2022.2 Release Notes

Summary

This release includes a facelift for Autotask, a board view for tickets, a new, simplified process for onboarding co-managing users, a deeper integration with Datto Commerce, and security updates for the MS Outlook Extension. As with each release, we have included a number of usability improvements.

New Features

Autotask has received a facelift. We have updated our UI to match the other products in the Kaseya product palette. With the exception of some minor rearrangement of the top navigation bar, menus, page features, and click paths remain the same.

Here are some examples:

Top navigation bar

  • The top menu icons were changed to text.
  • The Recent menu icon changed from to and moved to the right.
  • The Community iconwas removed, and its contents was moved into the Help menu.

Themes

We reduced the themes available for the UI to 2 options, one light, one dark. This reflects the fact that most customers simply kept the default settings. The new themes look like this:

You can adjust your display settings on your Preferences page, accessed from your user menu.

Larger page and section titles

Page and section titles now use a larger font:

Restyled buttons

Buttons have been restyled, but icons (except for the top navigation menu) remain the same:

Tabs

On dashboard and page tabs, the selection indicator moved to the bottom:

Boards are a way of organizing tickets into a kanban-style layout grouped into columns and rows by preset criteria. You can directly interact with them by dragging the tickets between columns and rows. Boards are accessed through ticket widgets and ticket widget drill-in grids. They are available for widgets that appear on the main dashboards. They are not available for widgets that appear on the Company pages or in the Client Portal.

Tickets appear on "cards" on the boards, organized by rows and columns using pre-selected field values. The combination of a row and column is a cell. With the appropriate permissions, users can move cards from one cell to another and the ticket on the card will inherit the values from the row and column it is moved to.

Boards are configured in Admin > Features & Settings > Service Desk (Tickets) > Boards. There are several pre-configured boards available to you.  You can copy or edit the existing ones, or add new ones.

When configuring a board, you will need to determine the fields to use as the rows and the columns. For example, if you wanted to use a board to manage ticket assignment and priorities, you could create a board using Primary Resource as the row value, and Priority as the column value.

Each board can have an "On Deck" section. These are the first ten tickets in your database, filtered by a set of up to ten criteria and sorted by your selection. In the example above, you could filter the "On Deck" section for tickets in a Triage queue that do not yet have a Primary Resource assigned, sorted so that the oldest ones appear first. A user could then drag the tickets from the "On Deck" section to the cell with the appropriate Primary Resource and Priority combination.

Once configured, an active board can be set as the default board for any ticket widget. The default board can also be the drill-in view instead of the grid.

Users will be able to switch between the board and the grid view, and to select different board views. A board does not have to be assigned to a widget to be used. From any drill-in grid, tickets can be viewed in any active board, as long as the number of tickets in the grid does not exceed the maximum of 100 tickets and the number of columns or rows is not greater than 25.

All users with access to tickets will be able to view boards from ticket widgets and widget drill-in grids. From a widget drill-in grid, a user can select a board view. Boards can be viewed in a compact mode or expanded mode.

Users with Can edit tickets by moving cards on boards permission will be able to move the cards containing tickets to different cells. When tickets are moved to different cells, they inherit the value of that row and column. Some rows and columns may have values that are "View only", that is, you cannot move card to those rows or columns.

In this second iteration of the Co-managed Help Desk, the focus is on improved onboarding and management of co-managing users. We have somewhat narrowed the definition of a co-managing user. They are now defined as a contact (employee or contractor) hired by the MSP's customer. They do not generate billable work that needs to be invoiced to the customer. Taking billing out of the picture allowed us to simplify the creation and management of co-managing users. The following improvements were added to the Co-managed Help Desk:

When you enable the Co-managed Help Desk on the Activations page, a new Co-managed Help Desk section will appear in Admin > Features & Settings. From there, you can manage

  • the associations between companies, co-managing users, and co-managing teams
  • the co-managed security levels
  • co-managing users and any unmapped co-managing users who are not yet associated with a company contact

All co-managing user accounts must now be linked to a company and contact in your Autotask database. You must either:

  • select or create a contact to associate the co-managing user license with
  • convert resource accounts with a Co-managed Help Desk license type to a Co-managing User account

The company contact record will keep track of the contact details, the co-managing user license will specify the permissions for the user in Autotask.

