3. Getting started¶

3.1.1. Assumptions¶

This section makes the following assumptions:

• The computer or server used is solely for Intella Connect.
• The network used is a LAN and not subject to any firewalls other that the on the client or server.
• The settings given below are validated as secure and allowed by the organization.
• The user will consult their network administrator for configuration options should they wish to share a case via the internet.
• Any other security software will be disabled during setup.

3.1.2. Operating Systems¶

Intella Connect can be installed on the following operating systems:

• Vista
• Windows 7
• Windows 8
• Windows 10
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Server 2008R2
• Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2012R2.

Although Intella Connect can be installed on a number of Windows Server Operating Systems, Intella Connect does not require a Windows Server OS and runs perfectly well on one of the mentioned desktop operating systems in most circumstances. Note that server hosted installations of Intella Connect are only supported if configured according to the specifications contained within this User Manual.

3.1.3. Potential Conflicts¶

• Certain anti-virus software, specifically AVG, have prevented or interfered with the installation of Intella Connect. Therefore it is recommended that you disable any anti-virus software before installing Intella Connect.
• We do not support the installation of Intella Connect on a Server OS that already has IIS configured for web hosting.

3.2.1. Installation of Intella Connect and Intella Node on the same machine¶

It’s important to understand that remote indexing feature available in Intella Connect was designed in a way which promotes installing instances of Intella Connect/Node on separate servers. The reasons are outlined below:

• improved scalability - adding more processing power can be as simple as adding new machines to the network and installing Intella Node on them
• improved fault tolerance - if unexpected events will cause one instance of Intella Node to go down, then one has higher chances that processing and reviewing of other cases will be unaffected
• faster troubleshooting - maintaining independent systems is much easier and speeds up potential error analysis and recovery

We suggest to take this into consideration when designing new systems and adjusting existing ones if feasible.

That being said, it might make sense to do this when setting up testing environment or when using cutting-edge servers. In such cases a highly qualified IT personnel should make a risk-to-reward assessment.

3.2.2. Changing a default port¶

Before starting Intella Connect/Node for the first time you may want to change the default port (9999) Intella Connect/Node is running on.

To change default port of Intella Connect or Intella Node please look for user.prefs file located in: %USER_HOME%\AppData\Roaming\Intella Connect\prefs then open it with a text editor and find ServerPort or NodePort property respectively.

For Intella Connect You should change it to desired port like: ServerPort=8080 to run on port 8080.

For Intella Node You should change it to desired port like: NodePort=8080 to run on port 8080.

If Intella Connect and Intella Node will be running on the same computer, then they cannot have the same port (read more:).

How to choose the best port for Intella Connect/Node:

If you do not wish to use port 9999 for Intella Connect/Node you may select a port of your choosing. One option is to use port 80, a common port that is usually open in the firewall for at least outbound connections already. Using port 80 removes the need to add a port to the Case URL when typing it into a web browser as well. Like all ports, port 80 must not be presently occupied. If you wish to choose another port, you can select one from 1…65535 although it is best to choose a port greater than 1023 as those 1…1023 are registered ports and may be in use already. No matter what port you select, you should confirm whether or not it is in use on the host already.

3.2.3. Local Firewall Configurations¶

Intella Connect uses port 9999 (you can also assign a different port of your choosing as described in changing a default port). This port must be open on the local firewall in order for Intella Connect/Node to work correctly. To configure the local firewall for Server 2008 R2, go to Start – Administrator Tools – Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.

To enable or disable the Windows Local Firewall, click on Windows Firewall Properties.

There are three separate profiles contained within the Windows Firewall. They are:

• Domain - Applied to a network adapter when it is connected to a network on which it can detect a domain controller of the domain to which the computer is joined.
• Private - Applied to a network adapter when it is connected to a network that is identified by the user or administrator as a private network such a home network.
• Applied to a network adapter when it is connected to a public network such as those available in airports and coffee shops. When the profile is not set to Domain or Private, the default profile is Public.

Select the Profile you want to configure and select On or Off. If the firewall is turned on you may select either Block (default), Block all connections or Allow for Inbound Connections. You may select Allow (default) or Block for Outgoing connections.

• Intella Connect
  • For the Intella Connect server, the host in which you share the case, you must configure the firewall for inbound connections.
  • For the client, the host in which you will review the case, you must configure the firewall for inbound connections.
• Intella Node
  • For the Intella Node server, the host where indexing will be performed, you must configure the firewall for inbound connections.
  • For the Intella Connect, the host which will communicate with the Intella Node, you must configure the firewall for inbound connections.

Although you can configure the firewall at large, in most situations you probably just want to configure the firewall for the Intella Connect/Node designated port only. To do so, right click either Inbound or Outbound Rules and select “New Rule”.

In the New Rule Wizard, select Port.

Select TCP as the Protocol and 9999 as the Port or the port you have chosen as described in changing a default port.

Select “Allow the connection”.

If you wish to designate only designated users to this port, you may select those users in “Authorized Users”.

You can also select designated computers as well.

Then select the profile you wish to use.

Finally, name the Rule appropriately.

The Rule will now appear in the list of rules.

To access the Windows Firewall in Server 2012, click on the Server Manager icon in the task bar.

Then select Local Server in the left hand menu.

Then select Windows Firewall and Advanced Security from the Tools menu in the right hand corner.

The procedure to configure the Windows Firewall is identical to that of Server 2008 R2. You can also access the Windows Firewall through Control Panel just like any of the Windows Workstation operating systems.

3.2.4. Starting Intella Connect/Node¶

The application folder contains an executable called IntellaConnect.exe or IntellaNode.exe in case of Intella Connect or Intella Node respectively that can be used to launch the application. The desktop and menu shortcuts also start this executable.

