Can the ideas portal reside on a different server than Team Pulse ?

[Max Figueredo]

Currently we have TeamPulse and the Ideas portal running on server A. Ideally we want to have TeamPulse on server A, and the ideas portal on Server B.

Is this possible ? and if so, what are the high level steps to move the portal from server A to B ?

Thanks in advance !

[Ivan]

Hello Max,

Hosting the Ideas & Feedback portal site on a separate server - apart from the main TeamPulse site is possible.

Generally - what you'll need to do is (it is recommended that you do not delete the original FeedbackPortal site until you make sure the new one is working):

1. Copy the FeedbackPortal folder from your server A and paste it in the desired location on the server B

2. Create a new site in the server B IIS and point it to the FeedbackPortal folder, give it appropriate bindings according to the URL that is going to be used for access to the site.

3. Open the Application Pools screen and make sure that the application pool created for the Feedback portal is set to .Net Framework v4.0 and Managed Pipeline Mode is set to "Integrated". Make sure that the identity used by the site is an account that has permissions to use the SQL Server database back on the server A.

4. Open the Web.config file for the new Feedback Portal site (it is placed in the root folder of the site) and edit the server in the  <connectionStrings> element to point correctly to the Server A SQL database (e.g.: if the default value is set to (local)\sqlexpress - change it to {name-of-the-SQLServer}\sqlexpress). See the attached Edit-Portal-WebConfig-file.png screenshot.

5. Also in the Web.config file, in the <appSettings> element you'll need to place a correct value for"MachineID". To do that open the Admin pages of your TeamPulse site (the web URL is: {your-TeamPulse-site}/Admin/License) and copy the Machine Info Key placed there. We are sending to you a small application that will encrypt the key according to the server machine. So - extract the content of the MachineInfo.zip file (that is attached to this ticket) on the new server machine that will host the portal, run the TeamPulse.MachineInfo.exe file, paste the Machine Info Key into the Text to Encrypt field and click the Encrypt button. Copy the encrypted text and replace with it the one that is currently in your Web.config file.

On the server A (The one that hosts the main TeamPulse application):

6. Open the Web.config file for the main TeamPulse site (you'll find it in {your-TeamPulse-installation-folder}/wwwroot/).  In the <appSettings> element: change the value of the FeedbackPortalURL to point to the new location of the portal - e.g.:     <add key="FeedbackPortalURL" value="http://{your-feedbackportal-url}/Project/"/> (e.g.: see the Edit-TeamPulse-WebConfig-file.png attachment)

Please note that for future upgrades of TeamPulse you will need to repeat the described process. 

I hope these instructions are helpful. Let us know if you have further questions.

Regards,
Ivan
Telerik

[Max Figueredo]

Thanks guys, I'll be trying this out !

[Max Figueredo]

Hello Ivan,

I followed the instructions. I was having an issue that I resolved when I compared the application pool settings, and realized the app pool needs to be able to run 32-bit runtimes. After I fixed that problem, now I get the following error (see below: The page you're looking for isn't here).

A few questions for you:

• Is there any log file I can look to try to get more details on the problem ? I already tried windows event log, and also a log file path I found in the web.config (that one is empty).
• The issue might be SQL Server permissions, I was using windows authentication on the original server, with a local windows account. However for this to work on different servers I have to either use a domain account, or use SQL Server authentication. I tried adding valid SQL Server credentials in the connection string in the web.config, still get the error. On the other hand I am not sure how to configure an app pool to run as a domain account, I have searched and think it can't be done, or perhaps this issue is not related to authentication at all, I cannot really tell from the "page not found" error.
• Do the bindings have to be the same ? (on the original server it is binded to port 9896, but on the new server I want to use 443), or you don't think bindings are related to this issue ?
  
  
• In general any input you can provide to try to identify the problem is more than welcomed, thanks in advance Ivan !

[Ivan]

Hello Max,

I'm glad to hear that the information helped you.

To resolve the other issue I will first ask you what link are you trying to open, because we get the same error when we are trying to load http://feedback.telerik.com/Project/8888. Note that 8888 is not a valid project id.

The log files are usually located here C:\Program Files (x86)\Telerik\TeamPulse\Logs. In order to help you investigating the problem I would ask you to send us all log files.

Also you can go and turn off the custom errors in your web.config file (see the code bellow) in order to see more details about the error.

<system.web>
  <customErrors mode="Off"/>
</system.web>

I'm looking forward for your answer. Regards,
Ivan
Telerik

[Max Figueredo]

That is all it was, I was hitting the portal's root URL (invalid URL), after I entered a correct project URL then it all works !

Thank you very much for all your wonderful help Ivan, you guys at support really rock every time !

[Ivan]

Hi Max,

I'm really happy that you managed to run the Feedback Portal on separate server.

In the future if you have any other questions or troubles while using TeamPulse feel free to contact us again at any time.

Regards,
Ivan
Telerik