Neurons (Feature)

Ivanti Neurons (feature) is being deprecated and replaced with the new Ivanti Neurons Bots experience. Please refer to Migrating to Neurons Bots for further information.

Ivanti Neurons provides powerful hyper-automation capabilities for IT departments, and with a no-code/low-code interface and rich out-of-the-box content, organizations can start solving many challenges across the IT landscape in minutes.

Ivanti Neurons is typically used by IT administrators or managers who have responsibility for the productivity, health, or security of multiple users, devices, or those who provide tooling for service desk analysts to improve their troubleshooting capabilities. There are many out-of-the-box Neuron queries and actions to start solving problems, but Ivanti Neurons is also infinitely extensible thanks to PowerShell and osquery support.

Ivanti Neurons comprises two separately licensable features: Neurons for Healing and Neurons Workspace.

Neurons for Healing

Neurons for Healing can be used to increase the efficiency and security of users and devices by automatically monitoring the environment for compliance and user productivity impediments surfacing key insights. This then allows the automation of alerting and remediation of issues to improve proactivity around unreported issues and changes. For further details see Neurons for Healing.

Neurons Workspace

Neurons Workspace can be used to help service desks reduce complexity, long wait times, and high escalation costs by automating incident resolutions and processes that can be invoked by service desk analysts against a given device to resolve a support issue, resulting in faster end-user resolutions and greater productivity. For further details see Neurons Workspace.

Prerequisites

Ivanti Neurons employ several components of the Ivanti Neurons Platform to deliver functionality that you need to configure before using Neurons:

Service Manager Connector: This must be configured with Action credentials in order to be able to create Service Manager tickets with Neurons.

Ivanti Neurons Agent: This is used for querying real-time date from, and delivering action to, devices. This also deploys and transports osquery data.

Device Groups: The Device list provides the ability to filter and sort devices based on a range of attributes. The resultant set of devices can be saved as a group, which can be used in Neurons to constrain a query or action against that group of devices.

Some of the Neurons features are available only to users with the appropriate role. For further details see Access Control

Neurons introduction

The Neurons home screen has two main sections—depending on your license, you may see either or both. Towards the top are unique tiles for both Neurons for Healing and Neurons Workspace. Each tile shows four key performance indicators and is the main access point to manage the Neurons that live under each licensable feature. Positioned below are a list of Neuron Alerts. In addition, you can also access the Audit History and the Library & Marketplace using the buttons at the top-right.

Neurons management

From the Neurons home screen, click either Neurons for Healing or Neurons Workspace to view the respective management page. This is where you can view and access all the Neurons that belong to either group and see the overall key performance indicators including the total number of Neurons, the total number of active/published Neurons, the Neuron success rate, and the total count of Neuron runs.

All Neurons belonging to that group are listed in a table that includes the following details:

  • Status: Indicates if the Neuron is Active/Inactive (Ivanti Neurons for Healing) or Published/Unpublished (Ivanti Neurons Workspace).
  • Category: (Applies only to Neurons for Healing.) There are four categories designed around core business outcomes, and each contains some pre-built Neurons to get started:
    • Compliance: To provide early visibility and action against security threats or compliance issues.
    • User Productivity: To monitor and take action against issues that may prevent an end user from being productive.
    • Business Continuity: To monitor and take action against services or devices that may impact business continuity if unavailable.
    • Resource Optimization: To identify cost or resource-saving opportunities.
  • Stages: The number of stages in the Neuron workflow.
  • Run Count: Number of times the Neuron workflow has been run.
  • Success Rate: Percentage success rate of the Neuron workflow completing.
  • Last Run: Date the Neuron workflow was last run.
  • History: A timeline to show any trends in behavior.

Click ellipsis icon to Clone or Delete the Neuron.

Neuron workflow

A Neuron, or Neuron workflow is made from a series of connected stages designed to automate various business processes and can be used to discover, provide insight, and take action. You can create a custom Neuron workflow from scratch or customize a pre-built one to suit your business needs using the Neuron Builder, see Neuron Workflow Builder for details.

A Neuron workflow can live in either of the two licensable feature groups, Neurons for Healing or Neurons Workspace, and are built using the same workflow builder process. However, there are key differences between their available settings based on their intended use.

