Active access sessions

View active access sessions

Session queues provide information about and access to currently running sessions. The Personal queue contains sessions you are currently running, as well as invitations for you to join a shared session.

You also have queues for any teams of which you are a member. If another user requests any member of a team to join a session, that invitation appears in the team queue. When no specific team is selected, team managers and leads can also see which team members have sessions running.

Click the star to the left of a team name to mark that queue as a favorite. If a team chat message is sent, an orange chat bubble appears in place of the star.

Sort your queues by several criteria, including the length of time the session has been running, the computer name, external key, etc. You can also search for an active session. Click on an item in queue to view its details. Click it again to close the details pane. The access console remembers the column order and the sort order of the session queue the next time the access console is launched.

You can run multiple sessions simultaneously. At the top of the access console, a tab exists for each session you have open.

Dashboard

The dashboard feature enables privileged users to view and monitor ongoing sessions, enabling administrative oversight to help manage staff. Based on roles assigned from the Teams page of the administrative interface, team leads can monitor team members of a given team, and team managers can monitor both team leads and team members of that team.

If a user is a team manager or team lead of one or more teams, selecting one of those queues causes the dashboard pane to appear beneath the queue selection pane on the Home tab of the console. In this pane appear any logged-in team members of a lower role for the selected team.

Select a user from the dashboard pane to view any sessions they may be running. A team manager or team lead can take over a session from another user of that team by selecting the appropriate session from the queue and clicking the Take Over button. This transfers ownership of that session to the team manager or team lead, with the original user remaining in the session as a participant.

It is also possible for a team manager to join a session in progress by clicking the Join button. The behavior is similar to joining a session via session invitation, except that no invitation is required.

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Note

The team lead can join or take over a team member's session only if the team lead has start session access to the Jump Item that was used to create the session, or the dashboard setting to allow join or take over without start session access is checked.

If configured in the /login interface, a team manager or team lead can monitor team members of a lower role even if there are no ongoing sessions, as long as those users are logged into the console.

An icon is displayed in the corner of the user's desktop to indicate that monitoring is taking place. When the user moves the cursor near this icon, the icon moves to another corner to prevent obscuring the screen. Select the user whose screen you wish to view and then click the Monitor button. This opens a new tab in your console, displaying the user's console.

To gain control of the user's computer, click the Enable Mouse/Keyboard Control button.

Within a team, a user can administer only others with roles lower than their own. Note, however, that roles apply strictly on a team-by-team basis, so that a user may be able to administer another user in one team but not be able to administer that same user in another team.

Chat with other users

From the Home tab of the console, you can chat with other logged-in users. If you are a member of one or more teams, select whichever team you would like to chat with from the list of queues at the left of the Home tab. You can chat with all members of that team or chat with just that one.

Click the arrow icon at the top left of the sidebar to collapse the sliding sidebar. If the sidebar is collapsed, hover over the arrow by the hidden window to reveal it. Click the pin icon that replaced the arrow icon at the top left of the sidebar to re-pin the sliding sidebar.

When typing, misspelled words will be underlined in red. Right-click to view spelling suggestions or to ignore that spelling for the current console login.

In the settings, you can choose if the team chat should include status messages, such as users logging in and out, or only chats sent between team members.

Share your screen with another user

If your administrator has enabled this permission, you can share your screen with another user without the receiving user having to join a session. This option is available even if you are not in a session.

From a team queue, select a user, and click Show Screen. If working with more than one monitor, you can select which one to share or which apps will be visible to the other user. Once you have made your selection, the receiving user will get a notification with the option to accept or decline the invitation.

A Show Screen window appears, showing the name of the user that is now viewing your screen. This window contains a chat box and the options to stop screen sharing, grant the receiving user control, and select which monitor and which apps to share. You can stop sharing your screen but keep this window open, or you can close the sharing session completely. If you leave the Show Screen window open, you can restart sharing your screen.

Share my screen tools

Sharing user

: Temporarily stop sharing your screen with another user. This pauses screen sharing but does not close the Show Screen window, allowing you to restart screen sharing.

: Re)start screen sharing.

: Grant mouse and keyboard control to the user viewing your screen.

: Select the monitor to share with another user. The primary monitor will be designated by a P.

: Select which apps to share with the user viewing your screen.

: End the screen sharing session. This closes the user screen sharing interface.

Viewing user

: The user sharing their screen with you has granted you keyboard and mouse control.

: Turn on a virtual pointer, visible on the sharing user's screen.

