teamplify 0.1.8

Teamplify on-premise runner

Teamplify runner

• About
• System requirements
• Install on Linux
• Install on Mac OS X
• Configuration
• Configuration file locations
• Starting and stopping the service
• Updates
• Backup and restore
• Maintenance script
• Troubleshooting
• License

About

Teamplify is a personal assistant for your development team that helps you track work progress and notify your team about situations that may require their attention. It is available in two options: in the cloud or as an on-premise installation. This package is the installer and runner for the on-premise version.

System requirements

Teamplify was designed to run on Linux. It should also work if you wish to deploy it on Mac OS X for demonstration purposes. Windows is not supported. Before you proceed to the installation, please make sure that your system has the following components installed:

• Docker version 1.13 and above;
• Python 3.4 and above.

You can check to see if the required versions are installed with the following commands (shown with example output):

$ docker -v
Docker version 18.06.1-ce, build e68fc7a215d7133c34aa18e3b72b4a21fd0c6136
$ python3 --version
Python 3.7.2

In terms of hardware, we recommend 4GB of RAM, 2 CPU cores and 30 GB of disk space (SSD is strongly recommended) as a default server configuration. For most small-to-medium organizations (up to a few dozen people), this should be enough. Larger workloads, however, may need more resources. The recommended strategy is to start with the default server configuration and scale up or down depending on the workload.

Install on Linux

Install the latest version of Teamplify runner with pip:

$ pip3 install -U teamplify

Install on Mac OS X

For Mac OS X, we recommend installing Teamplify into a Python virtual environment located in your home directory. This is because Teamplify needs to mount its configuration files into Docker containers, and on Mac OS X only the /Users folder is shared with Docker by default.

Create a new Python virtual environment for Teamplify in your home directory:

$ python3 -m venv ~/.venv/teamplify

Activate it:

$ source ~/.venv/teamplify/bin/activate

At this point, a pip command will be linked to the virtual environment that you just created. Install Teamplify runner with pip:

$ pip install teamplify

Configuration

Teamplify requires a configuration file to run. You can create an initial configuration file with the following command:

$ teamplify configure

This will create a configuration file with default settings in your home directory: ~/.teamplify.ini. Now, please use your favorite text editor to adjust the contents of this file. You need to specify product_key in the [main] section and host and port in the [web] section. Other parameters are optional and can keep their default values.

All configuration options explained:

[main]

• product_key - the product key of your installation. This is required. Please email us at [e-mail] to get the product key;

• update_channel - the application distribution channel to use. Can be set to stable or latest. The default setting is stable (recommended for most users). With the stable channel, you should expect a few updates per month. Updates in the latest channel are more frequent and contain all of the latest features and bug-fixes. However, they also have a higher chance of introducing new bugs. Please note that Teamplify doesn't update itself automatically unless you've explicitly configured it to do so. See the Updates and Maintenance script sections below;

• send_crash_reports - possible values are yes and no, defaults to yes. When set to yes the system will automatically send application crash reports to our team. We recommend keeping this option enabled as it helps us to detect bugs faster and ship fixes for them more quickly;

[web]

• host - domain name on which Teamplify web interface will be running. It must be created in advance and pointing to the server on which you have installed Teamplify;
• port - port on which Teamplify web interface will be running, the default is 80. If use_ssl is set to yes then 80 is the only allowed option;
• use_ssl - possible values are yes and no, defaults to no. When set to yes all traffic to Teamplify server will be redirected to HTTPS on port 443. Teamplify runner will use Let's Encrypt to automatically generate and renew SSL certificates for the domain that you specified in host parameter above;

[db]

• host - defaults to builtin_db, which means using the DB instance that is shipped with Teamplify. You can also switch to an external MySQL 5.7 compatible database by providing its hostname instead of builtin_db and specifying other DB connection parameters below;
• name - the database name to use. Must be teamplify if builtin_db is used;
• port - the database port. Must be 3306 for builtin_db;
• user - DB user. Must be root for builtin_db;
• password - DB password. Must be teamplify for builtin_db;
• backup_mount - a path to a directory on the server which will be mounted into the built-in DB instance container. It is used as a temporary directory in the process of making and restoring backups;

[email]

