Determining Customization Requirements

There are a number of ways to customize the Reflection sessions, settings, and installation:

  • Create and Customize Reflection Sessions that include settings required to connect to specific hosts. You can set up traditional telnet connections or secure connections for SSL/TLS, SSH, Kerberos, SOCKS or HTTP proxy servers. You can also configure Reflection Sessions to use custom settings such as custom keyboard and mouse maps.

  • Customize the Reflection Workspace to change it’s appearance and functionality or to lock down access to settings and controls.

  • Customize to Protect Data and Information Privacy to define locations from which you can safely open (and store) documents, mask sensitive data (such as credit card numbers), or control access to the Reflection API.

  • Customize the Installation to create transforms (.mst files) that customize how Reflection is installed on user workstations.

NOTE:Reflection saves settings in custom configuration files. After you create the custom settings, you will need to package and deploy the configuration files you create as shown in Package Sessions and Custom Settings Files.

If you create a transform to customize the installation, you’ll need to deploy the transform with the base installation.

Create and Customize Reflection Sessions

Reflection stores the information required to connect to hosts in configuration files called session document files. You can create session document files that have connection information and other settings and then deploy them independently of your installation.

You can also customize session document files to use custom keyboard maps, controls, themes, and other settings. To customize these settings, see Create and Customize Session Documents.

By default, Reflection saves custom settings for QuickPads, keyboard maps, themes, mouse maps, hotspots, and ribbons in separate configuration files that you will need to deploy along with the session document files that reference them. But you can simplify your deployment by saving your session documents as compound session files, which include all of these settings.

Compound Session Document files include all of the customized settings for QuickPads, keyboard maps, themes, mouse maps, hotspots, and ribbons. These files allow you to deploy your sessions without having to deploy dependant files for these settings.

Session Document files save these settings in separate files. If you save sessions using this default, you’ll need to make sure that you deploy the custom files to the correct locations as shown in Customized Files and Where to Deploy Them.

Compound files are easier to deploy because you don’t have to deploy the supporting files. Regular session files offer more flexibility for sharing common configurations. For example, you can reference one custom keyboard map from several regular session files. With compound session documents, you have to recreate the custom settings in each file.

NOTE:Not all custom settings are saved in compound session files. For example, settings such as ssh_config and ssh_known_hosts required for Secure Shell connections are not saved in these files.

Customize the Reflection Workspace

You can customize Reflection by changing it’s appearance and functionality and by locking down access to settings and controls.

Change Reflection Appearance and Functionality

You can change the appearance and basic functionality of the main Reflection window in a variety of ways, including specifying startup macros and actions.

You can also change the appearance of the window (for example, by setting Reflection to open in TouchUx mode).

For more, see Customize the Reflection Workspace

Locking Down Settings and Controls

You can lock down Reflection to limit access to settings and controls so that they are not available to users. This allows you to simplify support requirements and resolve security concerns.

To prevent a user from changing a setting, you set the permission level for that setting or control to “Restricted.” For example, you could restrict the users’s ability to modify security settings.

As shown below, the restricted settings are grayed out. The security shield and the Change currently disabled settings link indicate administrative access is required to change them.

For more, see:

Customize to Protect Data and Information Privacy

From the Reflection Trust Center, you can set up Reflection to protect your working environment from information theft, and your data from potential damage caused by opening documents from non-trusted sources, using the following methods:

Set up Trusted locations

Define Trusted Locations to differentiate safe files from potentially harmful files. When a file is in a trusted location, it’s files are assumed to be safe. If you try to save a file in a location that is not trusted, Reflection warns that it will not be able to reopen the file.

Reflection enforces trusted locations by default, so if you want to save sessions in directories that are not default trusted locations, you’ll have to define these directories or disable the Trusted Locations feature. See Add Trusted Locations.

Set up Information Privacy

Set up Information Privacy to help comply with PCI-DSS requirements, including redaction of sensitive data such as credit card or social security numbers.

You can also set up the Reflection API to log access to unredacted data. See Configure Information Privacy.

Set up macro and API security

You can enable or disable the Reflection .NET API, determine whether Reflection legacy macros are supported, and determine which legacy API has preference for the GetObject() method used to retrieve API COM objects.

You can also specify whether to run restricted actions that are initiated through a macro or API call without elevating permissions.

Customize the Installation

Create and deploy a transform to customize how Reflection is installed on user workstations. As defined by Microsoft, "a transform is a collection of changes applied to an installation. By applying a transform (*.mst) to a base installation package, the installer can add or replace data in the installation database.”

For example, by deploying the transform with the Reflection base installation package, you can select which features to install.

You can also specify the installation directory or the user data location, change the Remove or Add commands from the Windows Uninstall or change a program list, and change other default settings.

For more about creating transforms, see Modify the Installation