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What's New in SquaredUp DS for SCOM

Documentation Team
  • Updated

What's New in SquaredUp DS for SCOM

What's New in v6.0

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v6.0 includes the following new features:

  • Auditing user actions

  • SolarWinds Orion integration

  • Prometheus integration

  • Many more enhancements

Auditing user actions

Up until now, there have been no auditing capabilities within SquaredUp DS itself meaning it isn’t possible to see how users are interacting with SquaredUp DS. From this release a SquaredUp DS administrator will be able to setup a SQL Server (2016 or higher) database to audit events relating to:

  • License

  • Provider

  • Connections

  • PowerShell Profile

  • PowerShell RunAs

  • Authentication

  • Named user

  • Dashboard

  • Perspective

  • Folder

  • Team Folder

  • Nav bar changes

  • Enterprise Application

  • Recycle bin

  • Audit itself

These new capabilities allow for a greater level of security, help companies meet compliance goals and allow a SquaredUp DS administrator to better understand which dashboards are stale and no longer in use. See our Auditing documentation for full details of what is possible.

SolarWinds Orion Integration

SolarWinds is one of the most widely used monitoring tools alongside SCOM, our customers have wanted to visualize data from it for some time along side their data from SCOM. We have built a native integration that utilizes SolarWinds Query Language (SWQL) to query the data to be displayed using any of these visualizations:

  • Scalar

  • Grid

  • Line graph

  • Column graph

  • Sparklines

  • Bar graph

  • Donut

  • Status icons

  • Status block

  • Date heatmap

See How to use the SolarWinds tile

Prometheus Integration

Prometheus is a timeseries observability tool and is commonly used to monitor Prometheus. Our native integration takes your PromQL query to present the data returned using any of these visualizations:

  • Scalar

  • Grid

  • Line graph

  • Column graph

  • Sparklines

  • Bar graph

  • Donut

  • Date heatmap

See How to use the Prometheus tile

Many more enhancements

  • Date Heatmap: add aggregation options for Web API, SQL, SolarWinds and PowerShell tiles

  • SquaredUp Cloud aligned color pallet and styling

  • New Column Graph visualization: Time series data as bar graphs

See Release Notes for SquaredUp DS for SCOM

Download now & more information

To get started see How to install SquaredUp DS for SCOM.

Get the latest version of SquaredUp DS for SCOM

Read the Release Notes for SquaredUp DS for SCOM for details on other improvements in this release. 

If you have an earlier version of DS for SCOM already installed, then the installer will upgrade your installation, see How to upgrade SquaredUp DS for SCOM (in-place)

 

What's New in v5.9

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v5.9 includes the following new features:

  • New visualization: Date heatmap
  • New visualization mode: Vertical bars
  • Tile copy/paste functionality
  • Dashboard favorites
  • Home dashboard
  • Personal dashboards for all users
  • SCOM Managed Instance support (beta)
  • Many more enhancements

New visualization: Date Heatmap

The date heatmap lets you see SCOM alerts or other events in a calendar view, so you can easily spot patterns in when alertsevents are being raised or resolved. The visualization is available for SCOM alerts, SQL, PowerShell and Web API tiles.

New visualization mode: Vertical bars

The “top n” bar chart available for SCOM performance data in previous versions now has an additional feature to enable it to display its data vertically (rather than horizontally as with previous versions). It is also possible to modify the width of the bars in both horizontal and vertical modes.

Tile copy/paste functionality

It is now possible to copy and paste a tile both within the same dashboard or between dashboards using new tile copy/paste buttons and your browser clipboard functionality. This will help speed up dashboard authoring and allow users to create their own dashboards by reusing components from existing ones.

Dashboard favorites

Any dashboard can now be added to a personal favorites menu to make it easier for an end user to access their most used dashboards. This will be vital in busy SquaredUp DS deployments. This functionality is available for all SquaredUp DS users, regardless of permissions levels.

Home dashboard

Users now have the ability to set their own “home” dashboard, making it easier to access, and so their chosen dashboard is the first thing shown when the user logs in. This functionality is available for all SquaredUp DS users, regardless of permissions levels.

Personal dashboards for all users

Historically only users with the “author” permission over a folder had the ability to create dashboards of any sort. Users of all other permissions levels could only view dashboards created by others. In this release we have added the ability for all users to create personal dashboards, that is dashboards a user creates which are stored for their personal use only (so cannot be published). This is great for enabling read-only users to be able to troubleshoot technical issues using SCOM data without needing elevated SCOM permissions.

