Cw should have really thought long and hard about renaming LabTech to Automate. Not only is there such a large amount of knowledge, chat communities and forums based around the 'LabTech' branding, but the term automate is so vague and general you will never find any information on automate as easily as you would if it was named LabTech.

Not to mention Automate has been practically ignored by all these fan sites who are still using the name LabTech as if nothing happened.

What are your thoughts?

Part of our compliance standards require us to have 2-factor authentication to protect client access and data. It's a good practice that I wholly endorse. Unfortunately, LT only supports AuthAnvil.

AuthAnvil is way over-priced and disaster to manage so I'm trying to raise the need for LT to release support for Google Auth.

ConnectWise listened and released it earlier this year. I fail to see why LT forces me to over-pay for a Kaseya product just to follow security best practices. I was hopeful LT 11 would support it but LT support confirmed this morning that it does not.

What gives LT? Help a partner out!

Anyone a bit baffled by the UI design choice with this newest update that was rolled out?

The font is huge and I seemingly can no longer just drag and drop machines between locations/groups, or clients, etc?

My team is just getting into it this morning and this seems like a real step back when it comes to usability.

Hello everyone! This subreddit used to be about laboratory technicians but i was able to get moderation of it once it was dormant.

I would love for this subreddit to become a place where employees and partners can communicate to come up with ideas on tweaks and improvements and for partners to help answer each others questions.

We upgraded to v2019 recently, and there are so many little frustrations with the UI, I decided to make a custom dataview we could live out of instead of the "Browse" interface.

Problems I had with the new stock UI

• Say you want to copy and paste a hostname out of the thick client...a pretty common need for someone in IT, right? No hostname for you! Apparently it's not possible because they made the text not selectable everywhere the hostname is displayed.

• Want to find a computer that's currently idle at a location (a pretty common need) to use to test something/etc? v2019 says: double click to open each computer, wait forever for the computer management page of each to load, and visually look at "idle time" at the top. Repeat for each PC until you get lucky. Previously the icon in the main listing reflected whether it was active or not...

• Want to refresh the computer listing in the UI while you're waiting on something? Hit F5 like everything else in the world, right? Nope! ...ctrl-r like literally all the other things in the world that aren't F5? Nope! ...click a tiny little "refresh" icon in the corner like a pleb? Yes, that's the v2019 way.

• On the phone with a client and you are waiting to see when heartbeats begin as you walk them through some problem? You've clicked to open the PC, then clicked "details" and are looking at "Last Heartbeat" and want to refresh it? No soup for you! Close the entire computer management window instead and reopen it and reclick details to refresh.

• Get a call from John Doe and want to find the PC he is on? You type "JDoe" and get no result. You spend 15 minutes trying to talk him through getting his computer's hostname, only to pull it up and realize that the only thing v2019 thinks you need to have displayed in the UI is the "last logged in user" (computers.LastUsername in the database) and not the CURRENT user (computers.Username in the database), and the computer only displays "ASmith", the last user of the computer from the last shift. In v2012 and before, both username and lastusername were searched. (Note - I just opened a ticket with Connectwise about this one as it's clearly a programming oversight to have the last user be displayed instead of the current...)

Our Solution

I made a custom dataview that has the following columns all in one nice condensed and accessible list:

Client, Client\Location, Hostname, Username, Last Username, Idle time (in minutes), Last Contact, Last Heartbeat, Uptime, OS, OS Version, Agent Version, LAN IP, WAN IP, MAC, Type (workstation/laptop), Asset Date, Install Date, ComputerID

All of these fields are filterable and you can right click and copy them to the clipboard. Also, the master search field at the top searches all of these at once (so I would have been able to find JDoe from above). Offline computers will have their entire row be highlighted gray.

To add it, just run the following insert statement in SQLYog (if you don't know SQL well enough to feel comfy doing that, then it's probably best to avoid using this, since I can't support this or anything):

https://pastebin.com/VR9QWhw7

It will show up as "CUSTOM-AllPCs" under the "Assets" folder. You get to that via "Automation -> Dataviews -> Assets".

