Family setup

For the one person who looks after the archive. About twenty minutes, most of it waiting for an app to install.

1. Create the family

A family is the whole archive — its photos, its stories and its people. One family per household; nothing is ever shared between two of them.

1. Sign in to the admin console at your archive's address, under /admin.
2. Open Families and create the family. Give it the name your family would actually say out loud.
3. The owner account is created at the same time. That is you, unless you are setting this up for somebody else to run.

If you do not have an archive yet, ask for one — they are set up by a person, one family at a time, on purpose.

2. Pair the tablet

Pairing is what signs the tablet in permanently, so she never has to. It is a code, typed or scanned once.

1. Install the app on the tablet.
2. In the console, open Devices and generate a pairing code. It is shown as text and as a QR, and it lasts fifteen minutes.
3. On the tablet, either tap Scan the code and point it at the QR — which fills in the address and the code together — or type both in.
4. Tap Pair this tablet. It goes straight to the photos.

Handing the tablet over

• Turn on Android's screen pinning so the app cannot be left by accident.
• Note down the caretaker password somewhere you will find it in a year.
• Put a few photos in before she first picks it up. An archive that opens on "nothing here yet" is a poor first impression.

Re-pairing or replacing a tablet

Generate a fresh code and pair the new one the same way. Then revoke the old pairing in Devices — do it in that order, so you are never left with neither working.

A revoked tablet stops working immediately. That is also what to do the moment one goes missing.

3. Invite family members

Family members can watch what has been shared and add stories of their own.

1. In the console, open People and users.
2. Add the person, and how they are related — the only two you ever type are parent of and married to. Brothers, cousins and grandparents are worked out from those.
3. Give them a sign-in if they need one. Somebody who only ever watches a shared link does not need an account at all.

People who only want to watch

Send them a link. No account, no app, nothing to install — see sharing.

Keeping it running

• Back up the archive. It is on a machine your family owns, which means the backup is yours to arrange. This is the single most important thing on this page.
• Look at the console's front page now and then: photos in, stories recorded, and whether anything has got stuck.
• Change the administrator password from whatever it was set up with, and do not leave it at the temporary one.

Installing tablets in bulk, kiosk provisioning, or working from a command line? That is the technician page, which is only reachable from inside the office network or the VPN.