If you have any unmapped co-managing users, Autotask will let you know as you log in and guide you through the process.

Since the contact details for co-managing users are tracked in their contact records and they are not able to generate billable labor, we have created a separate, much simplified wizard for adding co-managing users. This wizard can be launched from

  • The Co-managing Users page

  • Contact grids and Contact Detail pages of companies where Co-management is enabled

  • You can now enable co-management for a company directly from the Company > Tools menu.

  • For a contact, you can enable it from the Contact > Tools menu or any Contact grid context menu.

  • On both Company and Contact pages, new accessory tabs allow you to manage co-management and co-managing user settings

To prevent you from accidentally providing an internal resource license to a co-managing user, you can now only assign a co-managed security level when you are adding a co-managing user.

It is possible to re-map a co-managing user account to a different contact, and even a different company, as long as the company is enabled for co-management. We allow this so you can easily transfer a co-managing user license between the contacts of a parent company and its subsidiaries.

IMPORTANT  We do not recommend that you remap the license to a completely unrelated account, since any assigned tickets and tasks will be accessible to the new contact, and they will have account manager level access to the ticket company.

  • A co-managing user license can only be associated with a contact at a company that is enabled for co-management. If co-management is disabled for the company, all co-managing users associated with that company will be deactivated. There is one exception: if one of the co-managing users is the account manager for a company, you cannot deactivate co-management for the contact or the company. You must first assign a different account manager.

  • If a company is deactivated, the co-managing user accounts for all its contacts will also be deactivated.

  • If a contact is deactivated, the co-managing user access is revoked.

  • Parent companies and subsidiaries must be separately enabled for co-management. A co-managing user associated with the parent company can co-manage all subsidiaries that are enabled for co-management. A co-managing user associated with a subsidiary can co-manage another subsidiary if both the parent company and the subsidiary are enabled.

Co-managing users can be members of a change advisory board (CAB). Assigning a co-managing user as a change approver will make any ticket visible to the user. This has the potential to create security issues.

To limit the potential security exposure, co-managing users will only be able to see and assign change advisory boards that

  • have been marked as Available to Co-managing Usersand
  • they are a member of or
  • they are a member of a co-managing team assigned to the ticket company, and one of the co-managing team members is part of the CAB

The scope of the Autotask integration with Datto Commerce is nothing less than feature parity with Autotask internal quoting. A custom API manages data synchronization between the two applications.

  • For a transition period, your administrator can enable the Quoting Prompt feature. This will allow users to select either internal Autotask quoting or Commerce quotes as their quoting tool.
  • You can launch the Datto Commerce New Quote page either from the Autotask opportunity or from within Datto Commerce, and link it to either an existing opportunity or create a new one.
  • Commerce quotes can easily be accessed from the Opportunity page, opportunity insights, widgets, and grids. The Commerce quote is linked to the Primary Quote field and to the Commerce insight on the Autotask opportunity. The insight exposes real-time quote data on the Autotask opportunity.
  • Both quoted and unquoted Commerce sales can be linked to an Autotask ticket. The Datto Commerce Sales Order insight will expose high-level information about the sales order and any linked purchase orders.
  • Customers, services and labor, tickets, products, and opportunities can be created in either application and synced to the other one.
  • An opportunity can be won or lost from inside Datto Commerce.

Our goal was to make quoting in Commerce just as easy and seamless as using the internal quoting tool.

NOTE  Datto Commerce is currently available for provisioning in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.

Major enhancement

The MS Outlook Extension has received a major security update.

