How to connect Surface Hub to VPN?

Copper Contributor

Hi, we just installed a Surface Hub in the office to use for scrum meetings.

The plan is to display the teams' scrum boards from TFS on the Surface to be able to work interactively together at the screen.

However, currently our TFS environment is on a separate network, to which you need a VPN tunnel.

How can we set up this tunnel to TFS, and still use the normal network for the Skype For Business call for remote team members?

7 Replies
Hi Anders

I'm not sure this can be done. I've not seen any VPN clients that run on Surface Hub as they are most likely unable to run in a UWP environment.

Thanks
Dan

Thanks for your quick response, Dan.

Too bad, but hopefully this problem will pass in a month or two, when we have TFS servers on the same network as the rest of the environment.

 

BR

/Anders

Also note that you can connect a laptop to the Hub via HDMI/USB. You can then VPN in with the laptop and display/interact with TFS on the Hub.

Yes, thanks.

This is a workaround that we have discussed, but as I understand it we will lose the Surface apps (like Whiteboard) when we use a laptop instead. Still the Surface will work as a touch screen input, and that's good. Do you know if that is correct?

When you connect a device to the Surface Hub, it displays in the connect app. You can run this full screen, but you can also run it side-by-side with a second app. So there's no reason why you couldn't run the Whiteboard next to your plugged in laptop.

Aha, didn't know that.

I read about the "Replacement PC"-mode, where it seem like the Surface internal computer is disabled. I guess that this way of connecting is something different then...?

Yup. This allows you to connect another dedicated computer to the Surface Hub to use the Surface Hub hardware on the dedicated computer (screen, touch screen, pens etc.). This allows you to 'replace' the built-in PC with one of your own running Windows 10 instead of Windows 10 Team. You would need the following drivers if you ever did that: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=52210

Plugging in your PC for screen sharing is known as 'guest PC mode' and uses different inputs that the Surface Hub built-in PC can detect and display on screen through the Connect app (and through the Source picker).