Install and Setup - 2021

Welcome to Grooper!

This guide will instruct you how to get up and running in Grooper.  There are three parts of installing and setting up Grooper:

1. Installing the Grooper Product Suite
2. Connecting to a Grooper Repository
3. License Activation

This article also provides guidance for upgrading an older version of Grooper to version 2021.

Installing the Grooper Product Suite

Download the InstallerRun the Setup ApplicationInstall Prerequisite ComponentsRun the Grooper InstallerVerify the Installation

Download the Installer

If you have not registered at Grooper xChange, do so by clicking the link below. https://xchange.grooper.com/entry/register Once you've registered, you will have access to the user forum, including the "Downloads and Resources" section. Follow the link below to the "Download and Resources" section. The top level topic will have download links to the most recent version of Grooper. Links to older versions are available lower in the list of topics. https://xchange.grooper.com/categories/downloads-and-resources You will also need to choose between the 64-bit installer and the 32-bit installer. The 64-bit installer is appropriate for most environments. However, if you are using ISIS or TWAIN drivers to operate a scanner, you will need to install the 32-bit version.
The installer files will download as a zipped folder. Right-click the folder and select "Extract All..."
Choose the folder location you wish to extract the files to. Press the "Extract" button.

Run the Setup Application

Open the extracted folder to reveal the installation files. Open the "setup" application.

Install Prerequisite Components

There are a few components required to be installed prior to installing the Grooper Product Suite. Most notably, this includes the Microsoft .NET Framework. The setup application will prompt you to install any necessary components if they are not already installed on the server or workstation. Press the "Install" button to install the listed items.
Press "Yes" to verify any Windows User Account Control security requirements.
The installer will install each component one by one. Each item will be listed as "Succeeded" for successfully installed programs, "Installing" for the program currently installing, "Pending" for items waiting to be installed, or "Failed" if the installation was unsuccessful.
Certain components may prompt you through an Installation Wizard to complete their installation. Follow the steps on these dialog boxes to complete their installation until you can press a "Finish" button. You may need to accept license agreements to finish these components' installations.
Note: The installer may prompt you to restart your computer. If so, click "Yes" to reboot. After rebooting, navigate to the installer folder and open the "setup" application again to finish installing Grooper.

Run the Grooper Installer

When finished installing the prerequisite items, the setup application will automatically start the Grooper installer program. Click "Next" to begin. Press the "Next" button to start the Grooper installation.
Step through the installer's instructions until you reach the following window. Press the "Finish" button to complete the Grooper Product Suite's installation.

Verify the Installation

If you installed Grooper on a machine using the Windows 10, Windows Server 2016, or Windows Server 2019 operating systems, you can find all installed Grooper applications in the Start Menu in a folder named "Grooper".
If installed on Windows Server 2012, you can search for "Grooper" and find all applications in the Grooper Product Suite listed.
Regardless, Grooper will install to the "Program Files" folder of your hard drive (unless you choose a different location during installation). You can use Windows File Explorer to locate all Grooper files using the path C:\Program Files\BIS\Grooper.

Connecting to a Grooper Repository

A Grooper Repository is the environment used to create, configure and execute objects in Grooper. It provides the framework to "do work" in Grooper.

This environment consists of two things:

1. A database connection
2. A file store connection

The database stores Grooper nodes and their property settings (such as a Content Model or a Data Type or any other Grooper object). The file store location houses content associated with these nodes (such as the image file for a Batch Page object). Grooper is the application layer that sits on top of this two parts of the environment. It allows readable and writable access and the UI to create, configure, test and process the information stored there.

Connecting to a Grooper Repository is one of the first things you will do after installing Grooper to start designing (or implementing already architected) document processing solutions. This is done with the Grooper Config application.

⚠	Grooper Config must be run as an administrator to perform most of its functionality. It performs functions that require elevated access in Windows.

