Exploring the Browser-based Interface of Altium Infrastructure Server

Created: April 5, 2017 | Updated: January 2, 2020

Contents

Accessing the Interface
What's Provided?
- General Access Interface Elements
  - USERS
- Admin-Only Interface Elements

Parent page: Altium Infrastructure Server

Connection to an Altium Infrastructure Server is made through a dedicated browser interface. This gives you access to management interfaces for the various services available as part of the wider Infrastructure Server installation.

Accessing the Interface

To access your Altium Infrastructure Server through its browser-based interface, simply use a preferred external Web browser and type the address for the Infrastructure Server in one of the following formats:

http://<ComputerName>:<PortNumber>
http://localhost:<PortNumber> - if accessing from the same computer on which the Infrastructure Server is installed.

(e.g. http://designerhome:9780, or http://localhost:9780, for an Altium Infrastructure Server installed using the default port assignment). You will be presented with a Sign-in page.

Depending on your browser, you can drop the http:// part, and simply enter <ComputerName>:<PortNumber>, or localhost:<PortNumber>.

Sign in through the browser interface using your Infrastructure Server credentials. For a newly installed Altium Infrastructure Server, there is a default administrative user with the credentials:

Username: admin
Password: admin

While the default admin user could be left for general entry to the Infrastructure Server by administrators, it is a good idea to change the First Name, Last Name and Username to something more meaningful for your organization. And it's definitely a good idea to change the default password from admin to something only known/passed to authorized administrators - otherwise everyone could simply access the Infrastructure Server as an administrator!

If you want to sign in using your Windows login credentials - taking advantage of the Infrastructure Server's support for Windows Authentication - enable the Use Windows Session credentials option.

Access an Altium Infrastructure Server, and its associated platform services, through a preferred external Web browser. Roll the mouse over the image to see an example of successfully signing in to the interface.

What's Provided?

The interface provides a number of key technologies and services, and can be coarsely divided into two groupings, as shown in the following image, and listed thereafter.

The overall browser interface can be divided into two distinct sets of interface elements - those accessible in general by all users of the Infrastructure Server, and those
accessible only by Infrastructure Server Administrators.

Interface elements that can be accessed by any Infrastructure Server user. Note that some sub-elements may be admin-only, and they will be highlighted in the detailed sections that follow. To access a page, click on its name in the header.
Interface elements that can only be accessed by an Infrastructure Server Administrator. A single, administrative user is provided, admin. This user, and any additional user, is bestowed administrative powers by membership to the role Administrators. To access a page, choose the required entry in the ADMIN drop-down menu.

The banner area at the top of the interface reflects the user that is currently signed into the Infrastructure Server, with a control for signing out. The Inbox control will flag any general notifications - click this to access your Stream page, from where you can browse and read these notifications. Such notifications can also be sent from the Infrastructure Server through its email notifications service. For more information, see Configuring Infrastructure Server Email Notifications through the Browser Interface.

General Access Interface Elements

The following element of the Infrastructure Server's browser interface can be accessed by all users of the Infrastructure Server - both administrators and standard users.

USERS

This page provides the interface to the Identity Service (IDS), to define applicable service access, through specification of users and roles.

Access and manage the users of your Altium Infrastructure Server.

Controls are spread over the following sub-pages:

Users - use this page to create and manage a list of users; people who are to have access to the Infrastructure Server and/or the associated technologies installed with it.

In practice, a 'User' is an account profile that represents someone who will sign in to the Infrastructure Server – generally an Administrator – or a generated account profile that represents a PC that has connected to the server, based on the PC's network Name and its active Windows Account Name. See Automatically generated User profiles for more information.
Roles - use this page to create and manage a list of roles; roles allow you to further organize your users according to, for example, the particular section of the organization in which they are involved. Roles also make the configuration of other served technologies more streamlined.
LDAP Sync - use this page to configure and run an LDAP Sync task. This allows the administrator of your Altium Infrastructure Server to leverage the network domain’s existing username and password credentials, so that user credentials do not have to be created manually one at a time on the USERS page. When setup correctly, the USERS page will automatically populate with user credentials, enabling any user listed to sign into the Infrastructure Server using their regular corporate network username and password.
Sessions - use this page to quickly assess which of your users are currently signed into the Altium Infrastructure Server. Provision is made for an administrator to terminate a user's access to the Infrastructure Server by effectively 'killing' their active session, thereby freeing connections to the Infrastructure Server for use by others.

Two administrative users are provided with a new Infrastructure Server installation - admin and System. The former allows you to quickly get access to your Infrastructure Server as an administrator. Once you have added other users, you can keep and edit the admin user (change its name and password for example), or delete it. The System user is used for all background tasks (including LDAP Sync, and NIS-related operations). This user cannot be edited or deleted and is permanently online.

Only an administrative user has full access to management controls. While a non-administrative user can browse Users and Roles, they cannot access LDAP Sync or Sessions. And while management of users by a non-administrative user is not generally possible, they are able to change the profile of their own user - including changing username and password.

Admin-Only Interface Elements

The following sections summarize the elements of the Infrastructure Server's browser interface that can only be accessed by Administrative users of the Infrastructure Server - those who are part of the Administrators role. Access to these elements is through the dedicated ADMIN menu, located to the far right of the USERS page header.