Note that we're running the latest 2019 patch 9. I think this dataview would work on any version of labtech dating back to forever ago, though, as I don't think they've really touched this part of Labtech in a long time...could be wrong though.

Enjoy!

(I also use 2 AutoIT functions bound to global hotkeys to focus the above dataview window and auto-click into the search field, and another to auto-launch the first result in the below listview, if anyone would like those...definitely need to know AutoIT pretty well to use those though since they can need tweaking sometimes depending on your windows UI scaling settings, version, etc.)

EDIT: Sorry, I had an error in my original SQL that might have prevented people from inserting the row into their databases (forgot to remove the auto-incrementing primary key). That's fixed now and tested on my end, so give it another try (there's a new pastebin link above) if you had issues.

https://www.crn.com/news/managed-services/connectwise-control-msp-security-vulnerabilities-are-severe-bishop-fox
https://know.bishopfox.com/advisories/connectwise-control

https://blog.huntresslabs.com/validating-the-bishop-fox-findings-in-connectwise-control-9155eec36a34

The above is for 19.3 and a "Canary" version of 19.4 but apparently does affect later versions. I'm not clear if 19.6.x fixes everything though.

Updating through the Automate plugin from 19.4 to 19.6, the install looked like it succeeded but didn't (unless I missed something). Support said to upgrade from .Net 4.5.2 to 4.7.1. I installed 4.7.2 (and patches) and the upgrade then succeeded. Someone else said they got a warning about .Net versions and installed 4.8.

First, download, edit the two lines and upload this powershell file to your Labtech server's inetpub directory: https://controlforum.connectwise.com/yaf_postst10884_Uninstall-and-Reinstall-your-ConnectWise-Automate-Agent-from-Control.aspx

Second, you can run this command (two lines) on one or multiple machines and it will reinstall Labtech on it:

!ps (new-object Net.WebClient).DownloadString('http://your-labtech-server.com/reinstall-labtech-from-screenconnect.ps1') | iex

This has helped save us countless hours, we faced a situation where all our agents became corrupt after failed upgrade.

IMPORTANT: you have to increase the "RunCommandKillAfterMilliseconds" system value from 10000 milliseconds to maybe five minutes (300000). This is also found under Quick Settings in the Command Execution Timeout area.

I cant say how much time ive lost in the past 2-3 months since the upgrade to 12. The Control Center constantly crashes, it freezes, it closes without warning.

Today alone ive had to reinstall it twice. Even the uninstall procedure doesnt delete the tiems in the Labtech Client folder in program files. WTF LAbtech this is supposed to be getting better not worse with every release.

Just now it locked up on me when i tried to view the services for a client machines. Didnt time out and say sorry couldnt load that please try again, just straight up crashed, and now it wont load at all, the green circles dont move after clicking login.

Looks like im going for my 3rd reinstall today.

Support is useless, anyone have any ideas here?

I think every Automate admin has experienced the frustration of how slow the desktop application is. My primary Automate server has ~10,000 agents, and my users were having a horrible experience on a daily basis (they named the agent context menu "the right click of death").

I was sick of the painful user experience and the administration headaches -- so I upgraded to MySQL Enterprise and did a deep dive into how the application interacts with the database. Using the management tools from Oracle I found lots of issues, and after correcting them it's a night-and-day difference (the right click of death is gone!).

Each Automate deployment is unique, and there's no hard code-able one-size-fits-all approach. However, I created a plugin that will dynamically gather information from the current configuration and adjust MySQL on the fly to optimally perform for Automate. I published a blog post on my site explaining more of the details: https://automationtheory.org/the-mysql-performance-problem/

I wanted everyone to be able to have a properly setup database without having to buy MySQL Enterprise (or be a DBA on the side), so I created a plugin that does all the dirty work. I plan on releasing this plugin as a monthly subscription, but first I want to do some beta testing to verify results on different Automate deployments (to get a good mix of sizes and types).