Creating a New Grooper Repository

Initialize Grooper ConfigEstablish the File Store Location(Optional) Install SQL ExpressCreate a New Grooper Repository

Initialize Grooper Config

If this is your first time opening Grooper Config after installation, you will need to initialize the System Configuration. You will see the following dialog box appear. Press "Yes" to initialize.
Upon initializing the system for the first time, you will see this screen. This is a totally unconfigured Grooper Config! From here, we can create new Grooper Repositories and connect to existing Grooper Repositories accessible on your network. If starting totally from scratch, you will need to create at least one Grooper Repository.

Establish the File Store Location

Remember, a Grooper Repository is two things: A database connection A file store connection The file store simply needs to be a Windows folder you have readable and writable access to. In this case, it is a folder named "2021FileStore" in a parent folder named "GrooperFileStores" in the "Documents" folder of this server. What you name your file store and where you put it is totally up to you.
⚠ Grooper strongly recommends always using a UNC path to avoid access problems when networking your Grooper Repositories. Mapped and local drive references may not be accessible to other users or machines. The file store can be any folder you have writeable access to. However, using a fully qualified UNC path is always regarded as best practice. UNC paths can be established using the "Sharing" properties of a folder. Right-click the folder Select the "Properties" option.
In the following window, press the "Sharing" tab. If the folder is already shared, you will see the UNC path under "Network Path" The UNC naming convention for Windows paths is as follows: \\host-name\file_path If you have not shared the folder, you can do so by pressing the "Share..." button. From there you can list users or user groups who should have networked access to the folder.

Install SQL Express

⚠	This step is only applicable to stand-alone Grooper installations on a local machine. If you are using the full version of Microsoft SQL Server and it is already installed and running, you can skip this step and continue to the next tab.

Remember, a Grooper Repository is two things: A database connection A file store connection For Grooper Repositories, nodes and their property values are stored in tables in a SQL database. Node objects created in Grooper Design Studio are stored as rows in a table, with their property values in the row's columns. This can be anything from a Batch of documents, to a Batch Process used to process that Batch, to a Content Model referenced by the Batch Process to classify the documents in the Batch or any object used to execute document processing in Grooper. If you do not have a SQL environment already available, you can download and install Microsoft SQL Express directly from Grooper Config. Press the "Download SQL Express..." button. The installer files will download automatically. You will see this dialog box appear upon successful download. Press "Ok" to continue.
Next, you can install SQL Express directly from Grooper Config. Press the "Install SQL Express..." button. The following confirmation box will appear. Press "Yes" to continue installing SQL Express.
Grooper will then prompt you for a folder location to save the installed files. This defaults to a folder in the "Grooper" folder of the "BIS" folder created during installation. Press "Ok" to continue.
You will then be prompted through the SQL Express installation process.
Upon successful installation, the following dialog box will appear. You can elect to either keep the installer executable file or delete it. You don't need it anymore. You may as well delete it. Press "Yes" to delete the file.