Full authentication to Autotask is now required

Logging into Outlook is no longer sufficient to access Autotask. With this release, we have foreclosed the option to add, change, or sync Autotask data from the MS Outlook extension unless you have fully authenticated to Autotask using either two-factor authentication (2FA), single sign-on (SSO), or Kaseya IT Complete unified login. Unless you are already logged into Autotask in your default browser, any action that requires Outlook to access Autotask will open the login page associated with your authentication method.

Inactivating a resource

If an administrator inactivates an Autotask resource who is using the Outlook Extension, their session token will be revoked, and the user will be unable to sync Autotask data going forward.

Managing the devices that can access Autotask from Outlook

Users can install the Outlook extension on multiple devices and run them concurrently. To enhance security, we have added a tab to the Preferences page that lists all devices that are currently running active sessions. On this tab, you can close an open session and remove access for a listed device.

UI updates

In addition to the security enhancements, we have updated a number of Autotask pages that are called from Outlook to match the ones that open in the browser. The following pages are impacted:

  • New Project Note
  • New Task Note
  • New Ticket Note
  • New Task Time Entry
  • New Ticket Time Entry
  • Calendar Item Mapping

Usability improvements

These features are general improvements to the overall Autotask experience. The requests come from the Ideas Forum on the Community, are internally driven, or they arise from other means of feedback. For your convenience, they have been grouped by product area.

Type Summary
Improvement
 We will now always connect via SSL when using LDAP, and are preventing connections via non-secure ports (389).
Improvement

Ticket, task, and time entry notifications, even those initiated from workflow rules, can contain attachments. We have added a column to the > Admin > Automation > Email Notifications & Surveys > Notification History page that identifies the notifications that contained attachments.
Improvement

We have added the [Miscellaneous: Current Date/Time] variable for the notification templates of the following entities:

  • CRM
  • Projects
  • Service Desk
  • Contracts
  • Timesheets
  • Miscellaneous

We have added the [Miscellaneous: Current Date/Time] & [Miscellaneous: Current Date] for these entities:

  • Survey Email Message
  • Client Portal/Taskfire notification
Improvement
 The Invoice Email Message, Contact Invoice Recipient, and Resource Invoice Recipient fields were added to the Company and Company & Contacts import spreadsheets.
Improvement

We are now tracking the Created By and Create Date/Time for products. These fields are automatically populated when the products are created manually, imported, or created using the API. The fields are available as search filters, and can be displayed on the Products page.
Improvement
 To support our deeper integration with Datto Commerce, we have increased the character limit on the Product Name field from 100 to 1000.
Improvement

We have added a Save button to the Edit Security Level page. Setting up a security level can take a lot of time. This will allow you to save periodically, without losing the Expand/Collapse state of the page.
Improvement
 For your task and ticket notification templates, new variables are available that allow you to display the [Task: Status Color] and [Ticket: Status Color] variables on notifications. These new variables have been added to the Sample Notification Templates zip file.

Improvement
 You can now use the same product name for multiple products.

Improvement

On the General tab of the Security Level page, we have added Mine and My territories to the View permission options for vendors and partners. These options have always been available for all other company types.
Type Summary
Fix

When importing assets (using the Ticket Import or Asset & Subscription Import), it was likely that the same asset names appeared for parent companies and subsidiaries. This lack of a unique identifier was generating the "Asset Name is invalid and/or inactive" error.

To fix this, we have added the asset's IP address as a unique identifier.

