Installation¶

Installing Disco on Windows¶

To install Disco on Windows, please follow these steps:

Step 1:

Download Disco from https://fluxicon.com/disco/.

Step 2:

When you extract the downloaded .zip file, you will find the installer Disco-Setup.exe and an example log file [1]. Double-click the Disco-Setup.exe file to start the installation (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Double-click the Disco-Setup.exe file to install Disco.

Step 3:

In the upcoming dialog click Yes as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Click Yes to run the Disco installer.

Step 4:

The Disco setup starts. Click Next as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Click Next to continue.

Step 5:

Then, click Install as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Click Install to start the installation.

Step 6:

Finally, click Finish as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: To complete the installation, click Finish.

Disco will now start and you can follow the steps described in Registering Disco (Windows and macOS).

Installing Disco on macOS¶

To install Disco on macOS, please follow these steps:

Step 1:

Download Disco from https://fluxicon.com/disco/.

Step 2:

Double-click the downloaded file Disco.dmg to mount the disk image. A disk image named “Disco” will appear on your desktop. Double-click to open it (see Figure 6).

Figure 6: Double-click the Disco.dmg disk image and drag Disco to your Applications folder.

Step 3:

The disk image contains the Disco application. Drag it to your Applications folder. Eject the disk image “Disco” by dragging it onto the trash / eject icon in your dock. Start Disco by double-clicking the Disco application in your Applications folder.

Disco will now start and you can follow the steps described in Registering Disco (Windows and macOS).

Registering Disco (Windows and macOS)¶

When you start Disco for the first time, you will be asked to accept our license agreement and you need to register your copy of Disco. The setup is easy:

Step 1:

Read the software license agreement and tick the checkbox I have read and understood this license. Then click the button I accept these terms (see Figure 7). If you should want to review the software license agreement again at a later point in time, Your Disco License describes how to find it.

Figure 7: Accept Disco’s software license agreement.

Step 2:

To register Disco, fill in your email address and click Login as shown in Figure 8. You will receive an automatic email with the subject Complete your Fluxicon ID registration, which contains a personalized registration key. If you can’t find the email in your inbox, please check your Spam folder.

Figure 8: Request your registration key.

Step 3:

To activate Disco, provide the registration key that you received via email in the text field and click Complete registration as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9: Complete your registration.

Step 4:

If you do not have a license code (not required for the demo version) click Use in demo mode as shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10: Use Disco in demo mode to get started.

Refer to Using the Demo License and contact Anne via anne@fluxicon.com if you want us to set up an evaluation license to import larger data sets.

Offline Registration (Windows and macOS)¶

Disco runs locally and can be used completely offline. You can set up an internet connection (also via a proxy - see Bringing Disco Online) for convenience, because it enables the automatic download and installation of new versions of the software and it allows you to send bug reports and feedback right from within the application - but this is optional.

Note that also if Disco is used with an internet connection, your data always remains on your machine. It is one of the advantages of Disco that the software runs locally and the data that you analyze with it is guaranteed to remain within your organization.

If you have no possibility to connect Disco to the Internet (for example, in an offline environment), or if you do not want to get in touch with your service desk to retrieve the proxy information just yet, then you can follow these steps to install Disco offline:

Step 1:

Once you see the Cannot connect to the internet screen shown in Figure 11:

• Press the Try again… button once. This will enable the Use offline button.
• Now press the ‘Use offline’ button.

Figure 11: Press the Try again… button once to enable the Use offline button.

Step 2:

This will bring you to the Offline registration screen shown in Figure 12. Keep Disco open, because you will come back to this screen in a moment (you can minimize it if you want). Now open your web browser and open the webpage at the URL https://fluxicon.com/disco/offline/.

Figure 12: Keep Disco open and open the web page https://fluxicon.com/disco/offline/ in your browser.

Step 3:

You will see an offline registration page (see screenshot in Figure 13), where you can type in your work email address and your System ID displayed in Disco at the Offline registration screen. After filling in your email address and your System ID, press the Send registration key button in the offline registration web page.

Figure 13: Fill in your email address and your System ID. Then press the Send registration key button.

Step 4:

You should now have received an email with the subject line Your Disco registration key. The email contains an attachment with the name DiscoRegistrationKey.dscreg (see screenshot in Figure 14). This is your offline registration key. Save the DiscoRegistrationKey.dscreg file on your desktop (or somewhere else where you find it back easily).

If you are installing Disco in a complete offline environment, where you don’t have access to the internet or your email, you can request the key from the browser at a different computer (where you do have internet access) and save the key file on a memory stick to transport it to your Disco computer for activation.

Figure 14: You will receive an email with the subject line Your Disco registration key. Save the attached key file on your desktop.

Step 5:

Go back to Disco and press the Load registration key button in the Offline registration screen (see screenshot in Figure 15).

Figure 15: Press the Load registration key button.