Create a New Grooper Repository

Now that Grooper is initialized, we have a file store location, and we have an available SQL environment (either a full install of SQL Server or SQL Express) we can create a new Grooper Repository. Connecting to a Grooper Repository is the first thing you will do in Grooper Config. If you're not connecting to an existing Grooper Repository set up on someone else's Grooper installation, you'll need to create one. Select the Repositories property in Grooper Config. Press the ellipsis button at the end.
This will open up a new window to add Grooper Repository connections. Press the "Add" button to add a new connection.
Remember, a Grooper Repository is two things: A database connection A file store connection The first part of creating a new Grooper Repository is establishing the database connection. Select the Server Name property and enter the server's name running the SQL environment. For SQL Express installs, the server instance will default to the machines name followed by \GROOPER as seen here. For standard SQL Server installs, simply enter the server machine's name. Select the Database Name property and enter a name for the database. Here, we chose to name it 2021Database. Name the database whatever you would like. Press the "Test Connection" button. Since we are creating a new Grooper Repository, the database has not been created yet. A dialog box will appear informing you the database does not exist and asking you if you want to create it. Press "Yes" to create the database.
FYI By default, Grooper will use your Windows login authentication to access the SQL environment. However, if you need to access the SQL environment with different rights (for example a SQL admin login), you can do so using the Authentication properties.
Upon creating the database, you will get a message letting you know the database has not been initialized. Also note the "Status" of this Repository Connection has changed from Unknown to NotInitialized. Press "Ok" to continue. Press the "Initialize..." button.
Remember, a Grooper Repository is two things: A database connection A file store connection Initializing the Grooper Repository connects the repository to the file store location and establishes the folder structure Grooper uses to store files. Select the Storage Path property and enter the file path for the file store's folder. Press the "Execute" button to initialize the Grooper Repository. ⚠ While you can use the ellipsis button to navigate to a local file store location, it is ill-advised. Please use a fully qualified UNC path for your Grooper files store location. FYI You may also name the Grooper Repository using the Repository Name property. We named ours Grooper2021. However, you may rename your Grooper Repository at any time after it is initialized. Once initialized, you can select the Grooper Repository from the Repositories list and press the "Rename..." button to rename it.
Upon successful initialization, you will receive this confirmation window. Press the "Ok" button to continue. You will see the "Status" of the Grooper Repository change from NotInitialized to Ok. You've officially established a connection to a Grooper Repository at this point. Press the "Ok" button to finish.
This will return you to the main Grooper Config window. Press the "Save" button to finalize your Grooper Repository connection.
After licensing your Grooper installation, you will be able to access the Grooper Repository in Grooper Design Studio. The Grooper Repository forms the root node of the Node Tree when the repository is selected in Grooper Design Studio.

Connecting to an Existing Grooper Repository

Add a Repository ConnectionConfigure the Connection

Add the Repository Connection

Connecting to an existing Grooper Repository is very similar to creating a new one. If anything it's the exact same process, just with less steps. For this tutorial, we have a second machine that will connect to the Grooper Repository created in the Creating a New Grooper Repository tutorial. This machine has Grooper installed, but does not have a local SQL environment. However, it doesn't need one. As long as it has networked access to the SQL server where the Grooper Repository's database is created, as well as networked access to the Grooper Repository's file store location, it can connect to the Grooper Repository. The first steps of connecting to an existing Grooper Repository is the same as creating a new one. Select the Repositories property. Presse the ellipsis button at the end of the property to bring up the Grooper Repositories connection editor.

This will open up a new window to add Grooper Repository connections. Press the "Add" button to add a new connection.

Configure the Connection

Select the Server Name property and enter the server's name running the SQL environment. Select the Database Name property and enter the Grooper Repository's database name. Press the "Test Connection" button. In this case, the Grooper Repository has already been created from on the listed server machine. The database has already been created and it's associated file store has been initialized. Furthermore, this machine has network access to the database and file store. Therefore, a dialog box appears letting you know the connection is successful. Press "Ok" to continue.
FYI By default, Grooper will use your Windows login authentication to access the SQL server and database. However, if you need to access the SQL environment with different rights (for example a SQL admin login), you can do so using the Authentication properties.
You will see the "Status" listed as Ok indicating you have successfully connected to the Grooper Repository. Press the "OK" button to continue.
This will return you to the main Grooper Config window. Press the "Save" button to finalize your Grooper Repository connection.
After licensing your Grooper installation, you will have full access to the Grooper Repository in Grooper Design Studio. The Grooper Repository forms the root node of the Node Tree when the repository is selected in Grooper Design Studio. Any machine connecting to this Grooper Repository will have access to the objects in the repository. Each machine can create new and configure existing objects. Essentially, you have now networked access to the Grooper environment.

License Activation

The last step in the process is licensing your Grooper installation. Grooper can be licensed as "stand-alone" installations, where a single license is activated and registered to a local machine. Or, you can use a licensed installation as a server to hand out licenses to client machines. In this case, the licensed machine will run a Grooper service, called Grooper Licensing. The client Grooper installations will then call to the service to receive their licensing. This way, a single product license can be used to register multiple Grooper installations.