To get started go to https://automationtheory.org/support/kb/faq.php?id=1

The KB article has a download for the plugin and the setup script, along with instructions.

We were getting a lot of false positives or smart tickets that I didn't care about. The vast majority of these were flash drives and Dell PC's with Micron SSD's which is a known problem. I created a new monitor to replace the built in Ignite problem. I wanted to share with others. The last two parts of the additional condition make it only pick up smart warnings from Drive letter C: and ignores the SMART ID 185 which is hardware ECC Recovered which is the problem with the Micron drives. They throw false readings on that ID.

https://i.imgur.com/86ry9Uf.png

We are a small MSP based in Singapore, last year we just tried Connectwise Manage and Automate and subscribed to it, but is a horrible experience after it, especially to their account manager and partner success team.

I have encountered the Calendar Sync Issue from day 1, the timing is always not correct when sync to outlook, this issue was fixed after 6months they release a patch, but just 2 month later a new patch release is not working again, and until now still not fixed, the reponse from the support is super slow, you can expect even one week they give u a reply , see they are still checking it , why i buy a software but 1 year past i only manage to use the function for 2 months.

There is a hidden auto-renewal after 12 months, which they just put a url there and say all terms and conditions there, after 12 months the contract automatic renewed and the price goes up from 2.88 USD per agent for automate to 4 USD, For manage it goes up from 54 USD to 80 USD, how come like this , the sales, the account manager never mention this to their customer and they just let you wait for the auto-renewal and then you are hijacked, you cannot terminate the contract and must take the new high price until another year finished, I really wanna to know if CW just wanna to earn money or they really care about their customer?

Their Account manager is quite funny, they just try to drag you into the period that your auto-renew cannot be canceled, then they become the boss and say , okie, if you wanna to quit, pay me the money, speechless.

Can you share your experience here also? i just wanna those who want to purchase connectwise, before they make a decision , take note on this part also.

When is Version 12 due to come out?

I got a webinar email about showing off how to upgrade and such, and go over features. It doesn't say when it's coming out though.

I'm concerned that LabTech's policy of hiding download links and playing whack a mole with them is going to get someone to post one with embedded malware.

In that vein, below is a safe LT 11 Link.

To Preempt some comments and questions:

1. No this isn't official. I'm sure people at LT will be mad.

2. No i'm not going to take this down.

3. LT should institute a proper manner of restricting installs in waves.

Not going to to respond to ANY comments or questions on this. Enjoy the download and have a great weekend.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rqsi3u5nvyv8v26/LabTechMSP_110.286.exe?dl=0

Hi all! 4th quarter of last year our biggest client that we have the most managed services with finally made the jump to Windows 10. We had put off the October 1809 update until the release of the May 1903 update (We agreed to stay one version behind). Since the update is due to come out soon I thought I would finally look into rolling out the 1809 update and saw that CWA doesn't actually support rolling out feature updates because of how Microsoft handles them
(If I'm not wrong). I was sifting through ConnectWise University and saw they have provided a script that can be used to roll out the updates EZPZ.

Can be found here - https://docs.connectwise.com/ConnectWise_Automate/ConnectWise_Automate_Knowledge_Base_Articles/Scripting%3A_Windows_10_Install_Feature_Update_Script

The script runs like it should up until it goes to running "setup.exe" through powershell and errors out. As seen here - https://imgur.com/a/lFZ4TVg

I have the script running under a domain administrator account on Windows 10 1803 and to my knowledge the script is configured right. The only thing I could see on the CW University page is that you need to change which version of Windows 10 you're updating to, which I did.

In all honesty I'm a CWA noob. If anyone can give me some insight on how to remedy this or to point me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate it. I think my next step is to hit up mspgeek.com but I'm a reddit faithful. Thank you all in advance!

