Surpass - This Time it's Surpass Viewer

[jthompson]

Having recently had to do the usual faff to get Surpass SecureClient working and updating successfully, I was confronted with the task of getting the separate Surpass Viewer application to work.

 

Given the death of Flash, this is a separate standalone app that's provided to allow for the marking of exams. That aspect is apparently still Flash-based and not yet updated to HTML5, hence the need for a separate app. For extra painfulness, it installs to the user profile, so needs to be installed by the end user.

 

I thought I'd post this to save others the time and effort of wrestling with it.

 

Three AppLocker 'executable' rules:

• A publisher rule to allow the downloaded setup exe to run
  
• A path rule to allow %OSDRIVE%\Users\*\AppData\Local\SurpassViewer\*
  
• Another path rule to allow %OSDRIVE%\Users\*\AppData\Local\SquirrelTemp\*
  

The last one is used during installation.

 

Given the need for wildcarded path rules in user profiles, maybe limit the rules to as minimal a group of users as possible.

[chazzy2501]

we've had such a hard time this year with surpass during the mock trials, that the the teacher and exam officer have decided not to offer it!

 

EDIT: Some pupils actually got upset that the content: 1, doesn't fill the screen and / or 2, is off centre (to the left).

Edited February 7, 2022 by chazzy2501

[stumot]

Just wanted to say thank you jthompson as your notes on the applocker rules saved me some time!

 

I have found that much like with the original client you can get away with installing the application as normal and then copying the files to C:\program files and it runs fine from there as well, the only thing that's important to know if you do start moving the installed files from there normal appdata-ey location, is that you may encounter the error "this url cannot be accessed restart the surpass viewer and try again" that's due to the software not communicating with the proxy server (in our case smoothwall) so you may need to do an nslookup of the website (viewer.surpass.com) and create a rule to pass the two ip addresses through without inspection

 

Hopefully this helps anyone else who has the miserable task of installing this software!

[jthompson]

The latest version of Surpass Viewer includes a slight change to the publisher details, so AppLcoker rules to allow the installer to run will need to be updated.

 

The new publisher string is:

O=BTL GROUP LTD, L=SHIPLEY, S=WEST YORKSHIRE, C=GB

Previous versions had L=BRADFORD.