There are multiple ways one can allow remote users to access Infor CMR SLX. Over the next few posts, I will be discussing some of these methods, including some of the the pros and cons of using them. As many of these solutions are outside my area of expertise, I will not always be going into the particulars of how to set them. As most of them involve granting access to resources on your local network to remote users, there are important security concerns to take into account. I would strongly advise against implementing one of these solutions without either a competent IT department, a competent third-party IT provider, or you yourself being some who already knows the ins and out of setting up one of the methods mentions. Just setting up this sort of access and guessing at how secure it needs to be is very likely to end in tears.
In this post, we will be looking at ways to provide access to remote users through a VPN (virtual private network). A VPN provides a secure,encrypted way for external users to connect to you network. VPNs are generally a commercial product, though some firewalls come with the capability, and they generally require client software to be installed on the remote computer that will be connecting. Depending on how you choose to set things up, users connecting by VPN might access resources directly from their remote computers, or they might then connect to some other service such as a workspace solution that provides Infor CRM SLX access.
Many firewalls come with a VPN that can be deployed, and there are many commercial stand-alone VPNs. It is even possible to manually set up a VPN in Windows, thought the effort required required and lack of options compared to commercial products has made Windows VPN fairly unpopular. VPN’s generally require software to be installed on the remote client computers. After using the VPN client to long on to the parent network, the client computer can securely access resources on the parent network, subject to the speed of the connection.
If you are using a VPN to connect users to the Infor CRM SLX web client, there might be no other steps required beyond making sure the outside computer has a supported browser. Depending on how you have DNS configured on the internal network, external users might need to connect by IP address rather than server name. If your internal network is complicated enough to have multiple subnets, you will likely need to take steps to make sure users connecting by VPN can the get to server hosting the web client. If you are using the LAN client for Infor CRM SLX, it is highly likely the VPN connection will not be robust enough to allow a LAN client installed on an exterior computer to work.
If, instead, you using the VPN to provide access to Infor CRM SLX though some workspace solution such as Citrix or a remote Windows server, the LAN or web client would work equally well. This solution would require much more setup on the server, but would alleviate most concerns in relation to the remote computer, as it would only be serving as a client to connect to the workspace solution. Depending on your needs, you might need to take some special steps to make sure each user gets their own Windows profile when connecting in these ways, but that is optional for the web client.
