The first part of the installation process is to download the product files, extract them on your local machine, and upload them from there to your server:

1. Download GFI HelpDesk from the following location depending on the required edition:

Case	http://cdndl.gfi.com/gfihelpdesk/gfihelpdesk_case.tar.gz
Fusion	http://cdndl.gfi.com/gfihelpdesk/gfihelpdesk_fusion.tar.gz

2. Click the link to the product and save the file to your machine.
3. Extract the package locally.
4. The extracted folder contains a sub-folder named 'upload', which contains all the files required to install your helpdesk.
5. In the root directory of your web server, create a new folder for your GFI HelpDesk installation to live in and name it, for example, 'support'.
6. Using either the command line or an FTP client of your choice, upload all of the files from the 'upload' folder into your newly created 'support' folder.

Now that the product files are up on your web server, it's time to do some setup on the backend.

Your next step is to create a new MySQL/MariaDB database on your server that GFI HelpDesk can use.

Using command line

If you are using the command line, you can use the following commands to create the database and user credentials you need.

Using phpMyAdmin or other graphical server configuration tool

If you are using phpMyAdmin or another graphical server configuration tool, you have to use their create database function to do the following:

1. Create a new database called gfihelpdesk, set to use utf8_unicode_ci for its table collation.
2. Add a new user to the database called gfihelpdesk with a password of your choice.
3. Specify localhost when prompted for a hostname
4. Grant all privileges to that user.

With your database ready and waiting, there are a few last configuration steps you have to take.

Before you begin the GFI HelpDesk installation, the database configuration and the license file should be correctly set up.

Rename 'config.php.new'

To avoid accidental overwriting of config.php which is located in __swift/config/ and contains important data, the default name for the file is config.php.new. Rename it to config.php before continuing.

Edit 'config.php'

The 'config.php' file must be manually edited for configuration of the helpdesk's database connection.

The following variables in this file need to be edited:

$_DB["hostname"] – Unless you have supplied a different hostname when creating your database, this variable should be set to localhost.

$_DB["username"] – Unless you have supplied a different user name when creating your database, this variable should be set to gfihelpdesk_user.

$_DB["password"] – The variable should be set to the password that you supplied when setting up your database user.

$_DB["name"] - Unless you have supplied a different user name when creating your database, this variable should be set to gfihelpdesk_fusion-.

An example of what the database details in your config.php file should look like:

After editing, save the file.

Upload 'key.php'

In order to activate the product, download the key.php file corresponding to your registered domain and upload it to the root folder in which the rest of the helpdesk files have been uploaded.

Set folder permissions

GFI HelpDesk needs write permissions, recursively, for five directories:

• __swift/*.*
• __swift/cache
• __swift/geoip
• __swift/logs
• __apps

Now, choose the section below that corresponds to your operating system if you are unfamiliar with changing permissions on directories.

Unix-based servers:

On a Unix-based system, the chmod command to set permissions to '777' on the above mentioned directories:

From within the __swift directory:

chmod-Rf 777 files cache geoip logs library

From within your GFI HelpDesk root directory (for example, 'support'):

chmod-Rf 777 __apps

Windows-based servers:

Make below two adjustments if GFI HelpDesk is run on a Windows-based server:

1. In the php.ini file, set the upload_tmp_dir to C:\Windows\TEMP. Open up your php.ini file, search for upload_tmp_dir and make sure it looks as below:
   ; Temporary directory for HTTPHypertext Transfer Protocol - A protocol for exchange of hypertext documents in HTML. uploaded files (uses system default if not specified).

   upload_tmp_dir = C:\Windows\TEMP

2. Set some specific folder permissions for Microsoft's IIS. For the user account of the application pool used for GFI HelpDesk, grant full permissions to the following folders:
   • filesc
   • cache
   • geoip
   • logs
   • library
   • __apps
   • C:\Windows\TEMP

Now that your server is prepped, you're ready to start the installation itself:

1. Open up your browser and go to your GFI HelpDesk directory /checklist.php.
   Important:

   For example, https://www.yourdomain.com/support/checklist.php.

2. Ensure that there are no errors / warnings prior to proceeding with the installation (by clicking Install GFI HelpDesk).
3. Click Setup to begin the installation process.
4. Once you agree to the license terms, and then the setup utility checks to make sure your server meets all the requirements. When it is done, click Next.
5. The next step is to create credentials for the default administrator account and supply some important details for the helpdesk. The Product URLUniform Resource Locator is the address of a web page on the world wide web. should the publicly accessible URL of your helpdesk. For example - https://yourdomain.com/support/.
6. Once the details are filled, click Start Setup to begin the automated setup procedure.

Once setup has completed, a success screen is displayed, and you only have one more step before you are ready to start using GFI HelpDesk!

Once the setup process has completed successfully, remove the setup directory from your server, as a security measure. You may receive warnings if you do not delete it.

This completes installing GFI HelpDesk!