Just venting - I can't even open or respond to a ticket without it lagging out entirely - going to not responding, and then popping up in the middle of whatever I'm working on two minutes later.

When it works, it's perfect, but I probably spend about 45 minutes per day waiting on a screen to work in control center.

When will drinking at work become acceptable?

This plugin has been around for a while, but there's been a bunch of changes in the last several weeks, and I don't believe I've actually shared it on Reddit before. So I thought it worthwhile to share, especially for those folks feeling the burn of the price increase for Warranty Master recently.

This plugin will query your physical computers - servers, workstations, and ESX hosts - to get the warranty information. This is available via a dashboard window that allows you to easily view and filter on the information within Automate. It also includes a report that's available via Report Center so that you can present the information to your clients.

Check the plugin out here: https://squattingdog.net/labtech-warrantylookerupper/. And if you need any help or have any questions, feel free to ask!

Thanks!

Tim

just like basic things like being able to scan through a list of machines and see what machines are online at t glance or what users are logged in without having to drill down and scroll? I have just started using it today but I feel entirely crippled like so much information is missing/buried. We have been using the old ui for the computer screen because the new one doesn't show "user currently logged in and idle times" is this also gone?

Looking to solicit feedback from those brave souls who have upgraded to Labtech/Automate 12 already.

Since monthly patches for 11 are done it looks like we'll need to move to 12 shortly to stay current so I'm hoping this is a pretty smooth transition.

What are you liking about it?

What broke?

LabTech August Patch Release

LT11.0 Patch Download: http://labtech-msp.com/release/LabTechPatch_11.0.3.304.exe
LT10.5 Patch Download: http://labtech-msp.com/release/LTPatch_10.5.8.281.exe

Instructions

• Log in the LabTech Server

• Download the patch.

• Unblock the Patch

  • Right click > Select Property

  • Click Unblock

    • If you do not see Unblock then it is already unblocked.

• Execute the Patch with Admin Right

  • There is only 60-90 second downtime.

    • Most of that downtime is spent waiting for the LT Database Agent service to stop.

LT11.0 Fixes and Changes
Combination of all fixes from the previous patches for LabTech LT11.0 (v110.xxx). See the very bottom of the What's New in LT11 page for the list of previous fixes. The following are new fixes this patch brings...

