hot potato workers
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@pete-s said in hot potato workers:
@dashrender said in hot potato workers:
I have a front desk area of 10 workstations that I need to allow these 10 workers and about 20 others to randomly log into any of these 10 stations and have full function.
Each station has an insurance card scanner - software will only load for one profile at a time. I.e. if person 1 is logged in, then person 2 logs in while suspending (not logging off) person 1, the scanner won't work.
The printers are based on front desk location, so it's workstation based, regardless of who logs in.
Lastpass needs to be installed into Chrome and ready to go regardless of who logs into the PC.
As already mentioned - as backup to sick front desk staff, a group of 20 or so can be assigned to fill in as needed, and they need the ability to do all functions from these computers as well.
Because it's a medical shop - my users need the ability to lock their computers when they go to the bathroom - so I'm thinking a shared account likely isn't going to work.
Just an idea but why not use scanners that support network scanning and don't need a PC?
Having USB scanners is like having USB printers. Not great in a workgroup situation.
Our EMR only supports USB based scanning today. We've begged them to enable network based TWAIN - but they currently intentionally disable it.
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@dashrender said in hot potato workers:
@pete-s said in hot potato workers:
@dashrender said in hot potato workers:
I have a front desk area of 10 workstations that I need to allow these 10 workers and about 20 others to randomly log into any of these 10 stations and have full function.
Each station has an insurance card scanner - software will only load for one profile at a time. I.e. if person 1 is logged in, then person 2 logs in while suspending (not logging off) person 1, the scanner won't work.
The printers are based on front desk location, so it's workstation based, regardless of who logs in.
Lastpass needs to be installed into Chrome and ready to go regardless of who logs into the PC.
As already mentioned - as backup to sick front desk staff, a group of 20 or so can be assigned to fill in as needed, and they need the ability to do all functions from these computers as well.
Because it's a medical shop - my users need the ability to lock their computers when they go to the bathroom - so I'm thinking a shared account likely isn't going to work.
Just an idea but why not use scanners that support network scanning and don't need a PC?
Having USB scanners is like having USB printers. Not great in a workgroup situation.
Our EMR only supports USB based scanning today. We've begged them to enable network based TWAIN - but they currently intentionally disable it.
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@travisdh1 said in hot potato workers:
@dashrender said in hot potato workers:
@pete-s said in hot potato workers:
@dashrender said in hot potato workers:
I have a front desk area of 10 workstations that I need to allow these 10 workers and about 20 others to randomly log into any of these 10 stations and have full function.
Each station has an insurance card scanner - software will only load for one profile at a time. I.e. if person 1 is logged in, then person 2 logs in while suspending (not logging off) person 1, the scanner won't work.
The printers are based on front desk location, so it's workstation based, regardless of who logs in.
Lastpass needs to be installed into Chrome and ready to go regardless of who logs into the PC.
As already mentioned - as backup to sick front desk staff, a group of 20 or so can be assigned to fill in as needed, and they need the ability to do all functions from these computers as well.
Because it's a medical shop - my users need the ability to lock their computers when they go to the bathroom - so I'm thinking a shared account likely isn't going to work.
Just an idea but why not use scanners that support network scanning and don't need a PC?
Having USB scanners is like having USB printers. Not great in a workgroup situation.
Our EMR only supports USB based scanning today. We've begged them to enable network based TWAIN - but they currently intentionally disable it.
yep.. we've had two workgroup calls with them.. and about 20 people all begging them to turn it on.. stop manually blocking it!
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@dashrender said in hot potato workers:
Another idea is and RDS setup.
My biggest concern about this is the scanner. I have no idea if it will work in a multi-user environment like RDS. In fact I doubt it will since it won't work in a multi-user environment like Windows 10.Have you considered TS Scan by Terminal works? https://www.terminalworks.com/remote-desktop-scanning
We use it for RDP scanning from remote USB scanners and it works great. You can test it for a trial period to see if it will handle multiple clients to one remote scanner. I think it will; one at a time.
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@jasgot said in hot potato workers:
@dashrender said in hot potato workers:
Another idea is and RDS setup.