Regardless, at some point you will need to activate a license on a single machine, whether that machine is a stand-alone install or hosting the Grooper Licensing service. We will start with licensing Grooper to an individual machine.

Licensing Grooper to an Individual Machine

Obtain a Grooper LicenseOpen Grooper ConfigActivate the License: Online ActivationActivate the License: Offline ActivationVerify Your License

Obtain a Grooper License

First, you will need to obtain a Grooper license in order to register and activate your installation. You may receive your license in one of two ways.

1. As a license key.
   • This is by far the most common method. You will receive a serial number key you can use to activate the product online (something like "a1bc2de3-12a3-a123-a1b2345c6de7")
2. As a license package.
   • This is much less common. A license package is a ".lic" file you can use to activate the product. This is typically used for "locked down" environments where activating online is not an option.

⚠

If you are planning on installing a Grooper Licensing service to hand out licenses to other workstations, the machine activating the license must be the one to install the service. If you try to install the Grooper Licensing service on a product that has not activated a license as described in the next steps, it will fail to distribute licensing to other machines.

Open Grooper Config

License activation and management is performed in the Grooper Config application. Open Grooper Config and you will immediately see two things relating to licensing. The License property will inform you if the product has activated and registered a license. In this case, we have not registered a license yet. So, the property is blank indicating that no license was found. The "Activate License..." button. This button will navigate us to a license activation window. FYI License activation changed somewhat in Grooper version 2021. Prior to this version, license activation was performed in Grooper Design Studio. As of Grooper 2021, license activation is performed in Grooper Config.

Activate the License: Online Activation

This is the most common license activation method, activating online with a serial number key.

Press the "Activate License..." button. The "Activate License" window will appear. The default Activation Method is set to Online. Keep this set to Online Select the Serial Number property. Enter your license serial number key. Press the execute button to activate your license.
Upon successful license activation, you will see the following notification. Press the "OK" button to continue.

Offline License Activation

Offline activation allows you to license your machine using a .lic licensing file. This is a less common activation method. This is more appropriate for scenarios where your machine cannot access the internet due to security restrictions.

Press the "Activate License..." button. The "Activate License" window will appear. Change the Activation Method property from Online to Offline Select the Serial Number property. Enter your license serial number key. This will populate a URL in the Download URL property. Copy this URL.
Get to a computer with internet access. In a web browser, paste the copied URL. This will download a .lic file. You will need to copy this file to the machine you're attempting to license Grooper.
Once saved to the machine with Grooper installed, find the .lic file using the File Path property. Press the execute button to activate your license.
Upon successful license activation, you will see the following notification. Press the "OK" button to continue.

Verify Your License

After activating your license, you will see the License property change from being blank to Licensed to... followed by your company's name (or who the license is registered to).
You can also view more specific information about your license from Grooper Config. Expand the License property. This expands the property grid, displaying basic information about your license: the serial number used to activate Grooper, the licensee name, its expiration, the last time the license was reset, and more. You can expand the Licenses property to view even more specific information about your license.
Expand the Licenses property. This will expand the property grid, displaying the specifics of your product license, including licensed OCR engines, how many concurrent connections to Grooper Design Studio can be made, volume licensing, and worker thread licensing.

Installing a Grooper Licensing Service

Open Grooper ConfigAdd a New Grooper Licensing ServiceStart the Service

Open Grooper Config

Grooper Services are various executable applications that run as a Windows Service to aid Grooper. The Grooper Licensing service will allow one licensed machine to hand out licensing information to other workstations. To do this, the machine installing the service must have an installed version of Grooper that has been activated with a product key or licensing package. Refer to the previous Licensing Grooper to an Individual Machine tutorial for more information on how to activate your license. Services are installed and configured in the Grooper Config application. ⚠ You must run Grooper Config as an administrator to install, configure, start and stop services.

