Following new features, enhancements, and significant changes have been introduced into Applixure products in this half of the ongoing year:
Applixure Analytics
Single sign-on (SSO) is now supported for user authentication
Applixure now supports using SSO for authentication for Applixure user accounts owned by Accounts and Environments. Initial support for SSO uses Microsoft Entra ID as the identity provider, and the SSO requirement can be configured for individual users in Account or Environment or as a requirement for all user accounts owned by the SSO-configured Account or Environment.
You can read more about SSO support in a Helpcenter article documenting SSO configuration and use.
Connect API endpoints now supporting returned data paging
For selected endpoints potentially returning a large number of objects, making the resulting JSON document inconveniently large to process on the client side - as well as taking time to fully transfer through the Internet - it is now possible to specify additional offset and limit URI parameters.
Using these parameters, it is now possible to page or iterate through full results in smaller chunks of data, so the actual time to transfer the content will be more reasonable as well as limiting e.g. memory requirements of the client's REST library while processing the returned data. Using the paging approach trades the convenience of issuing only one single HTTP request with needing to do client-side logic for iterating using multiple HTTP requests, and then merging the data, but we recommend doing paging for any customers having large numbers of agents and software objects in their environment.
You can read more about using paging from our Developer site's documentation.
User account unlocking from the user management
It is now possible for Applixure Account administrators and Environment administrators to unlock user accounts that have been locked due to too many subsequent failed password attempts using the Account or Environment user management page - depending on the owning entity for the user account in question. Users themselves can also unlock their own user accounts by performing a password reset functionality (for non-SSO-enabled user accounts).
32/64-bit statuses for software
New status information has been added to individual software's details page, as well as in the API data for software objects, about detected bitness of the applications associated with the software in question. If the software has both 32- and 64-bit applications related to it, then both indicators are displayed:
Please note that this information might not be displayed at all for certain types of software, such as bitness-independent .NET Framework-based executables. Also, for any software products that might not have any executable content as part of their installed content, the bitness information is not shown, nor for any software products which have yet to be seen by Applixure Agent as being executed.
Advanced device search
We have introduced a new alternative way of creating a search filter for the devices listing page. In addition to constructing a search filter manually, as before, you now have the option to use an Advanced filter builder to pick from the available device object's properties and create filter arguments that way.
Advanced search filter construction presently can express filtering terms consisting of simple AND and OR operators to form a complete filtering term. Please refer to our Helpcenter article on search to learn more about the full syntax of search filtering.
Estimated hardware age now available for selected agents
Previously, only the detected original OS installation age was provided in Analytics for the Agent devices to estimate how old the machine is for lifecycle management purposes. This information, in many or even most cases, reflects the actual age - to a degree - of the physical hardware that the operating system is installed on. However, if the OS has been, at some point, completely reinstalled by reformatting the disks, this data potentially no longer reflects the actual age of the underlying machine.
As PCs do not provide any concrete "hardware age" data anywhere in the system, providing more accurate information about the hardware based on the Analytics Agent's readable data from the machine itself is basically impossible. Compounding on the problem is the fact that hardware may have had component upgrades during the lifecycle of the machine, so relying on potential installation date data - if any exists - from any single component is not reflective of the whole machine, age-wise.
For selected PC vendors, we can now provide an approximate hardware age for the machine if the Analytics can retrieve warranty information for it, as usually that information provided by the equipment vendor additionally includes either the manufacturing date or shipping date for the machine - or alternatively knowing the earliest warranty start date for machine typically indicates the shipping time as well, which is then used as the shipping date data.
If available for the machine, this information is now shown in the Analytics' device-specific page as approximate hardware age, replacing the original OS installation age indicator. For any other machines where Analytics do not have either the manufacturing date or shipping date information, OS installation age is still used as the second-best estimate for the age of the machine itself.
Windows servicing channel information updated
In the Analytics' Devices dashboard and in the API data for the devices, Windows servicing channel information has now been brought up-to-date related to currently existing Microsoft's operating system servicing options for Windows 10 and 11. During the lifespan of Windows 10 and, subsequently, Windows 11, Microsoft has been changing the nomenclature on the (previously) branches - and presently channels - via which the operating system is updated a few times already.
Analytics now will show this information consistent with the current naming: General Availability, Long-term Servicing (LTS) and Insider Preview, and various sub-categories on the Preview channel.
Applixure Workflow
Board-level data filtering now available
In a given Workflow board, each rule created defines data filtering search terms, except in cases of rules created against pre-existing Applixure Analytics Alert or Warning, which determines what devices are considered for inclusion for a work item created based on the rule. In certain scenarios, it might be necessary to always include only a subset of all devices in environment(s) synchronized against the board for consideration in all of the board rules - or, on the other hand, always exclude some specific devices from all of the rules.
In these cases, instead of including the same identical filtering terms for all rules alongside the rule-specific terms, it is now possible to use board-level data filtering to apply as a pre-rule evaluation step, moving those common terms into a board-level setting. Only devices in all of the board's environments that match the defined board-level data filter will be considered as further input into evaluating each rule.
Board-level filtering is found in the Workflow administration page's General settings -> Board settings -> Data filters -screen.
The visual data filtering editor for the rules has been updated
The visual rule editor for data filters has now been updated to show the structure of the rule's statement, or substatement blocks more clearly and concisely.
Previously, more complex filters with multiple nested blocks would show up using increasingly nested visualisation and multiple Add-buttons, which made it harder to understand the overall structure of the filter. In the new representation, each block is more clearly defined visually and adding a new statement or nested substatement block can be done with a combined Add-button at the end of each block.
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