Is there method of making a dashboard public without having a user log in? The reason I’m asking is I’d like to share 1 dashboard to my next door neighbour… but not have to have him log in. I’d like to share info on my weather station and him being able to turn on/off our shared garden gate light.
Guest users must have their own SharpTools account. It can be a free account as the license is based on the ‘owner’ of the dashboard.
Some people choose to create accounts that they manage for their guests. For example 123MainStreet@gmail.com and then they can share the login with their guest or add the restricted account to devices within the guest’s room.
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Hubitat just launched its EZ dashboards. A huge leap forward but still light years behind sharptools. But one feature got my attention.
You can share a dashboard with a cloud link that does not require you having an account or authenticate in any way.
Having to setup a free account on Sharptools is a bit of a barrier to accessing shareable dashboards. Even members of my family won’t go to that “extraordinary” length to access.
It would be nice if a sharing option existed where no login is needed.
I’m open to the idea if someone wants to create a feature request and it gets enough votes.
I would note that I have some hesitation with the idea of being able to access a dashboard with just a link with no other limitations applied to it. This seems like a reasonable approach for a short-term or temporary share, but as a permanent thing it just seems like it would be ripe for issues (eg. forgetting the link was shared and the link inadvertently getting exposed somewhere).
Having just worked on provisioning access for a weekend guest, I think this would be a game-changing feature.
The current share method isn’t viable because most guests don’t want to create a one-off account (or create yet another attack surface) just for a weekend visit to someone else’s house.
For that reason, I’ve taken the admin-managed guest account - but even that approach has some challenges and limitations if you want to provide frictionless access for guests while still keeping the guest account secure.
I very much agree with @josh that just creating static, public-access links would be prone to being forgotten and could pose a security risk.
What would be ideal is a tokenized “guest view” that would control both usage and duration:
- Within dashboard share interface, admin supplies an email address and expiration date (e.g. up to a calendar year).
- App emails a unique, one-time-use URL that invites recipient to access the dashboard with view-only priveleges (and sets cookies, local storage, etc. as needed).
- On accept, the guest is redirected to the “guest view” dashboard which is available until the specified expiration date.
Guests would then be able to use the dashboard on their device of choice during their visit. The admin would only expose the smallest possible access surface without requring guests to create an account. This access surface would close itself on expiration.
A simpler version would be the admin’s ability to create unique, expiring, public-access URLS with view-only access to a specified dashboard. The admin could then share these links manually with guests. These links would be more like a regular “public access” URL and so inherently less secure, but the admin would still be able to control distribtion and they would expire anyway.
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