Monitoring actions

The Actions page in the History area is the area where you can track Device Action requests. If the required permissions are associated with your user role, you can use Actions to do the following:

  • view Device Action requests
  • view the progress for the requests
  • view the Action status for individual devices in a request
  • cancel requests on devices with an Action status of Pending
  • resend a message to one or more devices

The following Device Actions are supported:

All other Device Actions are shown in Reports > Events > Event History.

To view or export the Actions page, your role needs to be granted View permissions for one of the supported actions. This allows you to see Device Action requests for all of the supported actions that the role is granted View permissions for.

To open the Actions page, click on the navigation bar and click Actions.

The Actions page provides you with the following information:

Device Action requests are listed in the sidebar as Scheduled, In Progress, or Done, with the most recent requests shown first.

Scheduled (Send Message requests only): lists all requests that are scheduled to take place in the future. All devices in the request have an Action status of Pending or Ready. Requests move to In Progress status when the scheduled date and time (local device time) of the Send Message request has occurred on at least one device.

Example
A Send Message request is scheduled for 11 a.m. on March 1. At 10 a.m., you log in to the console and see that the request has moved to In Progress. One device included in the request is in a time zone three hours ahead of your time zone. Since the scheduled date and time has already occurred in the local time of this device, the request was moved to In Progress.

In Progress: lists all requests where some or all of the devices in the request have an Action status of Pending or Processing. Each request has a progress bar showing the status of the request. The progress is represented by the following:

  •        Done: Portion of devices with a status of Failed, Succeeded, Completed, or Canceled
  •        In Progress: Portion of devices with a status of Pending, Ready, or Processing

Done: lists all requests in which all of the devices in the request have an Action status of Failed, Succeeded, Completed, or Canceled. By default, Done shows requests that were completed within the last year.

You can find a specific request by using search and the drop-downs.

Once a request is selected, you see a request summary in the work area. The summary includes:

Item Description
Progress bar

The progress of the action request showing the percentage of devices that are in each state

Actions can be in one of the following states:

  •        Failed: Either the system or the device is unable to perform the action
  •        Pending: The action hasn't been downloaded to the device
  •        Ready (Send Message requests only): The action has been downloaded to the device, but is scheduled to take place in the future
  •        Canceled: A user has canceled the action
  •        Processing: The action is currently being performed on the device but the action hasn't yet been completed

  •        Succeeded: The action has run on the device and the action was completed successfully

    • Run Script

    • Cryptographic Wipe

  •        Completed: The action has run on the device

    • Delete file

      For Delete file requests, review the Result column, the Log file, or Events to determine if the action was successful for each device.

      When a Delete file request runs on a device, the files found and the files deleted may not be the same. The Result column and Events show the number of files found and the number of files deleted. The Log file contains further details about which files were found and which files were deleted, as well as the reason files weren't deleted.

    • Unenroll

    • Send Message
Request name

Consists of the action type, the number of devices in the request, the time of the request, and the requester's name

For Send Message requests, consists of the action type, the date the request is scheduled, the time of the request, and the requester's name
Action ID The system defined unique identifier for the request
Description The description added when the request was created, if any
Configuration

Any configuration details that were used to create the action request

The work area contains the request details. Information about each device is organized in a table with the following columns:

Column Description
Device name

Includes the device's device name The name assigned to the device in the operating system. For Chromebooks, device name is not applicable and therefore shows as "Chrome" in the Absolute console. and serial number The identification number assigned to the device by the device manufacturer. For Windows devices, this value may correspond to the serial number of the BIOS, the motherboard, or the chassis, depending on the manufacturer.

To view the device's Device Details page, click the linked device name.
Status > Action status

The progress of the action and the date of the last status update

Actions can be in one of the following states:

  • Failed: Either the system or the device is unable to perform the action
  • Pending: The action hasn't been downloaded to the device
  • Ready (Send Message requests only): The action has been downloaded to the device, but is scheduled to take place in the future
  • Canceled: A user has canceled the action
  • Processing: The action is currently being performed on the device but the action hasn't yet been completed

  • Succeeded: The action has run on the device and the action was completed successfully

    • Run Script

    • Cryptographic Wipe

  • Completed: The action has run on the device.

