Edge2Cloud Customer Preview
Edge2Cloud enables a user to remotely FIN through the Cloud securely.
Securely access FIN from anywhere in the world!
Adaptive multi-factor authentication.
Everything’s encrypted.
Log in only once
Log into remote sites using your Edge2Cloud user account.
Organization, user and device management.
Build out your portfolio of buildings to manage.
Edge2Cloud is J2’s first Cloud product and is offering select customers the chance to try out their services through the preview programme…
Preview is a time-limited early access programme for Edge2Cloud.
Preview is a chance for select customers to try out Edge2Cloud services and provide feedback.
There’s no limit to the number of devices that can be registered for Edge2Cloud.
The preview Cloud environment will be stopped end of July 2020.
All user and device related data will be removed when the preview is stopped.
When the Cloud environment is stopped, FIN will still function as expected! Remote access will just stop working.
At this point customers will be expected to switch over to the released product environment.
No migration of data will be made between preview and production.
All devices will have to be re-registered with Edge2Cloud once preview has been stopped. Customers are expected to switch to production.
All support for Edge2Cloud is provided through J2’s existing support channels.
Edge2Cloud remote access will be available to all customers who are up to date with their maintenance for FIN.
Getting started
FIN Installation
Please download and install the version latest released version of the FIN framework.
From your J2 support person, you’ll also receive a file called
finEdge2CloudPreview.zipThis file contains all the additional files required to run Edge2Cloud.
At various points you may receive some updates you may need to install in order to continue using Edge2Cloud.
Unzip the files over the top of your FIN installation.
For example, unzip the file over
C:\Program Files (x86)\FIN Framework\FIN Framework 5.0.3.2726
Restart the FIN service.
User registration
Before you can remotely access FIN, you’ll need to register your new FIN install with Edge2Cloud. In order to do this, you’ll need a Edge2Cloud user account…
A J2 empoyee will send you an email invite to join Edge2Cloud.
A J2 employee will create you an Edge2Cloud organization if it doesn’t exist.
A J2 employee will create your initial user account for you organization.
When you receive the email, click on the provided link and go through the registration process.
Please note, you receive an email with a temporary password you’ll need to enter!
You’ll need to agree to the terms and conditions.
Once you’re registered, you’ll have administrator access to all the users and devices (a.k.a. FIN installs) for your organization
Click on your user in the top right-hand corner of the portal
This shows a list of the organizations you’re currently a member of
Click on your organization to view its page…
This page shows all the user and device information for your organization.
A few notes about organizations…
Organizations are how users and devices are grouped together.
A device (a.k.a. a registered FIN instance) can only belong to one organization.
Note your FIN instance doesn’t appear in Edge2Cloud yet because it’s not yet registered.
A user can only see the devices in an organization they’re a member of if they have the device operator/admin role.
Users who are no device operators/admins can also see devices if they’re a member of an access group.
As you’re a user admin, you can view all users in your organization and invite new users.
Note your user account under users. This is the identity you’ve used to log onto Edge2Cloud. Click on your user account to see more information about yourself…
Your email address and phone are extremely important in Edge2Cloud and are used to log into the system.
Note your user roles in the organization. Click edit to see a list…
The user roles define what you can do in an organization…
Device Manager: register new devices in an organization.
Device Operator: view all devices in an organization.
Device Admin: view, edit and delete devices in an organzation.
Remote Op, Admin, and Super User: the remote FIN role used when remotely access FIN using Edge2Cloud.
User Operator: view all users in an organization.
User Admin: view, add, edit and delete users in an organization.
Click cancel and head back to your organization’s page.
Device registration
As you’re a Device Manager in your organization, you can register your newly installed FIN instance with Edge2Cloud.
Log into FIN locally as a superuser
Only superusers can register with the Cloud.
Create a new project in FIN.
By default, the demo project can’t be registered with Edge2Cloud.
Create some sites in FIN.
Fill out all the geographical information for the site.
Remember to add the site’s latitude and longitude so it appears on the map in the Edge2Cloud portal.
After creating your site, click on the FIN application launcher and select 'Cloud'.
Clicking on ‘Register to Cloud’ to be taken to the Edge2Cloud device registration website. Alternatively, you can click on ‘Registration QR Code' you can scan using your cell phone.
The QR code is to the device registration web site.
It’s valid for three days.
It’s useful if when installing FIN, FIN doesn’t yet have Internet access but may do soon in the future.
Once you’ve logged into the device registration website you should see…
Select your organization to register the device under.
Note that if you’re a Device Manager in multiple organizations, the drop-down box will have multiple choices
Click the ‘Register’ button.