My biggest concern about this is the scanner. I have no idea if it will work in a multi-user environment like RDS. In fact I doubt it will since it won't work in a multi-user environment like Windows 10.Have you considered TS Scan by Terminal works? https://www.terminalworks.com/remote-desktop-scanning
We use it for RDP scanning from remote USB scanners and it works great. You can test it for a trial period to see if it will handle multiple clients to one remote scanner. I think it will; one at a time.
We have an insurance card scanner at each desk. I don't see this changing.
In fact, if anything - there have been discussions for years about adding a full size page scanner at each station. The biggest hold back on this is space. our primary location's front desk barely has enough room for the keyboard, mouse, phone and a cup of coffee. the insurance card scanner is crowded up under the monitors and pulled out when needed.
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I keep thinking about this. It's the kind of problem I love to tackle.
If the scanner redirector from terminalworks does indeed allow you to use the scanner with you insurance/single use issue, then mandatory roaming profiles may work well for you.
BTW: for some reason, I think the termnalworks software disconnects the link to the scanner if the RDP session goes into a disconnected state. This should work well for insurance/one user issue.
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@jasgot said in hot potato workers:
I keep thinking about this. It's the kind of problem I love to tackle.
If the scanner redirector from terminalworks does indeed allow you to use the scanner with you insurance/single use issue, then mandatory roaming profiles may work well for you.
BTW: for some reason, I think the termnalworks software disconnects the link to the scanner if the RDP session goes into a disconnected state. This should work well for insurance/one user issue.
Personally - I'm not a fan of the RDS solution - it's so expensive.
I'd like a solution at the desktop instead... not sure I'll get one, but it's where I'm currently trying to aim.
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@dashrender said in hot potato workers:
@jasgot said in hot potato workers:
I keep thinking about this. It's the kind of problem I love to tackle.
If the scanner redirector from terminalworks does indeed allow you to use the scanner with you insurance/single use issue, then mandatory roaming profiles may work well for you.
BTW: for some reason, I think the termnalworks software disconnects the link to the scanner if the RDP session goes into a disconnected state. This should work well for insurance/one user issue.
Personally - I'm not a fan of the RDS solution - it's so expensive.
I'd like a solution at the desktop instead... not sure I'll get one, but it's where I'm currently trying to aim.
Will the scanner work in the following scenario?
- User A logs in and scans
- User A locks the screen and goes away
- User B logs in
- User B unplugs the scanner physically and then plugs it in again
- User B starts working and scanning
Do you think what I'm thinking?
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Will the scanner work in the following scenario?
- User A logs in and scans
- User A locks the screen and goes away
- Computer goes to sleep
- User B wakes it up and logs in
- User B starts working and scanning
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Is it possible to run a script with admin rights that terminates the scanner software when a new user logs in?
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@dashrender said in hot potato workers:
We have an insurance card scanner at each desk. I don't see this changing.
Not sure how to read this response.
TSScan is software not hardware. It will allow a session on an RDP server to see that locally attached twain scanner. But RDP is not an option. (yet!) -
Having spoken to @Dashrender just yesterday about the environmental differences between his org and mine - it's amazing.
We use the same EMR, just accessed differently. very very differently. So we have the same issues, do a differing level, application wise,.. network/computer wise - we are 10x more involved. (would you agree @Dashrender )
His org goes direct, whereas we use RDS. And there are a number of other differences. We use the AmbirScan card scanners and TS Scan on the desktop to the RDS session. We also have nearly fifty printers and and Zebra printers. Our RDS Pool is suspended over night for cost. Everything is across a VPN...
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@jasgot said in hot potato workers:
But RDP is not an option. (yet!)
in
hisenvironment - I don't think RDS would ever be an option. The infrastructure changes needed are quite involved. -
@pete-s said in hot potato workers:
@dashrender said in hot potato workers:
@jasgot said in hot potato workers:
I keep thinking about this. It's the kind of problem I love to tackle.
If the scanner redirector from terminalworks does indeed allow you to use the scanner with you insurance/single use issue, then mandatory roaming profiles may work well for you.
BTW: for some reason, I think the termnalworks software disconnects the link to the scanner if the RDP session goes into a disconnected state. This should work well for insurance/one user issue.
