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Remote viewing
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Remote viewing shows an appliance's dashboards, custom pages and reports to people outside the plant, read-only, through Scada.Ink Cloud. No VPN is needed and no inbound firewall port is opened: the appliance keeps one outbound connection to the cloud and viewers' requests travel over it.
Requirements
- A Remote View, Remote View Plus, Cloud Complete or Cloud Complete Pro plan covering the appliance.
- The appliance registered to your account, with Remote Viewing switched on for it in the portal.
- Cloud health reporting on, a license key, and outbound internet on the appliance. See Connecting an appliance.
Turn it on
- In the portal, open the appliance and switch Remote Viewing on (or use the switches on the Remote Viewing page).
- At its next health report (within about a minute) the appliance opens a secure WebSocket to the cloud. If that fails it retries after 1, 2, 4 … seconds, up to once a minute.
- On Remote Viewing, the appliance shows Ready to view once connected.
Open an appliance
- Sign in to the portal and open Remote Viewing.
- Under Open an appliance, click Open next to an appliance that is Ready to view.
- A new tab opens the appliance's own interface through the cloud, already signed in as a read-only viewer. There is no appliance sign-in page.
A viewing session lasts up to 8 hours. The launch link works once and expires after a minute.
What a remote viewer can and cannot do
- Can see: dashboards, custom pages, history, reports (and download generated reports), and — when switched on for the appliance — OEE, downtime, quality, andon, templates and symbols, with live values.
- Sidebar: pages a viewer never needs (Scripts, Libraries, Data Tables, Workflows, Files, Schedules, Driver Health, Users, Appliance) are hidden, and so is every other licensed page not in the list above.
- Cannot: write tags, press buttons that change anything, acknowledge alarms, or change configuration. Any such request is refused with "Remote view is read-only: changes cannot be made from here."
Read-only is enforced twice: by the cloud, and again by the appliance, which replaces whatever credentials arrive with its own short-lived viewer token. Even a compromised cloud cannot write to the plant.
Viewers
People who only need to look can be invited as viewers — they get a portal login that shows nothing but Remote Viewing and Account.
- On Remote Viewing, in the Viewers card, enter Name and Email and click Invite viewer (account owner only).
- The invitation is emailed when the cloud can send email; the page also shows the one-time link to send yourself.
- The person opens the link, sets a password of at least 10 characters, and clicks Accept and continue.
- Invitations expire after 7 days; Resend invitation issues a new link.
- Open invitations count toward the plan's viewer limit (10 on Remote View, unlimited on Remote View Plus).
- Removing a viewer ends any session they have open immediately.
The activity table records every session: Started, Person, Appliance, Duration, Requests and how it Ended (Signed out, Expired, Viewer removed, Access ended).
Troubleshooting
| Message or symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Not connected — The appliance is not connected. It connects within a minute of remote viewing being turned on, if it can reach the internet. | Tunnel not up | Check Cloud health reporting is on and the appliance has internet |
| No remote viewing plan is active. | No plan | Subscribe on Plans & Billing |
| Your remote viewing subscriptions cover N appliances, and N already use it. | Plan quantity used up | Increase the quantity |
| Your plan includes 10 remote viewers, counting open invites, and all are in use. | Viewer limit | Remove a viewer or invite, or move to Remote View Plus |
| This invite has expired. Ask the account owner to resend it. | Invitation older than 7 days | Owner clicks Resend invitation |
| This viewing link has expired or was already used. | Launch link reused or older than a minute | Click Open again |
| A dashboard widget shows no data remotely | The widget reads data remote view does not allow | View it on site |