Using Mosaic with a Proxy Server

For customers with Mosaic installed on your servers, you may find that help topics or Mosaic alerts are not displayed.  This can be due to a misconfiguration of your “External Help Url” or your “Notification URL” or you may have a proxy server in place at your organization.

Solution

Under Administration | Maintenance –> Mosaic Settings, locate the “Mosaic Application Configuration” section.

If the “External Help Url” or “Notification URL” settings do not appear, click “add/remove settings” and add them by clicking their checkboxes.

The correct setting for “External Help Url” is:

http://www.virtualchemistry.com/MosaicHelp/MosaicHelpHandler.aspx

The correct setting for “Notification URL” is:

http://www.virtualchemistry.com/MosaicHelp/SaasAlerts/alerts.aspx

If Help and Alerts still do not work, your Mosaic server may communicate through a proxy server. You’ll need to obtain the address and port of your proxy server. Place an entry similar to the following into the <configuration/> element of the web.config file for your Mosaic web.

<system.net>
  <defaultProxy>
    <proxy
      proxyaddress=http://proxy.company.com:8080
      bypassonlocal="true"
    />
  </defaultProxy>
</system.net>

Recovering your “mosaic” password

The following topic applies to customers with Mosaic installed on your own servers

To recover access via “mosaic” you need to modify the vci.config.xml file (in the “config” folder) for the relevant Mosaic web.

Locate the "Vci.Mosaic.Authentication.Mode" key and make a note of the current value.

Then change the value to “Maintenance” as shown:

<add key="Vci.Mosaic.Authentication.Mode" value="Maintenance" />

You can now login from a browser on the server itself as “mosaic” with no password. You must be on the web server to do this.

Once logged in, change the “mosaic” password via the options link (upper right). You can also go to Administration | Security -> Personnel and right-click on the row for the “mosaic” user to set the password.

When you are done, restore your vci.config.xml to its original state.

Updating Mosaic

For customers with Mosaic installed on your own servers, there are four components of installing an update.

1. Update the Mosaic Database
2. Update the Mosaic Web
3. Update the Mosaic Metadata
4. Update the MosaicService

Step 1:  Update Mosaic Database

Step (1) is not always needed, but if it is, then we’ll tell you.

ORACLE Users

You will receive a file named similar to Update-YYYY-MMDD.zip which you’ll extract to a temporary location.  Then run Update.bat:

c:\temp> UPDATE MOSAIC/MOSAICPW@ORCL

Microsoft SQL Server Users

You will receive a file named similar to UpdateMsSql-YYYY-MMDD.zip which you’ll extract to a temporary location.  Then run Update.bat with the following usage:

UPDATE SCHEMA_NAME SCHEMA_USER PASSWORD SQLSERVER

The SCHEMA_NAME is always MOSAIC.  SCHEMA_USER and PASSWORD may vary according to your installation.

Example:
c:\temp> UPDATE MOSAIC MOSAIC MOSAIC MSDB

Step 2:  Update Mosaic Web

You will receive a file named similar to Mosaic-YYYY-MMDD.zip.  Simply extract the contents to a new directory and “point” your Mosaic IIS web application to this new directory.  Use the “Basic Setttings…” dialog in the IIS Manager.

Notes:

If you have custom authentication DLLs, copy them from your old “bin” directory to your new one.

If you have custom locations for your configurations and sandbox directories, copy the following block from your old web.config to the corresponding section of your new web.config

Step 3:  Update Mosaic Metadata

Login as the “mosaic” user.  Visit Administration | Maintenance –> Mosaic Maintenance.  Press the “(Re)load Application MetaXml” button with “Incremental” unchecked, and “Import Data” checked.

After this finishes, restart the web application using the IIS Manager.  Each Mosaic web application (test, production) should have its own application pool. Restart the appropriate application pool.

Step 4:  Update MosaicService

You will receive a file named similar to MosaicService-YYYY-MMDD.zip.  If this is your first installation of MosaicService, follow the instructions in “Install MosaicService.docx” which will be provided.

For updates to an existing MosaicService installation, follow these steps:

1. Rename your existing vci.config.xml file to vci.config.original to save your existing settings.
2. Stop the Mosaic Service.
3. Extract the provided .zip file containing new binaries over the existing binaries.
4. Edit the new vci.config.xml and bring back any customizations you have made from vci.config.original (usually SMTP settings).
5. Start the Mosaic Service.
6. Check the Application Event Log.

After these steps, you’ll need to restart your Mosaic web application as described in Step 3.

* ? X

What are those symbols on my breeding cage cards?

Have you printed any new breeding cards yet? These cards always show the parents associated with the original mating configuration. However, those parents may not always be in the cage.  For example, you may have moved one female to her own cage, and euthanized the male. To make this more clear, you will see a small column with a symbol on the left of the card where the parents are listed:

* means this parent is currently in this cage.
? means this parent has been moved to some other cage.
X means this parent is not alive.

New Receiving Cage Cards

We have three new cage card templates streamlined for receiving. Take a look at the examples below, and if any of them fit your needs, their names are "Receiving 1", "Receiving 2", and "Receiving 3" in Mosaic. Just choose them when creating your receiving cage cards.

These are optimized for the DYMO 30256 stock, landscape orientation.

We can also have investigator phone numbers on cage cards. If you want a customized cage card including phone numbers, different printer stock, different orientation, contact us through the Mosaic feedback link on your account.

Receiving 1

Receiving 2

Receiving 3