FastTrac: VIC Installation
How to install VIC onto a workstation
Summary
Join Brian Hatch as he reviews the steps to install VIC onto a workstation.
Video
Transcript
In this video, we're going to walk through the process of installing and testing our Vermont integration client, or VIC. VIC is the program that we need to install that allows the Internet browser that's going to be running RecTrac to communicate to your different peripherals. So this would be any type of printer or receipt printer, cash drawers, potentially scanning different types of scanners. The browser by itself can't directly communicate to those. And that's where VIC comes into play to allow that type of communication. You can run RecTrac Without VIC, it just means that when you run a transaction, and you want to print it, you'll have to preview it as your first step. And then from the preview, you'll be able to go to File and Print to any printer that your workstation has access to. The same thing would go with reports. And so there's some flexibility there if VIC is deemed that is not needed. In most cases, we'd recommend that VIC is installed on all workstations that are doing any Type of transactions. With VIC, the browser is actually able to see what workstation you're on. So it does give you some flexibility to be able to link different settings, profiles and devices to your given workstation level in Profile assignments. So installing it and pushing that out to all workstations is typically what we recommend just we have that flexibility. To install VIC is pretty straightforward process there are two files that we'll need to download. One we can download right from the VIC Profile itself. And that is our exe file. So I'm going to go to Profile assignments in our menu. And I'm going to expand the VIC interface on the left, and I am in a hosted test database. So these files, these profiles are created automatically. If you're in an on premise database, we might need a consultant to assist to help you Build the initial VIC Profile that you can then work with moving forward. In this case, there are two ways to actually deploy VIC, but we would recommend using the exe solution just because it's going to give you the most flexibility and it works with all hardware. So I'm going to select Update. And again, the initial Screen is going to be set up in a hosted database. So we should be able to go straight to the VIC installation tab. And at the bottom, we're working with a VIC Windows Installer. So it's our new installer and we can download the file or copy paste this URL from this address. So that's gonna go ahead and download. And that'll be the first file we need. So I'm gonna go ahead and hit save here while that downloads. While I'm in here, I'm actually going to do the next step of linking this Profile if it isn't already into my hierarchy in the middle part of my Screen. So typically, we would link VIC to the default level in every database. So I'm going to just Click and drag the VIC exe option over to my default profiles. So now I have VIC linked at the default level. And now RecTrac will try to connect the next time I log out and log back in to the application. The second file that we are going to need is going to be the Certificate associated with VIC. So one thing that is going to be required is that you're accessing RecTrac from an HTTPS connection. The URL, Google and other browsers are going to be forcing this solution. So hosted databases are automatically set up with HTTPS. And if it's on premise solution, we need to make sure that we had a Certificate setup for how you're accessing RecTrac. The Certificate is out on our FTP site. So if you have an sFTP client, you can go to our sFTP.vermontsystems.com and you can log in using our vsiftp Username and then the password and port 22. To get the updated password as that changes periodically, you can go to our support website and you can log in and find our knowledgebase 1516 to see the current credentials. You can also when you're logged into the portal, you can do an online chat and someone on our support team can get you that information as well. So once you are connected to the sFTP site, you can go to File updates and drivers and then the RecTrac folder 3.1. And then there's a folder for VIC certs. So that is the path you can browse out to. And we're going to grab and download the vsivicca.cr cert. And I'm just gonna go ahead and put that in my Downloads folder. And now we have that downloaded as well. So in my downloads folder, I now have the two files, I need the VIC. exe file and the VIC cert. So I would recommend saving both of these files out on like a network location somewhere that you can access. As you're going to need these files if you're if the plan is to go install VIC out on every workstation manually, it'd be nice just to grab these files from a network location and be able to repeat the steps on each of your workstations. Or ultimately, if you're going to be pushing these out through group policy to all workstations, you can use these two files for that step as well. So I'm going to load the Certificate first. And there's multiple ways you can load in a Certificate, but I'm gonna go through the process right by clicking on install Certificate. And I'm going to get a little wizard here. You would want to be in as an administrator for this steps on average user is likely going to run into permission issues. So you want to be logged in as an administrator when this step is taking place. And we do this for the local machine with a Certificate available for everyone on this machine, not just the current user. I get a second prompt in the wizard for where I want this to be stored. So I'm going to specifically say that I want this Certificate in my trusted root certificates directory. So I'm specifically saying that and then if I hit Next, and Finish, I get the confirmation message that the import was successful. If there's ever any question on whether the Certificate is in place or not, you can go to your MMC console, so you can Type that into your Windows Search Screen. And you can browse out and verify the Certificate like go to certificates and hit OK. I can jump into my trusted root certificates from here. And this is all the ones on my local workstation. And the one would want to verify so this represents what we just installed. So my Vermont Systems Inc, with my 2044 date is my Certificate. So now that certificates installed, I can now do my second step which is my exe. So I'm going to right Click and run as administrator and you'll get our little wizard for this and you can just hit next and you can accept the defaults as we don't need the VIC service and you can just choose Install and you should receive a VIC has successfully installed message so I can hit Finish. And what that means in the bottom right there is in my tray there is a white circle icon or the VIC icon that's showing up, it's automatically going to be placed in my tray because I just installed it and it's automatically going to be put in the startup folder for all other users on this workstation. So anybody that logs into this workstation and Windows is automatically going to have that running in the background kind of waiting and listening for requests that that are gonna be received by the application. So if I go back to my browser, so now that my Certificate has been installed and VIC has been installed, I'm gonna go ahead and log out of the application and I'm gonna go ahead and log back in so now that VIC is actually linked at the default level one icon up here, this is when VIC is linked, it will display this icon, this connection icon on the top. And if I hover over it, it'll tell me that my hardware is connected. So this means that this browser, this session of RecTrac, in the browser, is connected to my local instance of VIC. And you can kind of see there's a green.on VIC, so that tells me it is connected. If VIC wasn't running or wasn't able to connect, you'd have a red line through this connection icon, and you'd receive a hardware message saying it was unable to connect to hardware. So this is a good connection. And this is also a sign of a good connection. The other ways to verify that always recommend is you can open up really any program in RecTrac that any printing program, so I'm going to go to my receipt reprint program. And one way to verify that you are able to see the printer settings is this list. This printer list is actually populated with everything I have in my local Printers and Faxes in Windows. So this would be normally blank without VIC so before I installed VIC, this would have been a blank value and would have been able to see my printers. And now that I have VIC installed and I'm connected to it, it is able to see my printers. So that's a sign that obviously VIC is connected and working. The final piece if you Click on the user details in the bottom left is you should see the workstation value listed that means that it's able to with VIC installed it's able to do a reverse DNS lookup and it's it knows that I'm on my workstation versus somebody else's workstation. Again, that just gives us the ability to tie settings and profiles to an individual workstation. And that proves and completes the setup steps for the VIC application. Again, this would just be repeated on every workstation if we're doing it manually, or those to install files can be pushed out. Through IT Departments have different tools for that step.