While on a flight I wanted to use SU on my iPad, couldn’t log in because the Wi-Fi on the plane wan’t working. Are there any other options to sign in, enhancement idea/request?
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Great question. The Trimble login will last for a while, and perhaps the only way of doing that now would be to login from home before your flight, and the login should be preserved. This would also include a few kabob-clicks to “Make available offline” from the HOME screen to be sure the files you’re working on are local to the iPad.
Short of that right now, there’s no immediate way to authenticate until Elon comes up with Starlink-In-Your-Pocket™.
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That could be better managed if we could see it coming with a countdown clock of some kind, at either the home page or dialog at launch. Something that says “your last login was ~date~” and “your next login needs to be on or before ~date~”
I really wish that if I pay for a full year in advance it would stay valid for one year.
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Indeed; there is no good reason for us to need a literal or cyber dongle. Optionally, they could just grant a few days extension so we can keep working if there is no net, or if the net goes down.
User needs have to be above corporate tiny profit differences and lowest common denominator assumptions.
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I can sincerely offer that that is not at all why the authentication flows are designed the way that they are. In fact, the flows are designed specifically to accommodate the security requirements that are imposed on Trimble, by our customers. There is a pile of various compliance and data security safeguards that we’re required to have in place that relate to the application’s cloud storage capabilities (i.e. integration with Trimble Connect). The most stringent safeguard would have us following more precisely, the 24 hr auth token expiration that the Trimble Connect apps use. It took considerable effort on our team’s part to extend the duration to a full month – in order to be able to offer a better user experience for customers who on average would prefer to Sign In less frequently.
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Sorry, but I don’t buy it, and your answer seems defensive and lacking in creative problem solving. The OP is right, and per RTCool there should be some kind of countdown, pop-up warning, or other way to ensure one isn’t caught off-guard by these unexpected login requests. As a business owner I have a slew of software that is subscription based and none of them have this problem.
Whenever you hear stories that go “blah blah blah techno babble cloud safeguards security blah blah blah”, one needs to ask how companies A, B, C, etc. manage to do it? And as for dismissing the corporate profit comment, operational budgets ARE a factor in the user experience–they always are. And of course better user experiences (better performance, more features, fewer bugs) come at a cost to the consumer. But let’s be honest about it rather than basically saying ‘that’s the way it is and there’s nothing we can do about it’.
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Better user experience, sure. But I’m genuinely curious: explain to me how Trimble profits from making you sign in? In fact, there are bandwidth costs the more frequent the sign ins, making it more expensive, not profitable.
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It’s a user experience problem that undoubtedly requires an allocation of financial resources to change, thus impacting profit.
The management of authorization tokens involves inherent tradeoffs, both in terms of duration and security. None of the major technology companies have discovered a perfect solution to address these challenges entirely.
When authorization tokens have a longer duration, there is an increased risk that malicious actors could exploit compromised data to impersonate users for an extended period, amplifying the potential damage they can inflict.
In the case of organizations utilizing Trimble products for international enterprise operations, compliance with numerous laws, legislations, and security requirements, such as ISO certification, becomes essential. The risks faced by these organizations multiply exponentially when dealing with software used by hundreds of users. Consequently, organizations tend to prioritize options that minimize risks when implementing these controls.
It’s worth noting that SketchUp and Trimble are not unique in facing these challenges. Other software solutions in similar domains also require users to connect online at least once every 30 days to address security concerns and maintain compliance.
Thanks @audiobrad that’s true. It would cost $ to fix, which would be offset +/- by not having 1/30th of your user-base hit your login servers daily. There are a lot of tricks that the big internet companies do to renew your login so you don’t notice expirations: we know, we were a part of one of those for 6 years. They also pop up in far less than 30 days - for example, if I sign in via gmail to a different iPhone, suddenly my laptop demands I sign in again immediately. 15 years ago at a big internet company where some of us may or may not have worked at, if you typed in your internal password into any external website, you were immediately forced to change your internal password. There were lots of crazy things there like this. And yes, they paid big $ for people to write stuff like this.
