2024.1 Release Notes (February 22, 2024)

Last updated: 4/18/2024

What's New

New REST API Endpoints

There are several new REST API endpoints included in 2024.1! These updates include endpoints with GET methods for:

  • Retrieving Device Asset information for a device by the specified device ID

  • Retrieving a list of all Organization Units, Service Organizations, Customers and Sites

After upgrading to 2024.1, you can view the updated list of REST API endpoints by navigating to your Swagger Documentation page located at https://Your_FQDN/api-explorer/. The new endpoints can be identified as any endpoint with ‘Preview’ prepended to the endpoint description.

Endpoint Detection & Response Upgradability (On-Prem Partners)

The legacy EDR integration can now be upgraded to the new EDR integration!

This new and improved EDR integration will give you full SentinelOne functionality while continuing to utilize N-central for bulk deployment (Windows and macOS) and real-time monitoring of your devices. With full dashboard access to SentinelOne, including SSO access via Azure AD, you can now view detailed threat reports, configure granular notifications, and access the SentinelOne API. You can also try advanced security features like Threat Hunting, also known as “Deep Visibility”.

To upgrade your EDR integration, navigate to the Integration Management screen within N-central and click the ‘Upgrade’ button.

Device Management for Apple

N-central DMA functionality has been improved by adding an icon to the Features column within the All-Devices view, providing a quick and easy way to see the enrollment status of a device. This new icon includes multiple states, such as DMA Enrolled, Waiting for User, DMA not Enabled, and more.

Patch Management CVSS Scoring

We are delighted to announce a significant enhancement to patch management which brings brand new security focused functionality with the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) data being shown alongside patch information with the Patch Management workflows. CVSS provides a standardized and consistent way to assess and communicate the severity of vulnerabilities. By combining information including CVSS from Microsoft’s Security and Response Center direct into Patch Management you can see which patches are solving vulnerabilities allowing you to focus efforts on those If and when needed.

Please note that a Patch Management Engine (PME) release was launched prior to 2024.1 GA. PME has been able to gather CVSS information for some time pending the finish of the UI. For PME to re-submit older patches that have already been discovered, you will need to clear the cache located here: C:\ProgramData\MspPlatform\PME\data\Cve\CveHash.txt

New Patch Management Report

A new ‘Managed Patch for Mac’ report has been added to provide a much better experience when determining the patch install state over several devices.

Post GA releases

Here's a breakdown of new features and updates released since the GA version of N-central, along with explanations and context where necessary.

Apple DMA UI Updates

Released: 3/12/2024

DMA allows you to add and manage devices inside the profile deployment tab. Plans for this area are to give significantly more functionality than just profile deployment therefore we have updated this tab to be named “Devices”.

The Devices tab will also now be moved to the landing tab meaning when you click into DMA, you have immediate access to the devices you may wish to perform actions on.

We have also updated the Apple Business Manager tab to be named Auto-enrollment as it is more in line with what the area is trying to achieve and is not a direct replacement for ABM.

Analytics – Patch Compliance Dashboard

Released: 3/12/2024

Patch Compliance is a new N-central Analytics dashboard designed to provide insights into the status and progress of patch management activities for one or many clients. The dashboard was designed with partner feedback to match the functional needs and workflows required for day-to-day patch management.  This means that you can use the dashboard to focus on what needs your attention the most. It allows you to identify issues quickly, and through filtering, identify superseding patches, the severity of patches, and patch classification.

Known Issue:

Sometimes the dashboard exposes unexpected patches that are no longer visible in N-central. These are most often superseded patches that were left in the last status before being superseded, but can sometimes be other patches that are no longer visible in the N-central UI due to age. A fix is being investigated. If the issue is primarily for approved patches pending installation the dashboard can be customized and a filter added to the page using DATE APPROVAL > CALENDAR_DATE. Set the filter to ‘Relative Date’ and enter a number of days long enough to not exclude recent and relevant patches but short enough to hide the patches no longer visible in the N-central UI.

EDR Version X SP5 release and Mac Agent 23.3

Released: 3/3/2024

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) was updated to SentinelOne X SP5. This release delivers significant management console enhancements and includes Agent updates for macOS agent version 23.3.

EDR version X SP5 Includes:

  • Keep Your Agents Updated with Auto-Upgrade Policies

  • New Filter for macOS Endpoints: Missing Permissions

  • 2FA Management Improvements

  • Data Collection Scripts

  • Application Management Changes

  • Full Disk Scan Management Improvement

  • Exclusion Catalog Improvements

Patch Management Engine PME 2.10.4

Released: 2/27/2024

An updated version of PME has been released, which includes:

  • CVSS scoring update

    PME has been collecting CVSS scores for some time, this build is required to clear and resync the cache for N-central version 24.1. If you are not on this build, you might not see older CVSS Scores. Note: this update is for N-central only.

  • Verbose 3rd Part Patch Logging default

    We have enabled verbose logging for 3rd party patch by default due to the unnecessary steps of requiring customers to enable and replicate a problem for advanced investigations.

