1. Can the Vuture integration work with load-balanced InterAction Application Servers?

 

Yes it can as long as the load-balancer is transparent to Vuture and the HTTP requests are not modified in any way. We have a number of clients who successfully use load-balanced setups.

 

2. If the external IP address of the InterAction Application Server Vuture connects to needs to be changed, what is the process?

 

See this helpdesk article for details

 

3. My InterAction is going to be down for a period of time - what should I do?

 

If the InterAction application server that Vuture connects to is going to be down for longer than a hour due to planned or unplanned maintenance please contact Vuture support who can pause your InterAction queue. See this article for more information.

 

4. From which Vuture IP addresses do I need to allow incoming HTTPS connections to my InterAction Application Server?

 

As part of the integration we require HTTPS (443) traffic from the IP addresses below to be routed through to the internal address of your InterAction Application Server.

Please contact us if you are unsure of the location of your Vuture instance.

If you are already permitting traffic from an IP address other than the ones listed below please let us know what it is but do not remove it without getting confirmation from us first to avoid breaking the connection to your InterAction.

 

Region of Data Centre	IP Address to add	Port
United Kingdom (AWS)	18.168.224.108/30	443
United States (AWS)	44.194.111.20/30	443
Canada (AWS)	18.168.224.108/30	443
Australia (AWS)	3.26.90.124/30	443
Germany (AWS)	3.68.188.152/30	443

 

5. How do I setup the Vuture InterAction user?

 

See our guide for best practice in setting up an InterAction account for the Vuture user.

 

6. How do I troubleshoot trapped errors?

 

See this article for more information about trapped errors

 

7. How do we find out the InterAction Configuration settings

 

Browse to "Admin.System.Interaction.InterAction URL"/evreport 

 

e.g. https://myinteraction.com/interaction/evreport

 

This will return a list of the settings from the InterAction.cfg file

 

8. When setting up the integration and configuring IIS can I set up Windows Authentication against a local account?

 

Yes. If the InterAction Application Server we are integrating with is not connected to your domain (e.g. if it is in a DMZ) then you can set up a local account and configure IIS Windows Authentication (NTLM) to use that local account and provide us with the local account credentials. Also in situations where there are performance issues authenticating against Active Directory, authenticating against a local account can be a solution.

 

In IIS, under "Authentication" disable "Anonymous Authentication" and enable "Windows Authentication" and under "Providers" move "NTLM" to the top. Then right-click on the website in IIS and select “Edit Permissions”. Click on the “Security” tab and give the local account “Read & execute”, “List folder contents” and “Read” permissions.

 

If continuing to have authentication issues such as receiving 401 messages when trying to authenticate, we have a setting within Vx which helps to PreAuthenticate HTTP requests.  To have this disabled please speak to your Account Manager to disable this setting:  Admin.System.Advanced Options.PreAuthenticate HTTP Requests

 

9. Is traffic initiated by the Vuture Server or the Interaction Application Server or both - and will I need a public IP address for the InterAction Application Server?

Traffic is always initiated from your Vuture Server to your InterAction Application Server and never the other way around. You will need a public DNS entry and IP address for Vuture to connect with.

 

10. Can we use a self-signed certificate for the Vuture connection to InterAction?

 

It is possible to use a self-signed certificate but we strongly recommend you don't since we are connecting across the internet and we can't validate the authenticity of a self-signed certificate.

 

We can use it for testing or as a temporary measure if there is a problem with your regular certificate. To use a self-signed certificate your Vuture administrator will need to update the system setting "Admin.System.SSL.External Allowed List" with the domain that is being used to connect. This over-rides our built in checks for certificate validation and expiry for this domain. The connection will still be encrypted but we recommend the certificate be switched to a normal certificate as soon as possible.

 

A tool like this can be used to check the validity of SSL certificates - https://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-checker.html

 

11. What Port Number does the Vuture specific InterAction Application Server require?

 

The port number refers to the SQL Server port that the Database listens on for the IA App Server. The default value for this is 1433 however, your environment could be configured to any port number during initial IA setup.

 

To find the port number you are using:

• follow instructions in #7 above
• search for database port and make a note of the value

 

When you install your Vuture specific IA Application server you will:

• Need to enter this port number
• Allow access incoming and outgoing traffic from the DMZ based IA Application Server to the MS SQL Database server over this port

 

12. Does the IA Application server require SMTP access? 

 

If you wish to receive InterAction related notification emails from the Vuture specific IA Application server, then you will need to allow SMTP communication from this server via a valid SMTP relay. 

 

A valid SMTP relay address value is captured at the time of install and can be edited in teh config file. Please ensure that you have allowed traffic on SMTP port 25 from the IA App serve rto your SMTP relay.

 

13. My activities are writing back with a different hour to what I expect

 

Your InterAction configuration settings in Vuture need to include the timezone where your InterAction application server is located.

 

Please provide that information to your Account Manager or Vuture Support who will update the configuration setting "Admin.System.InterAction.IA server timezone" using a valid timezone. Time zones can be looked up at {Your Instance URL}/api/timezones.xml - and the value in the <TimeText> field should be used.

 

14. Are there any problems with running anti-virus software on InterAction Application Servers that Vuture connects to?

 

There should be no problem as long as the anti-virus software does not block or change any of the incoming web requests from Vuture to the InterAction Application Server or the responses. We are not aware of any specific anti-virus packages that are known to affect the integration.

 

You should take care with the scheduling of any regular anti-virus scans since they can have a performance impact on the server and ideally should not be run during core hours or when you are executing large sends.