TeamViewer Pros and Cons

The TeamViewer system has some built-in security. The TeamViewer client connects to the TeamViewer host securely. Only a certain number of authorized users on our side have access to the system. Even within that, an individual endpoint can be assigned to a group, where not everybody has access but, rather, just one or two people who are part of a support team might have access to that particular device. So TeamViewer has given us tools to be able to segregate who has access to different things.

TeamViewer allows us to do multiple controllers on a Host, which is great. We have a lot of Macs in our organization, and TeamViewer being cross-platform is a good thing.

TeamViewer has a lot of options for deploying the Hosts, where you can mass deploy them very easily, and you can pre-configure them.

Ease of use was the number-one thing. It's an industry leader for ease of use, specifically on the client-side, which is the absolutely critical thing. If I want to connect to somebody, how easily can I — without seeing their computer — walk them through the steps to install it to a point where I can key in the code and help them resolve their situation?... TeamViewer is just a dead-solid, easy answer.

It saves trips to customer sites, which saves time. I am able to get in there remotely and fix things.

The product and platform work well. That is why I have stay with them so long. The stability has typically been good.

It was worth the investment. You can do file transfers and video calls with it. You can do a lot of copy paste stuff. E.g., if I have a file and want to place it on somebody's machine, I can just copy it off of mine and paste it right on their machine. I don't have to put it in a Dropbox account and have them log into it to pull it off. I can do all that right through TeamViewer. When you're looking at the TeamViewer screen, you think you are working on your own machine.

With an image, you can see immediately what's going on. You can run some tests. Without the solution, you need to do everything by telephone. It's not even thinkable.

It's very beneficial and time effective on how we are able to provide quick support. We've quadrupled our effectiveness as an IT support because we have cut down all that unnecessary travel time, even between floors.

The best feature is the remote access and being able to control another person's computer when you're showing them something, or teaching them how to do something during training, or fixing a problem they're having.

There have been a couple of times with the handy remote access feature, where I have been asked for something at eight o'clock on a Thursday evening and it is on my desk machine, but I am driving back to my office. With TeamViewer, I can just stay at my home machine, connect to my work machine, and get the data needed without having to drive back across town.

TeamViewer has been one of the easiest, right off the bat products, that we have employed at the college. We have had no issues. It's been one of the easiest solutions to pick up.

Sometimes we'll have a device in the field, and I'll click on remote control and it says "Can't authenticate." I'll double click in a different part of the TeamViewer interface and it'll say "Can't authenticate." Then I'll do it a third time and it connects. It's possible that it's just bad luck. It's also very possible that it's some bug within TeamViewer...

You can't configure multiple, unattended control passwords on the Mac. On the Mac, there's only one. On Windows, there are multiple unattended control passwords. I have people in different departments. My infrastructure people need to control a server and my developers may need to go into that same server. But I don't want them to have the same password... on the Mac, it can be done but it's extremely clunky and problematic.

Every now and then you'll get a silent crash and you relaunch the application. But it happens no more than with anything else in the Windows environment.

Support for mobile devices from Linux has been missing since the Native client was rolled out. This was a nice option, especially when trying to walk somebody who was struggling to understand something on their phone.

If they could figure out a little better solution for the iOS stuff other than just a screen share, even though it's an Apple thing, and Apple doesn't like to give up control of their devices. If they ever got to that point, and I could manipulate an iPad or iPhone, that would be awesome. Since we have a bunch of iPad users who are struggling with doing different things, it would be nice to be able to just jump on and actually show them, "Here, do this, this, and this." Similar to what we do with the laptops, e.g. for training.

A feature that they could add is chat with sound to talk.

Some of the additional features, like the meeting stuff, is making it too cluttered.

On occasion, when remote connection process can't connect to a machine, the error messages aren't always helpful to tell you why you can't connect, as the message doesn't help troubleshoot whether it is too slow, too much interference, etc. I usually have to run to another computer and figure out what is going on, then restart it. The diagnostics could be improved.

Sometimes, the app can be a little cumbersome when accessing certain aspects of the program.

It's not the program itself that's an issue, but there is a need for some better documentation on how to use the web portal Management Console. That seems to be a bit lacking in directions, if you aren't paying attention and you don't know what to do. Better documentation would make it a little bit easier to set things up in different groups and share groups between people.