Release Notes

What's new in version 2021

October 2021

Version 2021 is one of our most major releases ever. It introduces powerful new features, gives a total face-lift to the Web App and Self-Service Portal, and includes many improvements and customization abilities you and your customers will enjoy.

New versioning scheme

Version 2021 is a direct successor of Alloy Navigator Express 8. Focused on the continuous delivery of new features and capabilities while resolving issues identified in the existing products, we are switching to a single, year-based versioning scheme for all Alloy Software products. As a version number, 2021.1 provides much more visibility than, for example, 9.1, indicating the release date (actually, the year) and the release number within that year.

Introducing single sign-on

Set your users free from memorizing passwords and let them focus on the actual tasks. The added support for single sign-on (SSO) allows your technicians and end-users to sign in to Alloy Navigator Express apps with the existing accounts they already use in the organization.

SSO is an authentication scheme that enables users to seamlessly and securely access multiple apps and services using just a single set of credentials. It is also an excellent tool for IT admins to manage user identities in a single place and streamline access requests connected to new hires and terminations.

NOTE:Alloy Navigator Express 2021 includes preconfigured SSO integration with Microsoft, Okta, and ADFS. You would need to take only a few steps to complete the configuration. You can also add other SSO providers as long as they support OpenID Connect (OIDC). For details, see Settings Help: Managing single sign-on (SSO) providers.

Self Service Portal overhaul

We’ve turned the Self-Service Portal into a modern, powerful web application your customers and internal users can rely on.

Awesome homepage with customization feature

The Self-Service Portal homepage now offers an informative dashboard, with an impressive search box for ready-to-use solutions. Widgets get collapsible and provide quick access to everything your employees need for self-serve, including their open tickets, latest activities, and approvals. A new customization feature and a pack of beautiful templates allow the administrator to easily change the homepage’s layout and the look and feel of the whole portal.

INFO: For instructions, see Administration Guide: Customizing the SSP's homepage.

Self-Service Portal becomes more user-friendly and cutting edge. Your customers will appreciate a brand-new hamburger menu for quick navigation and an improved Latest Updates widget, now showing the essence of those updates (i.e., the text of the latest activities).

Possible solutions from the knowledge base

Lower your support costs and resolve issues before they get reported! The Self-Service Portal automatically suggests ready-to-use solutions when users are reporting issues. They don’t even need to search the Knowledge Base because the submission form immediately shows a list of articles that may help, based on the text the user is typing.

Optimized ticket forms

There is no longer a need to scroll down to update a ticket! The Update Ticket command has been relocated above the history of ticket updates to be easily accessible.

Web App enhancements galore

The Web App for technicians has received a significant face-lift and is packed with new features. Everything is handier, faster, and more beautiful than ever.

New Web App face

The new design of the Web App eliminates distractions and helps your IT team focus on the essentials.

Object forms got a redesign with usability in mind. We’ve given descriptions and activities a prominent place on the form and moved all vital object details to the side panel, grouping the essentials at the top. We've also made the top pane more informative and added a fascinating new control to preview associated objects in fly-outs.

As for Service Support tickets, you no longer need to switch between tabs to get the latest ticket updates. The activity log is now on the same page with the description and other ticket details, and it is the best activity log ever.

Easy-to-follow activity log

Pin essential activities to stay on top of the list, so you can easily find them when you resume work on the ticket, knowledge base article, or another object. The revised activity log comes in a compact, collapsed mode. No more scrollbars! You can expand some or all of the activities to view what you need.

Last but not least, we have replaced a check box for switching between an HTML mode and grid view with a pair of handy controls––Cards and Table.

Choose your colors

Customize the look and feel of your Web App and choose from many beautiful premade color themes. Now you can choose colors that suit the unique energy and vibe of your IT services!

Keep your favorites close

Some things must always be at hand. Now you can quickly access all your favorite tickets, assets, and other records. When you mark an item as a favorite, it appears under My Work > My Favorites, where you can organize your favorites and keep them at your fingertips.

