Introduction to External Applications

External applications can help you get things done that can't be done in mRemote.
You can for example start a CMD Console or launch your favorite FTP tool from within mRemote.
This wouldn't make much sense by itself because you can already launch your applications by using the Windows Start Menu, Quick Launch or whatever you prefer to use to start your apps.

But there's more!

In mRemote you can launch applications and tell them what to do with the use of arguments (parameters) and variables of the currently selected Connection.
You can for example select your home router's SSH Connection entry and do a traceroute (tracert) on that host.

This is much more comfortable and powerful than opening the console and typing tracert YourHost.

Notes:

- Throught this document I will refer to External Applications as Ext. apps or Ext. app.
- Ext. apps are stored in c:\documents and settings\username\local settings\application data\Felix_Deimel\mRemote\extApps.xml

Variables

Variables and arguments can be used to tell the ext. app what to do.
Here's a list of variables currently supported by mRemote:

- %Name%
- %Hostname%
- %Port%
- %Username%
- %Password%
- %Domain%
- %Description%
- %MacAddress%
- %UserField%

The variables always refer to the currently selected Connection.

Example

First of all start the Ext. Apps management interface. To do this click Tools in the main menu and select External Applications.
You will see a screen like on the following screenshot.

The fields below the list are greyed out because you haven't created a Ext. App entry yet.
To create one right click the blank area in the list and select Add like in the screenshot below.

This is what you'll get:

So the three fields are now available and need to be filled.
The Display Name is simply the name you will see when you want to launch that application, so give it a descriptive name.
I named mine Traceroute as I will create a Ext. App launcher that will do a tracert command in the console.

Ok, the next thing we'll need is a filename. This is the application that we want to be executed.
I simply type in cmd for a windows cmd console.

Now the fun part comes in - the arguments.
The windows cmd has a command line argument that tells the console to launch the command followed by that argument and stay open.
It's /K. (There's also /C, this is useful when you want the console to close after the command was executed)
In this case I'll use /K as I want to scan through the result when the command completes.
After that I just type tracert %HostName%. This tells the console to do a traceroute on the hostname of the currently selected Connection.

Alright! That's all we'll need.
Now right click one of you connections, click Tools, External Applications and select Traceroute.

Voilą! A console window will popup and execute your tracert command.