If you are using Iguana 6 or above then you won’t need to use the channel manager.  You’ll just need to add the Iguana apps repository to your list of configured repositories.

With Iguana 6 there is no need for the channel manager unless you have some channels of your own that you have saved with it. If you go to this article then there is a version of the channel manager you can use with Iguana 6.

If you are still on Iguana 5.6 though, this is how you can load it:

1. Make sure you have Iguana 5.6.5 or later installed.
2. Create a From HTTP(S) –> To Channel channel.
3. Give the channel a base URL like ‘chanman/’. It is important that it ends with a  / character. (If you do not the channel will give an error message.)
4. Import this Channel_Manager_From_HTTPS ZIP file into the translator instance.
5. Run Channel Manager, by opening the URL you specified in step 3, i.e., http://localhost:6544/chanman/
   Note: The server name “localhost” and IP address “6544” may be different, but you can easily find the URL in the Source properties of your channel:
   

At this stage you should already have something useful. It will require you to login and after that this is what you should see:

Now, to get some channels to import, you can go to our experimental GitHub repository:

https://github.com/interfaceware/iguana-web-apps

If you happen to be comfortable with GIT then go ahead and clone this repository. If you aren’t ready for that, you can just download a zip of the repository using this simple URL:

https://github.com/interfaceware/iguana-web-apps/archive/master.zip

Next click on the Repositories button and configure a directory that points at the folder you expanded the files into. (The right folder is easy to spot: it’s full of files with names like “Channel Manager.xml.“.  The screen should look something like:

Then, when you click Add Channel on the main page of the app, you should see something like this:

From here you will be able to go and import all the interesting channels we have in the Iguana community repository.  If you have questions about the channel manager or what to keep abreast of what is happening with it then a smart thing to do is get yourself subscribed to this forum thread. Subscribing can be done once you have a login to help.interfaceware.com.

One useful thing to realise is that the guts of the channel manager itself are very useful as a means of understanding how to implement your own more customized workflow.  It has a library called iguana.channel which can be used to export and import channels programmatically. This can be invaluable for scripting out advanced deployment scenarios.