Figure 9.15: Polar Cloud printer MEMBERS screen
Access to a printer through the Polar Cloud is controlled by the printer’s manager(s). Initially, the only manager of a printer is the printer’s owner – the person who initially connected the printer to the Polar Cloud.6 In addition, however, the printer owner7 can invite additional Polar Cloud members to become managers. A manager may invite Polar Cloud members or other persons to a list of members allowed to use the printer, or may share a printer with a group.
Invitations to manage or use a printer may be issued as Polar Cloud notifications, or via email messages. Alternatively, sharing a printer with a group is an especially convenient way to allow an entire group of Polar Cloud members to use a printer.
To invite additional Polar Cloud members to use or manage a printer, on the selected printer’s “MANAGE” screen, click on the “MEMBERS” tab to take you to the members screen for the printer, shown in Figure 9.15. Then click on the “INVITE” button to bring up a drop-down menu and click “Invite cloud members”, see Figure 9.16, which will bring up an “INVITE MEMBERS” pop-up screen, see Figure 9.17.
At the “INVITE MEMBERS” pop-up screen, see Figure 9.17, the printer owner or a printer manager can invite another Polar Cloud member, see Figure 9.18, to access the printer (“INVITE USER” button), or can invite another Polar Cloud member to become a manager for the printer (“INVITE MANAGER” button). When filling in search criteria in the “SEARCH MEMBERS” field of the “INVITE MEMBERS” screen, note that the search is performed on Polar Cloud members’ “Display Name” and “Email” address(es). The invited member will receive a Polar Cloud notification inviting him or her to access or manage the printer; the Polar Cloud member may ACCEPT or DECLINE that invitation.
The “MEMBERS” screen will show any pending invitations; see Figure 9.19. If a pending invitation has not yet been accepted, note that you may cancel it by clicking on its “CANCEL” button. (“CANCEL” removes the invitee’s invitation notification; however, the now-canceled invitation activity entry will remain on the former invitee’s “ACTIVITY” screen. So although the canceled invitation can no longer be acted upon, the former invitee will be able to see that an invitation had been proffered.)
As an alternative to using Polar Cloud notifications to invite printer access, you may issue email invitations; this allows inviting even people not yet members of the Polar Cloud. To issue email printer access invitations, after clicking the “INVITE” button, select “Send emails”; see Figure 9.20. At the resulting “INVITE MEMBERS VIA EMAIL” pop-up screen, then enter the email address(es) of people whom you wish to invite to use the printer; see Figure 9.21. Click the “INVITE USER” button to send an email invitation allowing access to the printer; click the “INVITE MANAGER” button to send an email invitation to become a manager of the printer.
The people invited via email will receive an email similar to that shown in Figure 9.22. Clicking on the embedded link in the email (and logging into the Polar Cloud using their preferred credentials from Google, Facebook, or Microsoft Live) will take the user to a Polar Cloud screen asking whether the person wishes to “ACCEPT” or “DECLINE” the invitation to access the printer; see Figure 9.23.
Note that each email invitation link is only valid for one-time use, and will expire after a certain time period (currently approximately six months) if the email recipient does not make use of it.
If a pending email invitation has not yet been accepted, note that you may cancel it by clicking on the pending invitee tile’s “CANCEL” button. (Note that this invalidates the invitation link in the email, but cannot retract the sent email; the email recipient will still see the invitation, but clicking on the link within the email will no longer work to add the recipient as a member or manager of the printer.)
For Polar3D printers, note that if the printer “SETTINGS” switch “Add Allowed” is enabled, then any Polar Cloud member with physical access to the Polar3D printer may add him or herself as a manager of the printer by going through the printer registration process (the LED security light check, discussed in Section 1.1: Connecting the Polar3D printer to the Polar Cloud via WiFi of the Polar3D Printer Guide). If, as printer owner, you prefer to control who are managers of the printer via solely your invitations, then do not enable that switch.
To allow printer access to a number of individuals, you may issue multiple invitations (whether via Polar Cloud notification or email messages), as discussed above. However, setting up a group and then sharing printer access with that entire group of Polar Cloud members is often more convenient; see Section 7.5.
The “SEARCH” button on the printer “MEMBERS” screen, Figure 9.15, may be used to search within those Polar Cloud members granted access to the printer; for printers with a large number of members allowed access, this may be more convenient than scrolling through the tiles on the “MEMBERS” screen.
Clicking on a member tile on the printer “MEMBERS” screen will take you to that Polar Cloud member’s profile page, as discussed in Section 4.1.
6But see the “Add Allowed” printer “SETTINGS” switch which, if enabled, permits any Polar Cloud members with physical access to the printer to add themselves as printer managers.
7Note that Section 9.2.1 discusses how to change the printer owner, for cases where you want to reassign who is in charge of determining the printer’s managers; in particular, the printer owner may reassign ownership to another user of the printer.
