Overview

As of Curator Connect version 2.0.1.279, there is a feature allowing automatic updates. There are various options available when setting this up: To allow downgrading, to be prompted before installing, and for the user to be able to cancel the update prompt.

In order to configure this feature, you will need to first set up a repository folder containing each of the versions of Curator Connect that will be available to the user and their various supporting files. In a typical installation, this folder is manually defined within the Curator Gateway installation for ease of configuration and future amendments, but it can be set up anywhere that is accessible to the user's computer. Curator Connect configuration can be defined in Curator System Administrator, allowing you to set whether the update function will be used, the location of the repository folder, and the various options around its use. 

Configuring and Maintaining Curator Connect Auto Updater - for administrators

Prerequisites

The following section walks through the configuration steps for a setup where the repository folder is a Virtual Folder on the Curator Gateway site. Curator Gateway's API Routes section will be used to route to the repository folder, which is a Virtual Folder on the Curator Gateway site linked to a folder on the server. There is significant flexibility available in these configuration options, and there are different ways to configure this feature depending on your setup.

It is often necessary to manually set a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) type for the extension .yml on Internet Information Services (IIS) for Curator Connect's update mechanism to be able to access those file types. This may already be configured out of the box for other non-IIS web servers, but if not, the same configuration principle applies.

The repository folder should contain at minimum a ‘latest.yml’ file which contains information on the latest version of Curator Connect. There will be different versions of these files depending on your operating system. 

If the Channel field has been set to a different channel from the default, there must be an additional file containing information about which versions to use. If the field is left blank, this will default to ‘latest.yml' or ‘latest-mac.yml’. 

Configuration Steps

1. The configuration that will be used by Curator Connect must first be defined. To do this, navigate to Curator System Administrator and go to the Configuration tab, then select Curator Connect, and the version and Workgroup you will be using.
Scroll to the Updater Facilities section in the centre of the screen and update the settings:

The Updates URL field should refer to the location of the repository folder. In the image above, there is a '{gateway'}' variable which is used to point towards the location of the Curator Gateway.  The location above is therefore the currently used Curator Gateway and an endpoint called ‘ccupdates’. 

Although ‘{gateway}’ is typically used, any URL value can be put here. However, the URL must be accessible from computer running Curator Connect. 

The optional Channel field defines which .yml file will be downloaded, determining which versions of the application will be used.

For example, if the Channel field is named testchannel then the files testchannel.yml and testchannel-mac.yml would control what versions of the client software should be installed on PCs and Macs respectively. If the field is left blank, this will default to ‘latest.yml’ and ‘latest-mac.yml’.

Enabling the Allow Downgrade option will allow for downgrades as well as upgrades.

Enabling the Prompt before installing? option will cause a pop-up window to appear for users with one or two available options when an update is available. 

Enabling the Prompt includes option to cancel? option will provide users with an option to cancel the upgrade.

2. You must ensure that each user instance of Curator Connect is configured to connect to  Curator Gateway which has the virtual folder with updater versions and will be configured with the ccupdates API route in the next step

3. Next, configure the API Routes section in Curator Gateway.

The Path Template in the Upstream section will be the endpoint defined in the Curator System Administrator configuration, which is passed to Curator Connect.

The Path Template in the Downstream section will be the location of the repository folder. In this example, this is located in a virtual folder named ccupdates on the Curator Gateway website.

Please note that Authentication & Authorisation should be set to Enabled here if possible.

Additional Information

Configuration steps may differ depending on the location of the repository folder. The API route needs to point to the folder/bucket/blob container, and likely needs to contain an authentication string in the Downstream. This is going to be exactly the same setting as for /proxies API route, prior to Credentials being used in File Server, possibly with the details of a different bucket / blob container if updates are supplied from a different storage. 

The “localhost” host setting should be changed to the fully qualified name of the server name for the cloud storage. Downstream Path Template should be changed to point to the bucket/blob container, and a folder within usually named "ccupdates", followed by {catchall} and appended with an argument for the access details 
e.g., /MyBucketName/ccupdates/{catchall}?sv=2022-12-01&ss=g&srt=do&sig=452790r8w89H58u23ifwv9fARP.

Headers Transformation needs to be set in order to allow authorization for the route to work. For this, the following three headers need to be set:
authorization (Remove), cookie (Remove), Authorization (Value set to Bearer {accessToken} with a space following word Bearer).

Maintenance Steps

Each new release of Curartor Connect comes with 4 required files two installers for PC and Mac and two .yml files.
The maintenance of the updater repository consists of these step

1.  Check the release note for any compatibility prerequisites for the new Curaot Connect and make sure these are fulfilled.

2.  Check if the Curator Connect bundle delivered with the release has the com.IPV.Connect.config.schema.json of the same or newer version (check the second line inside this file) than the one present in Curator System Administrator (Check Configuration / Curator Connect / com.IPV.Connect.config.json the latest version is on the green pannel, open the drop-down menu to see other versions. 

3.  If you have a newer version to configure then select Add Version at the bottom of the screen and read in your com.IPV.Connect.config.schema.json.Configure this new version as required for your user groups and your Curator System.  

4.  Place the new version installers .exe and .mac.zip and the accompanying versioned .yml files in the updater repository folder or storage bucket/container configured above. 
e.g. from the Curator 3.7.2 release copy IPV Curator Connect-2.0.1-279.exe,  IPV Curator Connect-2.0.1-264-mac.zip,  264-mac.yml, 279.yml.

5.  Copy the versioned .yml files to latest.yml and latest-mac.yml replacing the previous versions 
e.g. copy 279.yml to latest.yml and 264-mac.yml to latest-mac.yml.

6.  Updater is now set up to provide the installers when Curator Connect client instances check for them via the API route.

Using Curator Connect Auto Updates

For more information on using Curator Connect auto updates once these have been set up, please refer to this guide.