Add a New Service

Press the "Edit Services..." button to add a new service.
This will bring up a Service Manager window to install, configure and otherwise manage Grooper services. Press the "Install..." button. This will bring up a window to install a Grooper Service. Select Grooper Licensing Press the "OK" button to continue.
Grooper Licensing runs as a web service. Client machines will point to the host machine, port number and URL path indicated here via the Connection URL. The settings here are populated by default. However, you can edit these if necessary. You must always enter service user authentication in order for the service to run. Use the User Name and Password property to enter service user authentication. Press the "Execute" button to continue.
FYI You may also configure default service user settings on the main Grooper Config screen. If you enter authentication credentials here, you do not need to enter them when configuring the service. This can save you time when installing and configuring multiple services.

Start the Service

Upon pressing the "Execute" button, a new Grooper Licensing server is added to the list of services. However, notice its Status is listed as Stopped Also, the icon next to the item is red.
We need to start the service in order for this machine to start hosting license distribution. Select the service you wish to start. Press the "Start" button.
Upon successfully starting the service, you will see the Status change to Running The icon next to the item will also change from red to green. Now, this machine can use this Grooper Licensing service to hand out licensing information to workstations. We will discuss how to configure workstations to do this in the next tutorial.

Licensing Grooper from an Active Grooper Licensing Service

Imagine you have a second workstation from the machine you've already licensed. Opening Grooper Design Studio for the first time on the second workstation, you will see this error message. It's letting you know the product is not yet licensed. No big deal. That's what the Grooper Licensing service is for! The first machine already running a licensed version of Grooper can create a Grooper Licensing service to hand out licenses to the second workstation (or multiple workstations). Refer to the previous Installing a Grooper Licensing Service for information on how to set up the Grooper Licensing service.

Copy the Connection URLOpen Grooper Design Studio on the Unlicensed MachinePoint to the License Server

Copy the Connection URL

The first thing you will need is the Connection URL from the Grooper Licensing service. From the machine running the Grooper Licensing service, open Grooper Config. Press the "Edit Services..." button.
This will bring up the "Service Manager" window. Select the running Grooper Licensing service. Press the "Edit..." button. Note: We won't actually edit the service. We're just doing this to find the Connection URL needed to license the unlicensed workstation.
In this window, copy the Connection URL listed here. You can close out of this window and Grooper Config at this point.

Open Grooper Design Studio on the Unlicensed Machine

Open Grooper Design Studio on the Unlicensed Machine. This machine will also either need to connect to existing Grooper Repository or have a new one created from Grooper Config at this point. Press "OK" to continue.
Select the root node of the Grooper Repository's Node Tree. We will use the License Server URL property to point to the Grooper Licensing service running on the other machine using the Connection URL' we copied earlier.

Point to the License Sever

Select the License Server URL property. Paste the copied URL from the Grooper Licensing service. Note: You can also simply type in the URL. Press the "Save" button.
That's it! This machine is licensed now, using the product license distributed by the Grooper License service. You can verify the product is licensed by navigating to the "Licensing" tab. You can also view specifics about the product license here, as well.

Upgrading an Older Version of Grooper

Upgrading to 2021 is now easier than ever. You can upgrade directly from version 2.72, 2.80 or 2.90 to version 2021 (For upgrading from versions older than 2.72, you must upgrade to 2.72 before upgrading to 2021).

The upgrade process is essentially three steps:

1. Uninstall the older version of Grooper.
2. Install Grooper 2021.
3. Upgrade Grooper Repositories from the older version to 2021.

Depending on your Grooper install, your upgrade process may be slightly more involved. If you are running scripts in your environment to customize Grooper's functionality, you may need to update the associated Object Libraries code. However, these three basic steps will apply to all upgrades.