• address_from - email address used by Teamplify in the FROM field of its email messages. It could be either a plain email address or an email address with a display name, like this: Teamplify <[e-mail]>;
• smtp_host - hostname of an SMTP server used to send emails. Defaults to builtin_smtp which means using the SMTP server that is shipped with Teamplify. Built-in SMTP for Teamplify is based on Postfix, and it is production-ready. However, if you plan to use it, we strongly recommend that you add the address of Teamplify's server to the SPF record of the domain used in the address_from setting to prevent Teamplify emails from being marked as spam. Or, you can configure Teamplify to use an external SMTP server by providing its hostname instead of builtin_smtp and configuring other SMTP connection settings below;
• smtp_protocol - SMTP protocol to use. Can be plain, ssl, or tls. Must be plain if you use builtin_smtp;
• smtp_port - SMTP port to use. Must be 25 for builtin_smtp;
• smtp_user - username for the SMTP server. Must be blank for builtin_smtp;
• smtp_password - password for the SMTP server. Must be blank for builtin_smtp;

[crypto]

• signing_key - the random secret string used by Teamplify for signing cookies and generating CSRF protection tokens. It is automatically generated when you run teamplify configure, and typically you don't need to change it unless you think that it may be compromised. In such cases, replace it with another 50-character random string made of Latin characters and numbers (please note that this will force all existing users to log in to the system again).

Configuration file locations

When you run teamplify configure, it will create a configuration file at ~/.teamplify.ini. However, this is not the only possible location. Teamplify will search the following locations (listed in the order of their priority, from highest to lowest):

1. The location specified in the --config parameter in the command line. Example:

   $ teamplify --config /path/to/configuration/file start
   

2. An environment variable named TEAMPLIFY_CONF. Example:

   $ TEAMPLIFY_CONF=/path/to/configuration/file teamplify start
   

3. In the home directory of the current user: ~/.teamplify.ini;

4. At /etc/teamplify/teamplify.ini.

Starting and stopping the service

After you have created the configuration file, start Teamplify with:

$ teamplify start

During the first run, it may take a while before the application starts since it will have to download and configure a bunch of Docker images. Wait for the command to complete and open Teamplify in your browser using the host and the port that you provided in the [web] section of the configuration. After starting the service, it may take a minute or two before it finally comes online. If you have problems starting Teamplify, please see the Troubleshooting section below.

If you need to stop Teamplify, run:

$ teamplify stop

There's also a convenient command to stop the service and start it again. It could be useful for applying changes made to the configuration:

$ teamplify restart

Updates

Teamplify installation consists of the Teamplify runner and the Teamplify product itself, which is shipped in the form of Docker images. We recommend that you use the most recent version to keep up with the latest features and bugfixes. The update process consists of two steps:

1. Update Teamplify runner:

   $ pip3 install -U teamplify
   

2. Update Teamplify itself:

   $ teamplify update
   

The latter command will automatically detect if a new version has been downloaded and will restart the service if necessary. A service restart causes a short downtime, so ideally updates should be made in periods of low user activity. The update command restarts the service only when necessary. If no update has been downloaded, there will be no restart and therefore no service interruption.

Backup and restore

Teamplify stores your data in MySQL database. As with any other database, it might be a good idea to make backups from time to time to ensure that the data is not lost in case of a system crash.

To back up the built-in Teamplify database, run:

$ teamplify backup [optional-backup-file-or-directory]

If launched without parameters, it will make a gzipped backup of the DB and store it in the current working directory under a name in the format teamplify_<current-date>.sql.gz, for example, teamplify_2019-01-31_06-58-57.sql.gz. You have the option of specifying a directory or path to the file where you'd like to save your backup.

To restore the built-in Teamplify database from a gzipped backup, run:

$ teamplify restore <path-to-a-backup-file>

Please note that the commands above will work with only a built-in database. If you're running Teamplify with an external database, you'll need to use other tools for backups or restores that connect to that database directly.

Maintenance script

Backing up the data and keeping the software up-to-date are routine operations and we recommend automating these processes. Below is a sample script you can use to do so.

Create a file named teamplify-maintenance.sh with the following contents:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Backups directory:
BACKUP_LOCATION=/backups/teamplify/

# How many days should we store the backups for:
BACKUP_STORE_DAYS=14

# Back up Teamplify DB and update Teamplify:
mkdir -p $BACKUP_LOCATION && \
    pip3 install -U teamplify && \
    teamplify backup $BACKUP_LOCATION && \
    teamplify update

# If the update was successful, clean up old backups:
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  find $BACKUP_LOCATION -type f -mmin +$((60 * 24 * $BACKUP_STORE_DAYS)) \
      -name 'teamplify_*.sql.gz' -execdir rm -- '{}' \;
fi


# The final step is optional but recommended. Add your code so that would 
# sync contents of $BACKUP_LOCATION to a physically remote location.
#
#   ... add your backups sync code below:

In the code above, please adjust the path for BACKUP_LOCATION and the value for BACKUP_STORE_DAYS as necessary. At the end of the script, you can add your own code that would sync your backups to a remote location. This is an optional but highly recommended precaution that would help you to recover your backup in the case of a disaster. For example, you can use aws s3 sync to upload the backups to AWS S3.