If signed into the Infrastructure Server as a non-administrative user, the ADMIN menu will be hidden.

INSTALLATIONS

Related page: Network Installation Service

This page (ADMIN » INSTALLATIONS) provides the interface to the Network Installation Service, through which you can perform installations or updates to Altium products over your local network, and enables centralized control of software availability, configuration and its capabilities. Using NIS, you acquire software product files from Altium, and then assemble these into a configurable software deployment package. The locally stored package can then be deployed to networked workstations as a software installer executable (*.msi), or as a direct installation using Microsoft’s Active Directory Group Policy.

To use the NIS, the computer on which the Altium Infrastructure Server is installed must have connection to the internet.

The INSTALLATIONS page of the Altium Infrastructure Server's browser-based interface - your connection to the Network Installation Service.

Controls are spread over the following tabs:

Products & Extensions - your view into the set of available Altium product and extension installers, available to you based on your provided AltiumLive credentials. These are stored in Altium's Cloud Repository.
Deployment Packages - where you create and configure a Deployment Package, which stipulates how to install the chosen product and extensions. Once created, an associated Windows Installer Package file (*.msi) can be downloaded, and used to install the software on a target client machine, or on all client machines throughout the company.
Updates - presents a convenient area in which to configure how you want your products and extensions, in your local Infrastructure Server, to be updated. You can configure them to either be updated manually, or automatically.
Server Storage - lists what products and extensions are available in your local Altium Infrastructure Server (those that you have previously acquired). A deployment package can only include products and extensions that are listed in this tab.
Tasks - presents an Operations Log reflecting a task that is currently running, or has been run.

SETTINGS

This page (ADMIN » SETTINGS) provides a collection of sub-pages for configuration of options relating to various features and services provided by, and through, an Altium Infrastructure Server installation.

The Settings area - part of the admin-only pages within the Infrastructure Server's browser-based interface.

The left-hand side provides a navigation tree with which to quickly access various sub-pages of settings. The following pages are available:

General - not a page, but rather a structural entry for gathering together general settings.
- AltiumLive Credentials - when using the Network Installation Service (NIS), use this page to enter the credentials used to log into the Altium Cloud (AltiumLive) where the installers are to be sourced from. When using the Private License Service through the Infrastructure Server, these credentials allow the Private License Service (PLS) to communicate directly with your Altium account for the initial acquisition of your company licenses.
- Session Lifetime - use this page to enter a value for the IDS Session Lifetime (in hours). This is how long an Infrastructure Server user has to remain connected, in a single session, when using a seat of the applicable Infrastructure Server Client Access License (CAL). By default, the session lifetime is 24 hours.

License Manager - this page provides settings relating to using the Private License Service, and selection of its mode. A pre-set suitable default value is used for the Altium Cloud portal URL (http://portal2.altium.com/?cls=soap).

For more information, see Private License Service.

Network Installation - when using the Network Installation Service (NIS), use this page to define the update checking interval. This is the frequency (in minutes) that the Automatic Updates feature will check for available new versions of the applicable software in the Altium Cloud Repository.

For more information, see Network Installation Service.

Email Notifications - this page provides settings to enable and configure the Infrastructure Server's email notifications feature. This facility flags general events to key stakeholders. Such events can also be viewed on the Stream page of the interface, accessed by clicking on the Inbox entry at the top-right of the interface.

For more information, see Configuring Infrastructure Server Email Notifications through the Browser Interface.

LICENSES

This page (ADMIN » LICENSES) provides the interface to obtain and manage licenses - both for the licensing of the Infrastructure Server itself, and also for serving to client machines over the local network, through the appropriately configured Private License Service (PLS).

Use the various tabs within the Licenses area to obtain, manage, and assign licensing, for the Infrastructure Server, and for serving to your local network through the PLS. And use the various
reports that are available to keep an eye on license usage.

Three tabs are available:

Licenses - provides a listing of all licenses currently available. At least two licenses will be required to actually license the Altium Infrastructure Server (Altium Infrastructure Server and Altium Infrastructure Server CAL). Other licenses can be added for serving through the PLS. Licenses can be acquired either From cloud (choose from a list of licenses available to your company from the Altium portal), or From file (import existing alf license files from disk).
Roles - provides the ability to assign licenses to Roles of Users (or groupings of users). In Local PLS mode, the Infrastructure Server PLS can selectively offer software licenses that have been assigned to a specific Role. By default (unless otherwise specified), all licenses acquired by the Infrastructure Server are assigned to the All Users Role, and therefore available to any User that connects to the PLS.
Reports - the Private License Service includes a range of license usage monitoring and reporting features that can be used to audit how licenses are used within an organization. This is useful for ensuring that the best use is being made of the available license seats, for anticipating future license requirements, and to determine the usage of individual Users. A range of reporting options are available, accessed by specific sub-tabs. Depending upon the type of information that's required for each report, the associated reporting filters can be applied to tailor the results to include specific Licenses, Roles, Users, and time periods. There is also an option to export the current report to disk in CSV format, compatible with Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet applications, for administration and accounting purposes.