How To

Perform a Simple Upgrade

⚠

You should always perform a complete backup of your Grooper Repository's file store and database before upgrading to any newer Grooper version. If, for whatever reason, something goes wrong during the upgrade process and your file store and/or database is corrupted, you could loose critical components, such as your Batch Processes, Content Models, or document files for any Test or Production Batches. Performing a backup will ensure you have something to revert to in the rare cases where the upgrade does improperly overwrite existing database values or files in your file store.

FYI	If you are upgrading from version 2.72, 2.80 or 2.90 to 2021, you may upgrade directly to version 2021. However, if you are upgrading from version 2.70 (or older) to 2021, you must first upgrade to version 2.72, and then upgrade to version 2021.

Before You BeginStep 1: Uninstall GrooperStep 2: Install the New Grooper VersionStep 3: Upgrade Grooper Repositories

Starting Point

In this tutorial, we will upgrade a version 2.80 Grooper installation to version 2021.

Currently, Grooper version 2.80 is installed on this machine. As seen here, in Grooper Config, we have two Grooper Repository connections: one named "Grooper" and the other "Grooper280". The Grooper Repository named "Grooper" is a networked repository which has already been upgraded to the newest version of Grooper. The Status column indicates this by listing "Newer Version". We will not be able to connect to this Grooper Repository in Grooper Design Studio or Grooper Dashboard until this machine installs the newest Grooper version in "Step 2" of this tutorial. The Grooper Repository named "Grooper280" is a networked repository which has not been upgraded yet. Since this repository's version matches the version of Grooper installed on this machine its Status is listed as "Ok". In "Step 3" of this tutorial, we will upgrade this Grooper Repository's database to the newest Grooper version, thus upgrading all its objects (Batch Processes, Content Models, etc).

⚠

You should always perform a complete backup of your Grooper Repository's file store and database before upgrading to any newer Grooper version. If, for whatever reason, something goes wrong during the upgrade process and your file store and/or database is corrupted, you could loose critical components, such as your Batch Processes, Content Models, or document files for any Test or Production Batches. Performing a backup will ensure you have something to revert to in the rare cases where the upgrade does improperly overwrite existing database values or files in your file store.

Validate Your Grooper Repository

While not strictly necessary, the Grooper developers strongly encourage you perform validation on your Grooper Repository before upgrading from and older version to a newer version of Grooper. Improperly configured nodes can cause unexpected issues during upgrade. Validating your repository helps catch these configuration issues to avoid configuration related problems when upgrading the objects in your existing repository to the newer versions of those objects.

For example, a Data Type extractor object whose Collation property is set to Key-Value Pair must have a Layout specification as part of its configuration. If this is left unconfigured, validation will catch the configuration error. The Data Type selected in the Node Tree here does not have a Layout enabled.
To validate your Grooper Repository and catch configuration errors like the one described above perform the following steps: In Grooper Design Studio, select the root of the repository's Node Tree in the Tree View window.
Select "Tools" from the toolbar. Select "Validate Branch..." This will bring up the "Validate Branch" window. Press the "Validate" button. Grooper will check every object in your repository for any property configuration errors. Any object with configuration errors will be listed here. By choosing the validate the root, you validate all descendent branches. In other words, the whole repo. You may select any object in the list and press the "Go To Item" button to go to that object and resolve the configuration error, if you so choose.

Click Me to Return to the Top

Step 0: Back up your Database and File Store

⚠

You should always perform a complete backup of your Grooper Repository's file store and database before upgrading to any newer Grooper version. If, for whatever reason, something goes wrong during the upgrade process and your file store and/or database is corrupted, you could loose critical components, such as your Batch Processes, Content Models, or document files for any Test or Production Batches. Performing a backup will ensure you have something to revert to in the rare cases where the upgrade does improperly overwrite existing database values or files in your file store.

