What do I do if the Agent isn't displaying messages?

Note that, if, after reviewing the information below, you're still having issues, the Ticker Tape Agent Troubleshooting Flowchart can be used to guide you step-by-step through determining exactly what the underlying issue is .

In order for messages from the Administrator to be display by a Ticker Tape Agent installed on a workstation, a number of prerequisites must already be in place as described in the Deploying Ticker Tape - Overview topic. Briefly, these are;

A Message Control File location for the Site in question must be in place, with the correct permissions
The Site should be configured correctly in the Administrator software
The Agent software on the workstations associated with a Site must be correctly configured

Expanding upon the above;

The Message Control File location should ;
- Be accessible to the Administrator software and the permissions configured on it should allow the Administrator software to both read and write to the location or, in the case of FTP or HTTP-based Sites upload and download.
- Be accessible to all of the Agents associated with that Ticker Tape Site, allowing them to read from the location - they do not need to write to it. In the case of FTP or HTTP-based Sites, the Agents will just need to be able to download, via HTTP, from the specified location
- For the default and preferred UNC-based Site type, the MCF should be a normal Windows Share or full UNC path of the form \\servername\sharename or \\servername\drive\directory respectively. Examples of each form could be \\USBOSFILE\TickerTapeShare and \\USBOSFILE\C$\Apps\TickerTapeMCF
- For FTP-based Sites, the MCF Upload Location will be the place to which the Administrator software uploads messages to via FTP, while the Agents will download them via HTTP. Consequently, although the locations are actually physically the same, the Upload and Download MCF will be specified differently with the Agent configured during install to use the MCF Download Location
- For HTTP-based Sites, the MCF Upload Location will be the place to which the Administrator software 'posts' messages to a receiving PHP script via HTTP, while the Agents will download the message via HTTP also (exactly as they would for a FTP-based Site.) Consequently, there is an additional element of configuration at the receiving server to put the PHP script for each Site in place. The location from which the Agents download messages is fully controlled by the PHP script that processes the uploaded message from the Administrator
The Site configuration within Ticker Tape must accurately reflect the Message Control File location detail ;
- For the default UNC-based Site type, the MCF Upload & Download Locations are normally the same and should correspond to the Windows Share name or full UNC path as described above. Note that it is possible for the MCF Upload and Download locations to use different conventions to refer to what is in reality, the same place (i.e. the Administrator may upload to a full UNC path, while the Agents are configured to download from a normal Windows Share name which represents exactly the same location )
- For an FTP-based Site, the MCF Upload and Download Locations will be different as the Administrator software will use FTP to upload to the defined location, while the Agent will download via HTTP from the same physical location. As well as the different protocol (indicated by the 'ftp://' and 'http://' prefixes), it's often the case that the public HTTP 'view' of a web site differs from the 'view' exposed when using FTP to access the underlying directories and files - in the example below, this is apparent as the Upload path includes the 'httpdocs' directory which is itself the base (hosting) directory for the HTTP web site and, as such, isn't specified as part of the MCF Download Location;
- For a HTTP-based Site, the MCF Upload Location that the Administrator software 'posts' the message to must represent the physical location of the PHP script that will process the posted message for the Site. The MCF Download Location is, as usual, the place from which the Agents for that Site will download the message from; however, its location is wholly dependent upon where the processing PHP script is configured to save the 'posted' message to - which could technically be virtually anywhere you wish. Fro more detailed information, see the 'How do I... Configure the PHP receiver script for a HTTP-based Site? ' topic ;
The Agent software on the workstations associated with a Site must be correctly configured;
- The Agents associated with a particular Site should be configured to poll that Site's MCF Download Location for messages.In the case of the default and preferred UNC-based Sites, this will be a Windows Share name or UNC path, for a FTP or HTTP Site, this will be a HTTP address
- If appropriate, for simplicity, use the Agent Maintenance Wizard to deploy the Agent to the workstations in a particular Site as the Agent is then guaranteed to be correctly configured (though always test on a small number of workstations first before a mass roll-out!)
- If installing the Agent without using the Agent Maintenance Wizard - manually, or via a login script or SCMM for instance - refer to the example command line shown when configuring the Site as this gives a functionally correct MSIExec command line tailored for that particular Site. The screenshots above show several examples of this.