Requesting Access to Keyboard and Mouse Control

[KateG]

Hi @dharrel and welcome to the Community. Can you provide a few details on what happened when you tried to control your attendee's screen? 

To switch to GoToMeeting classic you should log in through the website. Try signing in here and you should be able to switch it in Settings. 

[dharrel]

Thanks, Kate.  I figured out how to request "Keyboard and Mouse" of an attendee by holding a meeting with myself on another computer.  However, I find there are more steps and more complicated than the prior GoToMeeting version.  It particularly is less intuitive for my meeting attendee, especially if they are not very computer savvy.  

Here are the steps that I determined with the new GoToMeeting:

• Make attendee presenter by clicking on their name in attendee list (no longer right click), and then click pop-up action "Make Presenter". 
• Attendee is no longer prompted to share screen.  They must now click “share” icon at the bottom of their GoToMeeting window.  
• Attendee needs to give control by clicking “…” at top-right in their GoToMeeting window, then click pop-up action “Give Remote Control”.   I can no longer request control.  
• I must then click “Remote” button at bottom of my GoTo app before I can actually take control. 

To contrast, here are the steps with the prior GoToMeeting version:

• Make attendee presenter by right-clicking on their name in attendee list, and then click pop-up action "Make Presenter". 
• Attendee sees a pop-up window asking them if they want to share screen.  I tell them to do so.  
• I request control of the attendee's screen by right-clicking on their name in the attendee list, and then click pop-up action "Request Keyboard and Mouse" (I could have requested control when making them presenter, but generally don't)
• Attendee sees a pop-up window asking confirmation to give control.  I tell them to do so.  

I was more in control with the old GoToMeeting, and the attendee's required actions were popped up before them, making it much easier for me to tell them what they need to do.  

[Rontechscaf]

The new goto remote is wrong in a lot of ways - the escape key cancells remote control and you need to reactivate it using the control button using the mouse, so it is impossible to show anything to anyone if you need to use the escape key on their machine (about every 30 seconds in my case!) and the direction of the wheel is backwards in the remote. Many keyboard commands and modifiers, such as shift, control etc are not sent through - so modifying mouse movements and clicks in the remote session does not work. Makes remote control for the purpose of training and demonstration impossible.

[Rontechscaf]

There are many problems with Remote control that make the product unfit for purpose.

The first is that requesting control and getting a user to share their screen is all driven by the user, needing the user to initiate and activate screen share, remote control etc through a series of steps that takes about 5 or 6 complex steps to achieve. You, as a meeting organiser need to accomplish this WITHOUT seeing the user's screen or interface to be able to give them feedback on what to do - This makes it a VERY tedious and frequently IMPOSSIBLE to achieve when assisting people that frequently have no familiarity with goto - especially the new interface - and are often not very computer literate.  After using this for a week, I have had to move to using another non goto product to achieve remote control on many occasions - solutions that all offer a much better remote control experience for all parties.

Secondly And just as importantly - keyboard strokes are selectively sent through to the remote control screen.

Example 1 - Pressing the escape key to cancel a command in the remote session - something that I do nearly a hundred times in a typical session result in the local interface cancelling remote control. You have to take you hands away from the keyboard, use the mouse to click on the local 'Control' user interface button to reestablish control each time to continue the remote session. This is VERY problematic on remote sessions.

Solution is to only enable cancellation of the remote session by using a mouse activated local interface buttons or an esoteric, CUSTOMISABLE keyboard combination shortcut.

Example 2 - Keyboard modifiers are not always sent through to the remote computer session - Combinations of Ctrl, Shift and Alt in combination with some other keyboard buttons and mouse clicks are not sent through and so potentially thousands of remote control commands are not possible to be used remotely. For instance, I regularly use a combination of shift and middle mouse button press and drag to accomplish a command in remote control mode - this is not sent through to the remote on the other end - it is ignored.

Thirdly:  Wheel mouse scrolling is REVERSED in remote control sessions, scrolling and zooming in applications such as graphics, illustration, and text constantly executes the exact wrong command being sent.

Fourthly. Remote sessions have an increasing progressive latency lag in video - audio remains synched, but the longer a session goes on lag in remote control starts out responsive and low - but after being connected for an hour or more the latency in video can be behind conversation by more than 45 seconds. The sync never recovers to low latency at any point, you have to end the meeting and reestablish remote control again (GROAN, See the first problem to reset the long latency - As I said - unfit for purpose.

