Installing Back Office application

• 2-3 minutes to read

The Back Office represents a control panel, where you can manage tenants, edit and manage design templates, and edit configs. To run this web-to-print solution, you need to deploy and run the following applications:

• Back Office
• Design Manager
• Design Editor

Back Office

Distribution Package

You can contact our support team to get the distribution package.

In the BackOffice_<version-number>.zip file, you can find the following folders:

• Backend - the server-side code.
• Frontend - the client-side application.
• Storefront - the control panel of an e-commerce system based on Shopify.
• LicenseManager - a utility to register Customer's Canvas.

Prerequisites

• ASP.NET Core 3.1 Runtime & Hosting Bundle
• URL Rewrite
• SQL Server

Deploying the Application

To install the Back Office on IIS web server:

1. Create a subfolder in inetpub, for example, D:\inetpub\BackOffice.
2. Copy the content of the package to this folder.
3. Create a Web Site in IIS and link it with this folder.
4. Create a separate App Pool and link to this Web Site.
5. In the Advanced Settings, change the identity to LocalSystem.
6. In appsettings.json, define URLs of the back end and front end, database connection string, and parameters of the Design Manager as explained further.

Design Manager

Distribution Package

You can contact our support team to get the distribution package.

In the DesignManager_<version-number>.zip file, you can find the compiled application.

Deploying the Application

To install the Design Manager on IIS web server:

1. Create a subfolder in inetpub, for example, D:\inetpub\DesignManager.
2. Copy the content of the package to this folder.
3. Create a Web Site in IIS and link it with this folder.
4. Create a separate App Pool and link to this Web Site.
5. Install MongoDB:

    npm install run-rs -g
    run-rs -v 4.2.5 --dbpath c:\data\mongo
   

6. In web.config, define your Graphics Mill key, a MongoDB connection string, and a secure API Key. Change the path to the folder with fonts, if needed.

Design Editor

Distribution Package

You can download the Customer's Canvas package from your account. In DesignEditor.zip, you can find the following folders:

• assets - such assets as designs, mockups, fonts, color profiles, etc.
• de-<version-number> - the built application.
• LicenseManager - a utility to register Customer's Canvas.
• userdata - user products and images.

Deploying the Application

1. Create a folder on the web server, for example, D:\inetpub\design-editor.
2. Inside this folder, unpack the application binaries and data folders (assets and userdata) at the same level.
3. In IIS, create a web application from the binaries folder.
4. For the AppPool of this web application, provide write access to the userdata and assets folders.
5. Edit the configuration file configuration/appsettings.config:

• The paths to the data folders.
• The correct key for the Customer's Canvas.
• The ExternalStateSecurityKey must match the ApiKey defined in the web.config of the Design Manager.
• The ExternalStatePushUrl and ExternalStatePullUrl must point to the correct URL in the Design Manager.

  <add key = "ExternalStatePushUrl" value = "https: // <design manager URL> / <endpoint>" />
  <add key = "ExternalStatePullUrl" value = "https: // <design manager URL> / <endpoint>" />

For detailed instructions about deploying the Design Editor, you can refer to the Design Editor's documentation.