BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Server Quick start for application administrators

Transcription

1 BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Server 2013 Quick start for application administrators

2 BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Server 2013 Introduction BlueCielo Publisher and Meridian Explorer have been integrated with a new product, BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Server. This new server application provides centralized management of administrative tasks and background processing. The BC Meridian Enterprise Server provides numerous services (like user management) and hosts many different background tasks (like publishing jobs). These can all be managed using a modern, web-based interface. This document provides a brief introduction and information regarding the upgrade from BlueCielo Publisher 2012 and Meridian Explorer 2012.

3 Concepts BC Meridian Enterprise Server 2013 introduces new concepts and also enhancements to existing features from BlueCielo Publisher 2012 and Meridian Explorer The most significant changes are briefly explained below. For more detailed descriptions of all topics described in this document, please read the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Server Administrator s Guide. Publishing jobs & rendering profiles Publishing jobs are used to publish a source document (or its rendition) to another repository. A single job definition can publish between multiple combinations of source and/or destination repositories. This minimizes the number of required job definitions. The jobs use rendering profiles to create renditions of the published documents. The same profiles can be used by multiple jobs. Publisher 2013 will automatically map properties with the same name in the source and destination repositories. Manual configuration is only required to exclude properties or to correct differences between the source and destination. Explorer synchronization A special type of publishing job is available to synchronization from a Meridian vault to an Explorer repository. This provides some new features: A single job for multiple source vaults Creation of renditions while publishing to the Explorer repository Automatic creation of target properties Automatic update of object display names Explorer security Meridian Explorer now provides item level security. This can be used to extend or replace existing view-based security. Using item level security, user permissions can be controlled based on property values. Task monitoring & Publisher Queue All background processes executed by BC Meridian Enterprise Server are recorded in a request queue. One page provides an overview of all tasks and their status. The published items can be inspected from the Publisher Queue.

4 Upgrade The upgrade process will import the BlueCielo Publisher and Meridian Explorer configurations into the new BC Meridian Enterprise Server 2013 environment. The configuration settings will be read from the 2012 configuration database. The System Settings section on the Settings page of the administrative interface contains an Upgrade command. In case no existing configuration database is found, you will need to provide the connection settings to the 2012 configuration database. The upgrade will list the available configuration items like: Explorer repositories Explorer views Publisher jobs Synchronization jobs After upgrading, the Explorer repositories can no longer be used from the Explorer 2012 application. You may choose which Publisher jobs to upgrade. The upgrade process can be repeated later to add other jobs. Review the imported configuration After the upgrade, the configuration items need to be reviewed carefully. Some settings require manual correction or reconfiguration. These are described briefly in the following paragraphs. Publishing jobs Property mappings, publishing job options, and watermarking settings might need to be adjusted for the new system. Also, if Publisher clustering was configured in the old environment, confirm that the computer names are valid in the new environment. Rendering profiles The upgrade will create a rendering profile for each rendering module used by the upgraded publishing jobs. Typically, this will lead to multiple rendering profiles where some have an identical configuration. Because Meridian Enterprise Server rendering profiles can be shared by multiple publishing jobs, these duplicate profiles can be

5 manually consolidated or removed and the remaining profiles can be used with multiple jobs. Synchronization jobs The Explorer synchronization jobs will require some manual configuration after the upgrade. Please read in the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Server Administrator s Guide about the options for the synchronization jobs. Special attention is required for the property mapping and the job-specific options. The values of the Synchronization timestamp property will be lost during the upgrade. The current timestamp is displayed on the detail page of the Meridian source vault (available on the Repositories page). To avoid a full synchronization, the timestamp can be manually set to a recent date. Scheduled tasks The Windows Task Scheduler is used to schedule the running of jobs. After the upgrade to BC Meridian Enterprise Server 2013, these jobs will have to be reconfigured. This can be done from the administrative interface. Explorer view security Meridian Explorer 2013 no longer uses Windows groups for the security of the views. After upgrading, you will need to edit the views to configure the view security. Typically, view security is used in combination with a filter to restrict access to information. In this case, there will be multiple views that only differ on the security settings. The new Meridian Explorer 2013 security model allows you to define security on the document level. This way, a single view can be used for user groups with access to different information. Please read the topic on security in the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Server Administrator s Guide.