Fix

We fixed a defect where the default Asset Category of a product was not getting assigned to a new asset created using the Asset Wizard on a quote.
Type Summary
Improvement
 In the Client Portal, we have added the option to Notify All Assigned Resources (Internal & Service Provider) by selecting a check box on a ticket note.
Improvement
 We have added a Refresh button to the ticket search results page in the Client Portal. This will avoid being brought back to the main dashboard when updating the ticket search.
Type Summary
New Feature
 Contracts could be configured to exclude coverage for labor entries associated with certain roles and work types. In this release, we have added the ability to exclude labor from a specific contract based on the selected Sub-issue Type. Sub-issue type exclusions can be applied to exclusion sets or individual contracts.
Improvement
 When setting up a contract or creating an exclusion set, inactive roles and work types are now listed at the bottom of the list on the Exclusions page.
Improvement
 The Exclusion Contract column was added to the search results grid of the Contract Search page. Display the column to easily find all contracts that reference the same exclusion contract.
Type Summary
Improvement
 You will now get a warning if you attempt to deactivate, or remove the email address of, a contact who is set to receive invoice notifications.
Improvement
 The Invoice Email Message, Contact Invoice Recipient, and Resource Invoice Recipient fields were added to the Company and Company & Contacts import spreadsheets.
Improvement

We have added the [Opportunity: Primary Quote Name] variable for use in CRM notification templates.
Type Summary
New Feature

You can now filter dashboard tabs by project. The tab filter can be set up to access all projects in your database, projects you are associated with, or a custom list of projects. You can also choose to include completed projects.
Improvement
 In addition to Primary Resource and Resource (primary or secondary), you can now filter ticket widgets by Secondary Resource.

Improvement

We now allow the Dashboard User security level to access the Tab Settings page for a shared dashboard tab, from where they can choose a theme and a tab group, and check/uncheck the Position widgets based on available space checkbox.
Improvement
 We have added the Company Status (active/inactive) to the list of filters available for Service Call widgets.
Improvement

The following columns that existed on the Approve & Post page were added to Pending Billing Item and Posted Billing Item widget drill-in grids:

  • Contract Category
  • Contract UDFs
  • Estimated Hours
  • Quantity / Hours to Bill
  • Offset
  • Purchase Order Number
  • Total Hours Worked
  • Total Offset
Type Summary
Improvement
 A Contained Attachment column has been added to the Notification History page. This allows the administrator to view which emails, including the ones sent from workflow rules, contained attachments.
Improvement
 The Published to field has been added to the Attachments grid on tickets, companies, articles, and documents. It is hidden by default.
Improvement
 The Time Entry Note Detail page on the Global Notes search will display an additional field, the Time Entry Date Worked. Before, you could only search on the date the time was entered, not on the date the search was performed.
Improvement When sending a notification email, we are now saving email addresses in the To: field and in the CC: field. BCC: email addresses will not be saved.
Type Summary
Deprecation
 The VARStreet integration code has been removed from Autotask. We recommend Datto Commerce for customers looking for an eCommerce, procurement, and quoting tool.
Type Summary
Improvement

On the Ticket Note History, Task Note History, and Time Entry History pages, all rows were assigned a status of [Changed]. Now, when the items are first created, the initial values are flagged as [Initial Value].
New Feature

You can now create a survey associated with a project task. Just add a "Send Survey" task at the end of the project, assign all customer recipients to it, and set it to Complete to launch the survey. The survey questions can be about the entire project.
New Feature
 On the Forward/Modify Project Task page, you can now assign and remove secondary resources from one or multiple tasks.
Type Summary
Improvement
 We added the unique Product ID field to the Product sub-categories in LiveReports. This will allow users to rebuild the "Export in import template format" report from the product search grid in LiveReports, where there is no 5000-row export limit.
Improvement
 There are general performance improvements for LiveReports Designer.
Improvement
 Aggregate functions are now available in LiveReport group headers.
Improvement
 When editing a standard LiveReport, you can now toggle the left panel to display either the folder tree or the field list.
Improvement
 In LiveReports Designer for standard reports, three new options have been added to Options > General > Excel Options. The Show Grid check box allows you show or hide grid lines. The Freeze Rows and Freeze Columns options allow you to create Excel exports with the selected number of rows or columns already frozen.
Improvement
 The multi-select behavior for the drop-down selector for the following LiveReport filters has been improved: Is One Of and Is Not One Of.
Improvement
 In the LiveReports Designer font selector, you can now search the font list and navigate it with your keyboard arrow keys. When you select a field, the list will open to the currently selected font.
Improvement
 We've added a formula bar that allows you to directly create formulas and edit cells in the LiveReports Designer. You can use type-ahead in the new formula bar and in the original Formula Editor page.
Improvement
 The following date functions have been added to LiveReports: DateCustomFormat, GlobalNumericFormat, MonthName, QuarterNumber, QuarterName. The following aggregate functions have been added to LiveReports: AggMedian, AggMode, AggSum, AggStandardDeviation, AggVariance. The following database functions has been added to LiveReports: ExportType, IsNull, PageNumber.
Improvement
 In the LiveReports Schedule wizard, there is now a Test Email button on the recipients page. This button will allow you to send a test report email to one or more recipients without adding them to the recipients list.
Improvement
 When adding a field to a standard LiveReport, a Search bar is now present that allows you to search for a field by name.
Improvement
 A new option has been added to the Options > General section of standard LiveReports and the Options > Export section of Express LiveReports which allows you to select a shortcut to appear next to the report name in the report tree. You can select Default, Run Report, or Export Report.
Type Summary
Improvement

