Right Click Tools

Right Click Tools Version 4.0 – Kiosk Manager

In Recast Enterprise Right Click Tools, if you’re familiar with 3.2, and you’re looking through 4.0, you will notice that Lab Manager is no longer there.  Fear not, the feature sets you’ve come to rely on are still in 4.0, but separated out in to two feature subsets: Kiosk Manager & Unified Write Filter.  We’ll focus on Kiosk Manager in this post.

Kiosk Manager is a way to apply several settings to a machine or group of machines to lock it down, or turn it into a single use machine… like a kiosk, for example. 🙂

Right Click Tools Kiosk Manager

First, create a Profile using “Manage Profile”

Create a Profile using "Manage Profile"
Select Configurations
A list of options, if you check the box, additional dialog boxes will be presented

For this example, lets display all of the options.

Choose the account that will automatically Logon to the Machine
Choose the account that will automatically Logon to the Machine.
Here you can Replace the Shell
Here you can Replace the Shell, with any application you’d like, perhaps a Testing Application, or Browser.
Set the Computer to reboot automatically
Lets set the Computer to reboot automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity.
Delete Files / Folders on Restart
Choose which folders you’d like to delete on restart, from a pre-selected list or custom.
Here enable a Whitelist feature
Here enable a Whitelist feature, and choose which sites you’d like to allow.  It already has some presets you can add [Pearson], or create your own.
Here you can disable keys on the keyboard.
Here you can disable keys on the keyboard.
Setting the volume to a specific level, or even mute.
Setting the volume to a specific level, or even mute.

Now that we have a Template, lets apply it to a machine and see what happens.  Right click on the machine, and go to “Apply Profile”

Apply template to a machine
Deploy the profile
You can deploy the profile now, or schedule it for later, like after classes are done today, but before they come in for testing tomorrow.

So we apply the Library Profile, Deploy it Immediately, it will reboot the machines to apply, which is also a good reason to schedule it.

When you apply a Template, the machine will reboot to apply the Template
When you apply a Template, the machine will reboot to apply the Template. So, keep that in the back of your mind.

After the reboot, the machine performs the auto-logon with the account information provided, it then launches the replacement shell, in this case, Chrome.  

Auto Logon & Launch Chrome in FULL Screen Mode
Auto Logon & Launches Chrome in FULL Screen Mode.  No Start Menu.

So, it had some of the desired effects, but since we’re using the whitelist, it only shows the content of the items added to that list, apparently many of the graphics are hosted under a different domain name.  Open “Developer Mode” in Chrome, and grab the other URLs that are needed, and an update to the WhiteList Tab in the Template.

 Add a few more entries
So we’re going to add a few more entries from the RecastSoftware Site that we see in Developer Mode.

After you make a change to the template, you have to RE-Apply it.

Re-apply the template

Now the machine will apply the updated template, reboot, and have your changes applied.

Reboot to see changes applied

There we go, that looks better.   Auto Logon to Chrome Browser with the Default Website set to RecastSoftware.com and the user is blocked from making modifications.   If the Kiosk is left unattended for 30 minutes, it reboots to a fresh state.

To get the most out of Kiosk Manager, leverage GPO to set lock screen settings, power options, and other control features.  

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