Introduction to NetSfere

NetSfere is the leading cloud-based enterprise messaging service that provides all preferred means of communication - text, video, and voice in one secure and encrypted platform. NetSfere's uninterrupted, end-to-end encryption communication keeps data secure when communicating with internal employees and colleagues as well as external partners, vendors, and suppliers.

Since NetSfere is cloud-based, it stores the master copy of your message text and attachments in the cloud and only caches the most recent content on your devices. This saves valuable space on your device and makes it easy to upgrade to a new phone: just install NetSfere and all of your messages are at your fingertips!

NetSfere organizations

NeSfere groups its users into organizations. An organization has at least one administrator and potentially thousands of users who are members of the organization. Administrators have the ability to add and remove users as well as set various security policies for the organization. Users can exchange messages and attachments with other members of the organization. If the organization's security policy permits it, users can also communicate with external users or guests who are members of other NetSfere organizations.

If you don't have a NetSfere organization, you must create one before using any of the features described here.

NetSfere Groups

An administrator of a NetSfere organization can optionally classify its members into groups. These user groups may represent business units, departments, projects, locations, or any other means of grouping people. In addition to its name, each group may have an optional short name, description, and avatar for graphical on-screen representation.

Groups may also have one or more owners who have the ability to change the group's name and add or remove group members. An administrator must create the group and its first owner. Subsequently, the administrator or the group owner may add or remove group members and owners.

NetSfere imposes no hierarchy on groups. If you would like to create your organization's groups in a hierarchical manner, you must enforce this hierarchy yourself. For example, if you create a NetSfere Group called "Finance" and would like it to contain two subgroups called "Accounts" and "Billing", you must manually ensure that every member of the "Accounts" group is also a member of the "Finance" group.

User roles

All NetSfere users have an assigned role which defines the actions the user may perform. The possible roles are:

• User
• Administrator
• Administrator (Read-only)

Members of your organization who have the User role can perform the following actions (subject to the organization's policies):

• Login, logout and change password
• Create conversations and send messages
• Make and receive NetSfere calls and use related features
• Change limited profile information such as the account's avatar
• Adjust various app preferences

Members of your organization who have the Administrator role can perform all User actions, but can also:

• View your organization's NetSfere usage data
• Add and modify members of your organization
• Adjust security roles for members of your organization
• Configure broadcast channels
• Change organization attributes such as its name
• Set messaging and security policies
• Configure and assign contact attributes for organization members
• Synchronize organization membership with an Active Directory
• Capture organization message content in a NetSfere Vault
• Associate a domain name with your organization
• Upgrade your organization's service plan

Members of your organization who have the Administrator (Read-only) role can perform all Administrator actions, but in a read-only mode. No changes may be saved.

If you created your NetSfere organization at signup.netsfere.com, your role is automatically Administrator.

To change a user's assigned role, see Users & Groups.

Account states

Every user you invite to your NetSfere organization progresses through three states. These states are:

• Invited - You've invited the user to join your NetSfere organization.
• Active - The user has accepted the invitation and is a member of your organization.
• Disabled - You've suspended the user account indefinitely.

A user account remains in the Invited state until the user accepts the invitation or until you cancel the invitation. If you cancel the invitation, NetSfere will permanently remove the user account from your organization.

Once a user has accepted an invitation, his or her account enters the Active state and its associated data becomes a permanent part of your organization. Although you can temporarily or permanently suspend the account and remove it from the view of other users, you cannot remove it from your organization. This ensures that messages sent by the user remain visible to others. It also provides you with the option of restoring the user's account if you wish to do so.

When you disable a user's account, NetSfere automatically logs the user out and blocks any future logins. It also removes all NetSfere data stored on associated devices.

See Users & Groups for more information about managing users in your organization.

Guests

Guests are NetSfere users who are members of another NetSfere organization. Although they are able to exchange messages with you, they are subject to the policies set by their own NetSfere organization rather than the policies set by your organization.

If you do not wish to allow guests to communicate with members of your NetSfere organization, you can disable this feature in your organization's settings.

Using the Admin Control Panel (ACP)

NetSfere's Admin Control Panel is the web-based control panel that an administrator uses to manage his NetSfere organization. You can access the Admin Control Panel as follows:

1. Point your desktop or mobile web browser at admin.netsfere.com.
2. Enter your NetSfere login credentials.
3. Click or tap Login.

If you are already logged into NetSfere's web application (from web.netsfere.com) and are an administrator for your organization, you can quickly open NetSfere's Admin Control Panel without the need to login by clicking or tapping on the Admin Control Panel shortcut .

Filtering records

When looking at a data table in the NetSfere ACP, filters enable you to view only data that matches or does not match text that you supply.

