Grooper on Azure Marketplace
Want to get started using Grooper without setting up a bunch of infrastructure on your own? Check out Grooper on the Azure Marketplace!
- Create a Grooper VM with everything already installed and ready to go.
- Users can choose a 60 day free trial or bring their own license key.
- The Grooper VM comes with several example Grooper Projects and Batches to explore.
Getting Started: Create a Grooper VM from Azure Marketplace
This tutorial assumes you already have an Azure account and capabilities to create resources, such as virtual machines.
- Go to the Microsoft Azure portal (portal.azure.com)
- Search for "Marketplace".
- Search the Marketplace for "Grooper".
- Select "Grooper".
- Using the "Subscription" dropdown, select the Azure subscription you wish to use to create the VM.
- Using the "Plan" dropdown choose one of the following:
- 60-Day Free Trial: Choose this if you do not have a Grooper license key and simply wish to evaluate the product for a trial period.
- BYOL: Choose this if you want to "bring your own license". If you already have a Grooper license key, you can enter it into the root of the Grooper Repository (We'll show you how in subsequent steps).
- Press the "Create" button to start configuring the VM.
- Select or create a new resource group for the VM.
- Configure the "Instance details" as needed.
- You must enter a name for the VM in the "Virtual machine name" field.
- The "Image" field will be preselected based on the plan selected in step 6. Do not adjust this. Doing so will install a different VM without Grooper pre-installed.
- The "Size" field will determine the VM's processing power and memory. We recommend at least the default "Standard_B8ms" which has 8vcpus and 32 GB memory. Prices for these VMs are set by Azure.
- Under "Administrator account" set logon credentials for the VM's admin.
- Press "Next: Disks" to continue.
- Configure disk settings as needed and select "Next: Networking" to continue.
- Configure networking settings as needed and select "Next: Management" to continue.
- Configure management settings as needed and select "Next: Monitoring" to continue.
- Configure monitoring settings as needed and select "Next: Advanced" to continue.
- Configure advanced settings as needed and select "Next: Tags" to continue.
- Add resource tags if desired and select "Next: Review + create" to continue.
- Review the VM's configuration and press "Create" to create it.
- It will take some time for Azure to deploy the VM. Azure will inform you of its progress as it is created.
- When the deployment is complete, you can select the "Go to resource" button to navigate to the VM.
- From the VM's "Overview" panel, you can start, stop and restart the VM.
- Go to the "Connect" panel to connect to the VM via RDP.
- Press the "Download RDP file" button to download an RDP file.
- Open the downloaded RDP file to connect to the VM.
- Enter the admin credentials to login.
- Once logged in, you can imeidiately open the Grooper app.
- Open Microsoft Edge.
- Go to <code>https://localhost/Grooper to open Grooper.
What comes on the Grooper VM?
Everything needed to give Grooper a test run already comes installed and configured. This includes:
- Grooper
- Grooper Web Client
- SQL Express (needed to host the Grooper Repository's database)
- Internet Information Services (needed to host the Grooper web app)
- A Grooper Repository
- Demo Grooper Projects and Batches
If you're new to Grooper, you need to know about the main navigation pages:
- Home - The landing page for a Grooper install. Users can review recent entries in the Grooper Repository's log and navigate to other pages from here.
- Design - Provides a comprehensive user interface for developing, configuring, and testing Grooper Projects and other configuration nodes (Content Models, Data Models, Batch Processes, etc) in a Grooper Repository.
- Batches - Provides a user interface for managing Batches (the primary container for documents in Grooper) actively being processed in production. Users can pause Batch processing, resume processing, reset steps, update a Batch's Batch Process. open paused Batches to inspect its contents, and execute ready Review tasks.
- Tasks - Provides a user interface for filtering and performing Review tasks. This is more streamlined than the Batches page. It is well suited for end-users who just execute Review tasks in bulk.
- Imports - Provides a user interface to manage importing files into new Grooper Batches. Files are importing by setting up "Import Jobs". Users can create ad-hoc Import Jobs from the Imports page and manage Import Jobs automated by Import Watcher services.
- Jobs - Provides a user interface for viewing, filtering, and managing Processing Jobs in the Grooper Repository. Processing Jobs are created by Activity Processing services whenever Batch content runs through a Batch Process. As each Batch Process Step is executed, a Processing Job is created. The Processing Job executes the Activity assigned to the step with a set of tasks for all items in scope (either the Batch, Batch Folders at a set level, or Batch Pages).
- Stats - Provides a user interface for managing and viewing saved Stats Queries. This allows users to view session statistics for Batches and their processing history.
- Search - (Enabled after adding AI Search to the Grooper Repository) Provides a user interface for searching documents in a Grooper Repository. Documents must be added to an AI Search index before they can be searched.
- Chat - (Enabled after adding an LLM Connector to the Grooper Repository) Allows users to chat with AI Assistants from the Grooper UI. Users can select AI Assists, start chat sessions with them, continue existing chat sessions and view documents linked in footnotes in a Document Viewer.