Pulseway and "Connected Standby" on Win8 Tablets

[nsdadmin]

I have been using Pulseway for a long time on my servers and VMs. I am implementing a Mobile Workforce using Windows 8 Tablets for my Technicians and I'd like to track them using Pulseway.

The tablets are Wifi only, so when they are truly offline because they aren't connected to a wireless network, then the offline indication would be correct; however, when the screen falls asleep the device apparently puts the Wireless Adapter into a low-power state that closes the connection to the Pulseway servers, and they are shown as offline.

 

I have read that programs can request that Windows not do this, and allow the program to maintain its connection (e.g. Streaming media services do this so they can continue to play music with the screen off.)

 

I understand that this would mean a higher battery drain, but that's not really my concern - I would like an option in the node's configuration that would enable "request connection always-on" so when the tablet is truly online (say, plugged in, sitting in the office downloading Windows Updates from my WSUS server) Pulseway would reflect this and allow me to perform functions from my Dashboard.

 

The way it stands now, I have to constantly wake the tablets to maintain Pulseway while many of my other administration tools (NetXMS, Spiceworks, Powershell, and Windows Computer Management, to name a few) are still very much aware that the computer is on and can poll and manage it.

 

Suggestions to turn off "Allow Windows to Turn off this device to save power" are outdated, as MS has eliminated that option from most ARM devices in an effort to be more like tablets. It apparently caused problems getting back out of Connected Sleep because that setting was designed for the standard Sleep, not Connected Sleep. Newer computers with the latest Windows Updates won't have this option available at all. MS would rather have individual applications assigned to maintain a connection - and that's logical - you don't really need some random software updater hogging power by updating while you're computer is Connected Sleeping, but you do want your streaming media to continue to play while you save power by turning off the screen. It's the shift to "always on devices" that also save power in the process that we're dealing with, and I hope there will be a way to allow Pulseway to monitor devices that are in this low-power state.

 

Thanks!

[Chris]

Hi,

 

What we normally do to prevent unintended offline notifications on laptops is disable the Power Save feature on the network adapter. We'd rather not prevent the network adapter to sleep from our software as there may be some clients who don't wish this to happen.

 

 

Regards,

Chris

Pulseway Support