We’re very pleased to announce the preview of a brand new feature for MAX RM – Active Discovery. We’ve heard from a lot of customers that you regularly find devices go unmanaged on your clients’ network. This is the first step towards us helping you discover those devices, and to charge accordingly.

This new addition to the MAX RM platform will enable you to scan and monitor your customers’ networks to see the active devices that are connected; everything from servers and workstations, to printers, routers, switches, NAS boxes, mobile devices, and any other networked equipment. You can monitor both wired and wireless networks, add network credentials to increase results, see detailed information for each device, and export the data to CSV.

This is just the beginning of our journey with Active Discovery, and for this initial release we have focused on adding value by providing information about the devices connected to your client’s networks. Future enhancements will bring even more actionable information directly to your RM dashboard.

We’re also introducing new Roles & Permissions in the same release. Click here to find out more.

This preview version of Active Discovery offers a range of benefits, including the ability to:

• Manage multiple networks from a single pane of glass
  You can monitor all of your clients’ networks and easily search for devices.

• Identify the active devices on your customers’ networks
  Discover and categorize the devices connected to each managed subnet and get details such as MAC address, IP, Operating System, Version and hostname.

• Uncover new devices as they come online
  The administrator will be able to see when devices come online and when they disconnect from the network.

* To use this new feature you need to install the new RC Agent v9.9.0. This installs Active Discovery.

What the future holds…
Active Discovery is a big commitment for us and we won’t be stopping here. In this release, we’re putting the essential building blocks in place for a series of enhancements that will help solve the device management needs many of you are highlighting to us. And we’re already working on the next set of updates.

Look out for:

• MAX RM agent detection
  This will help you identify new any unmanaged devices – so you can build your business with your clients without having to go back to the customer site to learn that new machines have been added to the network.

• The ability to remotely install the Monitoring Agent
  This will make it as easy as possible to upgrade unmonitored devices.

• Increased device fingerprinting
  So we can provide more device information out of the box.

• Device alerts
  Letting you know straight away when a new device has been added to a network that you’re managing.

Your Voice Counts…
We can’t make this the best possible feature without you, and we want to hear your feedback. Tell us what you think and let us know what you see as priorities for our next series of enhancements.

All the details…
Here’s what you need to know about getting started with Active Discovery. More information can be found in the Help documentation within the RM Dashboard.

1. The Active Discovery agent is deployed alongside of the MAX RM RC agent v9.9.0. To run a Discovery Scan, at least one agent must be installed per subnet. When the Discovery Agent is installed, the Summary Window of the South Pane will report it as Active under the Agent Supported Features section (1).

You will need to be a Superuser or an Administrator user to see the new Networks tab. (Of course you can use the new user permissions feature to set which users should access the feature.)

2. After the installation completes, or when connected to a new network, the Discovery Agent runs an initial scan to retrieve basic information on the wired and/or wireless network the device is connected to. To place a discovered network under management, navigate to the Networks tab of the Dashboard. Click on Manage a New Network to open the Manage Network dialog (2). By default the Manage Network dialog shows those networks that are currently online and connected to the RM Agent. Select your network, and then Save (3).
3. After bringing the network under management, give the network a name and optionally add credentials (4). Windows Domain Admin Account, SNMP Community String, SSH Account, Telnet Account and HTTP/S Account credentials are supported. Then select OK.
4. After the network has been brought under management, the Discovery Agent will now begin to scan the subnet for connected devices. This process usually takes a few minutes. As devices are discovered, the Summary tab will update to give an overview of the network (5). All of the devices are displayed in the Connected Devices tab in the South Pane (6).
5. After the devices have been discovered, users can edit any of the details. Results will continue to populate and update with time. Double click on a selected device to edit its details. This includes items like category, and operating system (7).

And finally…
The staging release notes are listed below.

Staging Release Notes
Please note that staging release notes are subject to change. Final release notes will go out with the release.

Summary for Service Release
– Service release focused on new features, bug fixes and performance
– Dashboard v6.0
– Agent v9.8.13 GA, Agent v9.9.0 RC

Dashboard v6.0
FEATURE: New User Roles and Permissions for customised Dashboard user accounts
FEATURE: New client login option with ability to customise the client’s Dashboard access
FEATURE: Introducing Networks tab for discovering connected devices on client networks

Agent v9.9.0 RC
FEATURE: Introducing Networks tab for discovering connected devices on client networks

Agent v9.8.13 GA
Includes all the updates since the current production Agent v9.8.9

Agent v9.8.10 RC
UPDATE: GFI MAX Backup check renamed to MAX Backup check
BUGFIX: Ensure deselected Plugins for Managed Online Backup are correctly removed from the list of billable MOB files
BUGFIX: Ensure script checks can be tested during agent installation using the Test Check function

Agent v9.8.11 RC
UPDATE: Apply Monitoring Templates at client and site level
UPDATE: Apply multiple Monitoring Templates simultaneously to the selected devices
BUGFIX: Ensure Kaspersky Endpoint Security 10 is detected correctly
BUGFIX: Ensure Take Control sessions consistently display the computer name that’s been connected to

Agent 9.8.12 RC
UPDATE: Performance improvement to the Site Concentrator feature  NB: This update was withdrawn and is not included in v9.8.13 GA