Pair your phone with your fleet

The phone is the piece of DevThrottle you set up before you need it, because the moment you need it - a session waiting on one word from you while you are in a queue at the supermarket - you are by definition away from the computer that could set it up. The thirty-second rescue tutorial starts from a phone that is already paired. This is that pairing: once, about five minutes, and you do it at your desk.

You need DevThrottle installed and connected to a gateway - that is step 1 of the path - and your phone. There is no app store download: the app is served to the phone's browser by your own Gateway, and the only install is pinning it to your home screen near the end.

1. Open the Cockpit's Phone page and scan the code

   The phone reaches your fleet through your Gateway, so the first job is getting the Gateway's address across the gap to the phone - and there is a page for exactly that. Open the Cockpit in a browser and click Phone in the rail, just under Account: Open DevThrottle on your phone - the same fleet, sized for one hand.

   The first card is Scan this with your phone camera. Point the phone's camera at the code and open what it offers. The address it carries is the one you reached the Cockpit on, so the phone has to be on a network that can reach this Gateway - the page says exactly that under the code.

   The second card, Or type it in, shows the same address in full with a Copy link button beside it, which is the easy way to send it to yourself in a message. And where a code could not work at all - a Cockpit opened on localhost, whose address no phone can reach - the page says so in the Gateway's own words rather than drawing a code that would scan perfectly and then time out.

2. No Cockpit to hand? Read the address off the Director

   The address is on the desktop too, if that is where you are. If you took the hosted gateway in the setup wizard, its connected badge read This machine is enrolled with, followed by exactly this address; any time after that the Director keeps it in Settings, under Gateway. Type it into the browser on your phone. The Gateway notices it is a phone and serves the phone app instead of the desktop pages - same address, no special path to remember.

   Running your own gateway instead of the hosted one? Read the warning at the end of this page before going on - the address the phone needs is the secure https one, not a plain local one.

   Either way, what comes up on the phone is a sign-in screen: the app knows nothing about you yet, and says so - "Sign in to connect this phone to your account."

3. Tap Sign in, and approve the phone on devthrottle.com

   The phone is sent to devthrottle.com to sign in - Google, GitHub, or email, the same choice as when you connected the machine. Then comes the screen this flow exists for: Connect this phone? It names the device asking (an iPhone or an Android phone) and shows which account it would join, on a line reading Signed in as your email.

   Read that line before you tap. The phone must join the same DevThrottle account you connected this machine with - if the browser happens to be signed into a different one, Use a different account is right there next to it. Then tap Connect this phone. (A deny button sits below it, and it means what it says: nothing is handed over.)

4. Land on your sessions

   The phone returns to your Gateway, shows Connecting... for a moment, and lands on the roster - your sessions, the same ones the Director shows, in your pocket. That is the pairing done; it does not need doing again.

5. Add it to your home screen

   Before the notification step, put the app on your phone's home screen -Add to Home Screen on an iPhone, Install app on Android, the same two names the Cockpit's Phone page gives them. It opens full screen like any other app from then on, and on some phones - iPhones in particular - notifications only work once the app is installed there; in a browser tab that cannot show them, the next step's banner simply never appears. Open the app from its new home-screen icon before going on.

   Note

   One phone can hold more than one DevThrottle account, and you switch between them from the phone's own Account screen - so a work fleet and a personal one live side by side on the same handset without pairing anything twice.

6. Turn on notifications before you put the phone away

   At the top of the roster is a banner: "Get an app-icon dot when a session needs you", with an Enable notifications button. Tap it and allow the permission. This is the step that makes the phone worth pairing - the app icon gets a dot while a session needs you, and the dot clears when nothing does. (One deliberate exception: a waiting session on a machine that cannot be reached right now stays on the roster but does not light the dot - there is nothing you could do about it yet.) Skip it, and the phone only helps on the days you remember to check it, which is exactly the job you were trying to give away.

   The banner answers every outcome rather than failing quietly. No banner at all - when notifications are not already on for this device - means this browser cannot show push notifications at all; on an iPhone that is what a plain browser tab does, and opening the app from its home-screen icon (the previous step) is what makes push exist there. Dismiss the permission prompt and the banner says so and offers Try again. And if notifications are blocked outright, it tells you the block lives in your browser's site settings, which is where to lift it.

Next

The thirty-second version of using what you just set up: Answer an agent in thirty seconds. For everything the phone can do with a session - the roster, chat, the live terminal, sending photos - see Sessions on your phone.