Advanced Settings
Establishing a Connection
The first time you connect, you will need to authorize the provider with Reckon. The provider makes requests to Reckon through the Remote Connector. The Remote Connector runs on the same machine as Reckon and accepts connections through a lightweight, embedded Web server. The server supports SSL/TLS, enabling users to connect securely from remote machines.
Connecting to a Local Company File
Follow the steps below to authorize with Reckon and connect to a company file when both Reckon and the provider are running on your local machine.
- Open Reckon as an administrator and open the company file you want to connect to.
- Connect to Reckon. A dialog will appear in Reckon prompting you to authorize the provider. After granting access to the provider, you can now execute commands to Reckon.
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If you want to connect to the company file when Reckon is closed, set the CompanyFile connection option when you execute commands. Reckon will open automatically in the background with the file specified.
Note that if Reckon is open through the application UI, only that CompanyFile can be used.
Using the Remote Connector
The Remote Connector can be used to read and write to Reckon in situations where direct COM access to Reckon is not available (e.g., ASP.NET, Java, or Reckon on a remote machine). Follow the procedure below to connect to Reckon for the first time through the Remote Connector:
- If you have not already done so, download the Remote Connector from remoteconnector.com and install the Remote Connector on the machine where Reckon is installed.
- Open the company file you want to connect to in Reckon using an administrator account in single-user mode.
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Open the Remote Connector from the system tray and add a user on the Users tab. Enter a User and Password and select the level of access in the Data Access menu.
Note: The Remote Connector does not use the User and Password properties to access Reckon; the User and Password properties authenticate the user to the Remote Connector. Authentication to Reckon is handled based on the ApplicationName property.
- When you first connect, a dialog will appear in Reckon prompting you to authorize the application. After authorizing the application, you can then execute commands to Reckon. Specify the URL of the Remote Connector and the User and Password. By default, the Remote Connector connects to the currently open company file.
- If you want to access Reckon when Reckon is not running, save the company file information for the user. The Remote Connector will then automatically open Reckon in the background with the company file for that user.
Note that if the Reckon UI is open, you can only connect to that company file. Additionally, note that the user permissions you run the Remote Connector under must match the user permissions you run Reckon under. The Remote Connector installation process installs the Remote Connector as a service under the current user account.
How do I Connect to Reckon over SSL/TLS?
You can enable SSL/TLS on the Advanced tab.
You will also need to send your public key certificate to the provider. You can do so by setting the SSLServerCert property.
Customizing the SSL Configuration
By default, the provider attempts to negotiate SSL/TLS by checking the server's certificate against the system's trusted certificate store. To specify another certificate, see the SSLServerCert property for the available formats to do so.
Connecting Through a Firewall or Proxy
HTTP Proxies
To connect through the Windows system proxy, you do not need to set any additional connection properties. To connect to other proxies, set ProxyAutoDetect to false.
In addition, to authenticate to an HTTP proxy, set ProxyAuthScheme, ProxyUser, and ProxyPassword, in addition to ProxyServer and ProxyPort.
Other Proxies
Set the following properties:
- To use a proxy-based firewall, set FirewallType, FirewallServer, and FirewallPort.
- To tunnel the connection, set FirewallType to TUNNEL.
- To authenticate, specify FirewallUser and FirewallPassword.
- To authenticate to a SOCKS proxy, additionally set FirewallType to SOCKS5.
Troubleshooting the Connection
To show provider activity from query execution to network traffic, use Logfile and Verbosity. The examples of common connection errors below show how to use these properties to get more context. Contact the support team for help tracing the source of an error or circumventing a performance issue.
- Authentication errors: Typically, recording a Logfile at Verbosity 4 is necessary to get full details on an authentication error.
- Queries time out: A server that takes too long to respond will exceed the provider's client-side timeout. Often, setting the Timeout property to a higher value will avoid a connection error. Another option is to disable the timeout by setting the property to 0. Setting Verbosity to 2 will show where the time is being spent.
- The certificate presented by the server cannot be validated: This error indicates that the provider cannot validate the server's certificate through the chain of trust. If you are using a self-signed certificate, there is only one certificate in the chain.
To resolve this error, you must verify yourself that the certificate can be trusted and specify to the provider that you trust the certificate. One way you can specify that you trust a certificate is to add the certificate to the trusted system store; another is to set SSLServerCert.