Archibus Configuration Options

Once you have verified that the essential installation starts, you may wish to alter some configuration settings to suit your deployment. All of the common configuration settings are in .properties files residing in the \WEB-INF\config\ folder.

If you change the configuration properties, you must restart Archibus on the application server in order for your changes to take effect.

This topic has the following sections:

Enabling Mobile Apps

By default, mobile services are enabled.

In \web-inf\config\context\applications\mobileservices.properties the default for projectId is FirstActiveProject. You only need to change this setting if you have more than one active project in afm-projects.xml.

Follow these steps to configure the mobile apps for one of your multiple projects:

  1. Open the WEB-INF\config\context\applications\mobileservices.properties file for editing.
  2. Change the projectId to refer to the name of the project within WEB-INF/config/afm-projects.xml to which all mobile apps should sign in. The below examples show the value for the project Sybase:
    • mobileServices.projectId=HQ-Sybase

Encrypting Mobile Data

If you wish for the Archibus Mobile Framework to encrypt all data that Archibus stores on mobile devices, enter any string as the passphrase in this property.

# Passphrase used to encrypt/decrypt mobile client database. Optional. mobileServices.sqlitePassphrase=B374A26A71490437AA024E4FADD5B497FDFF1A8EA6FF12F6FB65AF2720B59CCF

If you do not wish to encrypt data, leave this passphrase blank.

If you wish to hide the passphrase, surround the phrase with the TO_ENCRYPT(...) macro.

Enabling Multiple Languages and Locales

By default, Web Central enables only the single language that matches the server operating system locale. For example, if your locale is “fr-FR”, Web Central enables French. Loading fewer languages at start-up speeds the start-up process.

Enabling Multiple Languages

However, you can enable multiple languages if you have users that speak different languages or if you wish to switch between languages. To do so:

  1. Edit the WEB-INF\config\context\compatibility\afm-config.xml configuration file.
  2. Change the “enabled” attribute for each language that you want to support to “true” rather than “auto”.
  3. Additionally, you may need to do the following:

Enabling Multiple Locales

All users can change their Locale in their My Profile form. For instance, they can change from "English (United States)" to "English (United Kingdom)", "French (France)", or "French (Canadian)". Doing so lets the user choose both the language they prefer as well as the other locale conventions, such as the area, date, and default local currency.

To enable a locale, the Archibus Administrator must enable the language corresponding to the locale in web-inf\config\context\compatibility\afm-config.xml\afm-config.xml. For instance, to enable the "French (France)" [fr_FR] and "French (Canadian)" [fr_CA] locales, the Archibus administrator must set the French (fr) entry in the <languages /> tag to enabled="true".

If you need a locale for a language that you do not have installed, such as "Korean" [ko_KR], you can still enable that language. Any or all missing strings will just default to their English equivalent.

Archibus ties together locale and language information in this way so that the Archibus Administrator can centrally administrate consistent language and locale features for all users. With these features, users can have the language and locale they prefer with one selection; however, all users -- regardless of language, locale, locale date format, local units, etc. -- can enter data that correlates consistently on the central server.

See also: Adding Languages and Locales to the afm-config.xml File

The Locale and Translated Archibus Help

Archibus Help is available in English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian. If you enable these locales and access online help from Web Central, you automatically receive the online help in the language for that locale; the helpExtension section of afm-config.xml is set for the language of the locale. For a language such as Dutch, Archibus does not provide translated help; therefore, it useshelpExtension="".

<language

   isoLanguage="es"

   enabled="auto"

   dbExtension="es"

   helpExtension="es"/>

<language

   isoLanguage="nl"

   enabled="true"

   dbExtension="nl"

   helpExtension=""/>

With helpExtension=””, Web Central looks for the online help in the archibus_help directory, which is English by default.

The default behavior is for Web Central to look for online help at the appropriate URL on archibus.com, such as:

If you prefer that Web Central access online help from your network, see:

Note: Archibus System Management Help is available only in English.

Mail Properties

Archibus can automatically send email notification messages when certain events occur.  For example, the Move Management application sends email to a move coordinator when a move is requested. The Service Desk application sends notices when requests must be approved, must be scheduled, or have been escalated. The Archibus Administration application automatically sends account notifications to all Archibus users in bulk mailings, and so forth.

Properties

The mail.properties file holds the name, port and, optionally, the username and password of the account that Archibus should use to send these email notifications, as well as the default content type for email messages.

Other important preferences are:

host.starttls

When set to True, allows Web Central to use secure mail server connection using TLS:

  • mail.host.starttls=tre

In some SMTP server configuration, enabling STARTTLS may cause runtime errors. In this case, disable the secure connection:

  • mail.host.starttls=false


See https://www.fastmail.fm/help/technology_ssl_vs_tls_starttls.html.
maintmgr Is the address of the maintenance manager used in the Technologies / User Interface Add-Ins / Assemblies with Tabs / Work Request Creation Wizard example. It is not used in the Service Desk or Building Operations products.
administrator

Is the administrator account that receives new password requests from the Sign In form or from which the system sends bulk notices, such as notices to large groups of new users that each should log in and change their password.

