M4 Installation

These installation directions assume you have been given the M4 Solution software. If this is not the case, please contact Support at (804)743-1860 x1. Please note that if the user performing the installation is not an Admin on the machines, the software may not install correctly.

  1. Please Right click the M4 Solutions Setup or M4 Console Setup icon, and Left click “Run as administrator”

  2. Please follow the prompts that appear.

     2a. NOTE: If you are on M4 versions 2018 or higher, please reach out to the Support Team for assistance in completing this setup as there will be a one time database script that needs to be run before all users can access new functionality.

  3. The M4 Solutions software has now completed Installation, and you’re ready to begin M4 Registration.

If you are performing an installation of a new point release update of your version of M4, please first uninstall the program with the following steps:

1. Navigate to "Add or remove programs" from the Start menu.
2. Find M4 Solutions or M4 Console in the "Apps & Features" section and click "Uninstall"
3. Follow the prompts to complete the uninstall.
4. Run the M4 Solutions Setup or M4 Console Setup executable as detailed in the above section.

Configuring Permissions

Each user will need Full Control to the M4 Folder and permission to write the registry to successfully operate M4. This ability to write to the registry allows users to save settings such as preferred printers, backgrounds colors and custom toolbar modifications. Please reach out to your IT to ensure these permission are appropriately configured.

M4 Folder:

1. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86) or C:\Program Files (if on 32-bit)

2. Right click the M4 folder(depending on your version of M4 this may be named M4 Solutions, M4Foundation, or simply VertiGIS), and select ‘Properties’

3. Click the ‘Security’ tab, select the ‘Users’ group and click ‘Edit’

 4. Once again, select the ‘Users’ group, check ‘Full Control’, click ‘Apply’ and finish with ‘OK’

IIS Specific Permissions:

You will want to make sure your IT is available to help with this as users without Administrative control may not be able to see the C:\Temp folder that needs to have it's permissions changed.

1. Navigate to the C:\Temp folder and right click and select Properties.

2. Select the Security tab. Go down to the "Group or user names" section and select Edit.

3. From here click on Add. Enter the name of the User Group(or Anonymous Logon) and click OK to add them to the list of users with permissions.

4. Finally, back on the Permissions for Temp window, make sure to enabled "Write" permissions for the User Group(or Anonymous Logon) that you just added. Click Apply and then OK.

**IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING ANTIVIRUS SECURITY SOFTWARE PERMISSIONS**

For M4 Solutions Software Suite of products to work appropriately, the correct antivirus whitelist settings MUST be added for user's specific C:\Program Files (x86)\M4Solutions folder and the network folder location of the M4 project folder. Numerous issues with write and read functionality have been noted within our software when these locations have not been appropriately whitelisted within a client's antivirus suite(Windows Defender, Sophos, Carbon Black, etc.). Please contact your IT team to ensure these whitelist settings have been implemented.

M4 Registration

1. Right click and run ‘M4 Registration’ as an Administrator in the Start menu

 2. Please Click ‘Yes’ and follow the smaller prompts:

3. Select the module you are attempting to register from the drop down and then hit Next:

4. Send this code to Support via Zendesk ticket or phone call, then hit next:

5. Enter the provided counter code into the following box and hit Register:

6. If you have another module you need to register, hit Register another M4 product. Otherwise, click Done.

Setting up the ODBC

**THESE STEPS ARE ONLY NECESSARY FOR M4 VERSIONS PRIOR TO M4 2017**

Each user will need to set up an ODBC to connect to the database. This will allow the user to access the data used within M4. The user will also need permissions in SQL (found below) to successfully connect to the database. Please reach out to your IT to ensure these permission are appropriately configured.

1. 32 Bit: Go to Control Panel → Admin Tools or press and type ODBC

2. 64 Bit: Insert C:\Windows/SysWOW64/odbc32.exe into Windows Explorer

3. Click the System tab

4. Click Add and choose the SQL Server driver

 5. Fill out the ODBC name (will match the ODBC name found in the .prj) and server

6. Click Next Twice and choose a database

7. Click Finish

SQL Settings

Certain tables in M4 write to temporary tables in the SQL database. If the user does not have permission to write to these tables, it will result in errors. Also, each M4 User will need their default schema set to dbo. Please reach out to your IT to ensure these permission are appropriately configured.

Assigning Permission, Schemas, and Roles:

 1. Start by opening SQL and logging onto the server with your database.

2. Left click the plus sign left of Security, and Left click Logins.

3. If you have created a login, please Right click the user. If you have not, please Right-click Logins and select the New Login.

4. Select Properties, select User Mapping on the left and change User and Default Schema to dbo beside your database.

5. Make sure to also check db datareader, db datawriter and db owner.

Antivirus Exclusions

The following two file paths MUST have proper antivirus whitelist exclusions in place for M4 Solutions to function properly. Failure to properly implement these exclusions can result in project degradation and loss of data. These exclusions are AV version agnostic so they need to be implemented for ANY AV software utilized(Windows Defender or third-party).

Project Folder

This will be different for each client, but should look something like:
\\ServerHostingM4Project\DriveHostingM4Project\M4ProjectFolder

User M4 Folders

This will need to be done on the personal machine of each user utilizing M4 Solutions/M4 Console. The file path will be slightly different depending on your version of M4, listed below:

Versions 2016 and older:

C:\Program Files (x86)\M4

Versions 2017 through 2019.0.72/2019.3.9:

C:\Program Files (x86)\M4Solutions

Versions 2019.0.73/2019.3.10 and higher:

C:\Program Files (x86)\VertiGIS\M4Foundation

In addition, we also recommend the following path:

User App Data Folder

This will need to be done on the personal machine of each user utilizing M4 Solutions/M4 Console. The file path will be slightly different depending on the username of the M4 user:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\M4Foundation