Release Notes

What's new in version 8.0.2

April 2018

Version 8.0.2 is a maintenance release. It updates Alloy Audit Tools and resolves some issues reported in previous versions.

More intuitive purchasing workflow

  • Adding line items to Purchase Orders is more intuitive now. The user can choose whether to enter product details manually or select an existing item from the Product Catalog. A new configuration parameter allows the administrator to set the default option (in the Administrative Settings console, go to Customization > General >Workflow Configuration > Purchase Orders).

  • The new version ensures that Purchase Order numbers are unique throughout all Purchase Orders (POs) in your database. During the upgrade, the workflow parameter "Allow saving PO with duplicate PO numbers" is removed as unneeded, because duplicates can not be allowed now.

Uniquely identified IT assets

  • The new version ensures that asset tags and barcodes are unique throughout all IT assets, i.e., each identifier is unique throughout Computers, Inventory Items, Software Licenses, and Library Items in your database.

Smarter Network Inventory synchronization

  • Thanks to improvements made to the matching algorithm, the new version reduces the number of duplicate Computer records.

Links to KB for Help Desk actions

  • Now the "Notify Requester" and "Resolve Ticket" actions always allow the technician to add a link to a Knowledge Base article. A workflow configuration parameter "Allow adding KB links to reply," which controlled the technicians' ability to insert links to KB Articles into their responses, has been removed as unneeded.

Updated audit tools

  • Alloy Navigator Express 8.0.2 includes the latest (6.1.1) version of Alloy Audit Tools, a package of various tools and components that Alloy Navigator Express uses to perform the hardware and software audit of computers and networked devices and display audit results.

    NOTE: The new version enables you to differentiate paid editions of Microsoft SQL Server from free ones. However, you will need to manually resume tracking of Microsoft SQL Server products after the upgrade.

Resolved issues

The new version fixes a number of issues reported in earlier versions. The most important of them are listed below.

Integration with email

  • Resolved the issue with the Automation Server failing to send out E-mail Notifications and alerts containing Unicode smilies and other emojis. The issue could appear when the EWS protocol was used for sending email.

Active Directory synchronization

  • When the Active Directory Synchronization updates Persons and encounters a new Organization, it associates all existing Persons with this Organization after the first run now.

Network Inventory synchronization

  • An administrator's attempt to restore the default Inventory Data Mapping for Computers (by clicking the Default button under Customization > IT Assets > Computers > Workflow > Computers Data Mapping) no longer breaks the Network Inventory Synchronization.

Self Service Portal

  • Resolved a password validation error that could occur when configuring the Self Service Portal. Previously, this error was thrown: "Password validation failed. The password does not meet Windows policy requirements because it is not complex enough."

Web Portal

  • Resolved issues with data display in Table dashboard widgets and data views when their Advanced Filter was set in the SQL mode and contained the <Current User> placeholder.

  • The Web Portal no longer displays hidden details reports (reports having the Hide from Print menu option selected).

  • Boolean values now appear in hierarchical grids as check marks, not as True/False.