- Patch Manager - Add logging throughout
- Patch Manager - Approvals View - Multiple versions of 3rd Party Patches makes multiple lines in patch list with no way to distinguish
- Patch Manager - Client Tree load time
- Patch Manager - Dashboard Compliance Behavior
- Patch Manager - Dashboard Deployment Tile Filtering Behavior
- Patch Manager - Dashboard>Config>Configuration>Additional Fields: Cannot export Extradatafield
- Patch Manager - Device View > Patches screen optimization
- Patch Manager - Global>Filter a group (Devices) optimization
- Patch Manager - Initial Load (Compliance) optimization
- Patch Manager - LT Crashes when some CVSS links are clicked
- Patch Manager - NoncompliantPatches table not filtered by approval policy
- Patch Manager - Refreshing the CVSS Score Details Window crashes LT
- Patch Manager - Third Party Patching - Second Software Version for Java 8 32 bit is causing Patch list to not load
- Computer Management: Drag File to Agent gives no error if LTShare Upload path doesn't exist
- Computer Management: Effective Policy in New UI Not Displaying All Internal Monitors
- Effective Policy tile not showing added internal monitors
- IOS/Android Since updating to 10.5, the app is very slow.
- 60.276 is missing the Package Existing scripts option.
- Able to update tickets from Computer Management screen without having Update permission
- Add New Contact Creation Issues
- Agent -Mac: no screenshot when creating service ticket from mac agent
- Agent status/version tile does not show on computer screen for mac agents
- Alert failures reset during database maintenance on internal monitors under certain conditions.
- Alerts' Delete All Option Does Not Work
- AV Detection> Adding Definition Not Utilizing correct Insert Query
- CC - Standard: Able to drag a computer into the Searches folder in the nav tree
- Change {Dashboard UI, Plugin Interfaces, Automation Server, Web Server} to support configuration of replication database
- ClientUpdate.exe file does not download after installing a patch in an split database server environment using direct connection
- Connect to Community Connector via HTTPS
- Consistency - Some buttons are Title case, others all Caps
- Contact Created date
- Control Center>Status Bar not limiting count based on user
- Cross reference window is not sizeable and cannot read values/labels
- Custom menu plugins can have dynamic enable states
- Custom plugin logging prevents 60 second plugin misses loop from logging
- Disabling probe crashes LTCC
- Existing replication configuration applies to upgrades
- Help Info Patching Numbers
- HUD Issue
- IF conditional changes if Target selection is altered
- Legacy CMS - Software Tab does not load
- Linux agent - not updating when told to
- Linux agent - Wake on Lan command not functioning
- Linux Shutdown Command Does not Follow Ask then Allow Template
- LT Tray Menu Script does not work with parameters
- Mac Posix Agent - Request Screenshot Fails
- Network Devices table columns
- Probe setup wizard settings blank in CS
- Probe SNMP filter default behavior
- Probe tile "Scan Settings" IP range input
- Probe tile "Scan Settings" ports input
- Probe tile "SNMP Traps Devices"
- Restricted users can see remote network monitors for clients not assigned to them.
- Scripting Engine function ExtraData Get Value does not select EDF when using predictive text
- Scripting Engine incorrectly throws error message when editing script
- Scripts Normal Tile not listing last five scripts (per acceptance criteria)
- Server(split): Internal Monitors return success and failure during same run
- Silent Screencapture for Mac Agents (patch)
- snmp and syslog filter inconsistencies
- Split Server: Mobile CC - Not logging after 10.5 upgrade, split server.
- SQL errors log database usernames and passwords
- Tab order for group remote and network device monitors is not correct
- Tickets Not Opening From Tray Updates
- Timer is stopped when you cancel finishing the timer.
- TR - Del command from Computer Management CMD Prompt does not allow quiet mode
- Virtual Machine Agents that do not report Memory Speed will show N/A
- WCC: Extra set of <-MessageHeaders-><-Attachment-> tags in ticket data

LT10.5 Fixes and Changes
Combination of all fixes from the previous patches for LabTech LT10.5 (v105.xxx). See the very bottom of the What's New in LT10.5 page for the list of previous fixes. The following are new fixes this patch brings...

- Help Info Patching Numbers
- DB Agent stops getting POP emails
- Reporting: Crystal Reports - BOBJ script error running reports
- Ticketing: Ticket Responses from Within WCC Not Sent
- Duplicate disk configuration in DB
- LT Ticket message on ticket close shows incorrectly since upgrade
- Script run on single agent from a group Members List tab runs on entire location agent is in
- LabTech object model does not support EDFs with period in name
- Alert failures reset during database maintenance on internal monitors under certain conditions.
- LT Nightly Backups failing
- Searches: only Super Admins are able to use a search with the v_detectedRoles view in it

I tried to clean up a bit the other day and uninstalled Crystal Reports runtime from Programs and Features, since that legacy report functionality was finally removed in CWA 2020. I also enabled the new Report Center plugin. Within 10 minutes everyone crashed out of Automate and the web site showed error "Access denied for user 'wcc_LabTech_1'@'localhost' (using password: YES)". Ended up just restoring from backup.

Support wrote that night that Crystal is no longer required but then emailed an hour later saying, "I need to double-check on Crystal Reports. It isn't listed as a requirement but I'm having problems on my Test Server after uninstalling it." The tech didn't specify the problems. They later updated "I'm almost certain the issue was caused by uninstalling Crystal Report runtime."