Aiken Workbench: Installing the Recycly Integration service

In order to connect your Aiken Workbench system to Recycly, you'll need to install our Recycly-Aiken integration software on your Aiken server.

For your convenience, this software is packaged as an Ubuntu Snap package, which can be easily and safely installed without affecting the operation of your Aiken Workbench server.

Aiken Server Requirements

• Your Aiken Workbench server must have access to the internet
  • NOTE: It does not need to be accessible from the internet, no port forwarding is needed
• You will need an Aiken subscription which gives you access to the Aiken database
• • L2 - BASIC or above subscriptions allows this
• You will need your Aiken Server ID and Password
• • These will have been provided in your Aiken License email, along with the Aiken download links
  • Tip: try searching your emails for "Aiken license"
• You will need the password for the MySQL "manager" user (see below)

Obtaining your Aiken MySQL "manager" User Password

• In order for the Recycly-Aiken software to access your Aiken data, you will need to use your MySQL "manager" user password
• You may already have the MySQL manager password if you have previously extracted data from your Aiken database
• • Please note that this password is different to the Aiken Workbench "manager" user

If you don't know your MySQL manager user password, you can reset it as follows:

1. Click the "Show Options" link on the Aiken Server Console

2. Click the "Database" option, then click the "Reset Password" button next to the "MySQL user manager" label

3. First you will need to enter the current password associated with your Aiken Server ID. This will have been provided in your "Aiken Workbench License" email. If you do not have this you will need to contact your Aiken support representative

4. Now you can enter a new password for the MySQL "manager" user. Make sure you keep a record of this, as you will need it when setting up the Recycly-Aiken integration

When you press OK you should see the below message

You can then press the Accept button to close the options window

Installing our Recycly-Aiken Integration Software

To install the Recycly-Aiken Ubuntu "snap" you'll need to first install snapd, which is not installed by default on the Aiken Workbench server.

Note that Snapd is snapcraft, which is a means of installing software on Ubuntu using containers to isolate them for security purposes (i.e. to not affect anything else on the server), and makes automatic-updates easy.

You'll need to perform the following operations via the Ubuntu Terminal

To access the terminal, on your Aiken server, press the Windows key on your keyboard (pictured below)

This should bring up the Gnome "Activities" menu on the left of the screen, which should include an icon for Terminal. Click this to open it.

The terminal window should look similar to the below

Now we are ready to install and configure the Recycly-Aiken service.

Enter the commands below in the Terminal window and press enter.

sudo apt-get install snapd

sudo snap install recycly-aiken

The software is now installed. The final step is to link your Recycly instance with your Aiken server.

Note: This will always install the latest version of the integration software, and it will be kept up to date automatically.

Linking your Recycly instance with your Aiken Server

Log in to your Recycly system and go to Inbound -> Configuration -> Hardware Audit Report Sources.

If you don't already have an "Aiken" report source, click the New button to create it, otherwise open your existing Aiken report source.

The key bits of information you need from the above screen are your Aiken Client ID and API Key, which is the information that Recycly uses to associate your Aiken server with your Recycly system.

Armed with the above information, and your MySQL "manager" password, you can now configure the Recycly-Aiken service on your Aiken server.

Back in the Terminal on your Aiken server, type the following command

sudo recycly-aiken.configure

You will be prompted to enter the following information, which you can copy from the relevant location and paste:

• Client ID and API Key, taken from the Aiken configuration screen in Recycly
• Your MySQL "manager" password, which you may have reset using the instructions earlier in the article.

Once that information has been entered, the Recycly-Aiken configuration routine will test both the connection to your MySQL database and the Recycly API server.

If all is well you will see the SUCCESS message above.

If there are any issues, you will see an ERROR message, along with some details to help you diagnose the issue.  In this case, you can run the command again and correct any problems with your entries.

Testing the Connection

Once you've successfully installed and configured the software on your Aiken server, you can click the "Test Connection" button in Recycly to make sure everything is working.

If all is well then you should receive a "Connection Successful" notification, and the Recycly-Aiken Integration Status will show as Active, as per the screenshot below

Your Aiken system is now ready to use with Recycly!

Advanced: Starting, Stopping and Monitoring the Recycly-Aiken Integration Service

Note: You shouldn't typically need to do any of these things, but if you're an admin then you might find them useful.

The Recycly-Aiken integration service runs as a standard "Snap" service. You can use the following terminal commands to control & monitor it

• sudo snap services --global     - View the status of all snap services, including recycly-aiken
• sudo snap logs recycly-aiken -n=50     - View the last 50 log entries from the recycly-aiken integration (alternatively use -f to "follow" the log output)
• sudo snap restart recycly-aiken     - Restart the Recycly-Aiken integration service
  

Note that "snap" services automatically update themselves when new versions are released, so there is no need to do this manually