Neurons for Healing

Neurons that live in this feature can be invoked manually, but their intended use is to be ‘activated’ and run automatically on a schedule, targeting specified groups of devices. For further details see Neurons for Healing.

Neurons Workspace

Neurons that live in this feature can also be invoked manually, but their intended use is to be ‘published’ to the device view as a custom action for support analysts to invoke against specific devices for resolving incidents. For further details see Neurons Workspace.

Neuron output

From a Neurons management screen, click a Neuron to view the Neuron Output screen, where you can view the results of a Neuron workflow.

The Run Log lists the full history of runs for that particular Neuron:

succeeded icon – succeeded

partially succeeded icon – partially succeeded

skipped icon – skipped because a previous run was in progress

failed icon – failed

Click a Run # to display the output details which includes the KPIs for the trigger, date, duration, and target group. A non-editable version of the Neuron appears.

The non-editable version of the Neuron workflow shows the success of each stage. If a stage was successful for all devices succeeded icon appears, if a stage was partially successful (succeeded for some but not all devices) partially succeeded icon appears, and if the stage failed for all devices failed icon appears. To view output details of each stage, click it to open the Stage Output panel. From the Stage Output panel, click View Action Details to see more details about the selected action, including which devices the action succeeded and failed on.

The following actions are available in the top-right page toolbar:

  • Edit Neuron: To open the Neuron Builder.
  • Run Now: To trigger a manual run of the Neuron.
  • Audit History: To open the full Audit History of all Neurons in the Neurons category.

Neuron Alerts

The Neuron Alerts display on the Neurons homepage. The alerts table lists all alerts that have been raised for any active Neuron that is configured to raise an alert. You can sort the table in order of priority, Neuron name, description, or date that the Neuron workflow was last run. Click any Neuron to display the Neuron Output page with the details for the last run instance.

Library

The library is where you can view and access all of your stages, including default stages, custom stages created by you, and stages installed from the marketplace.

My Stages

Contains all of the stages available to use in your Neurons. You can add more stages to your Library either by creating custom stages or installing stages from the Marketplace. You can search for a particular stage or filter the stages by Category; Custom, Query, Common, Action, Beta, or by Publisher.

  1. On the Neurons homepage, select Library.
  2. From within the Library, select Create Custom Stage. Select one of the following stage types:
    • osquery - an open source SQL based language developed by Facebook that can be used to query and retrieve information from devices and supports all operating systems.
    • Powershell Action - can be used to perform actions on Window devices.
    • PowerShell Query - can be used to query Window devices.
    • BASH Action - can be used to perform actions on Mac devices.
    • BASH Query - can be used to perform queries on Mac devices.
  3. From the Stage Editor select to get started with an example template or from a blank template. Alternatively, you can paste your own custom code directly into the text box in the stage settings panel.
  4. When you are finished editing click Preview Stage. This allows you to preview the properties and appearance before you save.
    The Stage Editor for osquery supports a real-time preview and allows you to build parameters into the code for saving reusable stages.
  5. Click Save. When saving stages you have two options; you can either save:
    • This Instance: Saving as a unique instance means the stage is used only for that Neuron.
    • Reusable Library Stage: Saving as a reusable library stage means the stage is stored in your library and appear in the Library panel for use in the other Neurons.

    For workflow examples using osquery, PowerShell and BASH see Neuron Workflow Builder.

Marketplace

Contains all the available stages created by Ivanti that you can install to your library to use in your Neurons. You can search for a particular stage and you can filter by Category; Custom, Query, Action or by Publisher.

  1. To install a stage go to the Marketplace.
  2. Click on the stage you want to install, this opens the information panel.
  3. Click Install.

When a stage gets installed it is automatically added to your library and is available when creating Neurons.

  1. To uninstall a stage go to My Stages.
  2. Click on the stage you want to uninstall, this opens the information panel.
  3. Click Uninstall.

Uninstalling a stage removes it from your library so it is not available for future use. Any existing Neurons remain active until the stage is removed.

Audit History

The Audit History lists all of the Neuron run log activity including the status of whether it is running, successfully completed, or failed. The stat and finish time is listed with the run duration. You can click on any Neuron instance to display the Instance timeline.

Related topics

Neurons for Healing

Neurons Workspace

Neuron Workflow Builder