To add a filter click the green plus button next to one of your current filters or click the Add a filter button if you have no filters. To erase a filter you can click the red minus button by the filter you would like to erase. To erase all filters at once, you can click the text saying Reset Search

To use a filter you must fill in the text field and choose from the dropdown menus what column you want to filter from and how you want data in that column to match the text you supplied.

Above your filters is also a dropdown menu where you can choose ALL or ANY. You can either choose to view data that passes through ALL your filters or ANY of your filters.

Active Users

This section displays members of your organization who are currently active. These users can login, send messages and make NetSfere calls. The controls here enable you to perform functions such as:

• Search for a user
• Sort all users
• Add a new user
• Modify a user
• Disable a user
• Customize attachment permissions
• Force a logout

Groups

This section displays NetSfere groups that you have defined. The controls here enable you to perform functions such as:

• Search for a group
• Sort all groups
• Add a new group
• Modify a group
• Delete a group

Devices

This section displays devices that members of your organization use to connect to NetSfere. Please note that the display shows only devices on which a user is currently logged in; if a user logs out from a NetSfere on a device, it will no longer appear in the list. The controls here enable you to perform functions such as:

• Search for a device
• Sort all devices
• Wipe all NetSfere-managed information from the device

NetSfere apps are subject to the security policies imposed by the device vendor and therefore cannot remove data that is not managed directly by NetSfere.

Invited Users

This section displays users that you've invited to your organization but who have not yet activated their NetSfere accounts. The controls here enable you to perform functions such as:

• Search for invited users
• Sort all invited users
• Invite a new user
• Re-send a previous invitation
• Cancel a previous invitation
• Modify a previously-invited user

If a user fails to receive the invitation email from NetSfere, you should confirm that you've entered the user's email address correctly. It may also be helpful to ask the user to check his or her junk mail folder as NetSfere invitation emails are sometimes incorrectly classified as "spam".

If a user is unable to receive an invitation from NetSfere, you may also click or tap Activation Link to generate a personal email containing the activation instructions. Users may be able to receive this personal email in cases where NetSfere's invitation email cannot be delivered.

Disabled Users

This section displays users that were previously active within your NetSfere organization but who have been disabled. The controls here enable you to perform functions such as:

• Search for a disabled user
• Sort all disabled users
• Re-enable a disabled user

When you disable a user, NetSfere forces the user to logout from all devices, removes NetSfere-managed content from those devices and prevents the user from logging in again. The disabled user's account and message content remain present within your organization, however, so that remaining members may reference it. Additionally, you have the option of re-enabling a disabled user with no data loss if the need to do so arises.

Active Directory

Microsoft Active Directory (AD) provides enterprises with a central location for managing users and software applications.

NetSfere integrates with AD by automatically synchronizing users. When an IT administrator creates or destroys a user in AD, NetSfere detects the change and automatically creates or disables the corresponding NetSfere user account.

Setting up NetSfere's Active Directory synchronization requires four tasks: configuring sync rules, installing NetSfere's AD Agent, configuring NetSfere's AD Agent and confirming AD synchronization.

Configuring Sync Rules

Sync rules determine which Active Directory groups and organizational units (OUs) are synchronized to NetSfere.

1. Navigate to Settings > Active Directory to display the AD configuration.
2. Select the Sync Rules tab. You can use this tab to create, edit or view your synchronization rules.
3. Select Create Rule from the Actions menu.
4. Select the synchronization type ("Group" or "OU").
5. Enter the group or OU name as it appears in your Active Directory.
6. Select the desired NetSfere role (typically "Users") and click Create to create the rule.
7. Repeat as necessary for other groups and OUs.

Installing NetSfere's AD Agent

NetSfere's Active Directory Agent is a Windows software package that serves as an intermediary between your Active Directory and NetSfere. It must run on a Windows host that has a network path to NetSfere's cloud infrastructure. It must also have read-only access to your Active Directory.

The agent is comprised of two components: a "Setup" installer that installs or removes the agent and a "NetSfere AD Service" that runs as a Windows service and synchronizes NetSfere users with AD users. It performs the following synchronization tasks:

• Creates NetSfere accounts for AD users that do not already have them and automatically sends invitation emails to those users
• Disables NetSfere accounts for users no longer present in the AD
• Re-enables NetSfere accounts for users who are removed and later restored in the AD

Use the steps below to install and configure NetSfere's AD Agent:

1. Navigate to Settings > Active Directory.
2. Click the download link to obtain a copy of the AD Agent.
3. Launch the downloaded executable and follow the on-screen installation instructions.