    • Delete file

      For Delete file requests, review the Result column, the Log file, or Events to determine if the action was successful.

      When a Delete file request runs on a device, the files found and the files deleted may not be the same. The Result column and Events show the number of files found and the number of files deleted. The Log file contains further details about which files were found and which files were deleted, as well as the reason files weren't deleted.

    • Unenroll

    • Send Message
Status > Failure reason The reason why the action failed
Result

Only applies to Delete file requests

Found n – Deleted m: The number of files found on the device (n) and the number of files deleted (m). If the number of files found is different than the number of files deleted, see the Log file for detailed information.
Log file

Only applies to Delete file requests

A link to download the Log file available when the Request status for the device is Completed
Script return code

Only applies to Run Script requests

The return code to inform the user whether the script was successfully run

The script returns 0 if the script is success, other return codes are defined in the script. Click the link to the script in the request summary to view the script.
OS name The operating system of the device
Message response

Only applies to Send Message requests

A semi-colon (;) delimited list of Field Names and values for the Custom Device Fields included in the response to the message

Format: Field Name 1: value 1; Field Name 2; value 2

Shows No Data when:

  • the message requires a user response but a response hasn't been received
  • the message was informative and Custom Device Fields were only used to share information or were not used at all

Hover over the field to see a tooltip to see all values or click in the row to see a device overview
Certificate

Only applies to Cryptographic Wipe requests

A link to download the Certificate of Sanitization

You can use device name or serial number as search criteria to search for a device in a request. You can also include other Device Action information in the report by adding more columns.

NOTE  If No Data shows in any of the columns, the information was not detected on the device or the device information is duplicated. Device information may be duplicated if a device was listed twice in the File Upload. The second record is displayed as No Data.

Only applies to Send Message requests

To view more information about a device within Actions, click anywhere in the device's row to open the device overview dialog. The following information is available:

To pin the device overview to keep it in view, click the icon.

To view the device's Device Details page, click View Device.

By default, there are no filters used to generate this page.

You can create a customized version of the request details for a specific request by adding filters based on one or more filter criteria. For example, your can filter the request details to show only those requests that failed.

By default, the data is sorted by Status > Action status. Devices are displayed in the following order:

  • Failed
  • Pending
  • Ready (Send Message requests only)
  • Processing
  • Canceled
  • Succeeded/Completed

You can change the sort order by clicking a column heading.

To view the status for an action:

  1. Log in to the Absolute console as a user with View permissions for the action being completed.
  2. On the navigation bar, click and click Actions.

  3. On the Actions sidebar, click on the Request name that you want to view. To find a specific Device Action request, do one or more of the following:

    • Select an option from the Actions drop-down to filter by type of action.

    • Select an option from the Created drop-down to filter by the date the requests were created. Options vary from Past 7 days to Past 90 days.

      NOTE  When the Created drop-down is used to filter the list of requests, actions in Done are filtered by the date the Device Action requests were created, not by the date they were completed.

    • Click to expand the Search field and enter one of the following:

      • the last name of the requester

      • the script name (only applies to Run Script requests)

      • the message name (only applies to Send Message requests)

      The search results update dynamically as you type. To clear the Search field, click .

    • Click Scheduled, In Progress or Done to filter the list of Device Action requests.

The Device Action request's summary and details open in the work area.

Depending on the Absolute licenses associated with your account, and your user role, you may be able to perform some or all of the following tasks from the Actions page:

  • Cancel a pending Device Action request
  • Search for and view individual devices
  • Adjust the columns
  • Add or remove filters

  • Export the information from a Device Action request

    When you export the information from a Device Action request:

    • Identifier is exported as the first column even if you don't include it in the Request details.
    • Action status is exported as an Action status column and an Action status updated column.
    • Device name is exported as a Device name column and a Serial number column.

The Actions page is static, the statuses of requests and devices don't update dynamically. To refresh the page, do one of the following:

  • click the icon in the bottom left of the page

  • leave the Actions page and return

  • use your browser's refresh button