Then locate the DiscoRegistrationKey.dscreg file on your desktop (or where you have saved it) and press the Open button (see screenshot in Figure 16).

Figure 16: Find and select the DiscoRegistrationKey.dscreg file on your desktop and press Open.

Your copy of Disco is now be registered and in demo mode (you will see a Demo badge in the upper right corner of Disco, above your email address).

Refer to Using the Demo License and contact Anne via anne@fluxicon.com if you want us to set up an evaluation license to import larger data sets.

Bringing Disco Online¶

It has many advantages to connect Disco to the internet even after an initial offline installation. For example:

• Updates are released regularly, sometimes once or several times per week, and automatically downloaded in the background (see Automatic Updates: How it Works). You will have to manually install updates if you continue using Disco in offline mode.
• You can download a sandbox project that comes with Disco to play around with the functionality before you start working on your own data (see First Steps after Installation: The Sandbox).
• You can give direct feedback about problems, or ask questions, right from within Disco using the in-app feedback button (see Bug Reports and Feedback).
• If you have a problem with Disco and we fix it, then the change will be pushed automatically to you. We just let you know about it and you get the new version of Disco with the new update.

Keep in mind that we never see any of the data you are analyzing (regardless of whether you have Disco connected to the internet or not). The guaranteed privacy due to the local analysis of your data, which ensures that confidential data remains within your organization, is one of the big advantages of Disco.

So, here is how you can bring Disco online after an offline installation:

Step 1

Restart Disco and click on the Configure connection… button (see screenshot in Figure 17).

Figure 17: Click on the Configure connection… button in the upper right corner.

Step 2

This will bring you to the Proxy server connection settings screen shown in Figure 18.

Figure 18: Contact your IT Help Desk and ask them for the proxy server settings of your company.

Call your IT help desk and ask them for the following proxy server settings:

• Proxy type (e.g., HTTP)
• Proxy server name
• Proxy port
• Whether your proxy server requires authentication (and if yes, what your user name and password are for the authentication).

Step 3

After you have entered the Proxy server settings in Disco, press the Try again… button and Disco should now be able to connect to the internet.

First Steps after Installation: The Sandbox¶

To make it easy for you to get started, we built a sandbox project into Disco that can be opened from the empty workspace as indicated in Figure 19. Simply click on the Sandbox… button and the sandbox project will be downloaded from the internet. [3]

Figure 19: After you have completed the installation, load the Sandbox project to play around in Disco.

The sandbox project is shown in Figure 20. It introduces you to Disco based on the purchasing example log that is also used throughout this user’s guide. Read the text in the Notes section and follow the instructions to get a quick tour of the functionality in Disco.

Figure 20: Read the text in the Notes section and follow the instructions.

If you want to get back to the sandbox as a reference after you have imported some of your own data, you just have to clear your current project view by creating a new project (see Creating New Projects).

Using the Demo License¶

When you install Disco for the first time, you automatically get a demo license. So the badge above your email address in the upper right corner will say Demo.

The Demo license limits the import to 100 events per file, cannot be commercially used, and puts a note on exported process maps and animation movies that says that the map was created with the demo version of Disco. Otherwise, Disco is fully functional and you can explore the functionality based on the sandbox example, follow our Hands-on Tutorial, import the examples files from the Coursera course “Process Mining: Data Science in Action”, or try out process mining based on your own data.

When you close Disco after the installation and start it again later, you will see the screen shown in Figure 21. If you want to continue using Disco in demo mode, you can simply press the Try Disco in demo mode button.

Figure 21: To continue using Disco in demo mode, press the Try Disco in demo mode button.

If you would like to try out Disco for your own data on more than 100 rows, you can let us know by pressing the Get in touch now button or by sending an email to support@fluxicon.com. We can provide you with a free evaluation license to import larger data sets for a limited time.

Finally, if you have received a license code for Disco, you can type in the license code at the top of this screen. See also Updating Your Disco License if you already have a Disco license.

Automatic Updates: How it Works¶

Updates are downloaded automatically by Disco. As soon as an update becomes available, a blue bar appears at the top (see Figure 22). [4]

Figure 22: When a new update is available, a blue banner appears at the top of Disco.

You have two choices for how to deal with the update:

• Not now. If you click the Not now button then the blue bar will disappear and the update will be automatically installed the next time you start Disco. This is useful particularly when you are in the middle of something and don’t want to interrupt what you are doing by installing the update.
• Install update. If you click the Install update button, Disco tells you that you need to quit Disco and re-start it to let it install the latest update. This way, you will be working immediately with the latest version and all the improvements it has brought. To get a sense of what is new, Disco shows you a summary of the changes that have been made (see Figure 23). Simply click OK to make them disappear and start working with your updated version of Disco. If you would like to see these release notes again at a later point in time, you can refer to Software Version and Revision History.

Figure 23: After the update, a summary shows you which changes have been made.

If you are not sure which version of Disco you are currently working with, you can always check the version number in the footer at the very bottom of the screen.

Footnotes