Download Squad — Panic Button - support help for the clueless

Jason Clarke — 3 October 2006
[Snip] Panic Button is a simple program that sits in a user’s system tray innocuously, doing nothing. Where it becomes useful is at the moment where the computer displays an error message that is bewildering to the user. Rather than clicking OK or Cancel on the error and continuing on until they run into more trouble then calling you up and saying “I got some kind of error, I’m not sure what it said. Was it important?”, the user simply clicks the Panic Button in the system tray while the error message is on the screen.

It takes a screenshot of the error message, then offers the user a simply dialog to type out a brief description of what they were trying to do, and what problem they might be experiencing. When the user clicks Send, the screenshot and message get automatically emailed to a pre-determined email address.

What a clever idea. Its inventor, Russell Phillips, says this of it:

“Panic Button is intended to help people that support end-users, either sysadmins/helpdesks, or those that simply help friends and family. I got the idea after getting frustrated by reports like "I had this error message on my computer. It said that the whatsit had caused a thingy operation". No-one ever wrote down error messages, and could never remember what they said. I tried to teach people how to take screen shots, so that they could send screen shots of error messages, but that didn't work.”

Clearly a product born of frustration.

Where your family/friends/clients/colleagues do know how to take a screenshot, they might like to use something like Gadwin PrintScreen, which lets you store unlimited screenshots on your PC’s hard drive. No more worrying that what you’ve just copied will evaporate if you forgetfully press a wrong key.

I find the Gadwin software handy when taking part in Web conferences. Whenever there’s something I want to record, I just press the Print Screen key and hit Return twice. Typically, I’ll take at least 20 grabs during an hour’s presentation. All the grabs will be safely tucked away, sequentially numbered in their own folder, ready for me to look at later. (I write the grab number each time at the relevant point in my notes, so I can cross-refer later.)