Rich format for notes and ticket resolutions

Both the Notes and Resolutions are now in rich HTML format. Technicians can now add images, links, lists and use other HTML goodies when adding notes or resolution comments.

We’ve also added an indicator that immediately tells you when the Notes and Resolution tabs are not empty.

Discontinued and outdated functionality

It’s time to say goodbye to some things to make way for innovations. In 2021, Alloy Navigator Express is dropping support for these outdated features:

  • SAP Crystal Reports

    SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports, also called Microsoft Builder reports, have already swept away Crystal Reports in Alloy Navigator Express years ago. With version 2021, we officially announce the end of support for the SAP Crystal Reports integration with Alloy Navigator Express.

  • Mobile App Service (former Mobile Portal)

    Alloy Navigator mobile app for iOS and Android does not need the Mobile App Service (formerly "the Mobile Portal") as a backend since August 2020. Instead, the native API integration is used. We announced the deprecation of the Mobile Portal in Alloy Navigator Express 8.7; now, it is removed. If you have continued to use the Mobile Portal as the backend, you would need to switch over your Alloy Navigator mobile app to the native API.

INFO: For upgrade considerations, see Version 8.7 or earlier.

Updated audit tools

Alloy Audit Tools has been updated to version 2021. The latest version adds support to Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022 and delivers other improvements and bug fixes. For a complete list of changes, see Audit Tools Update Release Notes.

Other enhancements and resolved issues

Upgrade improvements

  • Now you can test drive the upgrade without affecting your production system. A new Sandbox Upgrade option in the Database Management tool allows you to preview and try new features using a sandbox database.

  • To streamline the installation process, we have removed the Microsoft SQL Server package from the Alloy installer. But do not worry! If you need a SQL backend for hosting your evaluation or production database, the installer will automatically download the proper installation package from our site.

  • To improve the overall performance, provide richer integration capabilities, and just keep up with the times, we upgraded Alloy Navigator Express to the 64-bit architecture. However, the transition could be a backward-incompatible change in 32-bit environments, encouraging you to switch to the modern 64-bit architecture.

  • Although we strive to avoid it, sometimes we are forced to break backward compatibility between versions. The new Alloy Navigator Express notifies you of upcoming backward-incompatible changes in advance, giving you time to review them, estimate how they will affect your organization, and perform a seamless upgrade.

Refreshed look with new visuals

  • To improve the user experience, we have refreshed the Web App, Settings App, and the Desktop App with modern, well-crafted icons for all commands and navigation controls.

    As for new workflow actions and flags, we equipped them with our signature beautiful icons and packed them in the Resources folder under your installation directory as Pack3.

Improved Web App

  • Now you can preview all the essentials at a glance. Preview fly-outs automatically resize to fit the content and show all information without scrollbars.

  • The ESC button (as well as an outside click) now closes drop-down menus, pop-ups, and fly-outs.

  • The build-in HTML Editor offers the same full set of commands no matter where in the Web App you use it—in action forms or when editing ticket descriptions or knowledge base article contents.

  • The Web App now shows a license expiration alert. The alert occurs on the dashboard 25 days before your Alloy Navigator Express license expires to give your admin enough time to renew it.

  • Resolved the issues with the Web App when the browser language is set to Polish.

  • The Attachment Area on action forms now shows the correct attachment size limit when attempting to add oversized attachments.

  • The Web App now informs users when attachments they attempt to add on an action form exceed the attachment size limit. Previously, the Web App silently discarded such attachments.

  • Full forms now allow attaching images from the Clipboard by pressing CTRL+V.

  • Fixed the "Requested Value Not Found" error when customizing views in some cases.

  • Resolved the issue with ticket number sequence skipping multiple values under certain conditions.

  • Resolved the issue in a scenario where the app keeps asking to install the Alloy Integration Launcher. The issue occurred when the Web App was installed "as a site," i.e., in the root directory and the API module in a virtual directory of that site.

  • The Web App now automatically resizes user photos uploaded from the Active Directory during Active Directory Sync.

