The Outpost tray app

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The Outpost tray app is the part of Outpost that the people who use your endpoints see. It shows them how to reach you, lets them open tickets and chat with a technician, install approved software, restore their own files, and answer when a technician asks to connect. This page is for the administrators who roll it out and support it. For end users, see Use the Outpost tray app.

What the tray app shows

The tray app opens as a small card. A rail down the side switches between its views:

View	What it shows
Support	Your support contact details, the person’s tickets, live chat, help articles, and satisfaction surveys. It opens here.
Incidents	A place for service incident reports. Incident reports are not sent to endpoints, so on an enrolled computer it reads No incident reports are available for this endpoint.
Software	The software catalog: what is installed, and what they can install or request.
Backup	Whether this computer’s files are backed up, and Restore Files… where you allow it.
Sync	Outpost Sync status, where it is turned on for the person. Outpost Sync runs on Windows only.
Device Info	The computer’s name, connection status, management details, hardware, and an Exit button.

The card also carries the prompts that cannot wait: a request from a technician to start a remote session, the banner while a session is running, a secure transfer code, a password a technician has sent, and a request to restart the computer. See Consent prompts and session notices.

The tray app reads everything from the agent on the same computer. If the agent is not running, the card says This information is unavailable because the Outpost Agent could not be reached. Please try again shortly.

On each platform

Windows

The Outpost icon sits in the notification area. Selecting it opens the card beside the icon, and Open in a window turns the card into an ordinary window. The Outpost entry in the Start menu opens the card too, which helps when Windows hides the icon. It starts the tray app first if it is not running. The tray app starts at sign-in for every user of the computer, with no card on screen.

The tray app needs the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime, which current Windows 10 and Windows 11 releases include. Where it is missing, the agent does not start the tray app.

The Windows installers always install the tray app.

Linux

The tray app shows an icon on desktops that display tray icons. Its menu has Open Outpost, Chat with support, New ticket, and About Outpost. Some desktops, such as a default GNOME desktop, do not show tray icons. On every desktop, the Outpost entry in the applications menu opens the card.

On Linux the card opens in the person’s web browser, served only to their own computer. Prompts that need an answer, such as a request to start a remote session, also appear as desktop notifications with Allow and Deny buttons, so they are seen even where the tray icon is not.

The tray app comes with the Outpost agent .deb and .rpm packages. The tarball that the console downloads installs the agent only.

macOS (Preview)

On a Mac, the tray app is a menu bar app installed with the macOS agent as /Applications/Outpost Tray.app. Selecting the menu bar icon opens the card.

Turn the tray app on or off

The tray app is always installed with the agent. Whether it runs is the tray.enabled setting, in the End user category of a profile.

It is on by default.
If any profile that applies to an endpoint turns it off, it is off.
Turning it off stops the running tray app and keeps it from starting at sign-in. Turning it back on starts it again without a reinstall.

The views inside the card follow their own settings and plans:

Live chat follows the chat.enabled profile setting, and needs a plan with the service desk.
Installing software follows software.allow_user_installs.
Restore Files… follows backup.self_service_restore.
Sync follows sync.enabled, which is off unless you turn it on.
Opening tickets needs a plan with the service desk. See Use the Outpost tray app.

Your support contact is what the Support view shows people as your name, phone number, email address, website, hours, and chat channel.

Content is licensed CC BY 4.0. Code samples are MIT. Outpost and the Outpost mark are trademarks of Outpost Business Solutions, PBC and are not covered by either license.