The other items in this file are for compatibility with older versions of Archibus and are not used in the newer applications.

Configuring your Mail Server

You may need to configure your email server to grant permissions to the server hosting Archibus to relay mail. This will likely be the case if the email server will be forwarding the mail to mailboxes on other servers, or if you have some users who auto-forward email to other addresses.

If you have a small company for which all mail boxes are hosted on a single mail server (or mail cluster) and all mail terminates at the receiving server, then you do not have to configure your mail server to allow the Web Central server to relay mail.

Encrypting Passwords

If you do enter a mail server account password, and if you do wish to encrypt this password in the file:

Smart Client Properties

smartclient.properties.reinstall When set to True, the Smart Client will prompt the user to reinstall their software if the user is running a Smart Client version earlier than the one specified in the reinstall.version preference.
projects\remote-client-install\smartclient.install.properties

Holds a preference used by the remote Smart Client-Only installation program to set the default application server location that they all should sign in to, e.g.:

smartClient.applicationServerLocation=http://myappserver:8080/archibus/

Security Properties

The security.properties file controls Archibus security.

guestUserID. Is the Archibus User account name for the Guest account. Sites configure an instance of archibus to use "GUEST" as the login.properties. As soon as the site starts hostcomputer:8080/archibus (or other URL), Web Central presents the home page for that user (per the GUEST account's Navigation home page).
systemUserID Is the Archibus User account used to run scheduled rules. Archibus signs into this account automatically when it starts up.
useHierarchicalSecurity Controls whether Archibus enables hierarchical security.
sessionTimeout Is not used. See the web.xml deployment descriptor file topic below.
removeUnlicensedActivitiesOnStartup If true, the server application removes any unlicensed applications from the afm_userprocs and afm_roleprocs tables for all users and roles. Unlicensed applications are those that either do not exist, or are disabled in the stock Archibus license file (ai-licenses.bin) or in the add-in third-party license files.
logoutView=login.axvw

View displayed to the user after signing out. SSO sites typically set this to schema/ab-core/views/process-navigator/logout-preauth.htm.
timeoutView=login.axvw

View displayed to the user after the session times out. SSO sites typically set this to schema/ab-core/views/process-navigator/logout-preauth.htm.
httpOnly

Default is true. Specifies whether to set Session Id Cookie to be httpOnly.

useSingleSessionForConcurrentUsers Set this to True if you want concurrent user accounts to always create a single session and sign out a single license just as named user accounts do.
groups

Specify what security group membership a user must have before they are able to perform certain sensitive operations, such as being able to run actions such as Replace Column that edit data in bulk, or alter the data dictionary schema. See also the following properties in afm-config.xml; these properties specify security group membership for editing views seen by all users.

  • userGroupAllowedEditCanonicViews
  • userGroupAllowedEditViewAnalysis

Core Properties

The core.properties file holds preferences for the server application.

core.runScheduledRules Dictates whether this instance of the application will run the scheduled rules. In a cluster, you need only one application server to run the scheduled rules.
core.preloadFileIndex Dictates whether the Archibus application will scan the folder of application files and build an index for finding these files. Doing so slows startup but speeds overall performance thereafter.
validateView. If true, this preference will validate the XML of your view files (.axvw files) against the Archibus XML schema.
ignoreNonFatalErrorsOnStartup=true

When upgrading a database, use this setting to have the system ignore non-fatal errors and continue the Web Central startup process. See Ignoring Non-Fatal Errors when Upgrading a Database.

debug If true, sets the logging to archibus.log to capture additional information about requests to the application server and the database.

Login Properties

If you are troubleshooting or if you are creating add-ins for Archibus, you may wish to set the following option in login.properties

autoLogin If True, this preference allows you to have Web Central log in for you so that you can bypass the sign-in screen.

Deployment Descriptor File

The WEB-INF\web.xml deployment descriptor file relays information about the Archibus application to the application server that runs it. While this file holds many settings, the two that you may wish to set pertain to the length of the user session.

session-timeout Controls how long idle application server sessions last if they are idle before expiring automatically. Sites with large numbers of users often set this to a lower value (e.g. 5 minutes) to preserve server resources.
scriptSessionTimeout Controls how long the Ajax direct Web remoting script session lasts when idle. Set this slightly longer (e.g. 5 minutes 15 seconds) than the session-timeout.

Other Configuration Files

The \WEB-INF\config\context\* folders hold other configuration files that control the Archibus server application.

The cases in which you would want to change these files are:

The Package and Deploy Wizard migrates the settings in the .properties files mentioned above. If you change other XML files, be certain to migrate those manually if you move your files to another server or upgrade to another version of Archibus.