Installation of analycess Cockpit

analycess Cockpit is an extension to analycess procurement that makes it easy for teams to manage multiple model key information. Team leaders often face the problem that they does not have an overview of the process of data analysis. They find it difficult to keep track of which model was finished or updated (with new data), and who is doing what in which file. If they need a price estimation for a new quotation, they will merely want to fill in the parameters for the new part and obtain a result, but they may be disinclined  to install or start analycess.

All these problems can be solved by analycess Cockpit. There is also an online demonstration available: https://ac-demo.processbench.com!

For collaborative work you probably use a Windows-based file sharing server. It is assumed that your users share a folder reachable through

  \\servername\analycess-files\meta-files\

and have read and write privileges. You can also use other cloud services, techniques or protocols as long as you can map the folder to a Network drive or in any other transparent way to the user's file system.

Start analycess, open menu "Window" -> "Preferences" and activate the feature to save the metadata as shown above. Set your target to the folder from step one. This step has to be repeated for each user that wants to publish information for the analycess Cockpit.

Open or create an existing model file and go to (1) "Model Chain and Model Comparison".

Please fill  in all necessary information (2) to identify this model.

You can either push the button "Publish meta data" (3) or save the current model file to let analycess write an .ameta file to the location you specified in step 2.

This server does not need to be the same machine that is used for your shared folder.

You need a server that has the following requirements:

• Installed Java Runtime Environment 1.7 or higher (from Oracle)
• A web server of your choice that can serve 'static' content. (No PHP, CGI, ASP, JSF, JSP modules needed)

You got the files shown above from Processbench. Copy them to the public folder of your web server so that index.html and the other resources will be offered to the visitor.

You may want to restrict the access to the data that will be provided here at this point.

Note down the location of data.json in your server's file system.

Windows: You can create a network drive to map the location of your .ameta files defined in step 2) to a fix drive letter. In our example we use "M:" You can also continue with UNC syntax.

Linux/Mac: Mount the location of your .ameta files from step 2) to your file system.

Processbench also provides with you the program analycess-cockpit-1.0.0.jar that is responsible to convert the .ameta files given by the users to the JSON file. Start it by:

 java -jar analycess-cockpit-1.0.0.jar -prepend "var sample=" -runmode "continuous-poll:5" -input "M:" -output "C:\analycess Cockpit\WebContent\data.json"

You can adjust the example above to your needs. Here "M:" (without a backslash at the end) is location of your .ameta files and "C:\analycess Cockpit\WebContent\data.json" is the path of the JSON file from step 4.1.

This program does not terminate, but runs forever waiting for changes on the .ameta files. As soon as a file is created, deleted or changed it regenerates the JSON file. This check is repeated every 5 seconds.

Use option -help to see the full list of options.

1. Open the analycess Cockpit by browsing the location you defined in step 4.1. You should see a list of models.
2. Go to analycess, open an existing model file, change the model name (as shown in step 3) and save the file under a new name. Also agree to "publish" it. You should see a new .ameta file within your shared folder.
3. Refresh the analycess Cockpit web page. You should see the new entry.

6. Convert it into a Windows Service

In order to run this independently of your user login, we recommend to create a Windows Service. You can kill the process from step 4.2 now.

6.1 Download NSSM

Download it from http://nssm.cc/download and extract it to you favorite location.
Start it from the command line:

cd Path\to\NSSM\win64
nssm.exe install analycessCockpitConverter

You can edit it later by: nssm.exe edit analycessCockpitConverter

6.2 Install a new service

You can reuse your parameters from step 4.2.

Tab Application
Path: java
Startup dir: C:\path\where\you\left\the\JAR\file
Arguments: same as used in step 4.2
Tab Environment
Fill in: PATH=C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_101\bin\
You must adjust the path your specific JRE installation.

Click "Install service". Open Windows' Service overview and start the new service.

You should repeat the check made in step 5, to make sure it is working properly. Use Windows' Event Log (with source = "nssm") for troubleshooting.