New features

A new System Preference, Display top five requests in Service Catalog, has been added to Web Access. If you set this to true (the default), when a user selects the All option in the Service Catalog in Workspaces, a new section appears that shows the top five most requested items in the Service Catalog. These items appear ordered by most requests, then by Catalog Order, and then alphabetically.

For more information, see Top 5 and featured items in the Service Catalog in Workspaces.

Featured Items now appear only when you select a category.

Bulk actions are now available in Web Access, enabling you to run an action on a number of items at the same time.

For more information, see Bulk actions.

You can now deactivate individual data import mappings within an import schedule from the Import Mappings tree of the Data Import component in the Console. To deactivate an import mapping, select it in the Import Mappings tree, then click Deactivate Import Mapping in the Actions list. When you deactivate or activate an import mapping, any other changes you made to the mapping are also saved.

For more information, see Creating import configurations.

In addition to manually enabling and disabling Chat, you can now schedule the availability of Chat to match your working hours. A new property has been added to the Chat section of the System Settings called Availability Calendar that enables you to select a calendar that sets the support hours when Chat is available. If you select a calendar in the Availability Calendar property, then the Chat Availability property is disabled. Setting Availability Calendar to None re-enables the Chat Availability property.

For more information, see Chat. For information about calendars, see Defining your support hours. Whenever you modify support hours or holidays, even for new calendars, you must restart the Application Pool using Configuration Center. For more information, see Creating an Application Pool.

You can now use the DELETE method with the REST web service. When you select the DELETE method, the Content Type defaults to none.

For more information, see Linking objects to REST Web Services.

Previously, users were identified in a Chat window by the Title attribute on the User object. When you run the V2022.4 database upgrade (see Upgrading the Ivanti database), a new attribute with the title Chat Name is added to the User object. You can add this attribute to the Analyst and End-user windows so that you can specify a different name to appear when using Chat. This can help with privacy concerns.

If no Chat Name is specified, the Title on the User object is used.

For more information about setting up and using Chat, see Chat.

Previously, if you did not make a window available to Web Access using Window Manager, then Web Access automatically created a window for you to use when required. This feature has been disabled as it provided all of the object's attributes on the window, which is not best practice. A system preference, Enable scaffold forms, has been added to Web Access so that you can re-enable this feature. We strongly recommend that you create the required Window definitions for Web Access and avoid enabling this system preference except as a temporary fix while you create the required Window definitions for Web Access.

For more information, see Window definitions for Web Access and System preferences.

A new setting, Simplify Tab Text, has been added to both the Self Service settings and Web Desk settings sections of the Web Access system preferences. This setting enables you to remove the application name prefix from browser tabs that display titles that are more than just the application name. For example, Ivanti Web Desk - Incident - 4 changes to Incident - 4.

For more information, System preferences.

If you use calculations to set start and end dates of appointments, you may get unexpected results if users drag appointments to different times on the calendar. A new system preference, Enable drag and resize of appointments in calendar gadgets, has been added to Web Access to prevent users from dragging appointments on the calendar.

For more information, see System preferences.

We are aware that some customers have not set the Time zone of their servers to UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) with no region or daylight saving specified. This is the recommended configuration, and we encourage you to ensure your servers are configured in this way.

The list of supported email servers has been replaced by supported email technologies.

See also Supported Platforms.

A new video has been added to the Service Desk and Asset Manager playlist on YouTube that describes how to configure your system to give better knowledgebase search results and also provides advice on how to write better knowledge articles.

Watch the video (5:15)

You can now import device and user data from Ivanti Neurons as a scheduled import. First you create a new app registration in Ivanti Neurons and make a data connection to your Ivanti Neurons instance, then you use the Data Import connection to schedule the import.

The connector you create to Ivanti Neurons is suitable only for data import. You cannot use it for other purposes such as queries and live look-ups in Service Desk.

Configuring this import is an advanced feature intended for use by people comfortable using technologies such as Postman, JSON, and OData to gather the required connection parameters. If you want support from Ivanti Professional Services in using this feature, contact your supplier.

For more information about data connections, see Data connections, and for more information about the Data Import component, see Data Import.

To create the data connection to Ivanti Neurons:

1. In the Ivanti Neurons platform, create a new custom app registration. This provides the Access Token URL, Client ID, and Client Secret you require later in this procedure.

For more information about creating a new custom app registration, see the separate Ivanti Neurons help.