On the Ticket Note History, Task Note History, and Time Entry History pages, all rows were assigned a status of [Changed]. Now, when the items are first created, the initial values are flagged as [Initial Value].
Improvement
 We are discontinuing the use of the word "Master" in all Datto products. We have changed the term "Recurrence Master" to "Recurring Ticket Template" wherever it appeared.
Improvement

The following columns are now available on all ticket grids that were still lacking them:

  • Service Thermometer Temperature
  • Current Service Thermometer Rating
  • Previous Service Thermometer Rating

They are hidden by default.
Improvement
 In the Activity feed of the Ticket page, we have increased the character limit of the Quick Reply field from 2,000 to 32,000 characters, to match the character linit of the ticket note.
Improvement

You can now filter ticket widgets on Status SLA Event, that is, all tickets associated with one of the SLA statuses:

  • First Response
  • Resolution Plan
  • Resolved
  • Waiting Customer

Data Warehouse Updates

For Data Warehouse Updates, we will communicate any columns created or dropped. For minor column alterations, please view the full report found in the Developer Help or online in the Community.

API Updates

SOAP API deprecation

IMPORTANT  The SOAP API entered a limited enhancement phase in Q4 2020. Access deactivation for version 1.5 began in Q1 2022 and will enter its concluding phases in October 2022. Access to version 1.6 will deactivate in Q4 2024.

