Absolute 7.9 Release Notes

This topic describes the software changes included in Absolute 7.9. It also describes the changes included in all hotfixes since the release of Absolute 7.8.

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.

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 feature enhancements

Absolute 7.9 introduces a new Home dashboard, new widgets and reports, and streamlined navigation to improve usability and provide a cleaner interface.

If you haven't already done so, click the Explore What's New icon () on the console's quick access toolbar to walk through an overview of what's new in Absolute 7.9.

To simplify the console, there are now five key feature areas, which are reflected on a new streamlined navigation bar.

You'll now find all of your existing devices, groups, widgets, reports, and configurations in these five areas.

The Home dashboard has a new look and is now the sole location for all of your widgets. All other dashboards, such as the Device Management dashboard and the Data Protection dashboard, are no longer available.

Click the Absolute logo on the navigation bar to go to the Home dashboard.

Learn more about the new customizable Home dashboard

The Device Management area is now the Assets area.

Click the icon to go to:

  • Devices (New!)

    • Use the Devices page to view and work with your active devices. This page is presented as a report that you can search, filter, sort, and customize. You can also perform device actions on selected devices. Learn more

  • Device Groups
  • Geofences
  • Investigations

Access all of your reports from the new Reports page. This page is divided into three areas:

  • Favorites (New!): contains links to the reports you use most often Learn more
  • Custom: contains links to all of your custom reports
  • Library: shows report categories containing links to all of the default reports included with your account, including Classic reports

Learn more about the Reports page

The Policies and Alerts area is now the Policies area.

Click the icon to go to:

  • Groups (formerly Policy Groups)
  • Persistence (moved from the Applications area)
  • Alerts
  • EDD Rules (moved from the Data Protection area)

The Administration area is now the Settings area, but it still contains all of the same features and settings that you're familiar with.

Three areas of the console are no longer available. Some of these areas' features are now available in other areas, and some features are removed entirely.

Removed Area

Removed features

Items moved to the Reports page

Features moved to the Policies area

Applications

Dashboard

NOTE  Application Persistence widgets are available on the Home dashboard.

Software Catalog

All reports

Persistence

Data Protection

Dashboard

All reports

Rules

Find Devices

N/A

All reports

NOTE  The Active Devices report is replaced by the Devices page in the Assets area.

N/A

The Home dashboard and its widgets have a exciting new look and they're now customizable.

Personalize the dashboard by including the widgets you care most about and then adjust their layout to suit your needs. Easily update each widget's view and filters to see different visualizations of the widget data. Click a section of the widget's chart to view more detailed information in a filtered report.

In this release, you can view the following widgets on the Home dashboard:

  • Makes and Models (New!): shows the makes and models detected most often on your active devices
  • Operating Systems (New!): shows the operating systems detected on your active devices
  • Anti-Malware
  • Application Health (formerly Application Persistence Summary)
  • Device Usage (formerly Device Activity)
  • Encryption Status
  • License Consumption
  • Repairs and Reinstalls (formerly Application Persistence Device Ranking)

Learn more about the Home dashboard

Absolute 7.9 includes three new reports and introduces an entirely new reporting interface.

New reports

  • Device Usage: shows information about the average daily usage of your active Windows, Mac, and Chromebook devices. Usage occurs when a device is unlocked.
  • Makes and Models: shows information about the makes and models of your active devices.
  • Operating Systems: shows information about the operating systems installed on your active devices.

You can access these reports from the Reports page, or from their corresponding widget on the Home dashboard.

Updated reports

The following existing reports now have a new look and feel with updated interactions for managing columns, searching and filtering report content, exporting, and performing device actions:

  • Android Vulnerability
  • Anti-Malware
  • Application Persistence
  • Application Persistence Events
  • Devices with Active Policies
  • Full-Disk Encryption Status

Favoriting reports

Favorite up to six reports that you use most often. Favorited reports show in the Favorites section near the top of the Reports page. Learn more

New reporting interface

The following enhancements are available in the reports listed above:

New device identifier columns

The first column in all device-related reports now contains each device's Device Name and Serial Number. Click a device's name to open its Device Details page.

NOTE  The Absolute Identifier column is now the rightmost report column.

Enhanced date and time columns

  • Dates and times are now presented in local device time instead of UTC.
  • Some time-based columns, such as the Last Connected column, now show relative times (for example: 3 hours ago). Values are in minutes, hours, days, months, or years. Hover over the relative time to view the exact date and time in a tooltip.

Contextual device action buttons

Display the new device action buttons, such as Freeze, Run Script, and Unenroll, by selecting one or more devices in a report.

Enhanced report columns

  • You can now pin a column to keep it in view as you scroll horizontally. Learn more
  • To add or remove report columns, click the report's icon and then click Edit Columns. Learn more
  • To improve report readability, related sub-columns are now grouped under a top-level header. For example, all report columns related to a device's operating system now show under the top level header, "OS".

Enhanced report filters

Report filters have a new look and are now easier to add, edit, and remove. Learn more

In the Absolute console, you can now submit a request to remotely create, change, or remove the supervisor password on the firmware of supported Lenovo devices. Learn more

For the list of Lenovo Thinkpad models that support this feature, go to https://community.absolute.com/s/article/Remote-Supervisor-Password.

