Introduction
Witness supports integration with many different types of external systems through the use of plugins. These are stand-alone software libraries which are dynamically loaded by the Management Server and have the ability to pass data and events to and from the external system. This document describes the process of setting up the Milestone XProtect Plugin.
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Milestone XProtect Requirements
Milestone XProtext 2016 Professional or higher
Version 2016, 2016 R2 or 2019 R1
Edition Professional / Corporate or higher
Basic User must be set up for a Witness system user with full camera permissions
The Modern Browser plugin (Chromium) is required to host the AdvanceGuard Web UI
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The requirements are the same for OEM editions of the software including Siemens Siveillance |
Witness Requirements
The Witness installation needs to be licensed to use the Milestone plugin and the required number of cameras
The Milestone plugin needs to be installed
At least one camera must be configured to generate bookmarks
The Mobile Server must be installed and licenced to use the AdvanceGuard Web UI within the XProtect Smart Client
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The plugin can be selected during setup and will automatically install the files in the correct locations. If you have already installed Witness without the Milestone plugin, you can run the setup to modify your installation to include the Milestone plugin. |
Configuring Milestone XProtect
Once the software has been installed, and the software licences have been activated, the system must be configured. Please refer to
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See the Milestone documentation for further information |
Creating a User and Role
The term users primarily refers to users who connect to the surveillance system through their clients. You can configure such users in two ways:
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As a minimum, the Witness user role will require the following global permissions:
Cameras → Read
Cameras → Bookmarks (Full control)
Alarms → Full Control
Filtering Cameras
On Milestone systems that have a large number of cameras it may be really beneficial to filter the camera list in Witness to show only the cameras being controlled by the Witness software, This can be achieved using permissions, which involves ensuring the global read permissions for all cameras are unset and instead only add the read option to the required devices. To filter the cameras, follow these steps:
Ensure you have a Witness user and a dedicated Witness Role in the Milestone system.
Ensure that the Witness user has been allocated to the Witness group
Select the Witness role and select the Overall Security settings. Select Cameras and ensure that neither Full Control or Read is allowed, but allow all the bookmark options:
Select Alarms and ensure all options are enabled:
Save your changes
Select the Device settings for the same security role and on the cameras which you want to appear in Witness, select the Read permission:
By default all other cameras should not have the Read permission enabled and therefore will not appear in Witness.
Save the settings
Configuring the Modern Browser Plugin
The Modern Browser plugin is a Chromium based project and provides a modern HTML 5 client. This is required to run the AdvanceGuard Web UI because the built-in Internet Explorer browser is not supported.
The plugin installer can be downloaded from here. Once installed the plugin can be added to a XProtect Smart Client layout and configured with AdvanceGuard Web URL.
Configuring the Witness Plugin
The Milestone Plugin will appear as a node under the Integration Configurations folder within the Configuration Tree.
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Enabled: select to enable the Milestone Plugin.
Name: the unique name of the plugin.
Alarm Priority: this sets the minimum level of alarm that the plugin will report to the Milestone system.
Generate Alarms: select to enable alarms in the Milestone XProtect Smart Client.
Generate Bookmarks: select to enable bookmarks to be created in the recorded video when an alarm is triggered in the Milestone XProtect Smart Client.
UI Camera: the name of the UI Stream in Milestone. Once the UI MJPEG stream has been configured in Milestone you will be able to select it here. This enables Witness to bookmark the UI video recording in the event of an incident.
Bookmark Preamble (s): the period of time before an alarm is triggered recorded in a bookmark.
Bookmark Postamble (s): the period of time after an alarm is triggered recorded in a bookmark.
Server IP: the Milestone server IP address.
Username: the username of the User logged into the Milestone services.
Password: the password of the User logged into the Milestone services.
Authmode: specifies the security protocol for the User:
a. Basic
b. Windows SSO (Single Sign On)
c. Windows SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
d. Windows
Critical: select to ensure the primary server is connected on the plugin startup and remains connected.
Use TLS: enable TLS for end-to-end communications security between Witness and Milestone.
Adding Additional Servers
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On larger Milestone systems that include additional servers for either load or redundancy, or both, it may be necessary to add these servers to the configuration. The primary server should always be added in the main part of the configuration and only additional recording and events servers should be added here. To add additional servers:
Select Edit on the plugin configuration
Select the + button in the Milestone Servers list
Complete the relevant server details
Repeat steps 2 → 3 as necessary
Select Save when complete
Mapping Cameras
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Once the plugin has successfully connected to the Milestone Server it will retrieve a list of configured cameras. The mapping configuration is required to map each of the cameras configured in Witness to the corresponding cameras in Milestone. This process ensures that Witness creates bookmarks for the correct camera in response to an alarm in Witness. To map the cameras:
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Note that the UI camera is mapped in the main configuration, not in this list. Please see the previous section Configuring the Plugin in Witness. |
Milestone XProtect Smart Client
The XProtect Smart Client is the desktop UI for Milestone XProtect server. On opening the client:
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For the UI to be streamed, Witness must have a separate PPI Panel open, with UI Stream set to Enabled. |
Milestone XProtect Web Client
"XProtect Web Client is a web-based client application for viewing, playing back and sharing video. It provides instant access to the most commonly used surveillance functions, such as viewing live video, play back recorded video, print and export evidence. Access to features depends on individual user rights which are set up in the management client.To enable access to the XProtect Web Client, you must have a XProtect Mobile server to establish the connection between the XProtect Web Client and your system. The XProtect Web Client itself does not require any installation itself and works with most Internet browsers. Once you have set up the XProtect Mobile server, you can monitor your XProtect system anywhere from any computer or tablet with Internet access (provided you know the right external/Internet address, user name and password)." - © 2019 Milestone Systems A/S
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Open up the Network explorer, OR type the XProtect Web Client's address directly into the web browser, of any computer connected to the local network.
Input the User username and password.
The Live tab will have all camera views displayed.
The Investigate tab is a simplified Playback, in order to search through the recorded video.
The Alarms tab lists all alarms, but the list can be filtered to specific parameters.
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