BigFix WebUI New Release available!

[adinia]

HCL Software is pleased to announce an update to BigFix WebUI, Software Distribution site and Self Service Application. This release introduces a range of enhancements, including improved performance, new features, functionality, and improved security.

Release Features

WebUI Performance Improvements!

Significant performance improvements to WebUI means that you can now manage up to 250K endpoints with a single instance. These performance improvements apply to all supported WebUI platforms (both Linux and Windows).

For additional details, please see the updated capacity planning guide available at: https://help.hcltechsw.com/bigfix/9.5/webui/WebUI/Admin_Guide/c_hardware_requirements.html

Software Distribution and Self-Service Application New Features!

Simplified distribution of files to endpoints via the WebUI
Operators in WebUI can now very easily send any file to endpoints through the Software Distribution Application.

Broadcast end-user messages through the Self-Service Application via the WebUI
Operators can now use the WebUI to write messages (including HTML text) to be communicated to end-users via the SSA. SSA will display the message to the user, who can snooze it if they’re busy. Additionally, these messages are stored and available for end-users to bring up for future reference.

Simplify management of large numbers of applications with additional display options within the Self-Service Application
Operators can now choose to display BigFix offers in SSA as a list of items, as opposed to a set of tiles. This is especially helpful in cases where organizations have a large number of offers made available to their end-users.

Query app enhancements

Enhanced experience for BigFix Query
Based on user feedback, the BigFix Design team has redesigned the user experience of BigFix Query app, to make it more intuitive and usable. In particular, access and storage of pre-defined queries has been made easier, and general navigation of the app has been improved.

Patch and Patch Policies enhancements

Improved search and filtering capabilities for Patches
Operators can now find patches in the WebUI by CVE number.

Maintenance window support within Patch Policies
Operators can now enable maintenance windows within a patch policy, allowing patch actions to run only during pre-defined maintenance windows.

Patch Policies now supports additional Operating Systems
Added support for: SUSE 15, CentOS, Oracle Linux

Other modifications

Resolved Defect Articles for WebUI:
KB0068704 Running WebUI service generates a large transaction log
KB0073369 A collation conflict makes the WebUI hang on loading page
KB0073601 WebUI Patch release date is incorrect
KB0074041 Discrepancy when adding targets in Patch Policy

Resolved Defect Articles for SSA:
KB0068786 Script error on SSA using Post-Action feature
KB0068771 SSA issue with closed actions shows pop-up message each hour
KB0068772 Configurations in the Post-Action tab are ignored
KB0074112 BigFix Self-Service app unable to launch on some Mac machines

How to update

WebUI will update automatically by default, unless configured otherwise.

The Software Distribution site will update automatically by default (if not in airgapped environment).
Users of the BigFix Self Service Application will need to update this component to version 3.1.1 using the following fixlets from Software Distribution site:
Fixlet 302: Upgrade IBM BigFix Self-Service Application (Windows)
Fixlet 304: Upgrade IBM BigFix Self-Service Application (Mac OS X)

Published Versions

Software Distribution Site, Version 89

WebUI Versions:

Profile Management 9
WebUI API 2
Application Administration 14
Patch Policies 12
Common 54
WebUI Content App 4
Custom 25
WebUI Data Sync 7
WebUI Framework 9
Patch 24
WebUI Permissions and Preferences 4
Query 16
Software Distribution 26
WebUI Take Action 8

Documentation links

WebUI Documentation https://help.hcltechsw.com/bigfix/9.5/webui/welcome/BigFix_WebUI_welcome.html
SWD/SSA Documetation https://help.hcltechsw.com/bigfix/9.5/lifecycle/swd.html
BigFix Capacity planning guide available at: https://help.hcltechsw.com/bigfix/9.5/webui/WebUI/Admin_Guide/c_hardware_requirements.html

Thank you for being part of the BigFix family!

[adinia]

A problem has been reported with this release and Baseline deployment from the WebUI.