When the maintenance script is ready, make it executable with chmod +x teamplify-maintenance.sh and set it as a cron job to run daily. Open the crontab schedule:

$ crontab -e

Append the following entry (remember to replace the path to the script):

0 3 * * * /path/to/the/script/teamplify-maintenance.sh

In the example above, it is scheduled to run daily at 3 AM. See cron syntax for a detailed explanation. When ready, save and close the file.

Troubleshooting

So what could possibly go wrong?

Teamplify won't start

Please check the following:

• The service won't start if the configuration file is missing or contains errors. In such cases, the teamplify start command will report a problem. Please inspect its output;

• There could be a problem with the domain name configuration. If the teamplify start command has completed successfully, you should see Teamplify's interface in the browser when you open an address specified in host and port parameters in the [web] section of the Configuration. If that doesn't happen, i.e. if browser says that it can't find the server or the server is not responding, then most likely this is a problem with either the domain name or firewall configuration. Please make sure that the domain exists and points to Teamplify server, and that the port is open in the firewall;

• If you see the "Teamplify is starting" message, you should give it a minute or two to come online. If nothing happens after a few minutes, there could be a problem during application start. Application logs may contain additional information:

  $ docker logs teamplify_app
  

  Please let us know about the problem and attach the output from the command above. You can either open an issue on Github, or contact us at [e-mail], or use the live chat on teamplify.com.

Email delivery issues

Emails can go to spam or sometimes aren't delivered at all. If you're running a demo version of Teamplify on your desktop at home, this is very likely to happen, since IPs of home internet providers have a large chance of being blacklisted in spam databases. We recommend that you try the following:

• If you're going to use the built-in SMTP server, consider running Teamplify on a server hosted in a data center or at your office, but not at home. Next, please make sure that you've added the IP of Teamplify server to the SPF record of the domain used in address_from setting in the configuration file;

• Some email providers, for example, Google Mail, explicitly reject emails sent from blacklisted IPs. It might be helpful to examine SMTP server logs to see if that's what's happening:

  $ docker logs teamplify_smtp
  

• Alternatively, if you have another SMTP server that is already configured and can reliably send emails, you can configure Teamplify to use this server instead of the built-in SMTP. See [email] section in Configuration for details;

The connection is refused or not trusted in SSL-enabled mode

During the first start, Teamplify runner generates a temporary self-issued SSL certificate (not trusted) and then tries to create a valid certificate for your domain via Let's Encrypt that would replace the temporary one. Besides that, it also creates a new set of 2048-bit DH parameters to give your SSL configuration an A+ rating. This process is rather slow and may take a few minutes to complete. If you open Teamplify in your browser and see that the SSL connection can't be established or is not trusted, the problem may be caused by DH params or the SSL certificate generations that are still in progress. After DH params and the SSL certificate have been successfully generated, they are saved for future use and subsequent restarts of the server should be much faster.

If you have just started the server for the very first time, please give it a few minutes to complete the initialization and then refresh the page in your browser. If after a few minutes the browser reports that the connection is not trusted, it probably means that the certificate generation has failed. Please check the following:

1. That the domain that you specified in the host parameter can be resolved from the public Internet and is pointing to the server on which you have installed Teamplify;
2. That ports 80 and 443 are not blocked in the firewall.

It also might be helpful to check the logs:

$ docker logs teamplify_letsencrypt

Other

For any issue with Teamplify, we recommend that you try to check for updates first. We release updates frequently. It's quite possible that the problem that you encountered is already addressed in a newer version.

If the suggested solutions above don't work, please don't hesitate to open an issue on Github or contact us at [e-mail]. You can also use the live chat on teamplify.com. We're ready to help!

License

Teamplify runner is available under the MIT license. Please note that the MIT license applies to Teamplify runner only, but not to the main Teamplify product. Some Docker images downloaded by Teamplify runner will contain a proprietary code that is not open source and is distributed under its own terms and conditions.