We’ve received lots of feedback on the Telerik Control Panel from our users since the initial launch back in mid-2012. A hearty thanks to those who’ve taken the time to provide their thoughts and recommendations. These real-w...
We’ve received lots of feedback on the Telerik Control Panel from our users since the initial launch back in mid-2012. A hearty thanks to those who’ve taken the time to provide their thoughts and recommendations. These real-world insights have helped to define the evolution of this application in order to make it the recommended approach for managing local installations of Telerik products. So, let’s take a quick tour of the current application, highlighting recent enhancements and providing some suggestions for optimizing use. Getting Started You can download the Telerik Control Panel by visiting your Telerik account page. Once installed locally, the Telerik Control Panel will be accessible via Start -> All Programs -> Telerik. If you’re using Windows 8, it will be located in Apps. On startup, you will be prompted to sign in using an active Telerik account. The “remember me” option allows you to store your credentials so you will be signed in automatically for subsequent uses. Features Once authenticated, you will be presented with a “Product View” Screen displaying a summary of Telerik products currently installed on you system (left panel) as well as additional Telerik products available to install (right panel). In the top white banner area, there is a breakdown of license types (Purchased, Trial, Free) for “installed” and “available to install” products. In addition, to the far right, there are “Open Contacts”, “Open Options Menu”, and “Open Documentation” buttons, as well as a banner link to the “General Feedback” support form. The “Sign Out” button for the control panel is accessed by hovering over the logged in user’s email address, which slides up to reveal it. The black banner area immediately below provides a total count for “Installed Products” versus “Available to Install”, along with check boxes for each category providing an “Install All” option. The “Options Menu” provides access to the following configuration options: Download Settings – Specifies the default download directory for the application Proxy Settings – Default setting uses the system proxy settings Installation Settings - Specifies installation location and previous version preservation Notification Setting – Enables/disables the Control Panel Notification tool (see below) I won’t go into detail on these setting here as the “Options Menu” and the Notifications feature are recent enhancements to the application that are covered in greater depth in Chris Eargle’s earlier blog post: Notifications and Settings in Telerik Control Panel. Installing Products Prior to any installation or upgrade, please be sure that you’ve set your preference for the “keep previous parallel versions” where required. In addition, be sure to close all open instances of Visual Studio to insure proper installation of the Visual Studio Extensions. You can now select one or more individual products from the “Available to Install” right panel of the “Product View” screen by checking their associated checkboxes. Alternatively, you can select to install all using the previously highlighted “Install All” checkbox at the top of the panel. Once finished, simply click the “Proceed” button. The next screen will allow you to modify the default installation location, as well as to toggle options on a per product basis for optional features such as local demos and Visual Studio Extension integration for installed versions of the IDE. Prior to clicking the “Proceed” button, at lower right of the popup, you will need to accept the License Agreement by checking the associated check box. Your installation should be