New preview capability - Track your hard-to-reach assets using IT Agent, the future of LsAgent

[Gilian]

Hi everyone!

Lansweeper is delighted to announce the availability of its new IT Agent in your Lansweeper Site, now in Preview. Track your hard-to-reach assets using the IT Agent which tracks the details of a single computer running Windows, Linux, or Apple MacOS and sends these directly to your Lansweeper Site.

How to access IT Agent in your Lansweeper Site

1. Open a browser and navigate to https://app.lansweeper.com.
2. Choose the Lansweeper Site to which you want to link the IT Agent Discovery. 
3. Go to Scanning > Discovery systems > Download installers/packages > IT Agent Discovery

A brief explanation

• Learn how to install/deploy IT Agent here.

• After a successful installation, the IT Agent(s) will be shown in your Lansweeper Site in Scanning > Discovery systems.

• To see the asset data, you can open Inventory > All assets (and you can use the search/advanced filter on the top right to filter on the specific assets/installation where IT Agent is running)

Product comparison

Lansweeper Network Discovery vs Lansweeper IT Agent (Portable) Discovery

Topic	Lansweeper IT Agent	Lansweeper LsAgent
Summary	Newest generation local tracking of any IT device running Windows, Linux or macOS device (including guest virtual machines and connected monitors)	Older generation local tracking of any IT device running Windows, Linux or macOS device (including guest virtual machines and connected monitors)
Asset reach	By default, local tracking only, no other network devices are discovered. This can be changed, but we recommend using Network Discovery for discovering network devices instead	Local tracking only, no other network devices are discovered. To discover network devices in combination with LsAgent, we recommend using Lansweeper On-Premise
Asset data	Expanded default IT discovery data set (extra data like user info on macOS)	Default IT discovery data set
Credentials	No credentials required for local tracking (runs as local system or similar elevated user by default). Credentials are optional for remote discovery but we advise to use Network Discovery for discovering network devices instead.	No credentials required for local tracking (runs as local system or similar elevated user by default).
Network access	Syncs with Lansweeper Site directly To sync with your Lansweeper Site, HTTP2 proxy is supported Check Install Network Discovery - Lansweeper Community for connection requirements Not available yet: Send results to Network Discovery hub or to a file on a network drive for later import into Lansweeper Site	Does not sync with Lansweeper Site directly HTTP2 proxy is not supported Requires a scan server to connect to (from a Lansweeper On-Premise installation). Can also connect first to Lansweeper LsAgent Relay server, see this link. Can save results to a file for import into Lansweeper On-Premise via scan server
Auto update	Auto update on Windows, Linux and macOS	Auto update on Windows. Linux and macOS require manual updates
Vulnerability risks	Built on .NET 8.0	Built on .NET FW 4.8 (Windows) and .NET 6.0 (Linux, macOS)

Request for feedback

It's time for us to let you try and test this new feature. We hope this first version will give you an easy-to-deploy agent-based discovery.

Finally, we're all ears! Your feedback is valuable, and we'd love to hear it.

Feel free to share in the comments or share your logs and screenshots privately to preview@lansweeper.com

Kind regards,

Gilian De Raes
Product Manager | Lansweeper

[eputz]

@ndeering We've been successfully deploying via Intune as a Win32 app using commandline of 

Lansweeper-IT-agent-discovery-0.12.0-windows-x64-installer.exe --mode unattended --accepteula 1 --cloudtoken %linkingcodevaluegoeshere% 

You'll note we missed off the -path attribute as we found that our deployments were failing with that and the ITAgent still installs to C:\Program Files\Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery without needing to specify path.

There is one issue we're having and that is that installs are failing after a while and it appears related to the linking code (cloudtokenvalue) no longer being valid so we're having to generate a new linking code and update that value in our Win32App install commandline

@Gilian - is there a specific lifetime on the generated cloudtoken value used for ITAgent installs? Also is the 500 client limit now removed? Thanks for your help.

[Gilian]

@eputz thanks for sharing the command for intune. Perhaps it has an issue with the backslash as that's usually to escape the next character. So you could still try to install using double \ instead:

1. Lansweeper-IT-agent-discovery-X.X.X-windows-x64-installer.exe --mode unattended --accepteula 1 --path "C:\\Program Files\\Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery" --cloudtoken cloudtokenvalue

As for the linking code: our development team is reviewing a solution to increase the duration while still ensuring secure deployments. I'll update the FAQ in this community post once done.

As for the limit of 500 IT Agents, that was removed mid January so you can link as many IT Agents as you like to your LS site now.

[Gilian]

1. Lansweeper-IT-agent-discovery-X.X.X-windows-x64-installer.exe --mode unattended --accepteula 1 --path "C:\\Program Files\\Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery" --cloudtoken cloudtokenvalue

[eputz]

@Gilian thanks for the update. Just to add that the path statement works fine in our SCCM deployments.

So what is the linking code lifetime at present as we're starting to deploy to thousands of machines and whilst the current short lifetime of the linking code causes issues, if we know the definitive lifetime we'll just have to periodically update our deployments until resolved - the portal mentions 24 hours but hoping it's a tad longer than that. 🤞

Thanks for your speedy response and help on this 👍

[Gilian]

@eputz currently it's still 24 hours. But our development team is working on an improved solution where you can set the expiration manually and create a new linking code, revoking a previous one to guarantee security.

[eputz]

@Gilian - Hi Gilian, any update on:

• the linking code expiration works
• asset types incorrectly identified as 'mobile' instead of windows (still have 350 showing as mobile)

Thanks for your help.

Ebe

[Gilian]

Hi @eputz ,
Our development/security team is still working on the extended duration of the linking code.
Can you rescan and recheck the asset types of the "mobile" devices? They should now report back as Windows devices according to our development team.

[eputz]

Hi @Gilian , apologies if I'm missing something but I thought the IT Agent default behaviour is to undertake a scan every 24 hours or is there a different scan I'd be initiating?

[eputz]

@Gilian  - following up on the rescan, I can't bulk select devices to initiate this but going back to the default scan interval,  if I export the LANSweeper Site data and filter on last scan date, worryingly of approx. 2800 devices - most of which were installed prior to March 2024, only 140  of them have a last scanning date withing March 2024 and at least 1000+ would have been in use during March so is the scanning date in cloud console supposed to be updating? If so does this mean that most of our IT Agent installs are no longer talking  to LANSweeper? The only changes we've been making  is to regularly update the linking code due to the 24 hour timeouts.

[eputz]

Thanks @Gilian , that sounds like it would work nicely. Any chance you can post in these comments when available so I get a notification 👍

[Gilian]

@eputz 

We've extended the linking code duration so you can now choose how long a single linking code should remain valid (1 day, 1 month, 3 months, ...)

Go to Scanning > Discovery sources > Link discovery source. Select Create new code, set an expiration and select Copy code.