Allowing ssh/scp on cloud image

Hey all ,

I'm new to the "world of virtualisation" and messing about with openstack.
For the company i'm in we're looking at setting up an on premise private cloud for our github and also all the developer machines so that the source code technically never leaves the location.


So I know when creating the VMs there's an option to import ssh keys so that it's password-less authentication. But I find this kinda limiting ?
I know the logic is it makes it more secure but it seems to make it actually harder to work!

Like for example we use third party vendors for development work so they can be changed depending on our demand. When we spawn a new VM for them, it'll be set up so they can remote into the desktop and develop away but it seems rather limiting that they can't ssh in to the machine itself. For example last night I wanted to import the company .cer file on the machine to get past the firewall but I couldnt scp the file either as there user in the VNC session :/ It just seemed like to me that it'll create additional headaches that could be avoided

So rather long winded post but was looking at and I'm not exactly sure what it's missing to allow remote login. There was one setting which I set to yes. But still no joy with trying to access the machine.
Is there something simple I'm missing to allow this ?