SCOM Managed Instance support (beta)

Beta support for SCOM Managed Instance is included in this release. Note that as SCOM Managed Instance is itself in beta, we cannot guarantee future versions past the release date of SquaredUp DS v5.9 will work (11th May 2023).

Many more enhancements

  • Cleaner list of tiles with better categorization of tiles

  • “The X Tile” provides help in connecting SquaredUp DS to SquaredUp Cloud for quicker setup

  • Added “last modified” to available Alert tile sorting options

  • Donut tile labeling improvements – new inline legend and sizing options

See Release Notes for SquaredUp DS for SCOM

 

What's New in v5.8

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v5.8 includes the following new features:

  • New visualization: Hosting Stack tile

  • Conditional custom colors on more tiles

  • Monitor tile: grouping improvements

  • Many more enhancements

New visualization: Hosting Stack tile

The Hosting Stack tile lets you glance at the parents and health status of any object in SCOM. Quickly and visually understand the upstream impact of an outage on a low-level object. Also works for SquaredUp Enterprise Applications and SquaredUp EAM-X objects. The new Hosting Stack tile can be added to any dashboard and perspective.

See How to use the Status tile

Conditional custom colors on more tiles

Highlight the most important objects on a dashboard visualization based on its value (e.g. show C: drives with less than 20% free space in red on bar graphs). Works across many tiles and visualizations including lines, sparklines, bars and donuts. Use the new mustache control to set one or more thresholds and choose a specific color per threshold to highlight what’s more important to you and your audience on a dashboard.

Monitors tile: Grouping improvements

Never miss a monitor that’s in an error state! The Monitors tile lets you group and sort monitor health without needing to group by its related object. Additional options let you more precisely adjust how the monitor tile is presented on a dashboard so that you never miss anything critical whilst optimizing the space on a dashboard.

See How to use the Monitors tile

Many more enhancements

  • More sorting options on Status tiles

  • Option to show data points on line graph

  • Management of perspectives in the Admin System settings

  • Ability to hide group links in VADA

  • Performance improvements for large, high load environments

 

See Release Notes for SquaredUp DS for SCOM

 

What's New in v5.7

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v5.7 includes the following new features:

  • Timeframes – major enhancements

  • Line Graph tile – major enhancements

  • Recycle Bin

  • Many more enhancements

Timeframes – Major Enhancements

A much-requested set of improvements bring new control over the dashboard and tile timeframes. Publish an SLA dashboard to show last month vs current month, choose a very specific date/time range on a Performance tile, or perform some analysis on your alerts by looking at various time ranges. These are some of the use cases that the timeframe improvements now enable. Specifically:

- A greater range of dashboard timeframes with the ability to specify ISO 8601 timeframes e.g. last x minutes/hours/days/months

- A calendar picker on Performance, Alerts, and SLA tiles

- User-friendly date/time picker in Connect tiles to inherit dashboard timeframes e.g. to insert in a Web API header, or within a PowerShell or SQL script.

See Timeframes for tiles

Line Graph tile – Major Enhancements

Several improvements aim to strengthen the capabilities of Line Graphs and the Performance drilldown. Display a threshold line and a red area of concern to quickly spot out-of-bound metrics. Use the new hovering panel to glance across a given datetime point and see all objects' values at once. The x-axis now draws future dates as well as up to the last datetime point. When you need to perform further analysis, the existing one-click drilldown now brings all objects and the threshold line to the analytics pane, making it a breeze to analyze your performance data.

See How to use the Performance tile

Recycle Bin

Any deleted dashboards and perspectives now end up in the new Recycle Bin. An administrator can see who deleted dashboards and perspectives and when, then take action: restore or permanently delete.

See Recycle Bin

Many more enhancements

  • Sparkline color matching

  • Each user's last login time on the Named User list

  • Improvements to Alert tile date columns

  • Donut legend is optionally scrollable to fix tile height

  • and more...

See Release Notes for SquaredUp DS for SCOM

Download now & more information

To get started see How to install SquaredUp DS for SCOM.

Get the latest version of SquaredUp DS for SCOM

Read the Release Notes for SquaredUp DS for SCOM for details on other improvements in this release. 

