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Hybrid on-premises (LMW)

Hybrid on-premises (LMW)

Light My Way - Documentation

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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 (as a ZIP-file with JSON and potential screenshots) 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).

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)

Limitations

Insight

Usage log parsing, indexing and visualization are available only on cloud. On-prem offers a configuration option to deliver the insight data to local end point The Administrator (LMW) | Settings userUsageLogsUrl. In such case log parsing, indexing and visualization solution is owned and maintained by the customer.

AI assistant

Currently a cloud only feature. Set disableAI before exporting you on-prem data package. Planned option to allow configuration of locally hosted or preferred LLM and Vector DB supporting the openai chat completions api (most vendors have aligned and supports this api format).

1. Extracting guide data

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 Light My Way (LMW) | 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 ZIP-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 Light My Way (LMW) | Registry entries using file (e.g. hosted-guides-path: https://companyurl/path-to-repository).

Light My Way will then load all guide data from the export file and the extension will not connect to CLOUD.

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2. Self-hosting client (web extension)

To self-host the extension you need to host two files (3 with the JSON data file)

  1. the update file (e.g. update.xml)

  2. the extension package (e.g. lmw-2024.2.crx).

The files needs to be hosted over HTTPS (Reference: Self-host for Linux  |  Chrome Extensions  |  Chrome for Developers). We recommend hosting these together with the guide data JSON (there is a version dependency).

Extension package

The extension build (.zip) can be downloaded from products.technia.com.

Then you will have to build the extension package (.crx) using the browser. (Reference: Create a .crx file)

Update file

The update file (.xml) needs to be edited according to how its hosted.

In below example these values needs to be updated:
<updatecheck codebase='path-to-extension.crx' version='version (must match extension version)' />

Example:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?> <gupdate xmlns='http://www.google.com/update2/response' protocol='2.0'> <app appid='abgmfmhjplgnlmjoglbgddpdnfdcjenj'> <updatecheck codebase='https://<YOUR_HOSTING_URL>/lmw-2024.2.crx' version='2024.2' /> </app> </gupdate>

Please refer to this page on more details about the elements of the update file.

Learn more

Web Extension self-hosting is supported technology for Chrome and MS Edge.
Please refer to browser documentation for more information.

3. Distribution

Self hosted extensions can be distributed just like the Chrome Store hosted extension using the registry Light My Way (LMW) | Registry entries using file.

The registry file also needs to be edited with the correct values and path to the update file.

In below example these values would need to be updated:

  • update_url

  • runtime_allowed_hosts

  • hosted-guides-path

Example:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome\ExtensionSettings\abgmfmhjplgnlmjoglbgddpdnfdcjenj] "installation_mode"="normal_installed" "update_url"="https://<YOUR_HOSTING_URL>/update.xml" "runtime_allowed_hosts"="[\"://<your local environment url>.com\",\"://<your data url>.com\"]" "runtime_blocked_hosts"="[\"*://*\"]" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome\3rdparty\extensions\abgmfmhjplgnlmjoglbgddpdnfdcjenj\policy] "hosted-guides-path"="https://<YOUR_HOSTING_URL>/data-export.json" "lmw-server-url-editable"=dword:00000001 "lmw-author-mode"=dword:00000000 "lmw-registry-script-executed"=dword:00000000

 

4. Hybrid in practice

Initial setup

  1. Web extension hosting

    1. Define where and how to host the local resources, apache or nginx is examples. A DNS alias is recommended as that bring some flexibility.

      1. update.xml

      2. extension-name.crx

      3. data-export.json

    2. Configure update.xml. (This is key for the client machines to automatically update the web extension)

      1. appid - must match the generated crx package id

      2. codebase - must match you hosting url

      3. version - must match the manifest version

    3. Create crx package

      1. Download the latest version from products.technia.com

      2. Follow the steps google docs how to build you local package

        1. Note that the update_url in the manifest must be updated to match your local hosting

        2. Keep the .pem file for future updates (generate the same id crx)

  2. Create & export content (guide data)

    1. Record guides with TECHNIA.cloud services using target environment replica (QA / DEV with no sensitive PLM data)

    2. Export data-export.json for on-premises from the Admin UI on TECHNIA.cloud.

    3. Deploy data-export.json file on the path defined in registry hosted-guides-path

  3. Distribution - define & test registry package

    1. Configure extension id (replace abgmfmhjplgnlmjoglbgddpdnfdcjenj in the above example to match your generated package id)

    2. Configure path to update xml update_url

    3. Configure path to data file hosted-guides-path

    4. Configure target environment runtime_allowed_hosts (note that data file host must be included)

Deploying updates

Note that any updates to the client or data package must match. I.e. when exporting a new data package, the latest cloud version used to create that package must also be updated in local hosting.

  1. Generate new extension-name.crx from the latest version matching technia.cloud (download from products.technia.com)

    1. Remember update_url in manifest.json

    2. Use .pem file generated the first time to keep the extension name intact

  2. Update update.xml to match with the version found in manifest.json

  3. Deploy the updated files in the hosting

    1. extension-name.crx

    2. update.xml

    3. data-export.json

Distribution

Share / remove the package to user machines registry is normally done centrally from IT using GPO or other enterprise software distribution tools e.g. Software Center.

Test setup

DTAP deployment process can be enabled by generating separate extension ids, update.xml, data-export.json and distribute to specific test machines before deploying to prod.

 

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