Settings
webmate offers a rich set of features that can be customized to fit different use-cases or requirements.
For instance, there are different requirements for security features such as password policies or account invitation token lifetimes. A large part of available configuration settings can now be configured by administrators in webmate. This page provides a reference of all settings that are visible to the user.
Activity Visibility Limit
The project dashboard by default displays a stream of all activities that happened in the project. In some organizations, it is forbidden to view the activity of other users for data protection reasons. When this setting is enabled, users will only see their own activity.
API Token Lifetime Limit
webmate supports API tokens to authenticate users for technical use-cases such as running tests in an automated pipeline. With this setting, it is possible to specify a lifetime for each API token created by a user. When enabled, the user can specify how long API tokens are valid and also set notification periods if a token is about to expire. Currently, there are three warning levels info, warning and critical. For each notification, an email is sent to the user whose token is about to expire. To learn more about the usage of the webmate API, refer to the API documentation .
If this feature is disabled, API tokens are valid indefinitely. If a user account is locked, see Unlock User Account .
App Instrumentation
Many features such as camera simulation and biometric simulation require instrumentation of mobile applications. For details, see Testing a Mobile App . Since some apps forbid modifying the code, this setting allows administrators to disable app instrumentation globally.
Workbench Timeout
This setting allows to define a timeout period for device workbench. If enabled, this feature automatically closes workbench after a specified period of inactivity. It enhances security and resource management, ensuring that idle workbench does not pose a risk or unnecessarily consume resources. In order to be considered active, the user must interact with the workbench, either by typing or by using the mouse.
Device Bandwidth Simulation
For mobile devices, network quality may vary significantly over time. From a testing perspective, measuring application performance under poor network conditions is an important use-case. To support this, webmate allows to simulate poor network conditions for individual devices. This setting configures if the feature is available to the user. To activate this feature, please contact webmate support (opens in a new tab) .
Device Customizations
Customization scripts can run when a device is deployed (currently only for virtual machines). This setting configures whether customizations are allowed. For details, see Manage Startup Scripts .
Device Idle Timeout
webmate tracks if a device is used for manual or automated testing. It may happen that users forget to release devices and unintentionally block devices from being used by someone else. To prevent this, this setting allows to specify an idle timeout after which devices are automatically released. Since this can be surprising for users, this setting can only be activated by contacting webmate support to discuss when and how to release devices.
Device Update Requests
If enabled, users can request an OS update for private mobile devices (not for devices from the public cloud). Users can access the dialog from both the menu of the respective slot and the menu of the deployed device in the device view.
DNS Management
If configured, webmate has access to testing infrastructure via secure tunnels. In order to support using well-defined hostnames and well-known URLs for automated and manual testing, webmate has powerful support for DNS management. For instance, it is possible to configure DNS names, or provide upstream DNS servers that are accessible to all devices.
Since configuring DNS is complex, enabling this setting requires interaction with webmate support. To see what DNS management can do, see Configure Custom DNS Rules .
Failed Authentication Attempts
For security reasons, webmate tracks how many times a user tries to authenticate with invalid credentials. This setting specifies the maximum number of consecutive failed login attempts before a user account is temporarily locked. If a user account is locked, see Unlock User Account .
Gravatar Profile Pictures
To make users feel at home in webmate, we provide support for Gravatar images that are displayed as profile pictures.
Inactive User Pruning
Within webmate, administrators can utilize the “Prune Inactive Users” option to simplify user management. When enabled, it automatically removes inactive users based on a customizable time frame, ensuring a streamlined and efficient user database.
Invite Token Lifetime Limit
When a new user is invited to webmate by an administrator, an invite token is sent to the provided email address. Every invite token has a limited lifetime for security reasons. This setting allows to specify the lifetime for invitation tokens. Depending on how quickly users respond to invitations, the lifetime should be in the range of several days up to two weeks.
Mobile Access
Mobile Access is a VPN that lets you access test systems with local mobile devices. The solution is integrated into webmate, which means you can test systems that are reachable from your webmate test infrastructure with your mobile device. For details, see Mobile Access . Since using Mobile Access has security implications, contact webmate support (opens in a new tab) if you need access to Mobile Access.