I’m sure there’s a ticket somewhere in Trimble ID for this, but when/where is outside of our domain for SketchUp. If not, we could ask for one. Point taken.
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ps - but I still contend it should be phrased “not spending enough on infrastructure” instead of “profiting from users”. It’s an expense item, not a profit item.
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Now that I understand the issue better, I think (?), I’m wondering this: If the cloud access is the tail wagging the dog here, why doesn’t lack of fresh authorization just cut you off from cloud/internet access and allow the user to keep working and saving locally on their machine until they can get it worked out later?
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We won’t lose work for you - if you get on a plane with the editor open, and work on that file in the air, and then exit it while still away from the internet, you’ll be asked to save locally to prevent loss of work. If you’re not seeing that intended workflow, please ping me and I’ll pursue a bug for it.
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Who said that? Regardless, there’s nothing wrong with profits --and of course they come from users. Without profits, companies close and we lose good products like Sketchup! My point is that every service and product we buy is a delicate balance between price point, internal costs, and profits. The barrier to getting every feature we want and getting every bug fixed is a function of price vs. functionality (i.e. “value”). So a feature or fix is rarely impossible, but it may be cost-prohibitive.
As to all the technical challenges with tokens, internet security, etc., does any of that prevent Trimble from providing notices, alerts, or tools outside of that system to help users avoid getting caught unable to log-in due to internet access issues? Sometimes you can’t control events on your computer that may require relaunching Sketchup unexpectedly.
OK, I’ll look for a way. Unlike a laptop, the iPad doesn’t give you an easy way to look at browser cookies to see when it expires (short term solution). I’ll think about this some more for the easiest way to give you a workaround, and us to put this somewhere in the app.
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What i don’t get is why, when an auth is coming to a runoff, like 25 days, why skp not silently checks and renews beforehand. The way its now to me is a typical example of developer-without-creativity. I’ve seen lots of those in my banking-siebel days. Hardwired instead of human-chaotic.
We understand. See Option to log in when no Internet is present - #5 by MikeTadros above. We will do our best to make this better, and right now it’s beyond our control.
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Signing is a a hurdle to multiple users being able to access a single account. It already happens to some extent, in most apps (like my wife can log into…(lock a subscription). So, putting up an occasional log-in requirement allows them to restrict (add a hurdle) to reduce the number of computers using one account.
Rgardless, I know of no other company other than Adobe, that does this.
If some companies require this, then optionally let them turn it on, but don’t impose this on all users.
Sure, if first time on a new computer, require a log-in. If it can 3 days, it can be 30, or 60, or a year. It’s just a number.
I don’t know much about it, but would it be possible to log in offline using a license code like with the sketchup classic licenses? If it is, would Trimble allow to generate codes to every customer to log in offline? I’ve never had any problem when I’ve had to log in but I don’t know if in the future I could run into this issue and I don’t have access to internet. By the way if you have internet data on your phone you can share it to other devices, I know this isn’t always possible but just in case you need for something like this.
A countdown would be very helpful!
My issue has been that I’m living and working in a ridiculously rural area, and we don’t even have phone up here except in a few places. Mostly we use wifi and wifi calling exclusively, hopping from known router to known router in order to make calls.
I’ve just gotten into the habit of logging in and out on Mondays when I drop into a check-in point for the work week, but there was a moment last week where I went to open SketchUp in a remote area and it was locked out waiting for me to login. Luckily the client knew the neighbors WiFi. It was probably on me, not having logged in in the 28 days, which is where a count down would have helped.
Honestly, it’s not really an issue for me anymore now that it’s stopped logging me off mid-project to make me re-verify with login.
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I understand the issues with security/Trimble. However, sketch up on the iPad is a locally installed app. I create something on my 11 inch iPad and save it locally, It is not automatically on my 12.9 inch iPad. It would be nice to be able to work in the app without the live connection to trouble connect if that’s the main concern.
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