nama.properties

nama.properties is the one file that tells an installation what it is: which database to open, what to call itself, where its files live, and which of the system's safety valves are open. It sits beside the application on the server — normally in Tomcat's lib folder — and it is read once at startup, so a change to it takes effect when the server is restarted.

The format is one key=value per line:

dbtype=SQLSERVER
dbname=namademo
dbuser=nama
customer=Nile Group
serverid=production-1

This page covers the settings support staff actually set on a customer's server. The system reads many more, but they are internal flags that exist for a developer chasing one specific problem — if a setting is not here and nobody told you to add it, it should not be in the file.

An unrecognised value is not an error

Most of these settings are read without validation. dbtype=sqlserve — one letter short — does not stop the server or log a complaint: the value fails to match, and the installation quietly starts up as MySQL. The same silence applies to a misspelled key, which is simply never read. When a setting seems to have no effect, check the spelling first.

The database, and what this installation calls itself

Setting	What it does
dbuser / dbpassword	The database login. The password is stored encrypted, not in clear text.
customer	The customer's name, as it appears in the licence and in messages the server sends home.
serverid	This server's identity. It is what decides whether this machine is allowed to send e-mails and SMS — see below — so a test copy must never keep production's value.
timezone	The server's timezone.
defaultlang	The language a user gets before choosing one.

Addresses the system hands out

Nama writes links into e-mails, reports and mobile responses, and it cannot guess the address a user reaches it by:

Setting	What it does
server	The server's own address, e.g. http://192.168.1.5:8080/. Needed by replication and by anything that builds a link.
guiserver	The address of the user interface, e.g. http://192.168.1.5:8080/erp/ — this is what a link in a printed report or an e-mail points at.
approvalsServer	The address used for approval links, when approvals are answered from outside.
background-server-url	The server that runs background processing, when it is a separate machine.

A link that lands the user on localhost is almost always one of these left unset.

Mail, SMS and WhatsApp — especially on a copy

The most expensive accident in ERP support is a test copy of a live database that starts e-mailing and texting the customer's customers. Three settings exist precisely to prevent it:

Setting	What it does
sendmailsandsms	The master switch. Off, and nothing leaves the server at all.
send-emails-only-to	Every e-mail the system produces goes to this address instead of its real recipients.
send-sms-only-to	The same for SMS: every message goes to this number.
send-whatsapp-only-to	The same for WhatsApp.
log-sms-data	Records the body and the provider URL of each SMS so you can see what was actually sent. Diagnostic — turn it off afterwards.

Restoring a production backup onto a test server

Change serverid, then set send-emails-only-to and send-sms-only-to to your own address and number, before the first startup. The sending rule is serverid matched against the Send Mails And SMS Only From Servers list in Global Configuration, and that list travels inside the database you just restored — so a clone that keeps production's server id is, as far as the software is concerned, production.

Keeping people out

Setting	What it does
prevent-login-of-login-ids	A comma-separated list of login ids that cannot sign in.
prevent-login-of-login-ids-msg	The message they see. {0} is replaced with the login id.
prevent-login-of-ips	A comma-separated list of blocked addresses, matched by prefix — 192.168 blocks the whole range.
prevent-login-of-ips-msg	The message they see, with {0} for the address.
use-ldap-for-authentication	Hand password checking to the customer's LDAP directory.

prevent-login-of-login-ids=user1,user2
prevent-login-of-login-ids-msg=The user {0} is prevented from login by the administrator
prevent-login-of-ips=192.168,214.165.10.13
prevent-login-of-ips-msg=You cannot login from IP {0}

These are a blunt instrument for an emergency — a leaked account, an office that must be locked out today. Ordinary access control belongs in security profiles, not in this file.

Files and attachments

Setting	What it does
tempFolder	Where temporary files are written. Defaults to c:/nama/temp on Windows and /var/nama/temp elsewhere.
storage-path	Where the system keeps its stored files.
local-external-attachments-folder	Keeps attachments on disk in this folder instead of inside the database — the setting that stops an attachment-heavy database growing out of hand.
max-single-attachment-size-kb	Rejects a single attachment larger than this.
max-total-attachment-size-gb	Caps the total size of attachments.

Background work

Setting	What it does
tasks-initial-delay-minutes	Holds scheduled tasks back for this many minutes after startup, so a restarting server is not immediately busy.
processors-initial-delay-minutes	The same for the background processors.
no-background-processors	Stops the background processors entirely. A server with this set saves documents but never processes them — which is right for a reporting replica and disastrous anywhere else.
disable-critical-errors	Turns off the critical-errors checks: isolation level, missing server id, disk space, failed business requests. Only for a server where those checks are known to be noise.
enable-purge	Enables the purge job that archives and removes old data.

Reports that will not end

Setting	What it does
kill-reports-running-more-than-seconds	Stops a report that has run longer than this. The usual answer to one user's runaway report freezing a server.
error-for-running-reports-more-than-seconds	Logs an error — without killing anything — for reports that run longer than this, so you can find them before users complain.

Defaults on new documents

valuedate and issuedate set the date a new document opens with, written as dd-mm-yyyy. They are for a data-entry catch-up — a batch of last month's paperwork — and should be removed when the catch-up is over, or every document created afterwards carries a stale date.

POS documents on the server

POS documents are written by the point-of-sale application, and the server refuses to let anyone edit or delete them by hand. allowposedit=true and allowposdelete=true lift those refusals. They are a correction tool, not a setting: turn on, fix the document, turn off.

Diagnostics you may be asked to switch on

Each of these makes the log louder for one area. Turn them on while reproducing a problem and off again immediately — on a busy installation they fill a disk quickly.

Setting	What it logs
detailederror	Full error detail instead of the short user-facing message.
logws	Web-service calls in and out.
log-failed-login-details	Why each failed sign-in failed.
logreplication / debugreplication	Replication messages, and the verbose version.
debugATTENDANCE	The HR attendance calculation, step by step.
log-to-files-in-debug	Writes logs to files even when the server runs from an IDE.

replication.properties

A site that takes part in replication carries a second file beside the first, replication.properties:

Setting	What it does
enable	Whether replication runs on this site at all.
siteid	This site's code. Without it, replication refuses to start.
sitesequence	This site's sequence number, used when generating codes so two sites never mint the same one. It is required.
headofficeurl	The head office address this site talks to.
headofficeip	The head office address, when given as a plain address rather than a URL.

enable=true
siteid=001
sitesequence=1
headofficeurl=http://192.168.1.5:8080/