A Nerd’s Eye View on N‑central’s Enhancements in 2023

I can’t believe it’s been a year already since I last wrote a blog covering all the N‑central releases in the previous 12 months.  Part of what inspired me to write the blog last year was the volume of partners that I would speak to that were not running the latest version of N‑central. So, I thought maybe if I highlighted some of the great new features added over the previous 12 months that it might inspire them to upgrade.  Maybe for some of you it did, but unfortunately as I sit here writing this 12 months later there are plenty of partners that haven’t yet upgrade to one of the latest releases.

So, let’s give this another shot.

We’ll get to all the cool new additions to N‑central in 2023 shortly but before we look at them, there are two crucial reasons why you should look to upgrade your N‑central server:

1. In July N‑able announced the end of support of all versions of N‑central 2022.6 or older along with notice that support would end on December 1, 2023.  For more information click here: https://status.n-able.com/2023/10/30/upgrade-n-central-by-december-1/
2. The Man in the Middle vulnerability CVE-2023-30297 was address in N‑central 2023.4.  For more information on that click here: https://status.n-able.com/2023/07/27/cve-2023-30297-release-note/

The two points above should convince everyone to upgrade N‑central to one of the latest releases, but if you still want more here are some of the key enhancements to N‑central in 2023.

The ability to customize the N‑central UI port number

In what would turn out to be a very busy year for N‑central releases we had to wait a whole six weeks into 2023 for the first N‑central release of the year as early February saw the release of 2023.1. Highlighting the first N‑central release of the year with the ability to customize the N‑central UI port number. This has been an ask for prospects and partners alike for as long as I can remember, so it was a great way to start the year.  It also meant that any new installations of N‑central from 2023.1 on will have 8443 as its default UI port number.

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External Identity Providers added, enhanced User Management, Remote Control column in the All Devices view

April saw not one but two N‑central releases, at the start of the month we released 2023.2 which saw support for External Identity Providers added to N‑central. Any identity provider that supports OpenID Connect will work—most popular among these is Microsoft Azure. We also enhanced User Management in N‑central allowing you to expand the User Management view at the System, SO and Customer levels to see any user accounts you have configured at lower levels in N‑central. All columns now are filterable, and sortable and we added the ability to export your list of users as well. 

Towards the end of the month, we released 2023.3 which brought the much anticipated updates to the Remote Control column in the All Devices view! More icon colours have been introduced to represent the remote control status more effectively. When N‑central hasn’t received a heartbeat from Take Control, the icon will shift to yellow but still let you attempt a remote control session. The hover over will tell you when the heartbeat was last seen as well as let you know if the N‑central agent is not checking in.

Man in the Middle vulnerability addressed

June saw the release of the most important version of N‑central this year 2023.4 which address the Man in the Middle vulnerability CVE-2023-30297 which we covered above.

Automation Manager Updates

We released 2023.5 in July, this release had some minor updates to the default branding and Automation Manger but mainly focused on addressing some of the top bugs in N‑central.

New notification template variable, filter for DNSFilter Standalone devices, getting device names in clipboard easier, upgrade to Device Management for Apple and more

September was another busy month for the team with another two releases. At the start of the month, we released 2023.6 which focused on usability fixes, adding a new notification template variable for including your customized UI port in notifications, a filter for DNSFilter Standalone devices and we added a copy button next to the device name when you’ve drilled into a device, to make getting the name into your clipboard as simple as possible. 

At the end of the month, we saw the release of 2023.7 which did require a hotfix in early October.  The focus of this release we largely around Device Management for Apple.  You might have noticed that I haven’t mention Apple devices yet in this blog even though throughout the year we have been making significant improvements on how N‑central allows you to management Apple devices which culminated in 2023.7, but since I recently wrote a blog which I sure you all read on how managing Apple Devices in N‑central is now better than ever, I said I wouldn’t bore you by repeating myself, if you miss it though you can find it here.

2023.7 also brought changes to the lefthand navigation menu, you’ll now notice a new menu for Cove Data Protection. If you aren’t using Cove Data Protection yet, check out the new links in N‑central to learn more about Cove and start a free trial. If you’ve been using N‑able Backup, your submenus have been moved to be under the new Cove menu.

N‑central data in full visuals

In late October we released 2023.8. They saw that good things come to those who wait and many of you out there will have heard us talk about Analytics once or twice over the previous few months, well the wait is over, with 2023.8 we have harnessed the industry standard of PowerBI, to bring you your N‑central data in full visuals. With our GA release, you will be able to see device data (inventory, summary, warranty, etc.), backup data (last backed up, last checked in, etc.), and patch information (installed, approved, missing, etc.) And those are just the first of more dashboards to come.

First set of REST APIs, addition of the NAC into the UI

We rounded out the year in style with 2023.9 in December. This feature rich release was highlighted by two early Christmas presents for many of our partners. Firstly, this release contains our very first set of REST APIs. These new APIs enable partner systems to programmatically interface with N‑central to execute common N‑central tasks, this feature is currently in preview. To request access to REST APIs please email [email protected] and keep an eye out for a brand new Head Nerd boot camp on N‑central’s RestAPIs in early 2024. Secondly for those partners that host their own N‑central server, 2023.9 saw the addition of the NAC into the UI.  When you upgrade to 2023.9, you’ll be able to turn off port 10000 to outside access. The items that were previously in the port 10000 interface can now be found at the System level of N‑central.

So, these are just some of the great new features added to N‑central this year, with nine releases there was just too much to cover here. If you are sitting there on an older version of N‑central reading this thinking you’re not going to upgrade because you can live without some of these, remember updating your N‑central server not only gives you new features but it is key to ensure you N‑central server is secure and preforms at its optimum. 

If you have questions join me on the N-Central office hours at www.n-able.com/events.  For more insight on how you can get the most out of N‑central, you can attend our N‑central Boot Camps, recordings of which are available in the N‑ableU, alternatively keep an eye on www.n-able.com/events to register for the live sessions.

Paul Kelly is the Head Nerd at N‑able. You can follow him on Twitter at @HeadNerdPaul, LinkedIn and Reddit at u/Paul _Kelly. Alternatively you can email me direct.