Overview
Contacts are references to other people with remote.it accounts. Contacts are used for sharing and transferring your Devices.
In this article, we will be going over:
- Creating a Contact
- Deleting a Contact
- Sharing a remote.it Device with a Contact
- Legacy Sharing
- Port Sharing
- Stop sharing a Device which was shared to you
- Stop sharing one or more Devices with other user(s)
1. Creating a Contact
In order to share or transfer a Device, first you must set up a Contact in remote.it. Click on "Contacts" in the left-side menu, then "Create Contact":
Fill in the Contact's details in the dialog which appears. The only required field is their email address. Everything else is optional.
Available languages include English and Japanese and control the language used for notification e-mails.
Fill in the details and then click on "Create Contact".
Next you will see a new entry in the Contacts list:
Now, once your contact is a remote.it user, you can share and transfer remote.it Devices to them.
What happens if the contact does not already have a remote.it account?
Notice that for this Contact, the Account column indicates "no". This means that the e-mail "noaccount@email.com" could not be found as a registered remote.it user name. Until an account exists with the specified user name, sharing cannot be performed.
To invite this user to create a remote.it account, click on the blue "Invite" button on the right side of the contact entry:
Click on the checkbox in the dialog which appears, then click on "Submit":
2. Deleting a Contact
You will see the following confirmation message. Click on "Delete" to delete the Contact. Click "Cancel" if you've changed your mind.
3. Sharing a remote.it Device with a Contact
Create a Contact to share the Device with if you have not already done so.
Sharing a remote.it Device in your account with one of your Contacts
Return to the "Devices" page and select the checkbox(es) on the left side of the row(s) showing the remote.it Device(s) you wish to share ("1" below). Note that prior to sharing, the Share icon is plain and light grey in color ("2" below).
Now, from the Actions menu, select "Share":
This opens the Bulk Sharing dialog, where you can use the Contact Picker to choose contacts to share your device(s) to.
Click on the down arrow to the the list of device(s) which you wish to share.
It changes to an up arrow which you can click to hide the list.
Click on this field, then begin typing the name of a contact to share these Device(s) to. Any matching contacts will appear in a drop down list where you can select the contact you have in mind.
Press the Enter key or click your mouse on the selected contact to add this contact to the share list. The cursor will appear at the end of the chosen contacts.
Keep doing this for all contacts which need to be added.
Contacts who haven't created a remote.it account yet
If you have Contacts whom you've invited, but have not created a remote.it account yet, you will see this warning. You can't share a device to a contact who has not yet created an account.
Allowing other users to run bulk scripts on your Shared Device
Check this checkbox if you want to allow the selected Contacts to execute bulk scripts on your Device(s). This choice applies to all Devices and all Contacts.
When you've finished selecting contacts, click on "Add Sharing".
You'll see this confirmation message. Close it when you are done reading it.
The Contact(s) you selected will get a notification e-mail. The Device sharing completes automatically.
Once the Sharing operation is completed, your Device will show up in their "Devices" page with a slash through the "Share" icon:
By hovering the mouse cursor over the share icon, a remote.it user can quickly see who has shared it to them. The slash indicates that by clicking on the icon, they can terminate sharing.
There will be a checkbox on the Share icon in your account for a Device you have shared to someone else:
Now your Contact will be able to connect to any remote.it Service on the shared Device as if it belonged to them.
If you allowed them the ability to run scripts when you added sharing, they will be able to do so.
If you wish to change a Contact's ability to run bulk scripts, perform the "Share" Action again and make the appropriate choice.
Please note:
- The user to whom a Device has been shared cannot change its name or share it with anyone else
- It is not possible to share a single Service on a Device
4. Legacy Sharing
You can share your registered remote.it Devices to one or more remote.it users. This will allow them to make connections to any of the Services you have configured. You can also choose whether the user(s) will be able to execute scripts on your device. You (or the other user) can remove sharing at any time.
How sharing status is shown in the Devices view
To see who shared the Device to you, hover your mouse pointer over the icon as shown.
To remove sharing, click on the icon in the "Share" column.
Devices you have shared to others
A check next to the "head and shoulders" icon indicates that you have shared this Device (or one or more of its Services) to another remote.it user.
5. Port Sharing
What is Port Sharing?
With the Legacy version of Sharing, when you shared a Device you were giving your contact access to every port on that Device. With Port Sharing, the owner of a Device is now able to choose which ports to share. Now you don't have to worry about managing private connections on a Device that you wish to share.