See here:

Webui baseline deploy problem

Hello , we have a problem about deploying baselines from webui. Last night webui got an update. After this update, baseline’s are not deploying from webui. (deploying from console is working fine) I restarted webui , filldb and root services, but problem still exist. webui update log from servic-wrapper ; [image] problem screenshot ; [image] workflow log ; 2020-01-10T10:44:19.545Z bf:apps:takeaction:actions:error TypeError: Cannot read property ‘id’ of undefined at l (C:\Program Files (…

We are working with max priority to address this.
Thanks for your attention

[adinia]

Fix for the baseline problem has been delivered.
TakeAction site version 9.
Thank you

[JonL]

Did someone forget to make the documentation live when the release happened?

For SWD, for example, the site still references placeholder links.

href="file:/BigFixGit/tem_9.5/9.5/swd_ug_toc.html"
href=“file:/BigFixGit/tem_9.5/9.5/ssa_overview.html”

Likewise on the WebUI documentation page, there isn’t actually any WebUI documentation.

[adinia]

Hi, I am not sure what you are referring to exactly.
BigFix WebUI doucmentation has been published and is available here:
https://support.hcltechsw.com/csm?id=bigfix_documentation

Please let me know if you can find inconsistencies or missing info.
Thanks

[JonL]

@adinia, If you go to the link you called out, click on ‘WebUI Documentation’ link on that page. It will take you what looks like a placeholder page that has generic links to Platform support, Trouble-shooting, etc. However it doesn’t have actual WebUI info on that page.

As I noted before, if you click the SWD link in the original post of this thread, there are likewise placeholders there too. The links point to file locations, not web locations. Please update them to proper links to the actual documents.

[Aram]

Interesting, we’ll have to look into that. Note that I’m not experiencing that behavior. For reference however, here is a direct link to the WebUI Documentation: https://help.hcltechsw.com/bigfix/9.5/webui/welcome/BigFix_WebUI_welcome.html

[JonL]

What do you see when you click the link? I see a generic page that says it is WebUI Documentation, but doesn’t actually have any. It looks like at template or placeholder page where WebUI items were supposed to be inserted.

[JonL]

Similarly, the WebUI SWD page has links in it, but they link to files.

[itsmpro92]

It wasn’t clear at first for me either. The documentation accessed via the links in the dark grey bar:

[JonL]

I see the links within the WebUI SWD site have been corrected, thank you!

On the documentation site, the main page was devoid (as per my prior screenshot) of WebUI information, but the menu bar does work. A confusing user interface experience for folks seeking information.

[bbrost]

My server updated to this version last week, and since, all my patch polices are not working. They go through the motions on the webui side, and update/refresh and click to the next date, show that the new patches are there, but no actions ever get launched since the update. I have daily sentinel patching action that runs every day, stopped on the 9th after the update as well, and now after patch tuesday, all my patch group patches did not start. looking at the policy they went through their time, incremented, but never started an action. All of the patches are listed in the policy, and are showing relevant, but it didn’t start the patching action.

[adinia]

Thanks, We are working to improve the user experience of our doc pages,

[dexdexdex]

@bbrost we just pushed out an update for autopatch which should resolve this problem. Can you check again? Thanks!

[swiars]

Hi ,

I think I found another problem on new release of webui. global hidden tasks are visible for all operators. Could you plz check it ?

First choose one device then you can see all task. ( including hiddens )

@adinia @dexdexdex

error screen shot ;

[adinia]

Hi, I don’t understand the error message, can you describe better the use case and what happens?
Thanks!

[swiars]

Hi ,

when master operator “global hidden” a task or fixlet, normal webui user can’t see this tasks. right ? This is normal behaviour. After new update of webui, normal users can see all hidden tasks or fixlets.

I global hide “robot_deneme” task from console ( I’m master operator) . I was able to see this hidden task from webui page with non-master operator. if I click to hidden “robot_deneme” task, I got this error messages.

I checked it both my production and test enviroment.

[adinia]

It is not a desirable situation, but it is not something that was introduced with the last WebUI update, to the best of our knowledge.
It is something we will address in the next release.
Thanks