Hosts and the desktop agent

A host is a Windows machine running the desktop agent for your organization. The Hosts page lists your hosts, when each was last seen, and whether its desktop agent is enrolled.

How a machine is enrolled

A technician signs in to the desktop agent on the machine with their Coldsea account and picks your organization. The agent then enrolls the machine: it receives a credential of its own, so it can sign in again after each restart without anyone at the keyboard. Workflows reboot machines often, and this is what lets a run continue on its own.

The Hosts page shows who enrolled each machine and when its agent last signed in. The credential itself is never shown.

The credential ends on its own when the workflow the machine is running finishes or is aborted. To run another workflow on that machine, a technician signs in and enrolls it again.

Removing a technician from your organization also stops any agent they enrolled: its next request to Coldsea Deploy is refused.

Revoking an agent credential

Revoke a machine's agent credential when the machine is lost, retired, or handed to someone else, or when you need to enroll it again and the agent reports:

This machine already has an active device credential. An operator must revoke it before enrolling again.

To revoke:

  1. Open Hosts.
  2. Find the machine and select Revoke agent.
  3. Confirm.

The desktop agent on that machine stops at its next sign-in, within 15 minutes. A technician must enroll the machine again before it can run workflows. Each revoke is recorded in your organization's audit log.

Who can do this. Anyone who can view hosts sees the Hosts page. Revoking an agent credential needs the same permission as removing a host, which the built-in Admin and Owner roles have. See Roles and permissions.

Single sign-on

If your organization uses single sign-on, members whose email is in a verified SSO domain cannot sign in to the desktop agent yet. See Single sign-on.

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