Refocus

Get started now with our QuickStart guide!

Refocus is a platform for visualizing the health and status of systems and/or services under observation. Check out our home page and our docs.

• Features
• Quickstart
• Securing Refocus
  • IP Restrictions
  • Authentication
  • Using API Access Tokens
  • Dummy SSO Password
• Perspective Debugging
• API Documentation
• Useful Resources
• Contributing
• Related Github Repositories

Features

• API for everything
• Pluggable lenses
• Self-service
• Easy deployment to Heroku

Quickstart

See the Quickstart guide to get going with Refocus!

Securing Refocus

1. Set the DEFAULT_ADMIN_PASSWORD environment variable before running the app; the default admin user will be created with the password you supply. If you do not set this the app will fail to start. For non-production environments, you can skip this step and it will be initialized with password "devPassword".
2. Set the SECRET_TOKEN environment variable before running the app. If you do not set this the app will fail to start. For non-production environments, you can skip this step and it will be initialized with secret "CHANGE_ME".
3. After installation, log in (UI or API) as admin@refocus.admin with the password you set. Delete the environment variable.
4. Create a new user record for yourself with your real email address, and set your profile to the Admin profile.
5. If you want to restrict access to specific IP ranges, see IP Restrictions below.
6. If you want to use your own single sign-on (SSO) user authentication service, see Authentication below.
7. New users are assigned to the "RefocusUser" profile by default. This profile has read/write permission to all resource types. If you would like to restrict a class of users to have only read access to certain resource types, you can update the ____Access fields in the "RefocusUser" profile record.
8. If you only want SSO users (no "Local Authentation" users), set environment variable REJECT_LOCAL_USER_REGISTRATION to true. This disables the POST /v1/register endpoint.
9. Set environment variable SESSION_SECRET to sign the session ID cookie. (When deploying on Heroku, this will be generated automatically for you.)
10. Set environment variable SECRET_TOKEN to create jwt tokens used for authentication. (When deploying on Heroku, this will be generated automatically for you.)
11. You can automatically delete unused tokens based on a threshold you define. Turn on this feature by defining two environment variables, one to set the schedule for the clock job and the other to set the threshold for what to consider unused.
    • Use environment variable name CLOCK_JOB_INTERVAL_deleteUnusedTokens to set the frequency of the clock job, i.e. how often should we check for unused tokens. Set the value to a time offset like 12h if you want to run the clock job every twelve hours or 1d if you want to run the job once a day.
    • Use environment variable name DELETE_UNUSED_TOKENS_SINCE to set the threshold of what we should consider "unused". Set the value to a negative time offset like -30d if you want to consider a token unused if it has not been used in the last 30 days.
12. If you want to require SSL for connections from Refocus Collectors to the remote data sources, set environment variable COLLECTOR_REQUIRE_SSL_TO_REMOTE_DATA_SOURCE to true.

IP Restrictions

By default, there are no IP restrictions for Refocus access. An admin can configure IP restrictions by adding a config var in Heroku with name IP_WHITELIST and value array of IP ranges, eg. [ [1.2.3.4, 1.2.3.8], [7.6.5.4, 7.6.9.9], [8.8.8.8, 9.9.9.9] ]. Only the specified IP ranges will be allowed access to Refocus.

Authentication

Local Authentication only. SSO is not enabled.

A user should sign up with Refocus using register page or POST to /v1/register. Once registered, the user can sign in using Local authentication - username/password on Refocus login page.

SSO enabled with Local authentication.

Non-SSO users

Non-SSO users should authenticate with Refocus as described above using Local Authentication.

SSO-Users

If Single Sign On (SSO) is configured in Refocus, SSO users can login using 'SSO Login' button on login page. In case of local authentication with username/password, SSO users will be considered as unregistered user unless they sign up using register page or POST to /v1/register. Once an SSO user is registered with SSO username, the user can sign in using local authentication as well.

Using API Access Tokens

See docs.

Dummy SSO Password

When using SSO, a placeholder user record is created and added to the database. Specify a dummy password string for these dummy records. This dummy password is never used for authentication.

Perspective Debugging

If you are troubleshooting realtime event handling in a perspective, add query parameter debug=REALTIME to any perspective URL. This turns on console logging in the browser for all the realtime subject and sample events the perspective receives.

API Documentation

The API is self-documenting based on ./api/v1/swagger.yaml. Start your server and open MY_HOST:MY_PORT/v1/docs for interactive documentation of all the Refocus API endpoints.

Useful Resources

• Redis command line interface
• Postman for testing API calls
• Node.js token-based authentication

Contributing

Guidelines on contributing to Refocus are available here.

Related Github Repositories

• refocus-collector - Use a Refocus Collector to push your samples to Refocus.
• refocus-collector-eval - Utilities used by Refocus Collectors for executing the transform logic from a Sample Generator Template.
• refocus-ldk - Refocus Lens Developer Kit - a toolkit for developing, testing and packaging Refocus lenses for deployment.
• refocus-lens-multitable - A fluid multi-table layout. Each table groups subjects together under a shared parent.
• refocus-lens-simplelist - A simple list of samples sorted by sample name.
• refocus-lens-tree - Display your subjects and samples in a hierarchical left-to-right tree.
• refocus-ruby - A ruby library (API wrapper) & CLI project.
• refocus-sgt-trust1 - A Sample Generator Template for Refocus that pulls data from Salesforce's Trust Status API.
• refocus-utilities - Some utilities to help keep your Refocus instance running in good health.