Installing on Database

Last Updated: 02/04/2017 Introduced in Verision: 2.0

The platform can be installed with a Microsoft SQL Server. To install with a Microsoft SQL Server backend, in the Database Setup step of the Installer, select a Database Type of MS SQL and fill in the connection credentials for your Microsoft SQL Server.

NOTE: Do not have the Services dialog open during installation otherwise an error could occur.

Example

Open the installer executable to begin the installation wizard. In the first step – Installation Type– click the Install button.

After reading the license agreement, select the I accept the terms of the License Agreement checkbox, and click the Next button.

Next, we Select Installation Type that fits our needs.

StandardServer

To configure advanced settings during your installation, select the Show Advanced Settings During Installation checkbox. Or, clear the checkbox to install Decisions OS with a standard configuration. Select the desired options:

Use Settings File – Enables a field in which you can select a file of saved settings from a previous installation
Change your Destination Folder for this installation – By default, the Decisions software is installed to C:\Program Files\Decisions. If desired, change this location by enabling this setting and browsing to the desired installation location.
Pick Alternate Source – Enables either a URL or directory to select for the installer files.
Install Image Library – Enabling this setting installs the image library of icons available for use (which can be used as icons for items posted to the Service Catalog, for example, or to represent published workflows). Images are installed to C:\Program Files\Decisions\images by default.
Showing the Service Settings – Enabling this setting makes it possible to customize the user name/password under which the Service Host Manager Service will run.
Run Service Host Manager Watcher after Installation – If enabled, the Host Manager Watcher service will run after installation. This is the process that can start and stop the ‘Service Host Manager’ that the Portal depends upon, as well as watches and restarts it if it stops for any reason.

Click the Next button.

Configure the Advanced Settings options (if Show Advanced Settings During Installation was selected).

SDK – If enabled, will install the software developer’s kit that includes libraries needed to build new elements, tools, and create modules for things like building data services, reporting sources and filters. etc.
Install Emergency Password Reset Tool – If selected, the installation will include an Emergency Password Reset Tool, which is a process that resets a user’s password when their account is locked out.
Change Default System Administrator Username and Password – Allows for changing of the Portal administrator credentials.

Click Next.

Under Database Setup, Database Type, select the MS SQL option. Under the Connection Type, select Basic or Custom Connection String and fill in the DB Server and DB Database fields with the server location and name of the database. If the database does not exist, Decisions OS will attempt to create it. To test these connection settings, click the Test button.

Under Connection Settings, choose the option for Windows Integrated Security to enable database connection authentication using Windows Integrated Security, or MS SQL Server Security to enable database connection authentication using a specified username and password.

To continue installation, click Next.

Fill in the Base Url field with the URL where users will go to access the portal. To redirect all requests for the root host to the portal URL, select the Redirect Root http(s) requests to Base URL above checkbox.

Click Next.

In the Web Application screen, under Web Site, select the site in IIS under which Decisions will install. Options are either Default Web Site or click Add Website to create a new site in IIS.

Click Next.

For many standard features to work, Decisions OS requires access to a mail server with which it can send email. To configure a connection to an SMTP server, select the SMTP Server option and fill in the required connection fields. To configure this connection later, or to configure Decisions OS to look for an SMTP server running on the local machine, select SMTP Direct Server.

Click Next.

If the Show Service Settings checkbox was selected in the Settings screen, the Service Settings screen appears.

By default, the local system account is used to run as a service. To specify a different service account, select This Account and provide the user name and password for the account to use. Click Next to continue.

NOTE: The account that is provided here must have proper rights to run as a service.

To add these rights, go to Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy > Local Policies > User Rights Assignment. Edit the item “Log on as a service” and add your domain user.

Finally, the installer will automatically perform tests of the installation environment to ensure that it meets the operational requirements to run Decisions.

When all of the system requirement checks have successfully completed, click the Next button.

The installer will list the configuration settings for this installation. To save these installation settings for future reference – such as in the event a reinstallation or recovery – select the Save Installation Settings to File checkbox. Click the Next button.
The installer installs Decisions OS instance. As part of the process, the installer will automatically download, register, and configure any required third-party services or utilities. As this is happening, you may click the Show Details and Hide Details buttons to toggle a report of what’s happening behind the scenes.

When the installation is complete, the installer displays a completion message. Click the Finish button to close the installer and open portal; use the admin credentials that are provided on the screen to log into the portal.

After clicking Finish you are being redirected to the login page. Mention, if Decisions system was installed on local machine we can see localhost/decisions/… in the browser’s address bar. If we were using different address to install Portal we would see something like 192.168.1.3/decisions/… in the browser’s address bar.

After we click Login we are being redirected to the Portal Home page…

Note: For the HTML Portal you must open the port configured in settings for SignalR and the next port after that.

UPDATING THE LICENSE

Computers can be licensed to run the platform with third-party plugins or with the built-in licensing mechanism – License Utility. To license a machine using License Utility, open the executable and email the Machine Key it generates to “support@decisions.com”. Our tech support team will respond with a license key which can be cut and pasted into License Utility and applied to generate a license key file.

You must run the utility as an administrator, otherwise you will not be able to successfully apply the license key.

Our example assumes that the platform has been installed in the default path.

To access the license utility, navigate to the folder C:\Program Files\Decisions\Decisions Services Managerlicensing.
Run the LicenseUtility.exe. The License Utility dialog box appears.

License Utility generates a unique string for this machine in the Machine Key field.

Select the string in the Machine Key field and copy it to your clipboard.
Paste the machine key into an email and send it to your contact for generating licenses.

Using the machine key you’ve provided, your license key will be generated and provide it to you.

When you receive the license key, in the License Utility, paste the license key into the License Key field.
Click the Apply button.

A pop-up alert will notify you when your license key is due to expire.

Click OK
After updating the license, restart the Service Host Manager.

Installing on Database

Example

Need more help with:

Installing on MS SQL Database?

Contact us at support@decisions.com

Additional Resources