Getting a key from another service

How Rivr walks you through fetching a key or an address from a service it cannot sign you in to.

What this is

Some services let Rivr sign you in with one press. Others do not, and for those you have to go to the service yourself, fetch something, and bring it back.

Rivr never leaves you guessing what that something is. Wherever a box asks you to paste a key, a set of steps sits beside it.

The steps are written once and shown everywhere that box appears, so the words never disagree with themselves.

What you see

A small block sits under or beside the box asking for the key. Its top line names the errand and the service, and says roughly how long it takes.

When the errand waits on the other service approving something, the top line says that too, so you learn it before you start rather than at the last step.

Open the block and you get the same shape every time.

First, what you end up with, named the way the other service names it. This is how you know you have found the right thing when you get there.

Then one line on what it lets Rivr do, and one on what it does not.

Then anything that has to be true before you start. An account of a particular kind, a verified domain, a paid plan. Where that is itself an errand, it has its own steps.

Then the steps, numbered, one action each. A step may carry a link straight to the page you need.

Then what to paste back, box by box, with the shape to expect.

Then how to tell it worked, and what the failure looks like when it does not.

At the foot, the date the steps were written.

The block is open when you have nothing saved yet and folded once you have. You can fold or open it yourself at any time.

What you can do here

• Read the steps for the service in front of you. See Find the steps for a service.
• Go and fetch the key, then bring it back. See Fetch a key and bring it back.
• Get where you are going when a link is dead. See Carry on when a link does not open.

How to

Find the steps for a service

1. Open Settings under Account.
2. Press the Connectors tab.
3. Find the service you want.
4. Read the block under the box. It is already open if you have saved nothing.

Fetch a key and bring it back

1. Read the part headed Before you start, and sort out anything listed there first.
2. Press the link on a step. It opens in a new tab, so the Rivr form stays where it is.
3. Do the one action that step describes, then come back and read the next one.
4. Copy what the other service gives you. Many services show a key once and never again.
5. Paste it into the matching box in Rivr and save.
6. Press Test where the panel offers it, and read what comes back.

Carry on when a link does not open

1. Read the step again. Every step names the menu path in the other service's own words, so the link is a shortcut and never the instruction.
2. Sign in to that service and follow the named path.
3. If the path has moved as well, look for the words the step uses. Services rename pages more often than they move them.
4. Tell us. The date at the foot of the block says when the steps were written, and stale steps get rewritten.

What changes for you

You must be signed in to save anything.

Some blocks are written for whoever runs this Rivr instance rather than for you. A service that nobody has registered this instance with says so in place of a connect button, and the steps are the ones an administrator follows once for everybody.

A group's keys are separate from your own. Open the group's own settings to work on those, and you need admin standing in that group.

The key your assistant uses sits on its own tab, apart from the rest, so it is never linked by accident.

Where a service offers no way to do the thing at all, the block says so plainly and gives you the manual route instead. Squarespace is the one that comes up most: it publishes nothing that lets Rivr change your DNS records, so the steps tell you how to add them yourself.

The addresses in these steps are not checked automatically. They were written from each service's own documentation, and a block whose links have never been opened by anybody here says so at the foot. That is why every step also names the path in words.

Where this connects

• Connected services lists the four kinds of link and where each one lives.
• Settings is the page most of these boxes sit on.
• Builder is where a domain provider's key gets used.