If you have an earlier version of DS for SCOM already installed, then the installer will upgrade your installation, see How to upgrade SquaredUp DS for SCOM (in-place)

 

What's New in v5.6

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v5.6 includes the following new features:

  • New visualization: Status Tree view

  • New visualization: Status Sun Burst

  • Export to Excel improvements

  • New display options in Status and Monitor tiles

  • And more enhancements

New visualization: Status Tree view

The Tree view tile lets you glance at the hierarchy and health status of your SCOM objects. You can take quick actions like drilling down with one click directly to the component that’s causing a problem. Useful when you need clarity during root cause analysis. The tile can be scoped to any SCOM object and will display all its children. Additional display options let you filter on health states and set the tree depth.

See How to use the Status tile - Settings for Tree view

New visualization: Status Sun Burst

The new Sun Burst tile lets you visualize your SCOM objects in a unique way. Quickly glance at the inner circle of the Sun Burst and work your way out to the outer circle that represents the lowest level component that’s causing a problem. When paired with EAM-X objects, you can now explore all your single pane of glass objects from SquaredUp Cloud plugins in a way that’s easy to navigate and quick to drilldown. Spinning the Sun Burst with your mouse lets you see any labels regardless of their orientation, and additional display options lets you customize the look & feel of the tile.

See How to use the Status tile - Settings for Sun Burst

Many more enhancements

  • Export to Excel now works with the Matrix tile

  • Option to limit the number of objects returned (Top n) in the Status and Monitor tile

  • Option to wrap sub-label in the Status tile

  • Option to sort objects by health in the Monitor tile

  • Allow API query parameters to be set at provider level

  • Updates to out-of-the-box dashboard packs

See Release Notes for SquaredUp DS for SCOM

 

What's New in v5.5

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v5.5 includes the following new features:

  • Alert tile – Major Enhancements

  • Adjustable dashboard refresh interval

  • Many more enhancements

Alert tile – Major Enhancements

A new expand panel allows you to reveal more information about an alert within the tile, without needing to drilldown or open every alert in a new tab. Breeze through your alerts quickly to see at-a-glance description, context and event data. Take quick actions to triage your alerts with the Select All option to assign to other, reset monitor and change resolution state. In summary, these enhancements are all about helping you be more efficient and reduce your MTTR during an outage or alert storm.

See How to use the Alerts tile

Adjustable dashboard refresh interval

A new dashboard setting lets you set the refresh interval for a given dashboard and its Open Access version. Whether you need to reduce the load on your external data, or an API comes with an access cost, you can increase the refresh interval in increments, up to 6 hours. You can also decrease the interval down to 30 seconds on any given dashboard if you need to see the data more often.

See How to create a dashboard - Dashboard Settings

Many more enhancements

 

What's New in v5.4

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v5.4 includes the following new features:

  • New visualization: Surface tile

  • New data source: ODBC

  • Updated Grid tile: major enhancements

New visualization: Surface tile

Overlay your most important SCOM metrics over any image background (e.g. a world map, an architecture diagram, a picture from your diagramming tool like Visio). Unleash your creativity and share stunning dashboards with your operation centers and stakeholders or display them on wall screens across your organization. Check out the 5.4 release webinar for inspiration!

See How to use the Surface tile

New data source: ODBC

The new ODBC data source lets you instantly visualize any data from virtually any database. From Oracle, PostGre, MySQL to many more, you can now dashboard your most important metrics directly from your ODBC databases using a dynamic SQL query.

See How to use the SQL tile

Updated Grid tile: major enhancements

Unlock your grid tiles! Breeze through your logs and alerts with the ability to sort, search and filter. Optimise the look of your dashboard tables for any screens by setting the zoom/font size, column width and improved text wrap. Available for any Grid tiles including SCOM Alerts.

For example see How to use the Web API tile

 

What's New in v5.3

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v5.3 includes the following new features:

  • Community Dashboards: Sharing and Importing

  • New visualization: Status Image

  • Default dashboard timeframe

  • Scalar: conditional colors

  • Donut: display improvements

Community Dashboards: Sharing and Importing

The Community Dashboards website has been completely redesigned to include any dashboard submitted by our community as well as existing SCOM dashboard packs from our partners and external vendors. Check out some of our most popular dashboards (VMWare, Solarwinds, and more) and import them directly in your own instance of SquaredUp DS for SCOM.