To start Intella Connect/Intella Node, double-click on the Intella Connect/Intella Node icon on the Desktop or select Intella Connect/Intella Node from the Start menu.

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This is because only one instance of Intella can run at a time.

If you are receiving this error after starting Intella Connect/Node for the first time, please look at section troubleshooting port conflicts.

Based on the application proceed with those steps:

• Intella Node - Locate the green Intella Connect logo in the system tray and double-click on it. This will open Intella Node local status page. If message saying “The Intella Node is prepared now” is present the installation of Intella Node was successful. You can proceed with Case Templates section in order to make use of newly installed Intella Node by Intella Connect.
• Intella Connect - Please proceed with reading the rest of this section.

Locate the green Intella Connect logo in the system tray and either:

• double-click on the icon, or
• right-click on the icon and select the Admin Dashboard menu entry.

This will open the Intella Connect Dashboard in your web browser. When requested for a user account, enter admin as username and admin as password. These are the default values. How to change the admin password is explained in the User management section.

If using Internet Explorer, you may see this popup message below.

This popup indicates that your computer doesn’t recognize that you are on the Intranet. To correct this simply go to Internet Options. Click the Security Tab and then select Local intranet Sites.

You can then select “Automatically detect intranet network” and all Intranet sites will be recognized.

You can also click “Advanced” and insert the address of the Intella Connect site URL as is shown below.

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The Dashboard will show cases:

• created using Intella Connect and indexed by Intella Node
• created with the desktop-based Intella version (Intella 10, Intella 100, Intella 250, Intella Professional or Intella TEAM Manager) on the same computer where Intella Connect is running.

• If you have not created any cases yet, you can do so in the Intella Case Manager. For more information, please refer to the section called “Creating a new case” in the Intella User Manual.

• If you already have cases created, but they are located on different computers than the one on which Intella Connect is running, you can choose to do one of the following:

  • Copy the case folder to the computer on which Intella Connect is running and add an existing case, as described in the section called “Opening an existing case not in the list” in the Intella User Manual.
  • Export the case as described in the section called “Opening an existing case not in the list” in the Intella User Manual and import the case on the computer on which Intella Connect is running, as described in the section called “Importing a case”.

It is recommended to go to the Admin Dashboard and select Systems Notifications which will inform you of any critical alerts or potential issues.

3.4.1. Granting case access to users¶

Before or after a case has been shared, you can define which users can access it. By default no user can connect to a shared case. To allow users to participate in a review you can click on the Authorizations button. This will open a modal window where you can assign users to various roles.

The purpose of this view is to list the roles defined in the RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) model and indicate which users are assigned what roles in this ase. Roles are emphasised by labels with a bright green color. Underneath each role there is a long input box that lists all the users who are assigned that role in this case. Each user can be associated with zero or more roles.

To learn more about users and roles please refer to the User management section.

Assigning roles to users is quite straightforward. Click on the input box for a particular role (e.g. “Reviewer”) and start typing the desired user name (e.g. “admin” with a lowercase “a”). An autocompletion box will appear with hints about names available among your user accounts.

Removing a role for a given user is done via clicking on the little x button next to the user name.

3.4.2. Case alias¶

Case alias can optionally be changed in order to change the URL on which the case is being shared.

3.4.3. Auto-Start option¶

Case can optionally be shared with the Auto-start option enabled. The purpose of this function is to specify which cases should be automatically shared after the Intella Connect server starts. It is a good way of making sure that a certain set of cases is always available for a review, even when Intella Connect is restarted often.

If the case will fail to start, there should be a trace of this fact left in the Case Logs.

3.4.4. Memory settings¶

The Intella Connect main process and its child processes (one for each case that you share) are limited by the amount of RAM that the process can maximally use, despite how much memory is installed in the machine. In some cases this limitation can cause issues when reviewing or exporting the data. These issues can be recognized by errors in the log files containing the text “OutOfMemoryError” or “java heap space”.

Setting memory allocation manually might help in this case. To increase these thresholds, select the case in the Case Dashboard and change the “Memory allocation” setting from Auto to Manual and increase the value.

Note that you can never specify more than half of the available system RAM. This is to make sure that when more then one case is shared, those processes and the OS still have sufficient memory available to them.

When the memory issue relates to the processing of evidence files on Intella Node (you may need to contact tech support for that diagnosis), then locate the IntellaNode.l4j.ini file in Intella Node’s program files folder and open it in a text editor. You will typically need administrative privileges to edit this file. Locate the following line:

# -Dintella.serviceMaxHeap=600M

When the “#“ is removed, this instructs Intella Node to use maximally 600 MB of memory for these child processes. Remove the “#” and increase this number to the higher value suggested to you by tech support. You should never put higher value than what your machine and OS supports. For processing of EDB files, a minimum of 3 GB will be necessary, e.g.:

-Dintella.serviceMaxHeap=3G

If Intella Node is running as a Windows Service, the change of memory setting needs to be done in connect-service.bat file in Intella Node’s program files folder. Locate the following line:

set JVM_OPTIONS=-Dintella.maxExtractorServices=auto;-Dintella.logSlowRequests=true;-Dintella.runningAsService=true;

Parameter -Dintella.serviceMaxHeap needs to be added to the end of this line, for example:

set JVM_OPTIONS=-Dintella.maxExtractorServices=auto;-Dintella.logSlowRequests=true;-Dintella.runningAsService=true;-Dintella.serviceMaxHeap=3G;

After editing and saving this file, it needs to be executed in order for this change to be propagated into Windows services system. The file has the following parameters:

• the action that this script performs. It can be one of these values: install, uninstall, start, stop
• Windows user account name
• Windows user account password

An example of executing this file:

connect-service.bat uninstall

connect-service.bat install ./Administrator password