Network Installation
Network installation should be carried out whilst logged in as administrator. The basic steps for installing The Report King are:
1) Make sure Microsoft .NET is installed and working correctly (click here). Although the program only requires .NET version 2.0 to run, we recommend installing version 3.5 SP1 on networked computers.
2) Install the The Report King using the setup file downloaded from the website.
3) Still logged in as administrator, run the program and enter your activation details.
4) Now give all users full access to the installation directory and its subdirectories. This is where The Report King stores some temporary data during report generation, and where information about individual user preferences are maintained.
5) Create a short-cut to the program, and copy this into the correct user profiles (so your users see the program on their desktop / start menu).
Once these steps are complete, you should then log in as a “normal” user and check that you can create reports.
Where to install The Report King
There are two ways of installing The Report King on a network. The first is to install the software on each computer individually, following the steps above. Remember to activate the program, and share out the installation directory, before the program is used for the first time. We recommend that all of our site license customers install The Report King in this fashion.
The second is to install the software once on a shared drive on your server, and direct each client machine to execute it from there. The first step is to follow the instructions above: install the software, share out the directory, activate the software, and grant all users full access permissions to the installation directory.
However, the Report King contains a .NET component called “CSTunnel.exe”. As this component is “managed code”, it requires .NET Full Trust permissions on the client machine if it is to run across the network. If your client machines are running .NET 3.5 SP1 or later, this is not an issue. For versions of .NET previous to this, each client machine must be configured manually.
The exact settings for achieving this will depend upon your network set up, particularly if you have additional security software installed on your computers. However, as an aid, the following code is given as an illustration of how CASPOL (the Code Access Security Policy Tool) can be used to grant Full Trust permissions from the command line or a batch file.
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CASPOL -q -m -addgroup All_Code -url “file://\\MYSERVER\SHARED_INSTALLATION_DIR\*” FullTrust -name “Report King”
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In the above example, replace MYSERVER with the name of your server, and SHARED_INSTALLATION_DIR with the shared name of the directory where you have installed The Report King. CASPOL can be found in the Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 directory - for more information, refer to CASPOL’s entry at MSDN.
As CASPOL is used for setting aspects of network security policy, the above code is executed as the user’s own risk, and is presented for illustration only.
Microsoft.NET
Each individual computer will require Microsoft’s .NET 2.0 framework or later. For networked installations, however, we recommend installing version 3.5 SP1, as this permits client machines to run the software across the network from a shared directory (see above).
If The Report King detects the framework is not present on the local machine, the user will be given an error message and then directed to the download page of Microsoft’s .NET website (click here).
If this behaviour is undesirable, it is possible to instruct the program to use automation instead of the .NET framework. This will require a copy of Microsoft Word to be installed on each client computer. To set this behaviour, add the switch -useautomation to the shortcut to The Report King. The program will then no longer make any checks for, or attempt to use, the .NET framework.
If your network set up limits access to the registry, The Report King may be unable to detect which version of .NET you have installed on your machine. In this instance, to stop the program making checks for the .NET framework, use the switch -disablenetcheck.
Although The Report King has been rigourously tested, all installations are ultimately executed at the user’s own risk.
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