Interact Intranet: Installing the API

Creating a custom widget in Interact Intranet takes a few steps, the first of which is to install the API (aka Interact Web Service - IWS).

1. Navigate to your web server roo
2. Create a folder called InteractAPI (or whatever you want to call it), and within it create another folder called bin
3. Go to your interact/Web/bin folder
1. Copy the following files to your new InteractAPI/bin folder: 
• InteractWebService.dll
• Odyssey.Interact.Core2.dll
• Odyssey.Interact.Database.dll
4. Go to your interact/web folder
1. Copy the following files to your new InteractAPI folder: 
• Service.asmx
• web.config
• A web.config is needed, however the file from this specific location will cause issues.  Your best bet when you are doing this is to contact Interact to ask for a web.config because there are a lot of changes that need to happen to this file for it to work.
5. Edit the web.config file in your InteractAPI folder
1. Change the <add key=”connectionstring”> entry to point to your Interact db.
1. The new entry should look something like this: <add key="ConnectionString" value="Data Source=INTERACTDB;user=interactdba;password=p!SSw!&#;Database=interact;Persist Security Info=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;Connect Timeout=30;Min Pool Size=5;Max Pool Size=1000 " />
6. Register InteractAPI to IIS
1. Open the IIS Manager
2. Right click on "Sites"
3. Select "Add Website"
4. Set the Site name to "InteractAPI"
5. Determine which Application Pool you want the API to be a part of
6. Set the Physical path to your newly created InteractAPI folder (C:\InteractAPI)
7. The binding shouldn't have a host name and the port should be set to 81 
7. Configure InteractAPI Authentication
1. Select InteractAPI from the left panel
2. Within the IIS area select Authentication
3. Adjust the authentication settings to match this:
1. Anonymous Auth: disabled
2. ASP.NET Impersonation: disabled
3. Basic Auth: disabled
4. Forms Auth: disabled
5. Windows Auth:  enabled
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
8. Set Default Document
1. Select InteractAPI from the left panel
2. Within the IIS area select Default Document
3. Click "Add..." from the right menu
4. Enter "service.asmx"
9. Test the Setup
1. At this point you should be able test your setup by going to http://localhost:81/ from your server. This should display your service.asmx page
2. Additionally you should be able to view the service page using whatever DNS you've created for your install and appending the port.  For example http://interact:81
10. Create a DNS entry for IWS

1. Clicking through from your localhost path (and example code which you can request from Interact) will display some errors because there are hard coded paths pointing to http://IWS:81 
2. To get around this you'll need to create an internal DNS entry pointing to the IP address of server you've installed the IWS on.
3. If your DNS is setup properly you should now be able to view the Service.asmx page by visiting http://IWS:81

Stay tuned for more blog posts geared toward creating custom widgets once the API is fully installed!