If your current Windows login does not have administrative rights in the database, you should enter a SQL Server (not Windows) user account that does have database administrator privileges. These will only be used to set up the database. In normal operation, Firefly uses an account that can only read and write data from the database.

Upon clicking “Next”, you will be prompted for a database name.

2B. Database credentials

Firefly needs a SQL Server account to connect to the database in normal operation. This account only needs read and write privileges on the Firefly database. You can select to either use an existing SQL Server user account if a suitable one already exists, or have the installer create a new one with the correct permissions.

SQL Server must be running with “Mixed mode” authentication enabled for Firefly to function correctly. The username and password entered below must be a SQL Server, not a standard Windows, login.

3A. Choose a directory service

If you're installing Firefly in a Windows domain environment and would like it to integrate with your Active Directory to use your existing lists of Windows users and groups, select “Microsoft Active Directory”. 

If you're installing Firefly on a standalone server and would like it to maintain its own lists of users and groups, select “Internal Firefly users and groups”.

3B. Active Directory configuration (if chosen in 3A)

Firefly needs to be able to connect to your Active Directory to check group membership. You can enter multiple directory servers if they are present on your network, though at least one should have been populated automatically by the installer. This will help improve resiliency.

We recommend you select to “Manage account automatically” - this will automatically create a user account for Firefly in your Active Directory with a suitably secure password, if not present already.

If you choose this option you will be prompted for domain administrator credentials. These will only be used to create a new user account, if necessary.

If you wish to manually select a username and password to use in order to connect to the Active Directory, choose the corresponding option from the “User account” dropdown. N.B. The automatic username is created in the form FFNETUSR_hostname.

4. IIS configuration

Select a web site and virtual directory which will be used to access Firefly from a web browser. During the install process, it is only possible to select one such site/directory. However, you can use the management tool to configure multiple virtual directories post-installation.

In most cases (particularly on newly-created, dedicated servers), you should leave the selection set to its default option.

5A. Choosing a folder to store resources

Firefly uses the folder selected below to store large and unindexable files that users have uploaded, for example images or video. Smaller indexable (or full text searchable) files are stored in the main database.

Over time as files are uploaded, this folder may become quite large (in the order of hundreds of gigabytes), so ensure that the drive the folder is on has sufficient storage capacity.

5B. Users and Groups > Administrators Group

Select the group who will have administrative access to Firefly. By default, the group selected at this stage is Administrators. We recommend that you create a new group for Firefly admins in your Active Directory, which will allow you to assign these privileges to separate users to whom you might not want to grant Domain Administrator rights.

You may also leave this option set to the default and change the group later in Firefly Manager.

5C. Users and groups > Students group

Select the group of users that are students.

5D. Users and groups > Send messages group

Firefly includes the ability to send messages, tasks and recommended pages or sections to other users. In order to control the usage of this feature, you need to specify an Active Directory group containing users who should be allowed to send these messages. Typically, you’ll want to set this to something containing all your staff.

5E. Choose a support address

Please enter the email address you would like all error emails to be sent to. Firefly very regularly sends messages for logging and diagnostics purposes. For this reason, we suggest creating a dedicated email account for this purpose, which can be consulted as and when needed for diagnosis.

6. Installation

Firefly will be installed to the selected folders and IIS configured as previously requested. The installer will also add a shortcut to the "Firefly Manager" on the user's Start Menu.

The installation process might take a few minutes. Don't close the window until you have seen the confirmation message below.

7. Uninstallation

To uninstall Firefly, use the "Add/Remove Programs" tool in the Windows Control Panel. Select Firefly, then click "Change/remove" to uninstall.