Application Resilience Policies for Nexthink Collector

You can activate an Application Resilience policy for Nexthink® Collector to collect information about the functional status of Nexthink Collector installed on your Windows devices and view the results in reports. You can also configure the policy to attempt to repair or reinstall the application.

Application Resilience policies for Nexthink Collector are supported on devices running:

  • a supported version of the Windows operating system

  • PowerShell version 5.1 or higher

    Due to PowerShell restrictions imposed by Microsoft, Application Resilience isn't supported for this application on devices running Windows 11 SE.

  • one of the following versions of Nexthink Collector:

    • 26.x or higher

      Significant software changes in higher versions may cause health checks to become invalid.

In addition to checking the version, the following table describes the health checks performed:

If you select Report higher versions as Compliant, higher versions report Compliant without running health checks.

Component Test performed
Services Installed Running Signed by
  • Nexthink Collector Service (nxtsvc.exe)
  • Nexthink Coordinator (nxtcoordinator.exe)
  • Nexthink CSSU Service (nxtcssu.exe)
 ✔ ✔

One of the signers entered in the policy configuration

By default, Signers contains "Nexthink S.A.".
Application name

The application uses the following name:

  • Nexthink Collector

You can configure an Application Resilience policy for Nexthink Collector to enable the Application Resilience (RAR) component A lightweight software component of the Secure Endpoint Agent that detects the status of third party applications installed on a device. The component may also attempt to repair the third party application if it is non-compliant. The RAR component is deployed on a device only when the device is associated with a customized policy group and that policy group's Application Resilience policy is activated. to attempt to repair Nexthink Collector if it's not functioning, or reinstall it if it's missing or can't be repaired.

Depending on the Absolute product licenses associated with your account, the Report and repair and Report, repair, and reinstall options may not be available.

The RAR component of the Secure Endpoint Agent can respond to the following issues:

Issue Resolution
Repair

One or more of the following services aren't running:

  • Nexthink Collector Service (nxtsvc.exe)
  • Nexthink Coordinator (nxtcoordinator.exe)
  • Nexthink CSSU Service (nxtcssu.exe)

The RAR component restarts each stopped service.

The "Startup Type" of one of more of the following services is set to something other than "Automatic":

  • Nexthink Collector Service (nxtsvc.exe)
  • Nexthink Coordinator (nxtcoordinator.exe)
  • Nexthink CSSU Service (nxtcssu.exe)
 The RAR component restarts the service and sets the "Startup Type" to "Automatic".

One or more of the following services aren't installed and the service's executable can be detected on the device:

  • Nexthink Collector Service (nxtsvc.exe)
  • Nexthink Coordinator (nxtcoordinator.exe)
  • Nexthink CSSU Service (nxtcssu.exe)

The RAR component reinstalls each missing service.
Reinstall

Downgrades are not supported. If the version installed on a device is higher than the expected version, no action is taken.

One or more of the following services aren't installed and the service's executable cannot be detected on the device:

  • Nexthink Collector Service (nxtsvc.exe)
  • Nexthink Coordinator (nxtcoordinator.exe)
  • Nexthink CSSU Service (nxtcssu.exe)

The RAR component downloads and installs the configured version of the application.
Nexthink Collector failed to be repaired, or the expected version isn't installed

The installer:

  • must be an MSI file

  • can have any file name

The RAR component looks for the following files names when checking pre-cached installers:

Component File name
Installers NEXThink_Collector.msi

Before you activate an Application Resilience policy, you need to configure the policy. You need to configure the application version in addition to the settings in Configuring Application Resilience policies.

To configure the application version:

Under Nexthink Collector version, enter the version of Nexthink Collector you expect to be running on your devices.

  • The target version must be a sequence of digits separated by a period.
  • You can use wildcard "*" characters after the major version, for example, 26.*, 26.2.*, or 26.2.01031.*.

Make sure the version you are entering is consistent with version 26.x or higher.

If you selected the Report, repair, and reinstall option, you also need to configure these settings in addition to the settings in Configuring Application Resilience policies.

To configure the Nexthink Collector specific settings:

  1. [Optional] To only reinstall the application if it's missing, select the checkbox next to Do not reinstall or upgrade if the app is already installed. When this option is selected, the application is not reinstalled when either of the following conditions apply:

    • The application version is lower than the expected version.
    • The application can't be repaired.
  2. [Optional] Under Additional installation commands, enter the applicable installation command-line parameters to configure any settings not covered by the policy configuration.
  3. [Optional] Under Additional uninstallation commands, enter the applicable uninstallation command-line parameters to configure any settings not covered by the policy configuration.

For more information on available command-line parameters, see Nexthink's documentation.