Remote access to computer used in worship

[lauriepop]

Hi everyone

I was wondering how many of you allow remote access to your presentation computer so that volunteers can work on putting together the service at home? Also, have you run into any problems by doing this?

Currently I am the only one putting together our contemporary worship service (announcements, songs, videos, graphics and sermon notes) and we use EW presentation software. Everything is composed at home and transfered to the presentation computer.

We want to begin using media in our traditional service as well as get additional people involved in compiling the contemporary service. This will mean adding volunteers who will need access to the computer, or they will need need to download the software at home and transfer the files.

I will be making a request to committee asking for remote access for volunteers, so I would appreciate any experiences you can share before I make this request.

Thanks so much!

Laurie Popowycz

[cw4u]

We have one individual on staff that does all of this for us.

We do allow our volunteers to download a copy of the software (ProPresenter) and use it in their homes for training purposes.

[petereit]

We do exactly that, but we use ProPresenter. ProPresenter allows anyone to download the full program to any computer. The only limitation to the unregistered program is that it watermarks the projected output, which isn't an issue for folks working on files from home.

We sync all of our song slide files to a Dropbox account that our volunteers can access from home. As soon as a finished file is uploaded it automatically syncs to all of the projection computers at church. It works pretty slick!

[katanna]

At my last church we had LogMeIn installed for remote access. They have a free account which is all we ever needed.

Matthew

[[Admin] osborn4]

We use the free workstation licenses that come with our SongShow Plus license, rather than using remote control.

[lauriepop]

We do use LogMeIn on other church computers, but do not have the presentation computer included. We do use Dropbox and do transfer files by flash drive, but someone from another local church said that using remote access has simplified their process and suggested we use it as well.
I have found that a drawback from transferring files from home to presentation computer, either through dropbox or flashdrive, is that some files cannot be edited. This may be a limitation with EW, but that is what we have. My thought is to have one place where all files are accessible (backgrounds, graphics, pictures, media, etc) to volunteers that are going to help.
We do not have anyone on staff that does this work.
Thanks for your comments!

[liko81]

I work in an environment that deals with many computers running at client sites which we occasionally need remote access into.

Where possible, we use a remote desktop app called VNC. VNC is a blanket term for the basic protocol (like FTP); there are many software implementations. The two we like best are UltraVNC and RealVNC, and UltraVNC is free. You install the "server" component onto the computer you want to access, and then install the "client" on computers you want to access the remote PC from. These will require that the computer have a public IP address (or that you set up "port forwarding" on your LAN's router to direct requests for the VNC port on the gateway to the VNC computer). There is also a limitation on the screen capture; certain applications which use direct memory access to draw to the screen (hardware-accelerated apps, DirectDraw apps, basically anything not using Windows GDI) will not show in the remote viewer. So, run some local tests with your software before committing to it as a solution. If it doesn't work, no huge deal; it was free to try.

Another one we commonly use is good ol' Windows Remote Desktop or RDP. The beauty of this one is that any PC with Windows XP or better has Remote Desktop built right in. But, the computer you wish to get to must be configured to accept Remote Desktop requests, and like VNC the computer must be available on a public Internet address (or via port forwarding from the gateway's external address). Remote Desktop is also a common target for hackers.

The last option for us is called ShowMyPC. It's a Java applet from showmypc.com that allows for remote support. LogMeIn is a very similar product. I believe ShowMyPC requires a subscription fee in order to provide remote access to an unattended computer. It's like $5/mo for one computer, very reasonable. LogMeIn, as others said, is free to use in this capacity.

[yagabu]

I would suggest not alowing remote access since that can introduce problems, but I would recommend allowing the volunteers to use the software at home as a workstation and transfering the files to the projection machine. Dropbox, or flash drive or another networked pc that you can remote to. You want to keep your projection machine as stable as possible.

[rcourtney]

We have a small FTP server that volunteers can upload content to.
When the computer that is connected to the screens is booted, we copy
through a script the files to the desktop.

From there they are inserted in our presentation software by an onsite volunteer
usually late Friday or early Saturday morning.

NOTE: the script only copies specific file types like: png, ppt, tga and
the antivirus program scans them as well.

[wogster]

Originally Posted by lauriepop

Hi everyone

I was wondering how many of you allow remote access to your presentation computer so that volunteers can work on putting together the service at home? Also, have you run into any problems by doing this?

Currently I am the only one putting together our contemporary worship service (announcements, songs, videos, graphics and sermon notes) and we use EW presentation software. Everything is composed at home and transfered to the presentation computer.

We want to begin using media in our traditional service as well as get additional people involved in compiling the contemporary service. This will mean adding volunteers who will need access to the computer, or they will need need to download the software at home and transfer the files.

I will be making a request to committee asking for remote access for volunteers, so I would appreciate any experiences you can share before I make this request.

Thanks so much!

Laurie Popowycz

Don't do it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The problem with remote access, is that it introduces the potential of a security hole. For churches, there are many people who hate Christians and the church enough, that they will spend all the time needed to crack the access, even, even if it's every waking moment for the next 40 years.

A better methodology is, if you have 5 volunteers, one is assigned the role of editor, everyone sends their material to the editor who incorporates it into the final presentation. This also allows the editor to set deadlines, if someone doesn't meet their deadline, then the editor can still make sure the work gets done.