Entity Revision Type Details
ArticleAttachments Field added parentAttachmentID
Autotask API Bug fix This release resolves an issue that caused the queryCount response to be incorrect for any non-zero value of MaxRecords when the tag was included in the query body. Now, the API will ignore any MaxRecords or IncludeFields values in the query body.
Autotask API Bug fix We have resolved an issue that could prevent the ServiceCalls entity's fields from accurately reflecting their current status.
Autotask API Bug fix Previously, due to an inconsistency with the response model generated by Swagger, tools such as Visual Studio and NSwagStudio returned "System.InvalidOperationException" errors when sending Delete requests to Attachment entities. This issue is now resolved.
BillingItems Field added contractBlockID
Companies Behavior change companyType cannot be changed from vendor if the account is associated with any existing services.
ConfigurationItems Bug fix This release resolves a bug that caused the entity to incorrectly report that it did not support webhooks.
ContractBlockHourFactors Bug fix When a purchase order has been received in full, you can still use the purchaseOrderItemReceive call to receive more items than originally ordered. This enhancement creates parity with the functionality of the Autotask UI.
ContractBlockHourFactors Fields added contractHourlyRate, internalCurrencyContractHourlyRate
DocumentAttachments Field added parentAttachmentID
Opportunities Behavior change This release sunsets the Opportunities entity's VARStreet integration support.
OpportunityAttachments Field added parentAttachmentID
Products Fields added createdByResourceID, createdTime
PurchaseOrderItemReceiving Improvement When a purchase order has been received in full, you can still use the purchaseOrderItemReceive entity to receive more items than originally ordered. This enhancement creates parity with the functionality of the Autotask UI.
QuoteItems Bug fix This release resolves a bug that could prevent the QuoteItems entity's fields from being updated after a service on a quote was renamed.
Quotes Behavior change This release sunsets the Quotes entity's VARStreet integration support.
ServiceCalls Behavior change Service calls cannot be created with, or updated to use, an inactive status.
Services Behavior change The periodType field is now read-only.
Services Behavior change The entity will only validate that the vendor ID maps to a vendor account when it has been changed. Services currently mapped to non-vendor accounts will be able to make updates, but once the vendor ID is updated to a different value, you cannot assign it back to a non-vendor account type.
TicketNotes Bug fix This release resolves a bug that caused the entity to incorrectly report that it did not support webhooks.
Tickets Behavior change If a ticket is created or updated with a sub-issue type that is excluded from the associated contract, the ticket's contractID will be updated to that of the exclusion contract, if it exists. If it does not exist, the contractID will be set to null.
Tickets Bug fix This release resolves a bug that caused the entity to incorrectly report that it did not support webhooks.
TimeEntries Behavior change If a time entry is created or updated with a contractID and the ticket's sub-issue type is excluded on the contract, then the time entry's contractID will be updated to that of the exclusion contract, if it exists. If it does not exist, the contractID will be set to null.
TimeEntries Bug fix If the user has access to edit time entries from the Approve & Post page based on their security settings, the entity will respect those privileges and allow corresponding edits via the API.
Entity Revision Type Details
Account Behavior change AccountType cannot be changed from Vendor if the account is associated with any existing services.
AccountTeam Behavior change We have added edit security to the AccountTeam Delete logic. Now, users can only delete AccountTeams that they have access to edit.
ContractFactor Fields added ContractHourlyRate, InternalCurrencyContractHourlyRate
InstalledProduct Bug fix This release resolves a bug that caused the entity to incorrectly report that it did not support webhooks.
Opportunity Behavior change This release sunsets the Opportunity entity's VARStreet integration support.
PurchaseOrderReceive Improvement When a purchase order has been received in full, you can still use the PurchaseOrderItemReceive entity to receive more items than originally ordered. This enhancement creates parity with the functionality of the Autotask UI.
Quote Behavior change This release sunsets the Quote entity's VARStreet integration support.
QuoteItem Bug fix This release resolves a bug that could prevent the QuoteItem entity's fields from being updated after a service on a quote was renamed.
Service Behavior change The PeriodType field is now read-only.
Service Behavior change The entity will only validate that the vendor ID maps to a vendor account when it has been changed. Services currently mapped to non-vendor accounts will be able to make updates, but once the vendor ID is updated to a different value, you cannot assign it back to a non-vendor account type.
ServiceCall Behavior change Service calls cannot be created with, or updated to use, an inactive status.
ServiceCall Bug fix We have resolved an issue that could prevent the ServiceCall entity's fields from accurately reflecting their current status.
Ticket Bug fix This release resolves a bug that caused the entity to incorrectly report that it did not support webhooks.
Ticket Behavior change If a ticket is created or updated with a sub-issue type that is excluded from the associated ContractID, the ticket's ContractID will be updated to that of the exclusion contract, if it exists. If it does not exist, the ContractID will be set to null.
TicketNote Bug fix This release resolves a bug that caused the entity to incorrectly report that it did not support webhooks.
TimeEntry Behavior change If a time entry is created or updated with a ContractID and the ticket's sub-issue type is excluded on the contract, then the time entry's ContractID will be updated to that of the exclusion contract, if it exists. If it does not exist, the ContractID will be set to null.
TimeEntry Bug fix If the user has access to edit time entries from the Approve & Post page based on their security settings, the entity will respect those privileges and allow corresponding edits via the API.