2. Start the Data Connections component, then in the Data Connections tree select the Ivanti Neurons connector and in the Actions list, click New Connection.
   A new connection appears.
3. Type a name for the connection, then press Enter.
   This name becomes the name of the module you use when configuring the source of the data import.
4. In the Properties grid, set the URL to the URL to your Ivanti Neurons tenant; for example https://example.ivanticloud.com/.
5. The Provider is set to OAuth2 and cannot be changed. Specify the Access Token URL, Client ID, and Client Secret. Leave Scope blank.
6. Click to test the connection.
   If the connection fails, check details above, then test the connection again.
7. Click to save the new connection.

When you have created a connection to Ivanti Neurons, you can create connection types to access the different types of data available from Ivanti Neurons, such as devices or users.

As part of the import configuration, you need to specify a unique identifier for the items that you are importing. However, in some circumstances, you may be unable to find an identifier that is unique for all the items you want to import. For example, if you are importing devices, you can use Device Name as the unique identifier for Windows devices but not for Apple devices, where you may need to use a different identifier such as Serial Number. In these cases, you need to create different data imports for the different types of device, using a filter to select only the required items.

You can't create a filter for the Neurons data in Service Desk, but instead have to filter it using an OData query as part of the endpoint URL when you create the connection type as described below. For example, instead of specifying an endpoint URL like api/discovery/v1/device, you would specify api/discovery/v1/device?$filter=manufacturer eq 'Apple'.

To create a new connection type:

1. On the Data Connections tree, click the connection you created above, then in the Actions list, click New Connection Type.
   A new connection type appears.
2. Type a name for the connection type, then press Enter.
3. In the Properties grid, complete the following connection type properties.
   End Point Url: the path to the endpoint you are connecting to, for example api/discovery/v1/device or api/discovery/v1/user. If you do not want to import all of the available data you need to include an OData filter as part of the URL, as you cannot add a filter later as part of the data import configuration.
   TPS Class Name: type a name for the object.
   TPS Class Description: optional.
4. Click alongside Attribute Mappings.
   The Manage Mappings dialog appears, which enables you store mappings to the OData entities in Ivanti Neurons that you want to retrieve in attributes in the Service Desk connector. These OData entities will then be available to import into Service Desk using the Data Import component.

If you want to access devices in Ivanti Neurons using Desktop Manager, remember to add a mapping for the Neurons ID attribute, as you use this to identify devices. For more information, see Connecting to Ivanti Neurons for Desktop Management.

5. Click Add Mapping.
   The Define an Mapping Attribute dialog appears.
6. Use a technology such as Postman to retrieve a suitable device or user record from Ivanti Neurons.
7. Enter a Name and Title on the Define an Mapping Attribute dialog, then enter an optional Description.
8. From Postman, copy the name of the entity that you want to import with this mapping, and paste it into the Mapping field.
9. Click OK.
   The mapping is added to the list on the dialog. If you used a / character to access entities from a tree structure, the / is changed to a . in the Response Mapping column. The Query Mapping column contains the value sent to the endpoint URL, whereas the Response Mapping column contains the path to the data you require.
10. If the entity corresponds to an array (for example, a user may have several email addresses and you want to select one of these), enter the index of the item you require in the Response Mapping column in [square brackets] before the . separator.

The index numbering starts with 0, so to access the first email in an array of emails, enter Emails[0].Email in the Response Mapping column.

11. Repeat for other attributes you want to access.
12. On the Manage Mappings dialog, set Is Name? to True for the attribute that contains a unique value to use as its name, then click OK.
    The Manage Mappings dialog closes.
13. On the property grid for the connection type, set the Primary Key.
14. In the Actions list, click Test Mapping.
    A grid appears showing the results of the mappings for the first 10 records returned.

After you save the changes to the connection type, you can add new mappings and delete mappings (other than the Is Name and Primary Key), but you cannot edit existing mappings.

15. Click to save the changes.

Now that you have created a connection to Ivanti Neurons, you can use it to create a data import. The data import maps the data you defined in the connector type mappings above to the appropriate attributes on Service Desk objects.

