issue. The remote action should take into account the responses of the employees and act accordingly.
Refer to Manage remote actions and Trigger a campaign documentation for more information.
Depending on whether the script payload of a remote action requires administrative privileges or not, run the remote action for self-help:
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.
In the self-healing scenario, the goal is to fully automate the remediation of specific issues on the devices of employees while avoiding human intervention.
Define remote actions for self-healing to be automatically triggered when a known issue is detected on a device and execute a remediation script that does not need the interaction of the employee. Carefully consider the frequency of execution of these kinds of remote actions.
Refer to Manage remote actions documentation on how to create and edit remote actions.
In the on-demand data scenario, the goal is to get additional data from devices and incorporate it into Nexthink.
Remote actions are scheduled to be periodically executed on the devices of interest to gather the additional information that Nexthink does not collect by default.
Refer to Manage remote actions documentation on how to execute remote action on demand using the 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 across the estate with sophisticated remote action dashboards.
To enable proper permissions for Remote Actions:
Select Administration from the main menu.
Click on Role from the navigation panel.
Click on the New Role button to create a new role or edit an existing one by hovering over an existing role and clicking on the edit icon to change the role configuration.
In the Permissions section, scroll down to the Remote Actions section to enable appropriate permissions for the role.
Refer to the Roles documentation for a detailed description of the permission options.
The table below showcases 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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