Preventing End-Users from Controlling Recorder

The Recorder offers a powerful security feature that allows users to disable when the Recorder is recording their desktop activity. There are however some cases when the recording process needs to be managed only by the administrator through the Recording Service thereby preventing the end user from turning the Recorder on or off. For such cases, the Recorder offers a custom UI option as an alternative to the classic UI. It removes the Enable/Disable buttons from the Recorder UI when it is installed in Server Managed mode. To use this option, all Recorders need to be installed in silent mode using the command line installation using the parameter controlButtonVisible = false. The controlButtonVisible parameter specifies the mode where most of the standard Recorder UI is turned off, preventing the user from controlling when the Recorder is on or off.

Before you begin

Before you begin installing the Recorder, pay attention to the following:

  1. The user workstations installing the Recorder component, and the server hosting the Recording Service must all be members of the same Active Directory domain.
  2. Add the accounts of users on whose computers you intend to install the Recorder to the Recorder writers Active Directory security group you created before the installation.
  3. If the appropriate browser extensions are not installed, user activities will not be recorded in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox.

IMPORTANT NOTE – Firefox Limitations: The Firefox extension for the Recorder has several limitations. For detailed information, please refer to the "Known issues" > "Recorder Firefox extension limitation" section of the ABBYY Timeline Deployment Guide for Windows Systems.

Command line installation

To install the Recorder components in silent mode, use the following command line:
Abbyy.Recorder.<version>.exe /silent

Example: Abbyy.Recorder.<version>.exe /silent installDir="C:\Recorder" DataPath="C:\Data" Tag="RecorderWorkstation1" ServerUrl="https://myrecordingserviсe.com/" FirefoxExt=false ControlButtonsVisible=false

This command installs Recorder to the C:\Recorder folder in Server managed mode with the following settings:

  • The Enable/Disable buttons are removed from the Recorder UI. Only the administrator has privileges to control the recording process through the Recording Service website.
  • The Recorder Chrome and Edge extensions will be installed. The Firefox extension will not be installed.
  • Program logs will be stored in the C:\Data folder.
  • Logs of user activity will be sent to the Recording Service hosted at https://myrecordingserviсe.com/.

22.09.2023 8:59:47

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