TSTool / Install Synoptic Plugin

This appendix describes how to install and configure the TSTool Synoptic Plugin.

• Install TSTool
• Install and Configure the TSTool Synoptic Web Services Plugin

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Install TSTool

TSTool must be installed before installing the Synoptic plugin. Typically the latest stable release should be used, although a development version can be installed in order to use new features. Multiple versions of TSTool can be installed at the same time.

1. Download TSTool:
   • Download the Windows version from the State of Colorado's TSTool Software Downloads page.
   • Download the Linux version from the Open Water Foundation TSTool download page.
2. Run the installer and accept defaults.
3. Run TSTool once by using the Start / CDSS / TSTool-Version menu on Windows (or run the tstool program on Linux). This will automatically create folders needed to install the plugin.

Install and Configure the TSTool Synoptic Web Services Plugin

This documentation describes how to install and configure the TSTool Synoptic plugin.

The folder structure on the computer should be similar to the following. The plugins-old folder is an archive of old plugin versions in case versions need to be switched.

Windows:

       C:\Users\user\.tstool\14\
         plugins\
           owf-tstool-synoptic-plugin\
             owf-tstool-synoptic-plugin-1.0.1.jar
         plugins-old\
           owf-tstool-synoptic-plugin\
             owf-tstool-synoptic-plugin-1.0.0.jar

Linux:

       /home/user/.tstool/14/
         plugins/
           owf-tstool-synoptic-plugin-1.0.1.jar
         plugins-old/
           owf-tstool-synoptic-plugin-1.0.0.jar

On Windows, the installation folder in Windows Explorer will be similar to the following:

Synoptic Plugins Folders on Windows (see also the full-size image)

To install or update the plugin:

1. Download the tstool-synoptic-plugin software installer file from the TSTool Synoptic Download page. For example with a name similar to tstool-synoptic-plugin-1.0.0-win-202303200336.zip.
2. If installing the plugin in user files and if TSTool was not run before, run TSTool once to automatically create user folders and files needed by the plugin.
3. If an old version of the plugin was previous installed, delete the old jar file or move to the plugins-old/ folder to archive. Only one copy of the plugin jar file can be found in the plugins folder to avoid software conflicts. If the Synoptic plugin features are not functioning properly, it may be due to conflicting jar files. The plugins-old folder is not necessary and is just a local copy of old versions to facilitate troubleshooting.
4. Expand the zip file or navigate to the zip file in Windows Explorer. Copy the top-level folder in the zip file to the TSTool plugins folder as shown in the above folder structure.
5. Configure one or more datastore configuration files:
   • See the Synoptic Web Services Datastore documentation for information about the datastore configuration file format.
   • See the Synoptic Getting Started with the Mesonet Web Services documentation for information about setting up an API token, which is needed for the ApiToken datastore configuration property..
6. Test web services access using TSTool by selecting the datastore name that was configured and selecting time series.
7. If there are issues, use the View / Datastores menu item to list enabled datastores.
8. If necessary, see the Troubleshooting documentation.

TSTool will be enhanced in the future to provide a "plugin manager" to help with these tasks.