Navigate back to the portal and click ‘Home’.
The portal should show the newly registered site on the map.
Please note, it may take a few minutes for the device to index all the data before it shows up on the map.
Click on the point on the map.
This presents the site information.
Clicking on the title navigates to the site information.
If the device is currently connected a green tick will be presented next to the title.
Navigate back to your main organization page.
Scroll down and see the new project and site information under the organization.
Congratulations! You’ve successfully set up your user and first FIN device in Edge2Cloud!
Features
Remote access
To remotely access your FIN device, click on the ‘Remote access’ button available from the device, site or project pages. This will navigate you to FIN remotely…
Note browser bar…
The connection is secure.
The SSL certificate is managed for you by Edge2Cloud.
The URL is unique for the device.
You can bookmark it as a link for that unique device if you want too.
You didn’t get asked to log in again.
You’re logged on remotely to FIN using your Edge2Cloud user.
It’s all single sign-on.
You can use your Cloud log in to remotely access every single site using Edge2Cloud.
The browser will automatically redirect you to another page after about 5 minutes of user inactivity.
One hour after being redirected, you’ll then be automatically logged out of Edge2Cloud.
Devices, projects, and sites
Once a device is registered with Edge2Cloud, all of its project and site information is uploaded. Any changes to the project and site information will be automatically uploaded in the future.
Remember that FIN uses projects and sites as the primary way of organizing your building’s data!
It’s important you make project and site names unique within your organization to avoid conflicts!
On the site bar you can click devices, projects or sites. Each enable you to easily navigate all of your data.
Try finding the site you created in the ‘Getting Started’ guide…
Click ‘Tags’ see view all the tags indexed for this site.
The totals shows you some statistics regarding your site.
Remote summary dynamically updates with alarm and point information for your site.
Please note, this is one feature that will improve during Edge2Cloud’s development.
Navigating to the associated project rolls up all site information into a similar view at the project level.
Clicking ‘Delete cached’ will delete the site information from the Cloud.
It will not delete any site information site in FIN on site.
Clicking ‘Sync’ will re-synchronize all the data for the associated device with Edge2Cloud.
There’s no real need to click this as this already happens for you.
Now find the associated device for this site. You can use the breadcrumb bar here or simply search for it under ‘Devices’ in the side bar.
Clicking ‘Delete’ will completely delete the device, site and project information from the Cloud.
The FIN instance on site won’t be able to connect anymore.
No data in FIN will be deleted. It’s only the data held in the Cloud.
Access groups
The device operator and admin roles enable a user to view or manage all the devices in an organization. However, what about granting certain users permissions to only certain sites? Let’s say you have a contractor who is only allowed to work on sites within Los Angeles and not Las Vegas? To do this, you need to set up Access groups within your organization.
An access group associated project and site information with users. Just like with everything in FIN, it relies on Haystack tagging.
Before creating an Access group, create another user in your organization…
Go to your organization main page and click the ‘New’ button under users…
Fill out your new user’s information.
Ensure the phone number has the international dialling code (+1 for USA).
Ensure the email is correct.
Tip: if you’re using your Google mail, you can reuse your Google mail by adding a plus after your user name. For example, garethj+whatevernamegoeshere@j2inn.com.
Tick the Remote Op role. Leave all the others blank.
Access to devices will be granted through an Access group.
Click ‘OK’ to create the new user.
Note the user is ‘Unregistered’.
Once Bob has gone through the user registration process, he’ll be marked as ‘Registered' instead.
If you’re using a different email for yourself then remember to do the next steps in a different browser (i.e. Firefox or Edge) or Incognito mode. This way you can have both users logged in at the same time.
Here’s a screen shot of both users logged in side by side…
Note how your original user on the left can see all registered sites. The new user on the right can’t see any.
Using your original user on the left, go to the organization and create a new Access group…
The Site filter says ‘geoCity == Los Angeles’
The site filter is a Haystack filter used to query a site’s tags.
The result of the filter is what Bob can access.
Bob is added as a user to this Access group.
Click ‘OK’ to create the Access group.
Refresh Bob’s browser window.
Note how Bob can now remotely access the site as a remote operator.
Bob can now only access sites in Los Angeles.
Try creating another site somewhere outside of Los Angeles and note how Bob cannot see or access them!
If any future sites are created Los Angeles, Bob will automatically be able to see them.
Reporting issues
Edge2Cloud isn’t released yet and so issues should be expected.
Please report any issues you may encountered to support@j2inn.com.
As this is in preview, J2 cannot currently offer any guarantees regarding when or if issues will be fixed!