Personally - I'm not a fan of the RDS solution - it's so expensive.
I'd like a solution at the desktop instead... not sure I'll get one, but it's where I'm currently trying to aim.
Will the scanner work in the following scenario?
- User A logs in and scans
- User A locks the screen and goes away
- User B logs in
- User B unplugs the scanner physically and then plugs it in again
- User B starts working and scanning
Do you think what I'm thinking?
Not likely - because the software is still actively running under user A
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@pete-s said in hot potato workers:
Is it possible to run a script with admin rights that terminates the scanner software when a new user logs in?
Now there's an idea...
So -
User A logs in - locks
user B logs in - script kills software, software auto relaunches - user b locks.The question is - when user A logs in again - is that seen as a new user logging in? or just a resume of previous session? If the script can be made to run every time, this would be a possible solution to that specific issue.
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@jasgot said in hot potato workers:
@dashrender said in hot potato workers:
We have an insurance card scanner at each desk. I don't see this changing.
Not sure how to read this response.
TSScan is software not hardware. It will allow a session on an RDP server to see that locally attached twain scanner. But RDP is not an option. (yet!)The insurance card scanner is not a twain device. It's it's own connection over USB (so far as I understand) - to TSScan wouldn't work for the scanner anyway.
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@gjacobse said in hot potato workers:
Having spoken to @Dashrender just yesterday about the environmental differences between his org and mine - it's amazing.
We use the same EMR, just accessed differently. very very differently. So we have the same issues, do a differing level, application wise,.. network/computer wise - we are 10x more involved. (would you agree @Dashrender )
His org goes direct, whereas we use RDS. And there are a number of other differences. We use the AmbirScan card scanners and TS Scan on the desktop to the RDS session. We also have nearly fifty printers and and Zebra printers. Our RDS Pool is suspended over night for cost. Everything is across a VPN...
yeah - Frankly your situation just sounds weird to me, but not unheard of considering that you can get Azure on-premises.
Gene's environment appears to be a singular session running in Azure, not a cloud session like mine.
Gene's company then uses RDS sessions in Azure to grant access to their users.
As Gene mentioned, there is a VPN between his office and Azure allowing local printers direct IP printing from the RDS sessions, and his client workstations to access those RDS sessions.
Gene also mentioned that the performance of their athena in this manner is significantly better compared to accessing athenaNet directly from their devices in their office via the internet.But my question is - what is the cost of this setup? I'm guessing 10's if not 100's of thousands of dollars a year on top of the athena cost itself (which is significant).
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@gjacobse said in hot potato workers:
@jasgot said in hot potato workers:
But RDP is not an option. (yet!)
in
hisenvironment - I don't think RDS would ever be an option. The infrastructure changes needed are quite involved.Well - I'm the one who tossed out the idea of using RDS/RDP in the first place for this particular situation.
And since your ambir scan's are working withe TSScan, we could switch to those for the insurance card scanning if the solution fit within our requirements.
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athenaNet recently added the ability to do direct scanning from within the chart (before that, the only option was - scan to a file, then upload that file through the uploader). using either TWAIN compliant or Snapscan scanners.
Sadly as mentioned repeatedly above, athena specifically blocks the use of network attached twain scanners.
Making matters worse, the process for getting an insurance card into athena is yet another process.
The insurance card is scanned (typically using Inuvio or Ambir scan software) to c:\card\cardab.jpg.
The athena add-on software (athena device manager) will - when the correct button is pressed inside athena - look to that directory and if a file is there by that exact name - check how old the file is. If it's more than 5 mins old - it will warn the user that this file is more than 5 mins old and are you sure it's the correct one? - assuming you choose upload anyway - the jpg is uploaded into athena.This process makes it extremely painful to use a single device to scan files AND insurance cards into athena from a single device. In the case of scanning, the twain driver is used. in the case of the insurance card - local scanning software must be used to place the image into c:\card.
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Okay. Let's look again at the idea of a script to kill and restart the software. Once you have a script working that can kill the software on demand, and start the software on demand. move the script to a GPP.
Use GPP (Group Policy Preferences) to create scheduled tasks that uses the "On workstation lock" and "On workstation unlock" event to trigger your script.