The following scripts, which you can run on your Windows devices, are now available in the Script Library in the Settings area:

  • Add Font to Device
  • Configure Computer Audio
  • Create a system restore point on a device
  • Collect hardware information
  • Detect Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) using Absolute Query Feature
  • Detect ZombieLoad or MDS vulnerability
  • Disable Remove All Page Files
  • Enable or Disable the Auto-Restart Notification Window
  • Enable or disable the IPv6 of a system
  • Play beeps on a device
  • Replace a string value in a text file
  • Set page file size based on RAM percentage

For more information about running Absolute Reach scripts, see Running scripts on devices.

Improvements and fixes

Absolute 7.9 introduces the following improvements and fixes:

Feature/Area

Improvements and fixes

Alerts

  • Device Name and Username Changed alerts are no longer triggered when new devices are activated.
  • Device Name Changed alerts are now triggered when the device name changes on a dormant device (device's "Dormant" Custom Field is set to Yes).

Android support

  • When you submit a security action, such as a Freeze request, the request is deployed to the Android device in near real time. Previously, it may have taken up to 24 hours for the request to be deployed.

Application Persistence (RAR)

  • A new configuration is now available in the Application Persistence policy for Microsoft SCCM. Select the Report higher versions as Compliant check box if you want a status of Compliant to be returned when all health checks pass but the Absolute agent detects a higher version than the selected version.
  • When an AP policy is persisting Microsoft SCCM , the SCCM Management Server health check no longer fails unexpectedly. The Absolute agent now uses a TCP connection to verify that network connectivity to the management server exists.
  • When the new Absolute license assigned to a policy group does not support AP, the AP policy is now deactivated on the device, as expected.  If the new license supports fewer AP features (for example, "Report only" instead of "Report and Repair"), the AP policy is now correctly configured on each device.

Authentication

  • Absolute now sends a confirmation email after a user successfully changes their password. Note that this improvement does not apply to accounts with Single Sign-On configured.
  • When you type an incorrect email address on the Absolute Login page and press Enter on your keyboard instead of clicking the Next and Log In buttons, an "invalid credentials" error message now shows.

Bulk Device Action

  • You can now successfully upload a file containing up to 10,000 device identifiers and submit a Cancel Freeze request or an Unfreeze request.

    NOTE  This issue and its associated fix apply to accounts configured with the Classic version of Device Freeze only.

  • To avoid performing a device action on unintended devices, the wildcard search option is no longer supported in uploaded files of Serial Numbers or IMEIs.

Chromebook support

  • When you submit a security action, such as a Freeze request, the request is deployed to the Chromebook device in near real time. Previously, it may have taken up to 24 hours for the request to be deployed.

Device Freeze (Classic version)

  • When the status of a Scheduled Device Freeze request changes, email notifications are now sent to all specified email recipients.
  • You can now submit a request in the Absolute console and successfully unfreeze a device that was frozen by a Scheduled Device Freeze.

Device Freeze (Absolute 7 version)

  • Previously, after entering an Unfreeze Code on a Windows device, the device remained frozen in some cases. This issue is now fixed.

Device Groups

  • After you filter a device list in a device group and click a device's Identifier, the device's Device Details now opens as expected and you can navigate to the various Device Details tabs.

Device Usage

Hardware Data Collection

 
  • The following data points are now detected on Mac devices and shown in reports and on the device's Device Details > Hardware page:

 
  • Disks
    • Description
    • ID
    • Firmware Revision
    • Disk Index
    • Model
  • Disks (continued)
    • Manufacturer
    • Size
    • Media Type
  • Volumes
    • Mount Point
  • A Mac device's Hard Drive Free Space field now shows the correct number of bytes in reports and on the device's Device Details > Hardware page. Previously, some Mac devices showed 0 bytes.

Geolocation

  • After a device successfully connects to the Absolute Monitoring Center, the device's last detected geographical location is now immediately available in the (Classic) Device Location report, the (Classic) Device Location History report, and the device's Device Summary page.

Reports

 
  • To avoid invalid date values, you can no longer type values in the custom date range fields in the Create Device Analytics Report dialog. Use the Calendar picker to enter the date range.
  • When you create a Device Analytics report and select the "All active devices" device group, Disabled devices are no longer included in the report.
  • You no longer need to add all instances of the Memory Serial Number column to a report for all of the columns to show data. Previously, the columns were empty or showed two em dashes (— —) unless all instances of the column were added to the report.

User Management

  • For new users who are assigned the Administrator or Security Administrator role, you can no longer assign a specific Classic device group to each user; the All active devices device group is now assigned by default and can't be edited. When you attempt to edit an existing Administrator or Security Administrator that is assigned to a Classic device group, you need to either assign a non-administrator role or assign the All active devices device group.
  • Role lists are now sorted in alphabetical order in all areas of User Management.
  • You can now create a custom role that includes any of the following special characters: .(period), ?, /, \, and #.