Be a community hero! Export your own dashboards to our community using the new one-click export.

See Dashboard Packs

New visualization: Status Image

Visualize the status of what’s important to you, pinpoint a problem more quickly and accurately, and share your complex metrics into simple and compelling dashboards for your stakeholders. Thanks to the new Status Image visualization, you can overlay status icons from any external data sources on top of any images of your choice (e.g. a world map, a data center layout, a picture from your diagramming tool like Visio). Statuses can be retrieved and calculated from any data sources (Web API, PowerShell script, Splunk, Elasticsearch, etc) thanks to our intuitive tile designer.

Default dashboard timeframe

Set the default timeframe of your dashboard so that you and anyone you have shared the dashboard with Open Access can always see the dashboard in its most relevant light depending on its purpose and target audience. Set it to 30 days or longer for an application SLA dashboard shared with your stakeholders, or 1 hour for your root cause analysis dashboard. Timeframes range from 1 hour to 12 months.

See Timeframes for tiles

Scalar: conditional colors

Add impact to your key metrics with conditional colors for scalar visualizations. Available for any SCOM metrics or data point from your external data sources. Use the intuitive logic builder to create custom conditions that will trigger your scalar visualization to change color. Choose from a range of colors with the option to highlight the background or the text. Also added support for web links so you can drill out to the corresponding tool to see more details about your metric.

Donut: display improvements

Include the ability to map a specific color to a specific segment/legend of the donut, show as percentage and sorting by value or legend. Note: Status tiles only support sorting, Alert and ServiceNow tiles only support percentage.

 

What's New in v5.2

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v5.2 includes the following new features:

  • PowerShell tile enhancements

  • New visualizations for Splunk

  • Public GitHub Samples repository

  • Various security improvements

PowerShell enhancements

The hugely popular PowerShell visualization tiles have been enhanced in this release to provide script execution controls and security configuration:

• Create your own Run As accounts for improved security.

• Configure script execution interval to independently control the load on your external data sources.

• All visualization scripts now run inside their own child process for increased robustness, with the ability to choose the execution environment (.NET Framework or .NET Core) for each script independently depending on the version of PowerShell your script is written.

See How to use the PowerShell tile

New Splunk visualizations

The Splunk tile now includes a full range of visualizations: Bar Graph, Donut, Line Graph, Scalar, Sparklines, Grid, Status Icons and Blocks.

See How to use the Splunk tile

GitHub Samples

A new public GitHub repository has been published, that contains sample dashboards and scripts, is now available and accessible from within the SquaredUp DS application. The GitHub repository is opened to contributions from the community. Browse the repository for dashboard ideas and various scripts to help you make the most of SquaredUp DS. From SolarWinds and Log Analytics dashboards to purpose-built SQL and PowerShell scripts, be sure to take a look at the growing list of samples and contribute your own creations!

See GitHub Samples repository

Security Improvements

A number of security improvements have been made in this release, following our regular independent security review and penetration test. Best practices for secure deployment of SquaredUp DS have been updated.

See Best Practices for Security.

 

What's New in v5.1

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v5.1 includes the following new features:

  • Two new data integrations: Splunk and Elasticsearch
  • PowerShell tile: visualize any metrics
  • Status visualizations for external data sources
  • New visualizations for the SQL tile

New data integrations: Splunk and Elasticsearch

The new Splunk and Elasticsearch data integrations provide a consistent dashboarding experience to pro-actively visualize your log data. An intuitive point-and-click configuration wizard lets you import and visualize your saved queries from Splunk or Elasticsearch. Paste any query or write your own query in the Query DSL or SPL language. Queries support contextual variables so you can visualize your Splunk or Elasticsearch data dynamically on SCOM perspectives.

See How to use the Elasticsearch tile and How to use the Splunk tile

New PowerShell tile to visualize any metrics

Available sample, with no separate configuration required, PowerShell visualizations let you connect to any data sources, display any metrics or build custom metrics on the fly. PowerShell scripting is incredibly powerful, and the possibilities in SquaredUp DS are endless (e.g. correlate and aggregate results from multiple APIs, visualize local log files, and more!).

Leverage PowerShell modules to visualize performance metrics that are not easily available via an API (e.g. VMWare). Create your own profiles to store any PowerShell script that you want to execute across different tiles as the first part of your script, such as connection scripts to 3rd party tools, or to load a PowerShell module.

