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Thread: Employee monitoring / reporting software?

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    Employee monitoring / reporting software?

    I manage the I.T. in a call centre, and lately the company isn't turning much of a profit, staff aren't earning their own wages etc.

    Anyway, i'm after some suggestions for software that will e-mail me a report from each PC at the end of the day with a summary of all the activity.

    We already have VNC on them to watch but obviously this can't be done constantl, so what are my options here?

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    Age before beauty......MOVE!!!!
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    Eeeek...all activity?

    I guess you are talking keystroke loggers and analysers??? Sounds highly specialised call centre software to me and no doubt dashed expensive.
    The Man with the Silver Spot

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    You have to weigh up the ammount you monitor with the ammont of time you'll have to spend reading the reports

    What do you actually want to monitor ?

    I'd suggest you start off with a transparent web proxy , and block MSN access.
    You can then implement content filtering software to restrict things to work only sites during work hours.

    locking down workstations so they can't install any games

    lock down your mail server so that certain file types can't be mailed ot each other ( .swf for example )


    most of all have a clear IT AUP policy that defines these and the penaties for breaking them.
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    If you have an Exchange mail server you can use the logs to look at email titles.

    Use a web proxy like Apache to monitor internet use - I'd recommend Dansguardian as a filtering pre-proxy combined with squid.

    Group policy settings in Active Directory can be used to stop certain applications from running - like games or IM type stuff, and force IE to go through above-mentioned proxy.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Michael
    I manage the I.T. in a call centre, and lately the company isn't turning much of a profit, staff aren't earning their own wages etc.

    Anyway, i'm after some suggestions for software that will e-mail me a report from each PC at the end of the day with a summary of all the activity.

    We already have VNC on them to watch but obviously this can't be done constantl, so what are my options here?
    I think you also need to take into account what is in employees contracts. A big shift in acceptance has happened recently where monitoring is starting that companies do is becoming a requirement at contract level.

    If there is no Staff policy on computer use then i'd suggest thats where you need to start. To be honest no call centre staff need access to the internet during work hours...

    If you are on a call then you should be focused on the call, not on what you are browsing....

    I'm an consultant now, but during uni days i was in the position of a call centre bod... Internet just wasn't needed and was totally disabled for call centre staff..

    TiG
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    I'm not sure Michael meant monitoring private use of company resources? I took it he was looking at productivity.

    Having gone through all the research a couple of years ago to implement a policy here, I can tell you it's a minefield. You are damned if you do and damned if you dont with conflicting untested legislation. The easiest policy by far is to prohibit all private use. No private browsing or private emails (unless you are IT manager!). A policy incorporated into T&C's and a comprehensive list of guidelines all help. I am able (and indeed expected) to monitor all emails, web browsing and even telephone use (though not the calls themselves).
    The Man with the Silver Spot

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    SurfControl is pretty good

    It'll also email you all the details of any attempted infringments, best of all it's a human operated blacklist so it's not going to block random parts of words (essex, sussex, cockfosters, etc..) on legitimate pages.
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    Cheers for the replies.

    I've used a program called BrowseControl to attempt to handle restricting sites.

    Internet is needed as staff need to lookup full addresses on various websites when they only manage to take down partial details and also get details / pictures of phones to email awnsers and such....

    Which is why i used the software i just mentioned... it allows me to restrict access to a whitelist of sites, however, it's pretty poor... It runs on the client side thus a bad thing form the start, and also uses vbscript to popup an alert when a site is attempted to be accessed (This was good for me as I could code it to reference toa PHP script and log which user tried to access which site and when), however due to the very nature of vbscript, half the computers threw up an error alert as opposed to the actual warning...

    As for the apache proxy... sounds intersting.
    We already run Apache and PHP, MySQL, etc, for the software i create/fix/edit/work on etc, how could i configure the PCs to all connect through this and use it as a proxy, thus blocking site son the server side?

    Any links or white papers (Quick and easy ones) I should look at?
    Last edited by Michael; 02-06-2005 at 10:01 PM.

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    you can force a proxy address using group policy within your active directory
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    Sounds to me like you need to do a lot more work on locking down the network, btw SurfControl is a server app, transparent proxy iirc (and it allows blacklists/whitelists etc)
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    Nox
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    i'm not posting in this thread on the off chance my boss reads it and thinks 'thats a good idea'

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nox
    i'm not posting in this thread on the off chance my boss reads it and thinks 'thats a good idea'

    Nox
    Why not? Get a promotion...

    I'm 17 - just

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