  • Resolved the issue with the display order of user-defined fields for tickets created via actions that use the full form.

  • Resolved the "Index is out of range" error on printing detail reports in some cases.

Better dashboards

  • Added the ability to specify the color for line charts. If you do not want random colors in your chart, choose a new "Solid Line" value for the Palette field and pick the desired color.

  • Table widgets with incorrect syntax in filters no longer show confusing data on the dashboard. Instead, they throw appropriate error messages.

  • AN: The Web App now displays the "Closed" shared view name on the dashboard in the correct case.

  • "Create Actions" widgets now reflect changes you made to action icons.

Revised Self Service Portal

  • Added the Group Manages access level for Self Service Portal customers. Group managers can view all tickets submitted by members of their respective groups.

  • Fixed the "Cannot read property 'loadData' of null" error that could repeat on every ticket update when a custom workflow action was used.

  • Resolved the issue with the Service Catalog showing all items when you click through pages in a category.

  • Resolved the issue with the Ticket Update form getting unusable when a Ticket's user-defined field contains a malformed HTML.

Easier workflow management

  • The Administrative Dashboard in Settings now throws an alert when the number of audited computers is reaching your license limit, giving you time to consider purchasing additional audit nodes or check if you can retire some computers.

  • To support the new Favorites feature, we have added the ability to manage flag statuses (or colors) via workflow. You can flag objects using workflow operations and check flag statuses in workflow conditions.

  • To simplify the process of setting up service requests for equipment lending, we have added the ability to use Library Items in the Related CI field for tickets.

  • User-defined fields of the Reference type no longer adversely affect performance when there is a large number of Person records they refer to.

  • Resolved the issue with encrypted fields (such as the Password) that could cause the "Could not convert variant of type (Null) into type (OleStr)" errors in the workflow.

Improved email integration

  • Improved the performance of sending and receiving mail when using Microsoft Graph to access your Microsoft 365 or Office 365 services.

  • Resolved the issue with the Mail Connector sometimes failing to update objects and throwing the "Access violation at address" error.

  • Resolved issues with sending notifications with large (~4 MB) attachments via Microsoft Graph API.

Fixes to Active Directory Sync

  • Resolved the issue with Active Directory Sync not creating Person records under certain conditions.

  • Resolved the issue when in some cases the Active Directory Synchronization job updates existing Person records when it should be creating new ones.

Better API module

  • Attempts to create closed tickets, retired computers, and other inactive objects via the API no longer cause the "Object does not exist in the database" error. Now the API can create such objects if needed.

Improvements to the Desktop App

  • Fixed a typo in the Authentication label of the Connection Manager.

  • Attempts to assign a non-unique Asset Tag to an asset no longer cause a duplication of that tag across all other assets on opening their full forms.

  • The Computers’ Preview Pane now correctly shows units of measure (GB) for RAM.

Fixes to Network Inventory Sync

  • You can no longer remove the default mapping rule for the Asset Tag virtual field in Computers Data Mapping in Settings. Network Inventory Synchronization relies on that rule, and it cannot be removed.

  • Implemented a proper sync of discovered installations in Network Inventory and Alloy Navigator Express when the computer is audited multiple times under different user accounts.

  • Network Inventory Synchronization now correctly applies the Full Name template from the Settings application (Customization > Customers > Persons > Options) when creating new Person records. Previously, instead of the Full Name, the Display Name from the Active Directory was used.

Enhanced discovery and audit

  • Improved the error message displayed by the Direct Network Scan when the timeout period expires.

  • The audit of Cisco devices no longer fails when we are unable to obtain information from one of their VLANs. The audit completes successfully, while a corresponding message is added to the log.

  • Corrected the messages logged during the audit of audit sources. Previously, some messages could lead the user to believe that we audit nodes by their DNS names instead of IP addresses.

  • Improved performance when uploading audit snapshots from hypervisors.

Other changes and fixes

  • Resolved the issue causing "Incorrect syntax near ')'" errors in the database trace.