New Laserfiche 12 Installations

Planning Your Laserfiche Implementation

Before you begin the installation of your Laserfiche products, you should take time to plan your implementation. Consider the following questions:

  • What problems are you trying to solve with your Laserfiche system? What are your goals for the system?

  • What Laserfiche components do you need to accomplish these goals? All Laserfiche systems will include the Laserfiche Directory Server, the Laserfiche Repository Server, the Administration Console, and a repository client. Most will use one or both of the Laserfiche automation tools Forms and Workflow. Use of other applications and components will depend on your needs. For example, if you are scanning large numbers of documents and need to perform image enhancements and automatically retrieve data from them, you should consider using Quick Fields.

  • How will your users be accessing Laserfiche? Will you be creating Laserfiche directory users, or using an identity provider such as Active Directory, Active Directory LDAP, or SAML?

  • What internal products or systems will you need to integrate with?

  • What are your performance and availability targets?

System Design

When planning an initial Laserfiche 12 implementation, it is important to consider how you will distribute components across your system. Laserfiche has a three-tier design:

  • Front-end: Web and desktop applications that users interact with directly, such as the Repository Web Client, Workflow designer, and Quick Fields.

  • Back-end: Business logic applications, such as the Laserfiche Repository Server, the Full-Text Search service, and the Workflow Server.

  • Data: Storage of the system's data, such as the SQL database associated with your repository, the volume file locations, and any external data sources.

The size and activity of your Laserfiche system will determine how you should divide up these tiers. In a small system, you may only need one server for all front-end applications, one for all back-end or server applications, and one for your SQL server plus as many as necessary for your volumes. A medium-sized organization, by contrast, might divide the front-end applications across multiple servers (for authentication, internal web apps, and external web apps), and provide a different server machine for the Repository Server and Workflow. Large organizations tend to have specialized needs and should be designed on a case-by-case basis.

Network Security

It is extremely important to ensure that your data is secured, both in transit and at rest. See Firewalls and Network Security for more information.

System Specifications

To review the supported SQL servers and operating systems for Laserfiche 12, see Specifications.

Installing Laserfiche Products

Laserfiche Directory Server

You should begin the installation of your Laserfiche products with Laserfiche Directory Server. Directory Server allows you to allocate user licenses and activate other Laserfiche products. See Installing Laserfiche Directory Server for more information.

Laserfiche Repository Server and Administration Console

Once you have installed Laserfiche Directory Server, you can begin installing other applications, starting with the Laserfiche Repository Server and the associated Administration Console. This will host your repository, which contains much of the content of your system: files, folder information, metadata, security, and so on. See Installing the Laserfiche Repository Server for more information.

Note: Once the Laserfiche Directory Server and the Laserfiche Repository Server and Administration Console have been installed, additional products can be installed in any order.

Repository Web Client

The Laserfiche Repository Web Client is the primary way that most users will interact with the repository to create documents and folders, configure and set metadata, grant or deny access to parts of the repository, and so on. See Installing the Laserfiche Repository Web Client for more information.

Workflow

Workflow is a powerful automation tool that allows you to create processes to work efficiently with your Laserfiche system. Workflow's wide range of activities gives you many automation options to streamline tasks. See Installing Laserfiche Workflow for more information.

Forms

Laserfiche Forms is a web application that allows users to create, manage, and route electronic forms. It can be used to collect, process, and analyze information, and to automate internal processes. See Installing Laserfiche Forms for more information.

Other Applications

See the following pages for information on installing other Laserfiche applications:

Post-Installation Procedures

Repository Creation

Once you have installed your Laserfiche Server and Administration Console, you should next create a repository. See Creating or Registering a Repository for more information.

Initial Security Configuration

Once you have created a repository, it is important to secure it before you begin to add contents to it, to ensure that your data is protected from day one. See Initial Security Considerations for New Repositories for more information.

Backup and Recovery Planning

It is important to have a backup plan ready from day one to prevent data loss. See Backup and Recovery for more information.