Absolute 7.10 Release Notes

This topic describes the software changes included in Absolute 7.10. It also describes the changes included in all hotfixes since the release of Absolute 7.9.

This release introduces performance, security, data integrity, and usability improvements that enhance the responsiveness, reliability, and ease of use of the system. It also introduces enhancements, improvements, and fixes to existing features and functionality.

To view the software changes introduced in this release that apply to the Absolute agent, see the Absolute agent release notes: Version 7.10.

NOTE  Depending on the Absolute product licenses associated with your account, some of the following software changes may not be available to you.

Features and enhancements

You can now track your missing devices in the Absolute console.

When a user reports a device missing, or a device fails to check in to the Absolute Monitoring Center for a number of days, you can now use the new Report Missing or Stolen... option to flag the device as missing so you can monitor its status. This option is available on the Device Actions menu, which shows in reports and the Device Details page for a device.

Devices that you've reported missing show on the new Missing Devices page in the Assets > Devices area. Review the devices on this page to see when a missing device begins checking in again, and from which network. Absolute also sends you an email when a missing device checks in. To remove a device from the Missing Devices page, use the new Report Found device action.

Absolute 7.10 introduces the following enhancements to the Investigations feature:

  • To submit a theft report, you now use the new Report Missing or Stolen... option. This option is available on the Device Actions menu in reports and the Device Details page for a device.
  • Investigate Stolen Device page: The Create and Edit Investigation Report page is now the Investigate Stolen Device page, which has a more streamlined interface with a new look and feel. Access this page by completing the steps to submit a theft report.
  • Reported Stolen page: The Investigations Summary page is now the Reported Stolen page with an improved results grid and a cleaner interface. Access this page in the Assets > Investigations area to review theft report details, upload police reports, and monitor the status of open theft investigations.

    • NOTE  If the police report is not available at the time you submit the theft report, and the device is eligible for the Service Guarantee, you must submit a copy of the report within 30 days of the theft report date.

Application Persistence policies, which collect information about the functional status of third party applications installed on your Windows devices, now support persistence of CrowdStrike Falcon®, VMWare Carbon Black Cloud™, and VMware Workspace ONE™.

Absolute 7.10 includes additions and enhancements to the Dashboard.

Widgets

  • Dark Devices (New!): shows the number and trend of active devices that have not checked in to the Absolute Monitoring Center in the last 30 or more days
  • Encryption Status: offers an additional trend view

Pending initial scan

A status of Pending initial scan now appears when a widget has been activated, but data is not yet available from devices that have yet to check in. This new status appears in the following widgets:

  • Application Health
  • Device Usage
  • Encryption Status

Device search

You can now search for a device from the Dashboard and quickly go to its Device Details page from the search results.

  • Absolute 7.10 introduces the Dark Devices report. Open this report to view information about active devices that have not checked in to the Absolute Monitoring Center for 30 days or more. You can access this report from the Reports page, or from its corresponding widget on the Dashboard.
  • The Activation report now has a new look and feel with updated interactions for managing columns, searching and filtering report content, exporting, and performing device actions.
  • In the Show/Hide Columns dialog for all reports, you can now drag and drop columns from the Available Columns list to the Include Columns list.

If your Absolute account doesn't have a System Administrator, Absolute has upgraded your first Security Administrator to this role. If your account has only one user, that user is now a System Administrator.

Note that the System Administrator role is granted the highest level of permissions meaning it can manage all devices and all aspects of your account. If you want to assign a different user to the System Administrator role, you'll need to promote that user.

You can now integrate Absolute with ServiceNow ITSM by downloading the Absolute ITSM Connector from the ServiceNow Store and installing it in your ServiceNow instance. The ITSM Connector lets you retrieve the following data about your Windows and Mac devices from Absolute and view that data in your ServiceNow instance:

  • Asset data, including system information and antivirus and encryption status details
  • Custom Fields

For more information about downloading and installing the ITSM Connector, see the Absolute ITSM Connector Configuration Guide. For more information about retrieving data using the ITSM Connector, see the Absolute ITSM Connector User Guide.

Improvements and fixes

Absolute 7.10 introduces the following improvements and fixes:

Feature/Area

Improvements and fixes

Absolute APIs

  • For the Device Freeze API, the limit of 10,000 devices (deviceUids) has been removed from the POST device-freeze/requests request. However, a limit of 10,000 devices per request is still recommended.

Account Settings

  • To more accurately reflect the scope of the settings on the Account Settings page, the page title has been changed to Authentication Settings.

Bulk device actions

  • You can now successfully upload a file of device identifiers when identifiers are followed by multiple special characters, such as commas (,).

Chromebook support

  • Devices that previously showed a value of "Unknown" for Device Name will now show "Chrome". Note that for the new value to show, a new hardware data scan needs to occur on each device.

Device Freeze (Absolute 7 version)

  • When you submit a Remove Freeze request, "Inactive Action Component" is no longer a reason for ineligibility. As a result, you can now remove a Freeze request from a device, even if the FRZ component isn't deployed to the device.

Device Freeze (Classic version)

  • When you unfreeze a device that was frozen by an Offline Device Freeze Policy, the Unfreeze request is now successfully submitted and the correct user is logged as the requester. Previously, the request was successfully submitted only if you initiated the action from the Device Details page.

Device Groups

  • Smart device groups that are based on a date time filter are now reevaluated correctly.

Hardware data collection

  • Values for Make, Model, and OS > Name are now consistent across Device Details, dashboard widgets, and reports.

Reports

 
  • A new column, Component Manager > Status, can now be added to reports and the Assets > Active Devices page. This column shows the communication status of the Absolute agent's component manager (CTES) The component manager is installed on top of the core agent and manages the agent components responsible for initiating device actions and collecting device data. Most agent components are controlled by policies, such as the Hardware and Installed Applications policies. on Windows devices.
  • On the Device with At-Risk Files in Cloud report, the correct status now shows in each device's Encryption Status column.
  • When you save a report as a custom report, any pinned columns are now saved to the custom report.
  • For reports where the Device name column contains both the device name and serial number, the serial number is now available in its own column when you export the report.
  • In your custom reports that you created prior to the release of Absolute 7.9, the device's Identifier is once again a link that you can use to access the device's Device Details page.
  • On the Reports page, the link to the Last Known Locations report is no longer broken.
  • On the Define Scope page of the Device Analytics report, the device group icons and hierarchy now remain correct as you expand and collapse folders.
  • When you add a filter based on either of the following conditions to a report, you can now save the report:
    • within last
    • not within last
  • In the Show/Hide Columns dialog, search results now show when you search for a column by entering the full parent/child column name (for example, "BIOS ID" where BIOS is the parent and ID is the child).
  • When you filter a report by specifying multiple values for a single field (such as Make contains S, or Make contains D) the filter is now saved correctly to your custom report.

Supervisor Password

User Management

  • When you create a new user account, the account's status is immediately set to Active. Previously, its status was set to Pending until the new user logged in to the console.