Hi there, First, I hope I am in the right forum. My apologies if not. Please move the post if I have messed up!
TL;DR: I work at a small company with only 1 physical office (although sometimes, employees will work from home using their laptops) and 8 PCs. It’s up to me to keep the PCs running, but I am not an IT professional, and only know as much as I can learn from an online search. I would really, really appreciate it if you could tell me what to research, and get me pointed in the right direction. My goal is to better manage the work computers, without physically being in front of the PCs and logging in as “Admin”.
Until now, I have been the “IT Guy” because I am the only one who can fix problems (that usually means restarting a PC, or restarting the printer when it won’t print ) When it comes to PC stuff, my area of knowledge is basically that I manage the company’s website design and maintenance, and how different service platforms can be used with the company’s website for marketing and lead generation. I also have experience with file backups and syncing, and using Cloud Services like Google Cloud and AWS. I do NOT consider myself a Windows power user, and I think that is my “Achilles heel.” We are looking at deploying a NAS here at the office, and as I am learning and preparing for THAT, I realize that the way I set up and manage the PCs already here at the office is a slow an inefficient method (And is probably not secure, since each computer might have out-of-date settings, updates, patches, etc. that could be a security problem)
Over time, as everyone gets a new PC, I have been the one to set it up. I always create an “Admin” account in Windows, and then a normal Windows user account for that specific employee. If anything went wrong or the PC needed new software, I would log in as the Admin (As in, I would physically sit at their desk and use their PC!) I have been the one to install Chrome, install the File Sync program(s) we use, and get it set up, install and configure other programs we use. But it has all been “hands-on” as I am physically at the employee’s desk using their computer. If it is a brand new computer, it takes me a couple days to get it totally set up and to get all their old files, programs and settings onto their new computer. But that’s not an inconvenience for them since it’s a new computer. Once they are using the computer for weeks, months, a year, however, it IS inconvenient for me to say “Oh, hey, we need to install this new version of Google Drive app and I need to configure it the right way for you. Would you mind if I sit at your desk for an hour while I am working on your computer? In the meantime, you can… uh.. take a long lunch break? lol Or, lately, Microsoft is pushing the Windows 11 upgrade notifications, so I have told people to NOT click and upgrade, but it’s that kind of thing I wish to handle ‘remotely’)
I know there are other ways of handling multiple computers. I just don’t know what they are called or …….