Table of Contents

The Basics

VCEA's remote access server can be found at connect.vcea.wsu.edu. It runs Apache Guacamole, and uses your WSU Network ID and password for authentication.

Important

connect.vcea.wsu.edu only accepts connections from WSU "on-campus equivalent" networks. This means that in order to connect, you must be in one of the following situations:

  1. You must be on-campus
  2. You must be connected to the WSU SSL VPN

If you don't meet at least one of those conditions, connect.vcea.wsu.edu will not respond to your connection, and it will appear that the website is not working.

For help setting up the WSU SSL VPN, see the WSU KB article about setting up Global Protect VPN

Getting Started

Logging In

Navigate to connect.vcea.wsu.edu in a web browser, and log in with your WSU Network ID and password.

If you're not seeing the normal login page

If you see an image similar to the one below, it probably means that you're not connecting from an "on-campus equivalent" network. See the "Important" box above in the "The Basics" section for more information. If you don't believe this is the issue, please contact VCEA IT for assistance.

After you've logged in successfully

Once you have successfully logged in, you will be taken to either the Guacamole home screen, where all available connections are listed, or directly to a connection, if you only have access to one connection.

The Home screen

If you have access to multiple Guacamole connections, you'll be taken to the "Home screen" once you log in. The Apache Guacamole documentation does and excellent job of explaining whats going on on the "Home screen". You can find that documentation at https://guacamole.apache.org/doc/gug/using-guacamole.html#home-screen.

The Client screen

If you only have one Guacamole connection, or after you open a connection, you will be taken to the "Client screen". This screen allows you to interact with the remote host in real-time, and has some hidden menus for doing tasks like copy/paste in Guacamole. Apache Guacamole's documentation does a great job explaining the "Client screen" and the menus that you can access from that screen. You can find that documentation at https://guacamole.apache.org/doc/gug/using-guacamole.html#client-screen.

Pro-tips

  • From the "Client screen" (your remote desktop screen), you can press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT to bring up the "Guacamole menu". This menu lets you do things like disconnect from your session, see or change whats on your clipboard, change your input method, access any shared directories you have, or change your mouse emulation mode