Error when setting up web access: These IIS modules must be installed for the new M-Files Web

Overview

When Setting Up Web and Mobile Access to M-Files , even after you went through the articles and installed both modules (URL Rewrite and Application Request Routing) via the topmost green button to download and install them,

 you may get an error similar to

These IIS Modules must be installed for the new M-Files web:

- URL Rewrite

-Application request Routing

For more information, click OK and then Help.

Details

In some cases, these two modules are needed by M-Files, and we check their presence in the Windows Registry from the following keys:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\IIS Extensions\Application Request Routing

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\IIS Extensions\URL Rewrite

If one is missing, we can assume that one or both are not installed properly and so this message is shown so you can make sure they are installed.

Likely the web installer that is the default might have shown you a message similar to "nothing to install" in at least one of the modules, but that is easy to miss.

Solution

To ensure those modules are installed, do the following:

1. Ensure you have the necessary IIS components installed first.
2. Go to the registry keys above and see which one is missing.
3. Go to the download page of the missing module and scroll down until you can find the offline installation package. Usually under a section like "Download ARR 3.0" at the time of writing.
4. Download and run the corresponding offline package (not the web installer), such as the "x64 installer".
5. Ensure the registry keys above are in place (you may need to refresh or restart the registry editor to see changes).

Notes

In some environments, access to the registry may be problematic. 

Double check that the user M-Files runs under is allowed access to the registry, and that the user running M-Files Admin to set up the Web access also has this access.

In such cases, the error may show up because M-Files does not see the keys, even though you may be able to see them via regedit, and that may be due to differing permissions.