Step 1: Uninstall the Current Version of Grooper

The first thing you need to do is uninstall the current version of Grooper before installing the new version. This can be done in a number of ways, such as uninstalling from the Windows Control Panel. Access a list of your currently installed programs by traversing the following path in Control Panel Control Panel\Programs\Programs and Features Select Grooper from the program list. Press the "Uninstall" button. If it appears, confirm you want to uninstall on the subsequent dialog box. Reboot your computer after the program finishes uninstalling. You should get a notification a reboot is required to complete the setup like the one seen here.

Step 2: Install the New Grooper Version

If you have not done so, you will need to download the current installer file from Grooper xChange. Zip archives containing the installer files can be found in the "Downloads and Resources" section, linked bellow https://https://xchange.grooper.com/categories/downloads-and-resources Once downloaded, unzip the installer file, open the "Setup" executable file and follow the onscreen instructions to install the current Grooper version. If you need more help, you can find the full Grooper installation instructions by following the link below: Install and Setup - 2021#Installing the Grooper Product Suite

Step 3: Upgrade Grooper Repositories from Grooper Config

After the installer has finished running, open Grooper Config to upgrade the older versioned Grooper Repositories to the newly installed version.

FYI

Major versions of Grooper change the Grooper Database in meaningful ways. These changes to the database must be reflected by upgrading the Grooper Repository. For major version upgrades (For example, 2.80 to 2021), all Grooper Repositories configured on an older version must be upgraded in order to connect to them in Grooper Design Studio or Grooper Dashboard. For minor version upgrades (For example, 2.90.0001 to 2.90.0002) you do not need to upgrade each Grooper Repository. No major changes are made to the Grooper Database, and you can skip this step. However, you should still always uninstall the old version of Grooper before installing the new version, even when upgrading to a new minor version.

Upon upgrading from a version older than 2021 to version 2021, the first thing you'll probably notice is the Grooper Config application's UI has changed. Previously, Grooper Repository connections were listed in a grid upon opening the Grooper Config application. Now, Grooper Repository connections are accessed using the Repositories property. We will need to get into the Repositories configuration window to upgrade the older versioned Grooper Repository to the newly installed version. Select the Repositories' property. Press the ellipsis button at the end of the property.
Notice two things about our Grooper Repositories here: The repository named "Grooper" now matches the current version (2021). It's Status is listed as "Ok". Any Grooper Repository whose version matches the currently installed version of Grooper will have a Status of "Ok". This means we can now connect to this repository in Grooper Design Studio. Whereas, before upgrading, we couldn't. The repository named "Grooper280" is still on the older version (2.80) and needs to be upgraded. Its Status is listed as "NeedsUpgrade" Any Grooper Repository whose version is older than the currently installed version of Grooper will have a Status of "NeedsUpgrade". Before we can connect to this repository in Grooper Design Studio, we need to upgrade the repository, upgrading the Grooper database to the current version (and therefore upgrading all the objects in the Grooper Repository to the current version).
To upgrade a Grooper Repository, select the repository that needs upgrading. Press the "Upgrade..." button in the upper toolbar. An "Upgrade" window will appear. Press the "Execute" button to confirm the upgrade.
You will be prompted to execute a Version Upgrader. In instances where you are upgrading multiple versions of Grooper (i.e. 2.80 to 2021) you must run each Version Upgrader sequentially. For example, in our case, we had to execute the Version 2.80 to 2.90 Upgrader, followed by the Version 2.90 to 21.0 Upgrader.
After the upgrade is complete, press the "Test Connection.." button to ensure you're now property connected to the upgraded database. If successful you will see the following message window. Press Ok. You will see the upgraded Grooper Repository's Status change from "NeedsUpgrade" to "Ok". Press the "Ok" button to exit the Repositories window.
Congratulations! You've upgraded Grooper. Don't forget to press the "Save" button in the main screen of Grooper Config. ⚠ IMPORTANT - If present, make sure you compile all Object Libraries after the upgrade. IMPORTANT - The devs also strongly recommend that you perform validation on your repository after upgrading. Object Libraries should be compiled before validating your repository to ensure best results.