Introduction

This will show you how to install CluedIn on your local machine by running it inside Docker. CluedIn is an application with many services, so you will need to ensure you have adequate resources on the machine you intend to run it on.

Requirements

• At least 16Gb of free memory (It is preferable to run on a machine with 32Gb of RAM)
• Latest version of Docker for your operating system (Engine: > 19.03)
• Powershell 7 for your operating system - This is to run helper scripts
• Access to the private repositories inside the cluedin DockerHub organization. You will require a Docker Hub account and request access from CluedIn; then use this account to do a docker login. NOTE: Only CluedIn certified developers have access to the CluedIn DockerHub. Please contact us on our website if you would like access.

Running CluedIn

First time preparation

CluedIn provides a helper script to streamline the process of getting started.

1. Clone the helper script from the CluedIn Home repo

    git clone https://github.com/CluedIn-io/Home
   

2. Open a powershell console on Windows - ( or pwsh on Mac & Linux ) and run:

    ./cluedin.ps1 check
   

   This will check a few things:

   • That you have the needed software installed
   • That you have the ports needed to run CluedIn available
   • That you have logged into docker hub

   If all these checks are green you are ready to proceed. If ports are in use then you may need to stop any programs locally that may be using them and re-run check again.

3. Pull the latest cluedin images to your local machine

    ./cluedin.ps1 pull
   

   You can use this command to refresh/update any images at a later date.

Starting the application

To start up the application use:

./cluedin.ps1 up

This will start up the various containers in Docker and begin initializing CluedIn for the first time.

Checking application status

Depending on the speed of the machine it is being installed onto CluedIn can take a moment to start up.

You can check the status of this by using:

./cluedin.ps1 status

CluedIn is ready when all the status checks are green.

Open your browser and CluedIn will be available under http://app.127.0.0.1.xip.io:9080.

Creating an organization

In order to use CluedIn you need to create an organization. You can use the following command to create an account from the command line

./cluedin.ps1 createorg -name foobar -pass Foobar23!

Stopping the application

There are two ways to stop the application:

Stopping (without deletion of data)

To stop CluedIn but to preserve the data you created while running, use:

./cluedin.ps1 stop

To start CluedIn back up again, you can simply use up or :

./cluedin.ps1 start

Stopping (with removal/reset of data)

To completely remove CluedIn and all of the associated data use:

./cluedin.ps1 down

This is a destructive action but it is useful for resetting data in CluedIn.

Increasing the log output

The environment is configured for Production level logging by default. You can increase the amount of information produced by switching to Development before using up to start CluedIn.

The following will update the environment for Development level logging. It will persist for all future runs of CluedIn:

./cluedin.ps1 env -set CLUEDIN_ENVIRONMENT=Development

Adding extra components

You can add extra providers or enrichers in two different ways:

1. Via Nuget packages
   1. Add a a file named Packages.txt in the ./components folder with the names of the nuget packages for the components you want to install.
   2. If the Nuget packages are not available publicly add a nuget.config file in the ./components folder. Either pass the password token to the nuget.config or create a KEY environment variable with it.
2. Copy the relevant DLLs for the components in the ./components/ServerComponent folder.

You will also need to load in the deps.json files that are compiled in your C# projects.

If you are wanting to debug your additions locally then you will also want to copy in the .PDB files.