3.1  Administration Console — the main window

The WinRoute administration dialog window (“administration window”) will be opened upon a successful login to the WinRoute Firewall Engine through the Administration Console. This window is divided into two parts:

The main window of Administration Console for WinRoute

Figure 3.1. The main window of Administration Console for WinRoute


Administration Window — Main menu

The main menu provides the following options:

File
  • Reconnect — reconnection to the WinRoute Firewall Engine after a connection drop-out (caused for example by a restart of the Engine or by a network error).

  • New connection — opens the main window of the Administration Console. Use a bookmark or the login dialog to connect to a server.

    This option can be useful when the console will be used for administration of multiple server applications (e.g. WinRoute at multiple servers). For details, refer to the Help section in the Administration Console manual.

    Note: The New Connection option opens the same dialog as running the Administration Console from the Start menu.

  • Quit — this option terminates the session (users are logged out of the server and the administration window is closed). The same effect can be obtained by clicking the little cross in the upper right corner of the window or pressing Alt+F4 or Ctrl+Q.

Edit

Options under Edit are related to product registration and licensing. The options available in the menu depend on the registration status (for example, if the product is registered as a trial version, it is possible to use options of registration of a purchased license or a change of registration data).

  • Copy license number to clipboard — copies the license number (the ID licence item) to the clipboard. This may be helpful e.g. when ordering an upgrade or subscription, where the number of the base license is required, or when sending an issue to the Kerio Technologies technical support.

  • Register trial version — registration of the product's trial version.

  • Register product — registration of a product with a purchased license number.

  • Install license — use this option to import your license key file (for details, see chapter 4.4  Product registration at the website).

Help menu
  • Show Server's Identity — this option provides information about the firewall which the Administration Console is currently connected to (name or IP address of the server, port and SSL-certificate fingerprint). This information can be used for authentication of the firewall when connecting to the administration from another host (see Kerio Administration Console — Help).

  • Administrator's guide — this option displays the administrator's guide in HTML Help format. For details about help files, see Kerio Administration Console — Help manual.

  • About — this page provides information about current version of the application (WinRoute's administration module in this case), a link to our company's website, etc.

Status bar

The status bar at the bottom of the administration window displays the following information (from left to right):

Administration Console status bar

Figure 3.2. Administration Console status bar


  • The section of the administration window currently selected in the left column. This information facilitates navigation in the administration window when any part of the section tree is not visible (e.g. when a lower screen resolution is selected).

  • Name or IP address of the server and port of the server application (WinRoute uses port 44333).

  • Name of the user logged in as administrator.

  • Current state of the Administration Console: Ready (waiting for user's response), Loading (retrieving data from the server) or Saving (saving changes to the server).

Detection of WinRoute Firewall Engine connection drop-out

Administration Console is able to detect the connection failure automatically. The failure is usually detected upon an attempt to read/write the data from/to the server (i.e. when the Apply button is pressed or when a user switches to a different section of Administration Console). In such case, a connection failure dialog box appears where the connection can be restored.

After you remove the cause of the connection failure, the connection can be restored. Administration Console provides the following options:

  • Apply & Reconnect — connection to the server will be recovered and all changes done in the current section of the Administration Console before the disconnection will be saved,

  • Reconnect — connection to the server will be recovered without saving any changes performed in the particular section of the console before the disconnection.

If the reconnection attempt fails, only the error message is shown. You can then try to reconnect using the File → Restore connection option from the main menu, or close the window and restore the connection using the standard procedure.

Note: After a connection failure, the Web Administration interface is redirected and opened at the login page automatically. Any unsaved changes will get lost.