On-prem hybrid setup
There are cases when connecting cloud hosted guide data and evergreen extensions with your production environment is restricted, not possible or undesired.
Examples:
Air-gapped production (e.g. top secure defence install without internet)
Company Policy
Quality assurance process requirements (DEV → QA → UAT → PROD)
Compliance (FDA or regulatory require extensive testing and control)
Security (Evergreen external extension hosting prevents validation and control for each version)
The solution is on-prem hosting of both web extension (browser plugin client) and data. The cloud solution is still used to record the guides (on dev or similar env without restrictions). The guide data and web extension are exported for self hosting. Guides are exported in JSON data format and the web extension using self hosting (.crx).
This setup enable full control with fixed offline package still avoiding complex full stack setup and system ownership (hosting and related effort).
DEV → https://lmw.technia.cloud, recording guides (edit)
PROD → On-prem, using guides (read only )
Matching web extension & data versions
For the on-prem self hosting to work, the data package and web extension versions must match!
To ensure matching versions we recommend extension self hosting and json guide data hosting in pair using the same service. The guide data extraction and web extension self hosting package creation should be done at the same time.
Support
All support is on the account at https://lmw.technia.cloud (problems must be reproducible there and fixes are delivered there, new export and self-hosted version need to be deployed on-prem by customer)
1. Extracting guide data (JSON)
To get started you first need to create your guides on CLOUD (lmw.technia.cloud). This requires the latest Light My Way extension that can either be installed from Chrome/Edge store https://technia.jira.com/wiki/spaces/TSD/pages/4031971409/Light+My+Way+-+Product+Documentation#Client-Installation or self-hosted 2. Self hosting client (web-extension).
When the guides are done you login to the Admin UI and export them by clicking on the export icon.
The exported json-file can then be provided on-premises as you choose. The Light My Way client (user browser) need access to the guide data file through https on the network.
To connect the extension to the file add the url to the registry https://technia.jira.com/wiki/spaces/TSD/pages/4031971409/Light+My+Way+-+Product+Documentation#Registry-entries-using-file (e.g. hosted-guides-path: https://companyurl/path-to-file.json).
Light My Way will then load all guide data from the export file and the extension will not connect to CLOUD.
2. Self-hosting client (web extension)
Web Extension self-hosting is supported technology for Chrome and MS Edge. Please refer to browser documentation.
Chrome https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/how-to/distribute
MS Edgehttps://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-manage-extensions-webstore.
3.On-prem setup
Pack Extension:
Click Browser--> Manage Extensions--> Click Pack extension and select extension folder.
Use the Pack extension dialog to find the directory that has the source for the extension. Select the directory and then click Pack extension. This creates your CRX file, along with a PEM file.
Add Extension to the browser:
Drag and drop the CRX file into the extensions window and verify that it loads
The extension is disabled after this operation. To enable it add the CRX ID of the extension to the ExtensionInstallAllowList policy.
Please use the below .reg file to update the registry editor. Please update the correct extension ID in the reg file.
Now, Extension will be enabled. Check user can open extension or not.
Download .json file from the admin and paste it in one folder. For example
C:\Users\akka01\Downloads\Onprem\######.json
In the Registry editor, to the following path create a new key and enter the extension id as the key name also create one more subkey with the name “policy”
Path: SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge\extensions
Click on Policy and create a new string with the below details:
“hosted-guides-path” : C://Users//akka01//Downloads//Onprem//demo-3dx-config-2024-03-22_154036.json (Path of Json file)
Please refer below screenshot:
Restart the edge browser and open extension. Consumer extension will be connected to the hosted guides.