Patch Management Engine (PME) 2.11RC

Released: 4/18/2024

Patch Management Engine v2.11 is focused on one major improvement to how we control an end user's ability to manually check and install updates. This improvement adds a new scheduled check within PME to verify the registry options set within a patch profile are still applied on a device. In some scenarios, environmental changes reset those registry keys thus giving us less control over the device and allowing end user or device to manually install updates.

Apple: New Mac Agent (v1.9.1)

Released: 2/27/2024

The new Mac Agent v1.9.1 is a minor agent release focusing on the following two bug fixes:

  • MSAD-3692: Resolves an issue where curl 8.4.0 being installed on a device breaks scheduled tasks/script running. In this scenario, a task would run and complete on its first attempt, but subsequent attempts would fail.

  • MSAD-3702: Improved Sentinel One deployment where it would not install due to issues with the configuration profile.

Upgrade Paths and Notes

To upgrade to N-able N-central 2024.1, your N-able N-central server must be running the following version:

  • N-able N-central 2022.7.1.44

  • N-able N-central 2023.4.0.32

  • N-able N-central 2023.5.0.12

  • N-able N-central 2023.6.0.9

  • N-able N-central 2023.7.0.10+

  • N-able N-central 2023.8.0.11+

  • N-able N-central 2023.9.0.25

  • N-able N-central 2023.9.0.26

  • N-able N-central 2023.9.1.30

Note the following when upgrading N-able N-central.

Tasks may expire if the agent on an associated device is being upgraded when the task is scheduled to be completed. Agent upgrades are normally short in duration but a delay may happen if a device re-start is pending.

Included updates in N-able N-central

N-central 2024.1

If you are upgrading from a version prior to 2023.9, please note that because of the PostgreSQL upgrade included with N-central 2023.9, on-premise partners can expect this upgrade to take longer than previous upgrades may have. Please do NOT reboot your N-central server if the upgrade appears to be stuck. Please check the server console for error messages, or contact Support and they can advise on the progress and status of the upgrade.

Category Description Item
Analytics Analytics scheduled reports could not be scheduled if the email contained a number in the domain DV-5510
Analytics The Analytics UI continued to trigger report status requests even after failure DV-5417
Analytics Analytics 'Sync' and 'Sandwich menu' actionable items were getting disabled after "reports/exportFetch" failure due to the Reset action on the report DV-5399
Analytics Analytics 'reports/exportFetch' would fail and throw a 404 error code when EU clicked on "Reset Data" button DV-5398
Core The N-central restore process failed to detect existing data tables NCCF-181460
Core The AI Assisted Scripting feature would fail to generate scripts, resulting in an unknown error NCCF-180856
Core Added Support for Okta OpenId as an SSO provider with Custom OIDC NCCF-176482
Core The EDR integration icon was inconsistent and displaying incorrectly on the 'All Devices' view at the System level NCCF-168090
Core Duplicate agent versions were present after an upgrade NCCF-163178
Core Creating a Site or Customer with a name using special characters would result in a system error NCCF-161143
Core Using the new filter option for 'Users created at Customer level' would result in the filter actually being saved at the Site level NCCF-119165
Core The 'Connect Using -> Best Available' option in the Remote Control Settings would cause an unknown error NCCF-88091
Core MFA Breaks with Azure SSO Accounts After upgrade to 2023.9 HF1 NCCF-192146
Core The user session token would expire after 30 minutes if you closed the N-central tab in your browser NCCF-179033
Core Rules would not load from the SO level, resulting in an endless spinny loader NCCF-178140
Core The 'My Links' page was showing an empty list, affecting the ability to add, delete or edit My Links NCCF-177270
Core The Asynchronous restore process would fail NCCF-173106
Core Navigating the Devices > Settings tab and the 'Save' button would be enabled even though changes were not made NCCF-170420
Core Multiple services would go into a 'Stale' state even when the services were sending data NCCF-169191
Core Monitoring services would show as 'Misconfigured' but the thresholds were normal NCCF-165435
Core Auto self-healing was running more frequently than it was configured for in the service settings NCCF-164251
Core The 'Active Issues' view would take several minutes to load, especially when viewing at the System or SO level NCCF-164202
Core The backup file would grow too large and cause an 'HTTP ERROR 503 Service Unavailable after upgrade to 2023.9' NCCF-161976
Core Opening an Automation Manager from N-central would result in an 'Unknown error during enumeration of the policies' NCCF-157006
Core The Device details summary would not populate fully for Linux devices NCCF-146110
Core Probes were not upgrading due to the probe upgrade script failing to run NCCF-142463
Core Domain User Management would not let you select 'User must change pass on next log on' NCCF-137385
Core Multiple devices would go 'Stale' due to the "mmsProbe3Convertor" script which has now been removed NCCF-133353
Core Users could not search by 'Discovered Name' from the All Devices view NCCF-127776
Core LaunchDarkly was spamming logs with useless information when a user accessed anything in the UI that has a feature check NCCF-113585
Core The Linux agent would crash on memory monitoring service when processes consumed a lot of memory NCCF-110109
Core The Take Control icon would incorrectly display as orange for user account with read-only permissions for devices NCCF-107295
Core SNMP settings were resulting in Device Asset information not updating NCCF-64275
Core A system error was generated when attempting to assign probes NCCF-21345
Core The 'Active Issues' count was not accurate to the list of results in the view NCCF-20361
Core Filters with custom drop-down properties were displaying the wrong results or empty values NCCF-17854
Core Updated the rules behavior with Integrated Backup so it will only apply to valid devices and not be applied to Cove enabled devices via Integrated Backup Manager NCCF-162103
Core New REST API Endpoint: Organization Units NCCF-145357
Core New REST API Endpoint: Device Asset Information NCCF-145358
Core Updated code to the latest ChatGPT version to resolve errors and stabilize the AI Assisted Scripting feature NCCF-124032
Core Updated Stock Filters to include Server 2022 NCCF-84251
Core Fixed the Mobile Device filters that were improperly marked as deprecated MSAD-3605
Ecosystem DNSF Integration: Add deactivation messaging/prevent reactivation of integration once disabled KUIP-5585
Ecosystem Intune Integration: Add deactivation messaging/prevent reactivation of integration once disabled KUIP-5584
Patch Management Patch Management: Changed 'Enable native OS patching' option to 'Manage Windows Updates' PMCM-5870
Patch Management Patch Management: Added Microsoft CVSS columns to the Patch Approval Wizard PMCM-125

