LANDesk Desktop Management

LANDesk is a product in use by Saunders Technical Support in order to provide remote assistance to our users and deploy software. While our users do not need to be concerned about most of the functionality of LANDesk, it does help to be informed about some of the things you may notice with the software installed onto your system.

Avoiding Untimely Reboots

LANDesk will deploy security updates when they become available. Your computer is configured to automatically scan for these updates on a daily basis. This typically happens when you first turn your computer on and at 11pm. Most security updates require your computer to reboot to complete the installation of these updates. Because the security scan will also run at 11pm every day, if you leave your computer on overnight, it should be patched by morning. Be aware that your computer will prompt you to reboot when the patching is done. If you do not select the Snooze option, the computer will automatically reboot after 30 minutes. Be sure you have saved all your work before you decide to leave your computer on overnight.

When prompted for these updates, you will be given an option to snooze the reboot for up to 6 hours by clicking on the Snooze button when the dialog appears. After 6 hours, you will be required to reboot and will be unable to delay any further.

If you manually reboot your computer before this 6 hour time limit expires, LANDesk will detect this and not require you to reboot again. For faculty, if you snooze the reboot notice while teaching class, once your class has completed, shutdown your laptop. Turning your laptop back on completes the required reboot. For staff, if you snooze the reboot notice, execute a manual reboot before taking a break or leaving for the end of the day.

If you would prefer to manually run the security updates to ensure they are installed at a time that is convenient for you, you may do so by clicking on Security Scan in the Start Menu.

This will launch the security scan manually.

Installing Optional Software

One feature of LANDesk is to provide a list of optional software that users can chose to install without having to contact Saunders Technical Support and without administrative rights. To review this list of optional software, start by clicking on the Desktop Manager icon in the Start Menu.

Click on the Software Deployment Portal button and select the software package(s) you wish to install and click the Deploy button.
Be aware that some of the software listed does require you to be either on campus or connected to RIT via VPN in order for the installation to work. Review the description columns for each software package before deploying them.

LANDesk will then start installing the software.
Once finished, the status for the software you selected will change to Complete.