Overview

Getting Ticker Tape deployed and in use within an enterprise is reasonably straight-forward but does require a little planning beforehand to ensure the simplest and most trouble-free deployment. This section gives a general overview of the process, with subsequent sections covering each step in more detail.

Note that, as of version 1.5.0 of Ticker Tape, support for FTP and HTTP-based Sites was introduced, however, for simplicity, it is strongly recommended that the default 'UNC'-based Windows Share Site type is used unless there are overriding reasons not to (such as the Agents on a specific Site being isolated from your corporate network)

In summary, the Ticker Tape deployment process can be broken down into the following few major steps;

Install the Ticker Tape Administrator software onto a single computer;
- As you're reading this help file, you've likely already done this - congratulations, step 1 complete!
Decide upon what type(s) of Site you'll be using;
- In the vast majority of cases Ticker Tape will be deployed within a highly-connected WAN/LAN environment and the default 'UNC'-based Windows Share Sites are the best choice
- If you have a Site in which the Agents are not normally (or never) connected onto your corporate infrastructure - but do have Internet access - a FTP or HTTP-based Site may be appropriate
- Note that you can use a mixture of Site types if required (e.g. 12 UNC-based Sites, a 'FTP' one and a 'HTTP' one)
Decide upon and create a location to host that Site's Message Control File on an appropriate server and assign the correct permissions;
- For the default 'UNC'-based Sites this will be a normal UNC-based Windows Share, usually (but not always) on a server that's local to the Agents to minimize WAN traffic;
  - ‘Read only’ permission for the Agents within that Site
  - ‘Read & Write’ permissions for the Ticker Tape Administrator user
- For a FTP or HTTP-based Site
  - Agents must be able to access the web page where the Message Control File uploaded by the Administrator software is hosted
  - For FTP-based Sites, the Administrator user must be able to upload via FTP
  - For HTTP-based Sites the Administrator user must be able to 'post' data to a HTTP Server, on which a simple Ticker Tape PHP-based 'receive' script will accept and process the data.
Update the Ticker Tape Administrator configuration to reflect the Message Control File location and Site type in use at each Site
Deploy the Ticker Tape Agent software to the workstations within each Site, appropriately configured to poll their Message Control File;
- For small to medium sized UNC-based estates (say less than 250 Agents per Site), this is best achieved using the Agent Maintenance Wizard available via the Administrator's Tools menu. Note however that the Agent Maintenance Wizard cannot be used to deploy to FTP or HTTP-based Sites.
- For large UNC-based estates, FTP/HTTP-based Sites or where a corporate software deployment mechanism is already in use, being a standard MSI package, the Agent can be deployed using a variety of mechanisms including toolset's such as SCCM or SMS, Group Policy or login scripts

For more detailed information about each of these steps, please select from the below;