See How to use the PowerShell tile

New status visualizations for external data sources

Beautiful status visualizations provide an at-a-glance view of your most essential metrics to help turn complex metrics into easy to consume dashboards for stakeholders. The new status visualizations are available for most data sources (e.g. Web API, PowerShell, SQL, Log Analytics, Splunk, Elasticsearch). They are configurable both in terms of look and feel (e.g. blocks/list, dynamic labels, etc) and logic. Use the status logic to easily map a status field from your data source, combine multiple values from your data sources, and add custom calculations to generate your own statuses. Click to drill out to the corresponding object in your external tool.

New visualizations for the SQL tile

The SQL tile now includes the full suite of visualizations: Bar Graph, Donut, Line Graph, Scalar, Sparklines, Grid, Status Icons and Blocks.

How to use the SQL tile

 

What's New in v5.0

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v5.0 includes the following new features:

  • Major overhaul of the dashboard designer experience
  • New Open Access
  • Improved Web API visualizations and configuration
  • Refreshed visual experience

Major overhaul of the dashboard designer experience

Take real control of your layouts, creating rich dashboards easily. Use the new pre-built templates to quickly add a layout, which you can adjust as required. New controls to easily add rows and tiles anywhere on the dashboard. Add new columns to the right or left which will scale the width of the tiles evenly. Split a tile in two to create a nested layout. Other improvements include the ability to drag & drop tiles more easily and better vertical resizing.

How to use the dashboard designer (v5)

New Open Access

Open Access shared dashboards now include simplified interactivity. You can now drill down to access more information with a named user license. Open Access dashboards work seamlessly on all devices, including mobile. Major improvements to the reliability of Open Access including self-healing capabilities and improved scaling and performance.

Sharing Dashboards with anyone - Open Access

Improved Web API visualizations and configuration

Add more context to SCOM dashboards with our new Web API visualizations for your external data sources. New visualizations include the bar chart, donut, line graphs and sparklines. New configuration options include the ability to see the response data, mustache picker options and data mapping capabilities for the new visualizations.

How to use the Web API tile

Refreshed visual experience

Better color contrasts in your visualizations, a new range of vibrant heatmap colors, a darker dark mode, and a more modern feel all round.

Internet Explorer is no longer supported.

 

 

What's New in v4.8

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v4.8 includes the following new features:

  • New SQL Line Graph tile
  • New Scalar tile to show the latest performance data figure
  • New scalable metric labels for Performance metrics
  • Line colors can be matched across Performance graphs
  • Option to use colored Bar Top N graphs and match colors

New SQL Line Graph tile

A new SQL visualization allows you to display the results of a SQL query as a Line Graph.

A useful addition to the existing Scalar and Grid tiles, the new Line Graph tile is a great way to graph SQL data into one dashboarding experience from your SQL databases or the SCOM Data Warehouse.

Supports all SQL data types, connection strings, value columns selector and miscellaneous SQL capabilities (e.g. stored procedures, temporary tables).

How to use the SQL tile

New Scalar tile for performance data

This new performance visualization shows the most recent value for the selected metric. The font size and units can be changed and the figure can be rounded up or down using the mustache picker.

See How to use the Performance tile

New scalable metric labels for Performance metrics

When configuring a Performance tile, a new metric label option (see Performance Metric Labels) allows you to specify a metric label (percent, bytes, megabytes and seconds) or enter a custom metric label.

The metric label will show on the Y axis and when hovering on a Line graph or Report tile.

The metric label will show next to the metric value on Sparklines and Bar Top N tiles.

See How to use the Performance tile

Match line colors across Performance graphs

The same line color is now used for each matching object across Performance graphs on a dashboard, when the object labels match.

Great with Open Access dashboards on wall-screens and for enterprise applications where you are focusing on a smaller number of similar objects across metrics.

Color matching is on by default, but can be toggled off per dashboard.

How to enable graph color matching

Colored Bar Top N graphs

A toggle option on the Bar Top N graphs will now apply a different color for each bar.

The toggle is off by default but when turned on, the bar colors will match other Performance Graphs’ line colors if the label names are matching.

