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User Guide
For Trainers

For Trainers

Basic usage for trainers/assistants

  • Ctrl + O Overview: Opens the trainer overview page, showing an interactive shell on the left and the current user status - a list of participants and who needs help - on the right.
  • Ctrl + S Search: Allows you to type in a username (shown in the menu bar at the bottom). Press Enter to connect to the terminal of the selected user. The search is fuzzy, and Cursor Left / Cursor Right switches between matches.
  • Ctrl + J Join Next: Attach to the terminal of the next participant. Both the trainer and the participant can now see and control the terminal. The currently selected participant will be highlighted in cyan in the status pane.
  • Ctrl + B Browse: Shows the terminal of the next participant, without any screen resizes. This enters Browse Mode (see below).
  • Ctrl + P Please Stop Typing: Displays a big, green banner with the text “Please stop typing” at the bottom of the window.
  • F1 Get Help: Activating Stop Typing will automatically disable Get Help for the connected participant. Press if you want to re-activate it for other trainers to notice.
  • Ctrl + Q Quit:: Exit the trainer’s ShellRoom process.
  • Ctrl + G Lock: All of the above keyboard shortcuts are intercepted and therefore not usable on the terminal. Activate Lock to instead send them to the terminal or participant.
  • F8 Presenter View: In the trainer overview (Ctrl + O), remove the activity pane and menu items for sharing your screen during the training.

Warning

Avoid cycling through participants using Join Next as it resizes the window of every visited participant to the smallest terminal size among connected users. This leads to annoying size changes for participants with a big terminal size.

Browse Mode

The Browse Mode allows you to quickly cycle through participants without changing the terminal size. If a participant’s terminal is larger than the trainer’s, only the top-left portion of the participant’s terminal window is shown.

  • Cursor Up / Cursor Down: Browse to the previous/next participant.
  • Enter: Attach to the current participant.
  • Page Up / Page Down: Scroll to the upper or lower sections of the participant’s window.
  • Ctrl + K: Kill the ShellRoom process of the current participant.
  • Ctrl + O or Esc: Exit Browse Mode to the Overview.

Marking participants (in browse mode)

Marking lets you place symbols next to a participant’s name in the status pane. Use this to signal statuses to yourself or other trainers - for example, to note who has completed an exercise.

  • M: Mark the current participant, displaying a ✱ symbol next to their name in the status pane.
  • P: Add a personal mark, displaying the marking trainer’s initials.
  • U: Unmark the current participant.
  • Ctrl + U: Unmark all participants.

Marks can also be set using the shellroom mark subcommand, which allows you to automate signalling through scripts or file watchers.

TODO: add screenshot to clarify terminology (status pane, menu).

For ParticipantsSetup Tutorial