Remote computer idle time?

[ShawnW]

I have AD admin permissions to the computers I support. I'm trying to write a simple script that will give me a popup when a someone is active at a specific computer.

I've been playing email tag with a certain user that needs help and needs to be there when I come assist. We keep missing each other so I figure something that lets me know the second they do something at their computer would be helpful. The user stays logged so I cannot just look for that, and they also do not always lock their computer (gonna have to talk with them about that) so I cannot check for that either.

Is there anything else I can look for remotely that might help?

[somdcomputerguy]

Well I don't mean this as a sarcastic statement, but couldn't they just call you when they need assistance?

[Colyn1337]

Try running a script that checks the date/time of the user folder every 15 seconds or so. When user's login, the folder get's "modified" and the timestamp changes.

EDIT:

Use the UNC path to the user folder.

Edited September 17, 2012 by Colyn1337

[ShawnW]

You'd think right? But apparently I'm supposed to be proactive in supporting idiots. I'm at a university and support faculty, staff, and phd students. Faculty bring in the money with grants and students and such, so we gotta bend over backwards to cater to them, unfortunately they seem to be the most stubborn, hard to work with, and technically challenged group of individuals.

[ShawnW]

Try running a script that checks the date/time of the user folder every 15 seconds or so. When user's login, the folder get's "modified" and the timestamp changes.

EDIT:

Use the UNC path to the user folder.

Nice idea but if the user is running something like a browser page that updates itself, or gets a new email which is cashed in outlooks ost file, or any number of other things that could write to a file while the user is not there, this might throw it off. Plus I've never really trusted windows folder time stamps. To many times I've navigated into a folder noting its "last modified" date, only to find a sub folder with a "last modified" date later than the parent folder.

[Colyn1337]

I hate to say it, but it sounds like you need something like ZCM (Novell) or SCCM (Microsoft).