Fifthly - Recorded sessions on the local computer are very large webm files, and are unable to utilise any of the plethora of hardware accelerated video encoding available on the vast majority of  computers today - intel quicksync, nvidia NVENC, samsung exynos, qualcomm snapdragon  and AMD hardware accelerated video encoders that would make these far more efficient and 20 times smaller are available on the majority of devices Goto is being used on, but are never utilised (this was a problem with the older remote as well.)

Sixthly - user interface cannot be maximised to remove buttons and borders about the screen to maximise the remote control space on smaller screens. - On a FHD screen up to  30-35% of the session managers screen is taken up with gotomeeting controls, leaving the remaining to be shared amongst cameras and remote screens that are scaled to fit in the remaining space - the meeting convenor is unable to move the controls to another window to maximise the remote window's size to enable the best use of the local screen on a remote screen that may be much larger.

There are many more listed here.

Is this software beta? You are hammering changing to the new Goto interface in the old interface but for me it is not anywhere near ready for use; It has many glaringly obvious problems to anyone who uses remote control in Goto even a little bit. Sso I ask - Is this software Beta? Has it been through a proper test process?
The old interface is not terrific, but at least it doesn't have any of the issues listed above, (apart from non accelerated session record encoding).

If we are forced to use this new interface then we will need to change from goto to alternative products.

Oh, and can you remove the pestering reminders in the old interface to try the new interface until you have rectified all these issues?

[GlennD]

Hi @Rontechscaf, welcome to the community.

The ability to request keyboard and mouse control will be coming in a future update to the GoTo App, we will post an update here once it is released. We will also be releasing Flexible Layout for Attendees soon (already available for Presenters), which will allow them to view in true full screen and move GoTo Meeting interface elements to different monitors if they wish.

Is remote control your primary use for GoToMeeting? Could you provide some more details about your typical use case?

[Rontechscaf]

The wheel mouse is in reverse so scrolling down sends scrolling up to the remote session.

[Rontechscaf]

We use Goto meeting as a remote solution most every day to assist clients with application support and training and troubleshooting as well as remote office meetings internally.

The wheel mouse, progressive latency on video, and the escape key turning off control and not being sent through to the client to cancel a command on the remote end are massively debilitating, making session twice as inefficient. A training session for 90 minutes last week covered less than half of the needed subject matter in the time allotted, recording was abandoned to see if that would improve things, and we are losing time and energy.

What makes it even worse is although we have turned off the new goto in the hub, and are attempting to use the old goto our settings are not sticking, and we are now forced to use the new goto regardless. WE are resorting to using VNC which is a long way from being ideal. Goto is VERY broken for us currently, a client for many years.

[chet1]

Well, congrats, Glenn, you've made the tool worse.

I note that you said this "request control" feature was coming -- LAST AUGUST, which is the best part of a year ago. It's still not here, even though you're forcing users into the "new" GoTo.

That's unfortunate, because this new version seems worse in every way that matters to me. Starting meetings is more clicks. The software takes up insane amounts of screen space for no good reason. Getting control in a support call is painful. The app is slow and buggy, far worse than the GTM of 2015.

the only GOOD thing about the redesign is that, well, any inertia I felt about staying with GTM is gone, since a big reason to avoid a switch is a learning curve. since there's now a learning curve for GTM, I may as well look into something else. Teams is just about as good now, and is FREE.

[Oozle333]

Rontechscaf has it exactly right! I'm searching alternative programs. Have you tried Zoom for this? 

I just don't think GoTo cares about any of these issues. The escape key taking you out of Remote Control is unworkable! I've trained myself to use the scroll bar on the mouse backwards in a meeting. And getting remote access relies too heavily on the non-technical user. Such a SHAME!

Anyone else find an alternative solution or will GoTo not let us post about more successful competitors. 

[Mark_MMS]

ISSUE with mouse/keyboard control when user shares one monitor but has a multi-monitor setup.  

We're finally being forced into the new GoTo (meeting).   Not being able to request control aside, a bigger issue I noticed in back-to-back sessions with different customers, they gave me control and I took it, but then I didn't seem to be able to do anything.  It wasn't until later that the customer told me they could see the mouse moving on the other screen.  So even though the customer correctly shared one of her monitors,  when given control, my mouse was not operating on the shared screen but the other!

They had to disconnect the other monitor and reshare so that my mouse control was on the correct screen.  I HOPE this was an anomaly, but it happened in back-to-back sessions.    Also, it is exceedingly annoying that the mouse wheel goes in the opposite direction.