Workstations Page

This screen was optimized to bring the time needed for your Cyber Cafe  management to the minimum. It also provides just about everything cashier needs in typical scenarios for everyday tasks.

On the left side there is a list of monitored workstations. Names for computers come from the Business Objects screen and must correspond to NetBIOS workstation names. For convenience, icons change color to signal monitored workstation's status. Short description of status can also be seen in the "Computer Status" pane at the bottom of the screen. 

Description of icon colors.

Computer is free, no one is logged on. Last user's online time, activity log and pricing information can still be seen.

User is working. This is the case shown on the above picture.

Computer in not in a list of monitored Business Objects, and although users can still log on and off, NetSpy will not charge them, because there is no pricing information associated with this workstation. If you want to fix this, go to the Business Objects view, add this workstation to the list of Business Objects and specify pricing for it.

Workstation is turned off or disconnected from the network.

Computer is on the network but client side agent software cannot be contacted. This probably means that NetSpy client is not installed on that host.

Indicates that someone with windows system level credentials (administrator) is logged on, probably for computer maintenance purposes.

Workstation is locked by the administrator

Client machine is in intermediary state. You can see this one sometimes for the brief periods of time when client machine is in the middle of logging on or off.

Expecting pre-paid user login. Indicates that a pre-paid user is given a credit and is scheduled to login this machine.

System logon failed. Can happen during the maintenance work

Controls

Most of the controls on this screen have obvious meaning, however, to be thorough, we will describe each control's purpose in detail.

"User" controls group

Is where you access data on last or currently logged on user. 

Shows how long current (or last) user has been logged on for. Shows last or current user's  due amount. Send text message to the user (active only if user is logged on) Change the user's computer. View user activity log, see below for additional details Sell other store items (i.e. CDs), see below for more details Jump to the user details of last customer. When pressed, NetSpy monitor screen will change to "Users" and cursor will automatically jump to current user to show his or her details.

Some of those controls may require a couple of additional words.

Change User Computer.

Pressing allows switching user from one computer to another. If you or your users need to change the computer, click this button. A window will appear with the list of computers you can transfer the user to.

Only those computers that are free (nobody is logged on) will show up in this list. Choose one, and click OK.  You can also choose to attach (transfer) the user's active bill to the new machine so that it is continued, instead of starting a new bill. If the machine you are transferring user from is currently in logged on state, NetSpy will logoff current user and then logon him/her onto the specified machine. It may take some time for one workstation to logout and another to logon, so please allow some 10-20 seconds for this procedure to complete. You can choose to attach bill from old Computer to the new bill.

When Additional Charge button is pressed, "Charge or Credit" dialog appears. It provides a simple POS terminal functionality. Here you can manually charge for some Business Object. You can also refund user for those items if needed by clicking radio button.

By default, Computers and Printers are not shown in the list of Business Objects, however you can make them appear by clicking or check boxes. 

Please notice that POS terminal is tied to the notion of a Business Object. This means you can only charge for items you have described on the "Business Objects" page.

Click button to see the user activity log. Activity log shows the details on what exactly user was charged for including taxes and discounts.

To have the receipt printed press "Print" button. 

Receipt Printout

This form allows printing customer receipts in a customized manner. The "Page Preview" screen shows approximately how the receipt is going to look like on the paper. 

You can customize header and footer portions of the receipt as well as change the receipt font (its face, size, style, etc ) Current Date and Time will be substituted instead of <DATE> tag.  Click "Print" to send this receipt to printer. Pressing "OK" without printing the receipt first will close this window and save this screen's settings for future use.

"Computers" control group

Is for managing client workstations remotely. You can use this panel to let users in and out remotely and do some other operations with computers.

Clicking this button will unlock a workstation for the next customer.  This can be used with pay-as-you-go payment schema.

  Typical use scenario - Alice comes to Java Cafe and says she wants to use a computer. Cashier asks for an ID to keep while she is online, then selects a workstation he wants Alice to use (it should obviously have a green icon) and clicks above button. Lock icon turns red indicating that the computer is in "Open" state now. Alice can now log in as "Guest", or as a registered user with her own credentials. If workstation were not unlocked, and Alice tried to log in, she would have gotten the following message.  