How to enable graph color matching

 

What's New in v4.7 

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v4.7 includes the following new features: 

  • New Infrastructure dashboards
  • Alerts Analytics perspective
  • Root Cause perspective
  • Azure Log Analytics enhancements
  • Search for more results
  • Criteria Mustache picker
  • Enhanced error handling
  • Enterprise Applications sample pack 

Infrastructure Dashboards 

Along with a complete overhaul of the Infrastructure dashboards, new dashboards for Alert History and NOC Operators have been added to provide deeper insights into the environment. 

  • Alert History dashboard: detailed alert analysis of alerts over time, to help identify the noisiest management packs and objects 
  • NOC Operator dashboard: surfacing actionable insights for operators in one place 

Alerts Analytics perspective 

The new Alert Analytics perspective improves issue resolution times by providing alert analytics using Data Warehouse queries (SQL tile). Analytics include average time to resolution, frequency, and alerts of the same type open on other objects. 

Root Cause perspective 

The Root Cause perspective provides a correlated view of information to assist with troubleshooting. When a SCOM object is reported as “unhealthy” this new drill down enables the quick diagnoses of underlying issues. 

Azure Log Analytics enhancements 

Azure Log Analytics tile enhancements:

  • A new bar graph visualization 
  • Quickly access and use your Saved KQL Queries from the Azure Portal  
  • Combine multiple values into the Line Graph visualization for a resource 

See How to use the Azure Log Analytics tile

Other new features

  • "Mustache" picker for Criteria scoping (see How to use criteria when scoping objects) now includes a Mustache picker to allow easy creation of specific expressions that refine the data from SCOM. 
  • "Show more" search results in the quick search pane. 
  • Enhanced error handling to no longer show hard to understand errors in published dashboards.  
  • Enterprise Application (EA) sample pack provides a sealed pack of sample EAs and dashboards to illustrate the most common SCOM Enterprise Application use cases (see Exploring the sample Enterprise Applications).
  • Relevant Community packs will be offered at on installation and upgrade for the SCOM Management Packs installed. 

 

What's New in v4.6

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v4.6 includes the following new features:

  • Open Access theme setting
  • Dashboard pack upgrades

Open Access theme setting

It is now possible to choose which theme (light or dark) is used for Open Access dashboards. This setting is independent of users’ personal settings.

See Sharing Dashboards with anyone - Open Access

Dashboard Pack upgrades

Upgrading from the previous version will now automatically install updates to the SquaredUp DS Dashboard Packs; new and updated dashboards will be installed, if your installed dashboards have been modified in any way which conflicts with the latest release then you will be able to retain your changes easily.

See Dashboard Packs and How to upgrade SquaredUp DS for SCOM (in-place)

 

What's New in v4.5

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v4.5 brings four new major features:

  • Log Analytics visualizations
  • Dark theme
  • Pinning perspectives
  • New Maintenance page for administrators

Log Analytics visualizations

You can now use line graphs and donuts in the Azure Log Analytics tile to provide enhanced visualizations of Azure Monitor Logs, as well as showing log data as either a scalar number or in grid tabular form.

See How to use the Azure Log Analytics tile

Dark Theme

SCOM joins the dark side in version 4.5 with the arrival of dark theme; users can choose which theme they prefer – light or dark - in their own Theme Personalization.

Pinning Perspectives

Publishing dashboards via Open Access is a great way to share via wall monitors or with users who just want high-level information; now in version 4.5 you can pin Perspectives to specific objects – such as a specific enterprise application - so the resulting Pinned Perspective can be shown on the navigation menu and be shared via Open Access; see Pinned Perspectives for more information.

New Maintenance page

The new administrator’s Maintenance Page displays important information, such as the latest product updates and high availability details, along with links for remote administration. Administrators can also control the logging level of SquaredUp DS, thus controlling the log file size, and view and download the latest log files.

 

What's New in v4.4

SquaredUp DS v4.4 brings three new features and many bug fixes and improvements.

  • New dedicated ServiceNow tile
  • VADA support for SQL 2017 & 2019
  • Improved support in VADA for non-ASP.NET IIS websites and web apps
  • New dashboard pack for version agnostic SQL management packs

The Service Now tile

The new ServiceNow tile introduces a new ServiceNow provider which is much simpler to configure than the generic Web API oauth provider (see How to use the ServiceNow tile).

The dedicated tile also makes it much quicker and easier to get ServiceNow incidents and change requests displayed in SquaredUp DS, because the complex configuration is done for you.