Known Issues

These items for the current version of the N-able N-central software is composed of material issues significantly impacting performance whose cause has been replicated by N-able and where a fix has not yet been released. The list is not exclusive and does not contain items that are under investigation. Any known limitations set forth herein may not impact every customer environment. The N-able N-central software is being provided as it operates today. Any potential modifications, including a specific bug fix or any potential delivery of the same, are not considered part of the current N-able N-central software and are not guaranteed.

Agents & Probes

Description

Bug

Communication issues may be encountered for N-able N-central Probes installed on Windows servers that have multiple NICs. For more information, refer to 'KBA20020:ConfiguringAServer WithMultipleNICs' in the online Help.

67778

Automation Manager

AV Defender and Backup Manager – D2D

Description

Bug

Running Automation Manager Policies created using Automation Manager 1.6 or earlier may result in Failed to create an EndDate ... errors if the Policies are run on a computer using a different date format. This issue does not affect Policies created using Automation Manager 1.7 or later.

65712

Custom Services

Description

Bug

Custom services may appear as misconfigured when the system locale of the device is not set to English. For example, in Portuguese the default decimal in c#/.net is not a period, ".", it is a comma, ",". If you are having this issue, please contact N-able Technical Support.

65288

Core Functionality

Description

Bug

Installing N-able N-central on Servers that have an Nvidia Video Card

Due to a bug in CentOS 7 with Nvidia's 'Nouveau' driver, installing N-able N-central on servers that have an Nvidia video card may result in the N-able N-central console showing a blank screen, or displaying an Anaconda Installer screen with an error message about the video card driver.

NCCF-11842

If you have the need to use Conditional Access Policies for your Azure AD/Entra ID linked users, there is a known issue that prevents your users from logging in. We have identified a workaround by using Custom (OpenID Connect) instead. To learn more, click HERE. NCCF-31030

HDM does not work with the 'Last 5 Tickets' widget.

NCCF-10855

Dashboards

Description

Bug

Modifying a Dashboard that is associated with a large number of services may cause performance issues when using the Firefox browser.

70326

PSA Integration

Description

Bug

In some instances, tickets closed in PSAs are not being cleared in N-able N-central. This is likely because the ticketing recipient profile in N-able N-central has Do not change the Ticket Status selected (in order to manually configure tickets). Then, when the ticket is removed in the PSA, N-able N-central will not be able to update or resolve the ticket's status and new tickets cannot be created for the same issue. Until a solution is available through the UI for this situation, the work around is to set a Return to Normal status and set a non-used status in the 'updatable statuses' section or set the same status as the return to normal one. This will cause N-able N-central to add a note to the ticket on return to normal but will not alter the ticket's status. This will allow the stale ticket check to remove the ticket from the system.

65620

UI

Description

Bug

When Cove Data Protection is installed on a device, the device details view will not light up the Cove icon in the features row correctly. NCCF-162108

After re-naming, the Names of files or Registry entries may not be displayed properly in the File System window and the Registry window of the Tools tab when using Internet Explorer.

68149

User Access Management

Description

Bug

Login window reappears when new tab is loaded.

When already logged into N-central and a user opens a new tab and browses to N-central from this new tab, the login screen reappears yet the user is already logged in. The left hand navigation is functional.

NCCF-29648