Password Lifetime Limit
Similar to API tokens, webmate also supports specifying a lifetime for passwords. Expiration notification for passwords are also configured in the same way.
If a user account is locked, see Unlock User Account .
Password Requirements
In many organizations, there is a set of rules (requirements) that passwords chosen by users must adhere to. Most notably, most organizations require a minimum length for passwords. Another example is that passwords must contain upper-case characters or other special characters.
webmate per se does not impose requirements for passwords. However, this feature allows administrators to specify a password policy for all users of an organization.
Note that setting up these requirements will not affect/invalidate existing passwords that might violate the requirements. The setting applies to passwords set after the requirements were defined only.
Password Similarity
Activate the Levenshtein distance-based password similarity check for enhanced security. With this setting enabled, webmate will assess password similarity, strengthening defense against reuse of passwords. It’s a practical security measure that helps keep accounts secure.
Project Administration
webmate offers a flexible role management system that can be configured by administrators. The default roles also include an administration role that is granted for individual projects (in contrast to global administration privileges). By default, only global administrators can invite other users. This setting enables project administrators to also invite users to their projects. That way, global administrators have less workload and user management for projects can be handled by project administrators.
Single Sign-On
webmate has built-in support for OpenID Connect workflows ‘Authorization Code Flow’ and ‘Implicit Flow’. Besides that, we also support SAML authentication via identity brokers. If you would like to use single sign-on for user management in webmate, please contact webmate support (opens in a new tab) .
Single User Device workbench
webmate supports using device workbench with multiple users at the same time. This allows for users to collaborate on the same device, for instance to analyze issues. However, concurrent usage has the downside that simultaneous input of multiple users can lead to unexpected results. Also, for data protection reasons, it may be undesirable to allow concurrent access. To that end, the Single User Device Workbench setting allows to control concurrent access to device workbench.
Slot Reservations
The slot reservation setting allows to configure reservations for slots that may be shared between multiple projects. This is necessary if critical manual and automated test activities are scheduled that require usage of one or more devices at a specific period.
When enabled, there is a number of parameters that control how and to what extent devices can be reserved:
Maximum Slot Reservations: This field specifies the upper limit of reservations that can be made for a given slot.
Maximum User Reservations: Defines the maximum number of reservations a single user can create. This limit helps prevent any single user from over-booking or monopolizing the reservation system.
Reservation Time Buffer: Define a time buffer to prevent new reservations from being made too close to existing ones. This buffer helps in managing the flow and timing of reservations, ensuring there are no overlaps and that there is adequate time between reservations for preparation or transition.
Minimum reservation length: The shortest duration for which a reservation can be made. This setting ensures that all reservations meet a minimum time requirement to maintain efficiency and ensure viability of the slots.
Maximum reservation length: The longest duration a reservation can be held. This limits how long a slot can be reserved to ensure turnover and availability for other users.
Test Data Export
If enabled, webmate administrators can export usage data as available in the statistics section in different formats.
User Profile Options
By default, webmate only displays essential options in the user profile. If this setting is enabled, all users will have additional options in their profile sections. Most notably is the ability to change the email address. Organizations can specify a regular expression which limits the mail addresses users can set. One common use case for this would be for organizations to disallow any email address that does not contain their domain.
User-based Statistics
The statistics view in the administration area provides detailed information about what kinds of tests were run on what platforms by which user. For data protection reasons, organizations may disallow presenting statistics for individual users. This setting allows to toggle displaying statistics for individual users.
Workbench
This setting enables users to access the workbench, a unified and comprehensive environment designed for testing with webmate devices. Similar to how an IDE supports developers, the workbench serves as an Integrated Testing Environment (ITE) for testers.
X-Forwarded-For Check
Some organizations forbid users to access webmate via ’normal’ internet routing. To support these users, webmate can also be accessed via secure tunnel. If this is the preferred way to access webmate, this setting must be activated for security reasons. Most users of webmate will not need to enable this setting.