The phone view is a cut-down Oversight dashboard for a mobile device, at /mobiledashboard.php. It shows the estate, whatever is in alarm, and for any one object its overview, history and poll log. It is view only: nothing on it changes anything.

It exists so that an alarm arriving while you are away from a desk can be looked into in seconds. Once a device is paired, opening the icon on the home screen goes straight to the dashboard, with no sign in and no authenticator code. A PIN protects it, and the pairing is done from a computer where you are already signed in.

Before you start

• You need to be signed in to Oversight on a computer, since that is where a device is paired.
• The phone must reach the site over HTTPS. The page sends you there if you type the plain address.
• Each person pairs their own phone. A device only ever sees the estate of the user it was paired by.

Step 1: set your PIN

On the computer, open Settings from the user menu and find the Phone view panel. Set a four digit PIN and save it.

The PIN is only ever set here, behind the full sign in. The phone never sets it, and never does anything but prove that it knows it. Until a PIN is set, no device can be paired.

Step 2: put the icon on the phone

On the phone, open https://oversight.im/mobiledashboard.php and add it to the home screen. How that is done depends on the phone:

On an iPhone or iPad, add the icon before pairing, and pair from inside the icon. An icon added to the home screen keeps its own cookies, separate from the browser it was added from, so a phone paired in the browser would still ask to pair when the icon is opened.

Step 3: pair the phone

1. Open the icon on the phone. It asks for a pairing code.
2. On the computer, in Settings, Phone view, choose Pair a device. A six digit code appears.
3. Type that code and your PIN into the phone, and choose Pair.

The code lasts five minutes, works once, and is not shown again. If it runs out, issue another. Three wrong PINs cancel the code, so a code read over somebody's shoulder is not enough on its own.

From then on, tapping the icon goes straight to the dashboard.

Using it

The page refreshes every ten seconds, and the bar under the tabs fills between one refresh and the next. If the server stops answering it says stalled rather than leaving state on screen that has quietly stopped moving. All times are UTC, as everywhere else in Oversight.

The padlock at the top right locks the device, so the PIN is needed again. Use it if you are handing the phone to somebody.

When it asks for something again

If a phone is lost

Open Settings, Phone view on a computer. Every paired device is listed with when it was paired, when it was last used and from which address. Remove stops that device at once, and it can then only come back with a new pairing code and your PIN.

Changing your PIN is worth doing at the same time, since the phone knew it.

What it deliberately does not do

• No acknowledging, pausing or resuming. An alarm still has to be acknowledged from the full dashboard.
• No configuration, no templates, no actions, no reports, no management pages.
• No journal, no data table, and no raw poll bodies.
• No alert sound. The phone view is for looking, and the alert itself still arrives the way it always did.

This is not a restriction of the menu. The phone view is a separate page that has nothing else in it, so nothing added to the dashboard later can appear there by accident.

If something is not right

Every pairing, unlock, wrong PIN and removal is recorded in the audit trail, so a phone that is behaving oddly can be traced.