6 System Requirements Supported OS Windows Server 2012 (R2) Windows Server 2008 (R2) Other prerequisites.net Framework 4.5 ASP.NET 4.5 WCF Services (HTTP & TCP) Windows Process Activation Service Supported database servers Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Oracle 12c Release 1 ( or later) Enterprise Edition Oracle 11g Release 2 ( or later) Enterprise Edition Compatibility Meridian 2013 SP2 (and later). Earlier versions are supported through manual upgrading as described in the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Server Administrator s Guide. Oracle AutoVue Client/Server Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9 (Compatibility mode required), 10 Chrome, Firefox and Safari (limited support)

7 Installation BC Meridian Enterprise Server 2013 can be installed on the same computer as BC Publisher 2012 or BC Explorer There is no need to uninstall the 2012 versions before installing Meridian Enterprise Server Before upgrading an existing environment, ensure that a backup is available of all databases. A single MSI setup is available to install any of the optional features: BC Meridian Enterprise Server (Windows service) BC Meridian Enterprise web application (ASP.NET application) BC Publisher system links and rendering modules Step 1 Installing the Enterprise Server BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Server is the key component of the setup. This Windows service is the backend of BlueCielo Publisher and Meridian Explorer. It can also provide services to other BlueCielo products in the Meridian Enterprise product suite. The setup will register the Windows service. During installation, you will need to specify the logon account for the service. Use a domain account that has access to the database server and the local file system. Step 2 Installing the web application The second most important component is BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise website. This must be installed on a computer with IIS and ASP.NET 4.5. This can be same computer that runs BC Meridian Enterprise Server. The web application provides the administrative interface for BC Meridian Enterprise Server and it also hosts the Meridian Explorer client. The setup creates an IIS application pool (BCEnterprise). Ensure this application pool uses the same logon account as the Windows service and is a member of the Administrators group. From the IIS Manager console, configure the BCEnterprise application to use Windows authentication. The application will not allow anonymous access.

8 Step 3 First use When the setup is completed, you are ready to open the application in your browser. Browse to: The web-based administrative interface allows you to perform the next steps from a browser on any computer. There is no need to be logged on to the server computer. Security can be configured to grant authorized users different levels of access to features of the administrative interface. Please note that members of the built-in Administrators group of the IIS server will always be granted full access. This is also true for users browsing from the server computer (localhost). On first use, the web application will prompt for the address of the BC Meridian Enterprise Server computer. In case the service and the web application are installed on the same computer you can confirm the default address. Once the web application is connected to the service, it will prompt for the connection settings to the configuration database. When upgrading an existing Publisher 2012 environment, we recommend that you select the existing database. You may also select a new database. Once the configuration database is available, the system is ready to be used. All configuration settings are stored in the configuration database. We recommend that you schedule a regular backup of this database. BC Meridian Enterprise Server does not store any settings in the Windows registry. The connection settings to the configuration database are stored in the Windows ProgramData\BlueCieloECM folder. These settings will not be removed when the application is uninstalled.

9 Step 4 System configuration The newly installed application will require some initial configuration. Please read the list below for a typical configuration. Configure users and groups BC Meridian Enterprise Server provides user management similar to the users and groups in BC Meridian Enterprise Administrator. You may manually define users and groups or import information from Active Directory. Restrict administrative access After defining user groups for the administrative users, you can restrict the administrative access to the application on the Permissions page of the Settings group. Configure the license server BC Meridian Enterprise Server will provide the licenses for publishing and the BC Meridian Explorer client. It will claim these licenses from the BC Meridian Enterprise license server. On the Licenses page of the Settings group you can select the name of the computer that hosts the license server. Here you can also see an overview of the available licenses and the current license usage. Configure an SMTP server BC Meridian Enterprise Server provides notification. You can configure the connection to your SMTP server from the Application Settings page of the Settings group. Step 5 Installing secondary servers BC Meridian Enterprise Server takes care of starting publishing jobs. These jobs will run in separate processes. These processes may require resources or external components (like rendering applications) that may not be available on the main server computer. This can be resolved by configuring these jobs to run on one or more secondary servers in a cluster. To enable clustering functionality, use the MSI setup to install the BC Meridian Enterprise Server component and the necessary rendering modules on the other servers. There is no need to install the web application on these computers. From the System Settings page of the Settings group, you can select the secondary servers as member nodes of the same cluster. These nodes can now be selected from the configuration of a publishing job.