A few cool things in Bushel Connect
Here's a little Bushel Connect demo. Watch the product image open beside Produce Pro, then watch the terminal: keyboard input stays right where it belongs. You can look at the attachment and keep working.
Bushel is a free, open-source desktop client for Produce Pro on Windows, macOS, and Linux. There are quite a few things in it that I think are cool. Here are some favorites.
Windows, Mac, and Linux
Bring your favorite desktop. Bushel runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, with a Windows installer, a universal Mac package, and several Linux package formats.
We have put a lot of work into making Bushel a great multiplatform tool. The attachment viewer, download manager, and connection tools are there whichever platform you use.
Open the attachment. Keep typing.
The RMI attachment viewer opens images, PDFs, CSV files, and HTML reports in a drawer beside your terminal. It does not steal keyboard focus, and the terminal keeps its rows and columns when the drawer opens.
Pull up a product image and keep moving through Produce Pro. Read a report alongside the screen that produced it. Search a CSV and copy text straight from its preview. Resize the drawer when you want a better look.
If you like opening files in their native applications, that is still supported. You can choose Bushel preview, your normal system application, or save only.
The download manager is pretty handy
Downloads stay in the session's transfer history, with Preview, Open, and Show in Folder actions. That report you just generated is right there when you want it again.
Uploads and downloads can run while the terminal stays visible, and supported upload workflows let you stage files with drag and drop.
Here is a longer look at the attachment viewer, CSV search, report previews, and a few session and support tools. Customer details and report data are blurred in both recordings.
Simple onboarding, easy deployment
The onboarding wizard is simple and awesome. It walks you through getting connected so you can get straight to work.
For IT teams rolling Bushel out to users, the managed deployment tool can bypass the wizard using DNS records on your LAN. Set it up once, and new installations can discover their connection information automatically. Connection subscriptions also let IT teams distribute shared connection information.
A few more tricks
- Another session in a click. Duplicate an active connection when you need a second session. Reconnect a disconnected session in its existing tab.
- Single User support. Guided setup can retrieve and install your per-user SSH key using your Produce Pro operator credentials on a compatible server.
- Tools for developers and IT. Existing SSH configuration, jump hosts, a searchable profile launcher, terminal captures, and support reports are all part of the toolbox.
Web Client gets the Bushel treatment too
You can use direct SSH or a compatible Produce Pro Web Client connection, with Bushel's terminal and supported RMI features around either one.
Web Client is especially interesting if your network changes during the day. Its server-side session can ride through some brief interruptions, such as moving between Wi-Fi access points or switching to Ethernet, that could otherwise drop a direct SSH connection. It depends on the server and the interruption, but it is a useful option to have.
Smoother under the hood
We have also put a lot of work into performance: less repeated profile loading and smoother held-key navigation, with more improvements to busy terminal output and diagnostics going through the next release checks.
Those are harder to show in a short clip, but keeping the terminal responsive matters when you are using it all day.
A lot of people helped
Some famous people in the PPRO world helped get us here.
Joe Roberts provided a lot of FTS support for the automatic deployment mechanisms, making it easier for IT teams to deploy Bushel. Joe and Sean from FTS did the Mac testing. Dave Donat provided a lot of Windows platform user feedback and bug testing, with recommendations that have made their way into production. Tim Boklewski also gave a lot of feedback from the user's perspective.
Look out for next month's big release, when Tim will share his favorite terminal settings for a "Pro's" configuration.
Thanks to them, and to everyone who tried things and told us what could be better.
Bushel's own code and original assets are licensed under GPL version 3 or later. Bundled components and fonts retain their own FOSS licenses, listed in the project's third-party notices.
Take a look at the Bushel project, or grab a development build from the releases page.