In today's "cloud computing" world, this comes up fairly often for our customers, and depending on compliance & security obstacles, there are several ways to approach this issue.  


Note: This article does NOT apply to mobile (phone/tablet) devices, nor does it apply to company owned devices and managed by Pinnacle.


There are 4 general types of resources that people need to access remotely:


  1. Shared "drives" from a server
  2. Shared printers
  3. A remote computer (usually a desktop or server) with specific applications that aren't available otherwise.
  4. Telephone extensions


Here are several general approaches we can take, depending on the needs


  1. Full site-to-site (branch office) solution - traditional router managed by Pinnacle, and all devices behind that router are fully on the corporate network and need to be managed by Pinnacle.  This is here for completeness, but is probably not the solution you are looking for if you ended up here.
  2. This is probably obvious, but moving all shared documents to Sharepoint (Microsoft 365) or Google Team Drives (or some other 3rd party file sharing system like Sharepoint or Box.com) is an option.  One downside to this that the certain applications (typically specific line-of-business apps, or Quickbooks) do not work with this scenario.  This also isn't an ideal solution for large files like videos, and backing this data up can be more cumbersome/expensive than traditional server solutions.  It also does not address telephones, printers, or applications that may not be available via the "cloud".
  3. Remote access of a company managed desktop on the local network using the same remote control solution (ScreenConnect) that Pinnacle uses to access company machines.  This is often used in a work-from-home scenario where the user remotely connects to their company-managed desktop machine from a home computer.  A downside of this solution is that printing to a home printer can be a little tricky, and the remote access is less "smooth" than other solutions.
  4. Virtual machine - it is possible to run a "virtual machine" that is managed by Pinnacle on top of a PC (or Mac) that is fully unmanaged by Pinnacle.  In this way, you can have full access via VPN to company resources on a local machine, but still keep everything within the corporate secured environment.  The major downside to this is licensing and resource utilization on the PC.
  5. Phone access specifically has several options:
    • Forward extension to traditional mobile number (always an option - some limitations apply)
    • 3CX app running on a mobile device (always an option)
    • 3CX softphone running in a web browser (always an option, and typically is paired with a bluetooth headset)
    • Physical phone running in a remote location (particulars depend on a case-by-case basis)