In addition to the usual scalar and grid displays, this new tile brings you the popular donut visualization, allowing you to visualize the number of ServiceNow incidents or change requests and of course drill down to ServiceNow.

VADA support

VADA now supports SQL 2017 & 2019, meaning that component level discovery is now supported for SQL 2005 through to 2019.

We've also added improved support for non-ASP.NET IIS websites and web apps, which you'll see with some new icons that visualize these components during discovery and mapping.

For more information see Visual Application Discovery & Analysis (VADA).

Support for new SQL Server management pack

A new dashboard pack offers built-in perspectives for version agnostic SQL MPs. This means SQL instances show default perspectives when you drill down to them, but also data and graphs on VADA maps and in the Matrix tile.

New installations of SquaredUp DS v4.4 will include this new dashboard pack by default.

For existing SquaredUp DS installations you can download and import the dashboard pack from system > import dashboard packs within SquaredUp DS.

For more information see Dashboard Packs.

 

What's New in v4.3

We are delighted to announce the availability of SquaredUp DS v4.3, continuing our approach of bringing you frequent updates to the product. Version 4.2 was released just two months ago, and 4.1 two months before that. Each new release brings bug fixes, quality improvements and in this case some cool new features too.

For a demo of these new features take a look at the webinar 'SquaredUp DS – v4.3 Release'.

SquaredUp DS v4.3 brings some great new capabilities in two areas:

  • New Performance Report tile. We have added a new type of Performance tile that enables you to make comparisons. You can either compare different metrics on the same chart, for example to identify correlations, or you can compare a metric with the same metric for a previous period, for example to identify trends or spot divergences from the norm.
  • Extended discovery of Enterprise Applications (EAs) in VADA. When building an EA map with Visual Application Discovery and Analysis (VADA) you can now discover Oracle servers (Linux and Windows), and can discover components through two additional load balancer types - NetScaler and Kemp load balancers.

New Performance Report tile

We have introduced a new Performance Report tile (see How to use the Performance tile). This is similar to the current line graph tile, but introduces a new concept of 'layers'. A Performance Report tile can have multiple layers, but each layer is added to the same graph – allowing you to show different metrics or different scopes on the same chart – for example you could show memory utilization with CPU utilization, or compare connections per second on web servers with CPU utilization on your database servers. Each layer can also be used to compare metrics with the same metric in a previous period – e.g. last week or last month.

When you configure the tile you are sent to a new full window page to make it easier to add the multiple layers without being in a constrained space. Any changes you make in this page are synchronised back to the dashboard that hosts the tile, but will only be published when you publish that dashboard.

We expect to add more capabilities to this tile over time – for example a separate y axis, the ability to save and export, and potentially additional visualizations such as bar/column chart. We would love to hear from you what improvements you would most like to see next.

Improved VADA mapping

Our VADA technology is at the heart of the EA designer.

In response to requests from partners and customers we have extended its ability to discover application components (see Visual Application Discovery & Analysis (VADA)), specifically:

  • Oracle - if you have installed the SCOM management packs for Oracle provided by NICE, then VADA will discover both Windows and Linux Oracle servers and add them to your application map.
  • Kemp - similar to the capability we added in v4.0 for discovery of components through an F5 load balancer, if you have the SCOM Kemp community management pack installed, VADA will discover components downstream of a Kemp load balancer and let you add them to your application topology.
  • NetScaler - likewise if you are using Citrix NetScaler load balancers, and have the Citrix management pack for SCOM installed, VADA will discover components to add to your network topology through the NetScaler load balancer. There are some restrictions here due to the more limited capabilities of that management pack.

SquaredUp DS will check for the presence of these management packs, and will enable the associated discovery source to enable automatic VADA discovery. The settings page for EAM lists the possible discovery sources (see ) and provides details of where to acquire any missing management packs.

 

What's New in v4.2

SquaredUp DS v4.2 introduces three new features, as well as a number of bug fixes and quality improvements. For a demo of these new features take a look at the webinar 'SquaredUp DS – v4.2 Release' (55 mins).

The three new feature improvements in v4.2 are:

  • Web API array support
  • Scoping improvements
  • Perspective hiding

For a demo of these new features take a look at the webinar 'SquaredUp DS – v4.2 Release' (55 mins):

 

Web API array support

You can now build more powerful integrations with third party applications by building queries against multiple objects. You can write your own dynamic query strings based on a list of objects from the tile's scope, or add and edit the mustache style example code snippets. You can even use JavaScript to manipulate the SCOM property values being inserted.

