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Set up CtrlPortals

By the end of this section CtrlPortals is installed and licensed in a vault, and one dashboard is there for a user to open.

Time: about an hour for a first deployment, most of it spent deciding what the first dashboard should show rather than on the software.

Who you need: someone with administrative access to the vault through M-Files Admin. No Microsoft 365 administrator is needed — CtrlPortals does not connect to Microsoft 365.

Before you start

Section titled “Before you start”
  • M-Files 23.6.0.0 or later on the server.
  • Administrative access to the target vault through M-Files Admin.
  • The CtrlPortals .mfappx file and its .lic licence file.
  • An agreed window for a vault restart. Installing any vault application requires one.
  • A decision about what the first dashboard should show. One object type and one question people ask about it is enough.

Steps

Section titled “Steps”

  1. Install the application and its licence.

    Follow Install a vault application, then Install a vault application licence.

    Check: CtrlPortals appears under the vault’s Applications node and the vault has been restarted. Leaving the Applications dialog open is what usually prevents the restart.

  2. Decide on employee and comment objects.

    They are the only vault structure CtrlPortals uses across the whole application, and both are optional: employee objects for features that act on the current user, comment objects for threaded comments. Everything else is picked from what the vault already has while you configure each element. See Vault structure.

    Check: the application status in M-Files Admin reports no configuration error.

  3. Build the first dashboard.

    Create a dashboard with one component on it and give a user group access to it. A list view over one object type is the quickest thing to get right.

    Check: a user who is not a vault administrator can open the dashboard in the M-Files client and see data in it.

If something goes wrong

Section titled “If something goes wrong”

See Troubleshooting. The most common first-deployment problem is that the application is installed but the vault was never restarted, because the Applications dialog was left open.

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