Configuring NetSfere's AD Agent

1. Locate the "Launch NetSfereADSyncAgent" item in your Windows start menu.
2. Enter a Windows user name and password that has read-only access to your Active Directory.
3. In the "Access Key" field, enter the value found on NetSfere's Admin Control panel, under Settings > Active Directory > Authorization Key.

You may update the authorization key with a character string of your choosing. The string may be up to 200 characters long. The same value must be used in both NetSfere's Admin Control Panel and NetSfere's AD Agent.

Confirming AD Synchronization

Use the following methods to confirm that NetSfere is synchronizing with your Active Directory:

• Monitor Settings > Active Directory > Log to view recent sync events.
• Monitor Users & Groups on NetSfere's Admin Control Panel to confirm the expected users are present.
• Monitor the Windows event log for any errors from the NetSfere AD Agent.

If you need additional assistance, please contact our support team.

Archiving

NetSfere archiving enables you to store copies of every message and file attachment sent within your organization in a secure NetSfere Vault. Since only your organization's members and the NetSfere Vault hold the encryption keys, no one other than your organization members and the NetSfere Vault can access your message content.

Setting up NetSfere's archiving requires three tasks: creating a NetSfere Vault account, generating Vault security keys and finally configuring archiving on NetSfere's Admin Control Panel.

You must have the NetSfere Enterprise service plan to perform these tasks.

Creating your NetSfere Vault account

Follow the steps below to create a NetSfere Vault account.

1. Point your browser at https://admin.netsfere.com and login.
2. Navigate to Settings > Archiving.
3. Click the Setup Vault button. This will open a new browser tab where you can create and activate your NetSfere Vault account.

If the new browser tab fails to open, you can copy and paste the URL shown on the Settings > Archiving panel into a new browser tab or window.

Although NetSfere Vault works together with NetSfere, they are distinct products with distinct user accounts. This provides you with flexibility by enabling you to create NetSfere Vault accounts for users who may not have NetSfere accounts. Additionally, you have the option of installing NetSfere Vault in your enterprise's data center for maximum security.

Continue with the following steps in the new NetSfere Vault browser tab:

1. Enter and confirm a password for your NetSfere Vault account.
2. Save this password in a secure location (along with your NetSfere email address) as you will need it later to access NetSfere Vault.

Continue with the next section to generate your NetSfere Vault security keys.

Generating NetSfere Vault security keys

When you enable NetSfere Vault for your organization, it automatically participates in every conversation to collect messages and store them securely. Like a human participant, NetSfere Vault maintains a set encryption keys that ensure that only participants in the conversation and authorized individuals with a NetSfere Vault account can read the message content.

Perform the following steps to generate security keys for your NetSfere Vault:

1. Point your browser at https://vault.netsfere.com and login.
2. Navigate to Configure.
3. Click Generate at the bottom of the screen. This will populate the fields above with a new private key and certificate.
4. Click Submit at the bottom of the screen to save the private key and certificate in your NetSfere Vault account.

Leave the NetSfere browser window open and proceed to the next section to complete configuration on NetSfere's Admin Control Panel.

Configuring archiving on NetSfere's Admin Control Panel

Perform the following steps on NetSfere's Admin Control Panel to link your NetSfere Vault account to your NetSfere organization:

1. Point your browser at https://admin.netsfere.com and login.
2. Navigate to Settings > Archiving.
3. Using the browser window from the previous section, copy the Archiving Certificate from the NetSfere Vault window to the NetSfere Admin Control Panel window. Be sure to copy all lines of text.
4. Using the browser window from the previous section, copy the Archiving Target from the NetSfere Vault window to the NetSfere Admin Control Panel window.
5. Using the browser window from the previous section, copy the Vault Authentication Key from the NetSfere Vault window to the NetSfere Admin Control Panel window.
6. Click Update at the bottom of the NetSfere Admin Control Panel window.

To begin capturing message content in your NetSfere Vault, perform the following additional steps:

1. Turn on the Enable Archiving switch on NetSfere's Admin Control Panel.
2. Click Update at the bottom of the NetSfere Admin Control Panel window.

Should you wish to disable your NetSfere Vault in the future, you can do so by turning this switch off and clicking Update.

Monitoring NetSfere Vault

To monitor your NetSfere Vault, perform the following steps:

1. Point your browser at https://vault.netsfere.com and login.
2. Navigate to Dashboard and observe the number of conversations and messages archived.

You can also generate reports on the message content captured by your NetSfere Vault. To do so, perform the following steps:

1. Navigate to Reports.
2. Click New Report.
3. Enter a name and your desired filter criteria.
4. Click Submit.

Depending on the amount of message content, NetSfere Vault may require as little as a few seconds and as long several hours to generate your report. If you don't wish to wait for NetSfere Vault to generate the report, you can safely close your browser window and return later to retrieve it.