: Capture a screenshot of the sharing user's screen at its full resolution.

: View the remote screen at actual or scaled size.

: View the remote desktop in full screen mode or return to the interface view.

: End the screen sharing session. This closes the user screen sharing interface.

Share session with other users

Invite another user to join a session by clicking the Share button in the session tools. By default, only teams to which you belong will be listed.

You can select a user listed in the teams displayed to invite them to join the session.

If you select Any User, the invitation is sent to the team queue so that any single user in the selected team can join the session. You can send multiple invitations if you want more users from the team to join your session.

Users are listed here only if they are logged into the console or have extended availability enabled.

If you are permitted to share sessions with users who are not members of your teams, additional teams are displayed, provided that they contain at least one member logged in or with extended availability enabled.

When you invite a user with extended availability enabled, they receive an email notification.

If you have sent an invitation and it is still active, you may revoke the invitation by selecting it from the Cancel Invitation menu. Only the session owner can send invitations. Invitations do not time out as long as you remain the session owner. Multiple active invitations cannot exist for the same user to join the same session.

An invitation is made inactive when one of the following events occurs:

• The inviting user cancels the invitation
• The session ends
• The invited user accepts the invitation
• The invited user declines the invitation

When an additional user joins a shared session, they are able to see the entire chat history.

Chat with other users during a shared session

The session chat window serves as a running log of everything that happens throughout the session, including files transferred and tools used.

If one or more users are sharing the session, you can chat with the other users. When an additional user joins a shared session, they are able to see the entire chat history.

Click the arrow icon at the top left of the sidebar to collapse the sliding sidebar. If the sidebar is collapsed, hover over the arrow by the hidden window to reveal it. Click the pin icon that replaced the arrow icon at the top left of the sidebar to re-pin the sliding sidebar.

When typing, misspelled words will be underlined in red. Right-click to view spelling suggestions or to ignore that spelling for the current console login.

Messages appear as plain text in the chat input area. You can add or edit BBCode tags within a message to add text formatting. Formatting will be applied once the message has been sent.

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Note

It is possible to reposition the different widget sections displayed on the sidebar, like the chat window, the session info pane, etc. When hovering over the title bar of a section, the cursor turns into a closed hand, allowing you to drag and reposition that section on the sidebar.

Extended availability

With extended availability, privileged users can receive email invitations to share sessions, even if they are not logged into the console. When sending an invitation, you may invite fellow team members. If permitted, you may also invite users from teams to which you do not belong.

If your account is configured for extended availability, you can enable or disable the functionality from the File menu of the access console.

If you have extended availability enabled, you will see a notification when you log into the console. From this dialog, you can easily disable extended availability to avoid distraction while in a session, for example.

Email notification and invitation

Each time you enable extended availability mode, the B Series Appliance will notify you via the email address configured for your user account.

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Note

BeyondTrust does not pull email addresses from external LDAP directory stores. The email address must be configured in BeyondTrust in one of two ways:

1. An administrator can add an email address to a user account by going to /login > Users & Security > Users and editing the account.
2. The user can set their own email address by going to the /login > My Account page.

The notification includes the URL of the site as well as a link to quickly disable extended availability mode.

The B Series Appliance also sends an email notification when you are invited to a session. This allows you to join a session even if you are not currently logged into the console. The email notification includes links to accept or decline the invitation, as well as to decline the invitation while disabling extended availability mode.

Invite an external user

Within a session, a user with the appropriate permission can request external users to participate in a session, for the duration of that session only.

The inviting user should click on the Share Session button and then select Invite External User.

A dialog opens asking the user to select a session policy. These policies are created in the administrative interface and determine the level of permission the external user will have. When you select a policy, the full description displays below.

Enter the name or names for the invited users, and the email addresses for invitations by email. Names appear in the chat window and reports. Click Add User to add additional users.

Next, enter comments about the external invitation.

Click Send Local Email for invitations by email, if available.

Otherwise, click Create Invitation, and a new dialog containing the direct URL and email option, if available, appears.

Depending on the options selected by your administrator, you may be able to send the invitation from your local email or from a server side email. You also can copy and paste the direct URL to the external user.

The external user must download and run the access console installer, which is an abbreviated process from the full access console installation.

The external users have access only to the session tab and have a limited set of privileges. An external user can never be the session owner. When the inviting user leaves the session, the external users are logged out.

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Note

Each external user invited allocates a BeyondTrust license.