Shared Access - Beta Testing

[endy]

Hi everyone,

We’re excited to introduce one of the most requested Bond Home app features: Shared Access.

Before the official release, we’d love your help testing it and sharing your feedback.

What is Shared Access?
Shared Access makes it easier and safer to manage your Bond Home account. You can:

• Manage multiple homes from one account
• Invite family members or other users to control devices in a home
• Give access without sharing your personal username or password

How to test this new feature

Note: Shared Access is currently available on iOS only for this beta phase.
Edit: as of July 20th, Shared Access is also available for Android Beta testers

If you are not a beta tester yet:

• On iOS, join here. Open TestFlight and update the Bond Home app to version v2.65.0.
• On Android, join here. Follow the instructions to download Firebase’s App Tester and download the Bond App withing the App Tester.

After updating, you’ll find the new home menu in the top-left corner of the app. From there, you can:

• View and update your home settings
• Add other homes
• Invite other users and manage their access
• Switch between homes

Important: Anyone you invite will also need to install the beta version v2.65.0 of the Bond Home app.

Your testing and feedback are extremely valuable!

Feedback form

Feel free to send me a private message or reply to this topic, I’ll try my best to help you.

Thanks in advance!

[residualimages]

Exciting!

I don’t use iOS much so I won’t be able to help test as easily.

When the Android release (beta or otherwise) comes in scope, I’ll be all over it.

[endy]

@residualimages it is now available in the latest Android beta build!

[residualimages]

Is there a “Guest” role coming?
Thinking either “can control devices” and/or “can control devices while on same network”?

Right now the 3 roles I see in the Android app are:

• Member: can control devices, modify schedules, change device settings, add and remove Bonds
• Dealer: can control devices, modify schedules, change device settings, add and remove Bonds. Shown as this home’s installer.
• Owner: can control devices, modify schedules, change device settings, add and remove users and Bonds

[danielvogel]

Hey @residualimages

Yes, we already have a Guest role planned for our development roadmap. For now, though, we’d like to get some real-world feedback on the first version of this feature before expanding it with additional roles.

Because of that, I can’t provide a timeline for when the new roles will be available. That said, if we see strong demand for this functionality, we’ll certainly consider prioritizing it.

Thanks for testing the feature and for taking the time to share your feedback—we really appreciate it!

[merck]

i agree w what Daniel wrote. re: Guests, we have some work to do to secure it properly rather than have it be just a best-effort thing on the UI. for example, issuing guest tokens from the firmware if the guests should be able to have local access, or making it something only at the backend side. it’s a big ballowax and i dont want to give users a false sense of security. would love to hear your expanded thoughts on this topic Matt!

[residualimages]

I appreciate the ballo’wax considerations to make it thought out and secure, but granular.

Loving the direction it’s headed, but the “modify schedules” (somewhat), and definitely “change device settings”, and 1000% “…and remove Bonds” are giving me pause before inviting others.

Granular control over what Bond device(s) / hub(s) are allowed to be controlled, or updated, makes sense.

For instance, a ‘Guest’ role might be something I would say should be allowed to control some or all devices in the home, and they could even be allowed to adjust the schedule for a Smart By Bond fan, or a fan configured through a Bond Bridge, located in the guest room – while preventing them from adjusting the schedule for a blinds device in the primary bedroom, y’know?
And they should not be able to add / remove Bonds, ever.
‘Guest’ role should also not see API token, whereas ‘Member’, ‘Dealer’ and ‘Owner’ should. Guests don’t need developer / API / routine access – and if they do, they can be changed to a Member.

Which reminds me – roles should be able to be updated, hopefully, instead of having to recreate.
And if I had all the pie in all the skies, assigned shared access users should be able to be edited in bulk and/or duplicated.
Meaning, if I have one user set up as a Guest role with all device permissions / schedule permissions, etc. set up, and want to invite another Guest role user with the same device permissions / schedule permissions, would be nice to ‘clone as other User’ kind of setup flow?
Likewise, if I add a new device to the home, I should be able to multi-select users to add permissions to, and in a device page, I should be able to see all Users granted whatever permissions, and multi-select to remove completely, or update levels of, permissions.

[nberanger]

I keep trying to invite my wife. Neither the generated link or QR will work though. She just gets this 404 page.

[merciasm]

Hello @nberanger, I hope you are doing well.
I see that this is an android phone.
My guess is that: Your wife does not have the bond app or she is in an outdated/unsupported version of the application.
The first point is a tracked bug already being fixed on our side.
Let’s check some things to make sure this is the case:

Does she has the bond app that supports this feature?
Since we have the bug I mentioned, she needs to have already downloaded the app.
This is the link to download beta on android: here.

The latest version 2.65.0-beta2 (28692) has Shared Access and improvements.

You can always check the version you’re in here:

I hope this helps

[nberanger]

Needing to have the app installed is a key bit of information that was NOT included in any provided steps/instructions on setting up an account. This would have been useful to know

It is also odd that the app is required to create an account. That is a bit unusual.

I will have her try again after she installs the app.

Thank you.

[nberanger]

Having my wife install the app, and then signing up, sorted things out.

Thanks!