The text and picture on this window, as well as other windows user will be seeing during logon procedure are customizable. You can put your messages here and even change the image.

Cashier, on the other side would be prompted with:

If "Yes" is pressed, workstation will be unlocked, and user will be logged in. If "No" is chosen - workstation will display an "Access Denied" message and go back to locked state.

Notice, that users are blocked this way only of they are not considered "trusted". Read more here about trusted user types. If user is trusted he/she can freely log in and out at any time. 

Button unlocks the workstation and logs in the Guest User (that is if "Guest" option was selected). Read here more about different kinds of remote logon.  Button becomes visible when computer is  in logged on state. It can be used to log off user remotely.  Shuts down or restarts the workstation. Removes computer from the list of monitored workstations. This is a quite harmless procedure, computer still remains in the list of Business Objects and should user log in that machine, its name will be added to the list again.

Pressing opens a window that shows recent receipts for the specified computer. This can be useful sometimes to see not only the last or current user receipt but also that of few logins ago. See an example screenshot of it below.

Remote User Logon is a very powerful feature of NetSpy. There are several ways cashier can logon user onto the workstation remotely from the monitoring terminal. This may greatly simplify a day-to-day operation and minimize the number of times your customers ask "How do I log in ?" question. There are four major types of remote login.

	Guest user login. Just select the option and click button. Guest user names begin with "GUEST ON" prefix followed by the computer name (i.e. "GUEST ON COMP1").
	To login users of other types, choose option. and click button. A screen will pop up that will give a choice of three other kinds of login. See below.

Login Anonymous User of given type. You can logon an anonymous user of any type you have listed on the User Types screen. A user will be created the very first time remote logon is initiated for that type. Username will begin with the Type Name, followed by " ON " and end with target workstation name (i.e. "DEFAULT ON COMP1").  

Pre-Paid User Logon can be a very useful and time-saving option if you want to make sure that people pay for the computer time and printer usage in advance. To login the User who paid some amount in advance select the computer, check "Other" option and click "Logon User" button. You will see Pre-Paid and Administrative user remote logon window.

Enter the amount (7.50 in this example) user paid and click OK. Now you can tell your customer to go and start using the computer. Client computer will have the following window up when user approaches the machine. 

Let's say Alice came to the Java Cafe and paid $7.50 to do some study work. Cashier will enter 7.50 as shown above and tell her to use the computer at the corner.  Alice will see this screen when she approaches the computer specified by the cashier. As soon as she logs in, an amount of 7.50 will be credited to her newly created or existing account as well as her user type will be changed to PRE-PAID.  If auto logoff option was not enabled during the PRE-PAID user remote login, cashier will be prompted to enable it. Again, this screen's pictures and texts are customizable. See Configurations screen for details on how to do that.

Selecting "Windows system user logon" will allow administrator to logon workstation remotely using system credentials.

System credentials you enter here will be transferred securely to the client workstation and used to unlock the machine as if the logon happened locally.   This option will be mainly used by the administrators for the maintenance work.

Recent Computer History shows last few receipts for the selected computer. 

To print a receipt for the particular user select one of the items of that receipt and click "Print" button.

option deserves more detailed explanation. It allows you to specify rules according to which NetSpy will automatically initiate user logouts. If unchecked, computer will have to be logged out manually either by User or Operator (using  button ).

Forcing Users Out  

Clicking on check box will bring up the "Auto Logoff Setup" window

This screen is quite self explanatory. 

To enable one or more of the auto logoff options select the user type you want to apply  it to and specify the parameters from the right side of the panel. 

Caution is advised when using any of these options, especially "Limit by Duration" (because user cannot prevent logout from happening). The main reason being that if user has unsaved data and he/she is forced out the data will most probably be lost.

Click OK to save and activate logout, or Cancel to leave without saving

This option  can also be accessed from the Business Objects page.