To create an import configuration:

1. On the Import Mappings tree of the Data Import component, select the Scheduled Imports folder.
2. On the Actions list, click New Scheduled Import, specify the required schedule, then click .
3. On the Import Configurations tree, select the schedule you have just created, then on the Actions list, click New Import Mapping.
   The New Import Mapping window appears.
4. In the Source Module list, select the module that you created when setting the name of the data connection.
5. In the Source Business Object list, select the object that you created when setting the name of the data connection type.
6. Under Target, select the Module and Business Object that you want to import the Neurons data into.
7. Drag the Source Attributes that you want to import data from onto the appropriate Target Attributes.
8. In the Target Attributes list, select the attribute you want to use as the key, then on the Actions list, click Set Target Key Attribute.
   The Target Key Attribute dialog appears.
9. Select the attribute you want to set as the key attribute, then click OK. For more information about Target Attributes, see Setting the target key attribute.
10. Set a Log File Path if required, then click .
    The data import runs as scheduled.

As part of the V2022.3 database upgrade (see Upgrading the Ivanti database), a new attribute called Neurons ID is added to both the Configuration Item and User objects. This enables you to use the External Connections node in Desktop Manager to create a menu item in Service Desk that opens the selected Configuration Item or User record in Ivanti Neurons.

For more information about the Desktop Manager component, see Desktop Integration.

To configure Desktop Manager to Launch Ivanti Neurons Device and User Views:

1. In the Console, start the Desktop Manager component.
2. On the Management Systems tree, select the External Connections node, then on the Actions list, click New Connection.
3. On the Management Systems tree, name the connection Neurons Device View, then press Enter.
4. Set the following values in the Property Grid:
   Include in CI Audit Trail: True
   Menu Title: Neurons Device View
   Application: Leave blank to use your default browser to open the web page, or add the application path and executable to specify a browser
   Prefix: [Ivanti Neurons Instance Address]/devices or [Ivanti Neurons Instance Address]/users
   Postfix: Leave blank
   Debug: False
5. Click .
6. Right-click the new Neurons Device View connection and select New Business Object.
   The Select Business Object dialog appears.
7. Expand the Business Objects tree, select the correct device business object, then in the Attributes tree select Neurons ID.
8. Click OK and save the changes.
9. Repeat this procedure for all of the device types you want to link to Ivanti Neurons.

When you log an Incident in Web Access and select a CI of a type that has been linked above, you can right-click the CI and select Neurons Device View from the popup to display the corresponding Device page in Ivanti Neurons.

You can now use XML-based REST request and response body formats when using a REST Web Service call, use OAuth2 to authenticate to the REST endpoint, and toggle the REST behavior on and off for an object in Object Designer using an Enabled check box on the REST Web Services dialog.

For more information, see Linking objects to REST Web Services.

Microsoft SQL Server 2012, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft Windows Server 2012, and Microsoft Exchange 2010 are no longer supported.

For details of all supported platforms, see Supported Platforms.

You no longer need to enable SignalR for all BridgeIT applications when configuring Chat, just those where you are using Chat.

A REST web service behavior has been added to Object Designer to provide a wider range of options for integration with other applications. This is in addition to the existing SOAP web service behavior. This is an advanced feature intended for use by people comfortable using technologies such as REST, JSON, Postman, and Swagger. If you want support from Ivanti Professional Services in using this feature, contact your supplier.

For more information, see Linking objects to REST Web Services.

A new diagnostic logging category, REST Service, has been added to support this.

We are aware that some customers do not have Custom Errors Mode for Workspaces enabled on their production web server. Having this disabled is useful for debugging, but in general it is best practice to have it enabled, because the debugging information could also be used to compromise your system.

On your live production server, enable custom errors mode for Workspaces by opening web.config in \Program Files (x86)\LANDESK\BridgeIT and under <system.web> setting <customErrors mode="On" />.

Certain external methods of logging incidents, such as some email clients, use css style tags in a way that can give unexpected results in Web Access.

On the System Preferences page, under Web Desk settings, set the option Remove style tags in HTML Controls to true if you want css style tags to be removed from all HTML controls in Web Access to prevent this. The default for this option is false.

Initially, the css style tags used by the external system are stored in the database, and then removed when displayed in Web Access. If you save ANY changes to an incident when Remove style tags in HTML Controls has been set to true, the css style tags stored in the database will be lost because they will be overwritten by the values with the style tags removed.

There is a separate, existing, option for Workspaces to remove all styles – both style tags and inline styles. For more information about all Web Access system preferences, see System preferences.

New System Settings have been added under Chat in Console that enable you to configure the Start chat message, End chat message, and Chat offline message.

For more details, see Chat.

A number of new features have been added to the Chat functionality for this release:

• Chat is now supported on mobile devices using Workspaces
• You can use hyperlinks in chat messages
• Chat can now be manually disabled system-wide using a system option
• Configuration has been simplified

For more details, see Chat.