This guide will go over the basics of how to use Port Sharing:
- Sharing
- Editing Access
- Removing
Sharing
To share a device with Port Sharing, navigate to the Devices page.
Next, locate the Device you want to share and click the Share symbol to the right.
The symbol with a checkmark signifies that the Device is currently being shared, while a symbol with no checkmark is an unshared Device.
After clicking the Share symbol, a menu will appear. Select the contacts you want to share with from the drop down menu, or type in their contact information.
Note:
While sharing with multiple contacts at once please keep in mind that you will assign the same permissions to all contacts you add.
Once you've selected the contacts you want to add to a Device, you can set their access. Choose which ports(s) you want to share and whether you want them to be able to execute scripts on your Device.
Note:
If you enable Bulk Scripting but do not enable access to any ports, the shared user will still be able to run scripts on the Device.
Then click the Share button. You will now see the contacts you added appear under the sharing menu, along with the ports they have access to.
Editing Access
Port Sharing allows you to instantly update which ports you've shared to a specific user. To do this, click the Share icon next to the desired Device and then click on the Pencil icon next to the contact you wish to edit.
From here you can select and de-select access for the user, as well as enable and disable their ability to execute scripts, in the same way as when you were initially sharing the Device.
When you are done editing their access, click the Share button to save your changes.
Removing
To remove a shared user from your Device, click the Trash Can icon. After a few seconds, the shared user will be removed from the Device and will no longer be able to connect.
Additionally, if you would like to remove yourself from a Device simply click the Share icon with the slash through it, located next to the Device you wish to leave.
Video tutorial
For a video tutorial, check out:
5. Sharing a remote.it Device with a Contact
Create a Contact to share the Device with if you have not already done so.
Sharing a remote.it Device in your account with one of your Contacts
Return to the "Devices" page and select the checkbox(es) on the left side of the row(s) showing the remote.it Device(s) you wish to share ("1" below). Note that prior to sharing, the Share icon is plain and light grey in color ("2" below).
Now, from the Actions menu, select "Share":
This opens the Bulk Sharing dialog, where you can use the Contact Picker to choose contacts to share your device(s) to.
Click on the down arrow to the the list of device(s) which you wish to share.
It changes to an up arrow which you can click to hide the list.
Click on this field, then begin typing the name of a contact to share these Device(s) to. Any matching contacts will appear in a drop down list where you can select the contact you have in mind.
Press the Enter key or click your mouse on the selected contact to add this contact to the share list. The cursor will appear at the end of the chosen contacts.
Keep doing this for all contacts which need to be added.
Contacts who haven't created a remote.it account yet
If you have Contacts whom you've invited, but have not created a remote.it account yet, you will see this warning. You can't share a device to a contact who has not yet created an account.
Allowing other users to run bulk scripts on your Shared Device
Check this checkbox if you want to allow the selected Contacts to execute bulk scripts on your Device(s). This choice applies to all Devices and all Contacts.
When you've finished selecting contacts, click on "Add Sharing".
You'll see this confirmation message. Close it when you are done reading it.
The Contact(s) you selected will get a notification e-mail. The Device sharing completes automatically.
Once the Sharing operation is completed, your Device will show up in their "Devices" page with a slash through the "Share" icon:
By hovering the mouse cursor over the share icon, a remote.it user can quickly see who has shared it to them. The slash indicates that by clicking on the icon, they can terminate sharing.
There will be a checkbox on the Share icon in your account for a Device you have shared to someone else:
Now your Contact will be able to connect to any remote.it Service on the shared Device as if it belonged to them.
If you allowed them the ability to run scripts when you added sharing, they will be able to do so.
If you wish to change a Contact's ability to run bulk scripts, perform the "Share" Action again and make the appropriate choice.
Please note:
- The user to whom a Device has been shared cannot change its name or share it with anyone else
- It is not possible to share a single Service on a Device
6. Stop sharing a Device which was shared to you
If a device has been shared to you, click on the Share icon corresponding to that Device.
You will see this dialog, which will let you remove sharing.
As with adding Sharing, you can choose to see the names of Device(s) which you are about to unshare. Start typing the name of the Contact(s) with whom you wish to stop sharing your Device(s). Only Contact(s) which are commonly shared to all chosen Device(s) will be shown in the drop down list.
This dialog confirms that sharing was removed from the selected devices.
7. Stop sharing one or more Devices with other user(s)
Use the contact picker to choose the Contacts from whom you wish to remove Sharing on the selected Devices, then click on "Remove Sharing".
While it's not possible to "undo" this action, you can easily share any Device again with another remote.it Contact.