The AcuToWeb Desktop must be running on a client machine containing applications that either want to capture client user-name/passwords for validation in the AcuConnect Access file, or applications that access certain client-side resources (see Supported AcuToWeb Desktop Functions); if you do not want to capture client user-name/passwords, or if the application does not use client-side resources, then your application can run without the AcuToWeb Desktop being present.
Once the AcuToWeb Desktop is running, another AcuToWeb Desktop will execute each time you start a new AcuToWeb session in the browser. At that point, a Web socket communications channel is created between the Gateway/browser and the Desktop, and then all the operations that cannot be handled by the browser are forwarded to the Desktop component for processing. For example, using the C$COPY routine to copy a file between the server and client requires the AcuToWeb Desktop, and without a link to the Desktop, the statement (and application) will fail.
Each AcuToWeb Desktop session captures information about that session. From each AcuToWeb Desktop, you can save the session information to a file.