SSH Setup

Actions Center requires you to connect to your feeds dropbox using a Secure Shell (SSH) connection. SSH is a network protocol that ensures secure data transfer between your systems and Google's servers.

To authenticate this secure connection without relying on passwords, you need an SSH key pair. A key pair consists of two matching components:

• Private Key: A secret key that resides securely on your system or is managed by your application. This key acts as your secure credential.
• Public Key: A non-secret key that you upload to Actions Center. Google uses this to verify your private key's signature when you establish an SFTP connection to upload feeds.

When you connect via SFTP, your client will automatically use your private key to securely authenticate with the Actions Center dropboxes holding your associated public key.

A public key is a single string that typically starts with ssh-rsa and ends with an identifier such as your email address. For example:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQCXsM9ycbHV6E6t2L+B4p/uYHn9Q0jmu5gUXMYnFnnf4l39xrznfDo8KCASzRrqUkRnuzrno059CvZVzcljkbwWLzKKoE1EwbzHL3nYahMB4MdYNWhBbHbB+ybq6RNO7hkoKDBIQCfqQDY0FEB6sV3d3F1WYl0bAMjp15yyZJzMKa/rRnZKWetHlcL1X+gFWmW2hQ93foPD463gb58/25GujjsS/tzjngw7UJMVkm08U1QEY3z3DE/R++7ovJozTCzH0CTNDN0AH3/oSC3dmG+yDh3ZXFATjWjyPXJSOziNrp9TXgJhlqSmoHcPvpotMVjx21kIZ+T+SusQmnG+hK+L [e-mail]

Note: Your public key must not contain any new line breaks.

Generate an SSH Key Pair

You can create an SSH key pair using the ssh-keygen command line utility, which is natively available on Linux, macOS, and most Windows environments.

1. Open your terminal or command prompt.

2. Run the following command to generate a new RSA key pair. You can replace google_actions_center with a filename of your choice:

   ssh-keygen -t rsa -f google_actions_center

3. When prompted, press Enter to create a key without a passphrase, or enter a passphrase to encrypt your private key locally. You don't need to provide this passphrase to Google.

4. This command creates two files:

   • google_actions_center (Private Key): Keep this file secure on your system. You will provide this key to your SFTP client when connecting.
   • google_actions_center.pub (Public Key): This is the key you will share with Actions Center.

5. Open your public key (google_actions_center.pub) in a text editor and copy its entire contents.

6. Provide this public key in your Actions Center account Onboarding Tasks during account setup, or under Feeds Configuration to update the key after account setup.

Steps to test SFTP connectivity

1. View your SFTP dropbox connection information in Feeds Configuration.

2. With the connection information for the respective dropbox, connect to the SFTP. For example using the sftp command line program (available on Windows, Linux and Mac):

   sftp -P <port> -i google_actions_center <user>@partnerupload.google.com

   Upload feed files:

   put <filename>

   Note: In this example, the file is uploaded to the SFTP root directory. You can upload to a specific directory, but remember to use the absolute path in the data_file list when uploading feeds that require a filesetdesc.json.

3. If you experience issues when connecting to the SFTP server, try running with verbose information sftp -v. Issues can occur due to network firewalls blocking outgoing connections or ssh client configurations that are not compatible with the server.

   Check that your public key is correct by running ssh-keygen -l -f google_actions_center.pub.

   If the key is not valid, the program will output google_actions_center.pub is not a public key file.