See How to use the Web API tile.

Scoping improvement

You can now quickly and easily find a relevant scope for a new tile, rather than trawl through a long list of SCOM object classes and groups. Tile scopes on perspectives now include realtime contextual suggestions based on the current scope's relationships.

See Working with perspectives

Perspective hiding

To make it easier for your users to find the relevant perspective for a dashboard, each perspective now has a suppress (hide by default) option. This presents a simpler, tidier perspective ribbon to users, and if required, users can click the show more button to view suppressed perspectives.

See Working with perspectives

 

What's New in v4.1

SquaredUp DS v4.1 brings improvements to VADA and license management, as well as a number of bug fixes and quality improvements.

  • Performance improvements to VADA and the Enterprise Application (EA) Designer
  • Simplified and improved license management (see How to reactivate your license)

To see more information on the improvements in version 4.1 see this blog post.

 

What's New in v4.0

SquaredUp DS v4 is a major new release that brings significant updates to the dashboarding fundamentals, as well as introducing a brand new Enterprise Application model to SCOM. Upgrading to SquaredUp DS v4 will firstly enable you to deliver a greater array of dashboards to an even wider audience, and secondly deliver a true enterprise application monitoring solution for your organization.

Dashboarding Fundamentals

New navigation experience

We've updated the navigation bar to offer a more intuitive navigation and authoring experience. See How to edit the Navigation Bar.

Matrix tile

The new Matrix tile supersedes the Dynamic Table tile to bring fully-customizable, data-rich grids to your dashboards. See How to use the Matrix tile.

Team Folders

Replacing user profiles, Team Folders enable you to deliver dashboards and delegate control to different teams within your organization (or to different clients if you are a service provider). See Team Folders.

New High Availability (HA) architecture

We have redesigned the HA architecture in SquaredUp DS v4 to make it simple to configure and support higher volumes of usage. See Enabling High Availability.

Community Dashboards improvements

A new community.squaredup.com site supports improved product integration, including dashboard pack suggestions tailored to your SCOM environment.

Other dashboard improvements

You'll find many more improvements to our dashboards including:

  • Advanced tile scoping on perspectives
  • New monitor status block tile
  • Faster loading and rendering

Enterprise Applications

Enterprise Application Designer

The new Enterprise Application (EA) Designer enables you to model your applications and save directly to SCOM as a new Enterprise Application class (see Enterprise Applications), replacing traditional SCOM distributed applications. Using the new designer, you can configure availability monitoring for your application, map your application using Visual Application Discovery and Analysis (VADA) and model the application's dependencies.

Application availability monitoring

Use the EA Designer to configure URL or TCP based outside-in availability monitoring of your applications, enabling you to surface meaningful application status dashboards and availability reporting to your business. See How to create an Enterprise Application

Custom PowerShell based availability monitoring

In addition to URL and TCP monitoring, our powerful new custom PowerShell availability monitoring enables you to measure the availability of any application.

Manual availability reporting

Update your business dashboards with accurate availability information and meaningful status messages for your service desk and end users. See How to manually set the health state of an application.

Enterprise Application dashboards and SLA reporting

Out-of-the-box dashboards for Enterprise Applications enable you to rapidly deliver meaningful, end-to-end application monitoring to stakeholders across your organization, from end-users, through IT teams to business managers and application owners. Where "green" is based on availability tests and actually does mean it's available!

Next-generation VADA mapping

Our Visual Application Discovery and Analysis (VADA) technology is still at the heart of the EA Designer, and has some major new improvements:

  • Component-level discovery: map applications across specific components such as websites, Windows services and SQL databases
  • Windows service discovery: automatically generate the SCOM monitoring for Windows services identified as part of your applications
  • F5 discovery (requires third party MP): discover application topologies across F5 load balancers
  • Large dataset filtering: view and filter network connections in large-scale server applications
  • Updated user experience: intuitive ‘filter-in' approach to mapping allows you to filter out the noise and focus on the true application dependencies

Node connection monitoring

In addition to mapping out your application, the EA Designer will automatically set up TCP availability monitoring of each of the application components, giving your teams meaningful alerts for fast issue identification.

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