Easy Way To Approve Manual Patches

MinnesotaJoe

December 17, 2019 at 7:00 pm UTC

We have separate groups and policies for each of our main linux distributions.
The policies are a manual approval policy so we can strictly control and report on what servers are patched with what and when new servers are brought on, we can force a patch down and know it will be at the same level as the others.

That being said, is there an easy way to approve all patches in a manual policy? I looked in the API and I am not seeing a way to easily do this and there isn’t a way to do it in the portal either.

Basically our end goal is to control patching so all are on the same versions for specific groups.

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Replies (9)

AnonymousDecember 18, 2019

There is a button on the Dashboard > Manual Approvals section to approve all patches in all Manual Approval policies, but that’s not a per-policy basis. There are limitations from the Policy Editor as you can only select a handful of patches at a time to act on.

I had a conversation talking about this exact scenario yesterday with a member of the UI/UX group, and I know it’s going to be something we’ll be iterating on.

As far as the API is concerned, I believe you are correct. The API works on a per-approval basis, so it isn’t grouping them in the way you would like. It’s meant more as a one-off method which you could script together if needed.

I agree that this isn’t the best experience in the scenario you’re working in with multiple Manual Approval policies in an organization but only wanting to approve all patches within one policy at a time. Today you can approve all in the org or checkbox 10 at a time within the Policy Editor.

Manual Approval API: https://docs.automox.com/api/software/update-manual-approval-record

AnonymousDecember 18, 2019

@MinnesotaJoe I’ll pass your experience on as reinforcement for my conversation yesterday.

ChrisW-AutomoxDecember 18, 2019

This is also a pain point doing manual approvals across multiple Orgs.

I’d like to be able to approve a patch for all my Orgs at once, instead of having to go into each one.

Nic-AutomoxDecember 18, 2019

@Chris there’s a feature request on our product board for that, and you can vote for it here:

MinnesotaJoeDecember 18, 2019

Thanks. We are basically trying to keep a group of servers at a point in time for updates.
Then when it is time to patch we approve at that point in time and it is locked again.

Nic-AutomoxJanuary 8, 2020

@MinnesotaJoe we’ve made a change to the manual approval interface from the Dashboard. You can now select all on the page by clicking the checkbox at the top of the list. Does that help you with what you’re trying to do?

Note that the select all checkbox just selects the ones showing on each page, so if you have multiple pages of manual approvals you’ll have to do those a page at a time. The page will show up to 25 patches at a time.

Nic-AutomoxJanuary 8, 2020

Here’s the updated KB with all the details:
https://support.automox.com/help/using-a-manual-approval-policy

MinnesotaJoeJanuary 15, 2020

That indeed does help. The only thing that would make it better would be having the table wider and a way to filter 🙂 But that does indeed go a long to to helping.

Nic-AutomoxJanuary 16, 2020

Glad that helps some. We are planning on adding sorting/fitlering and other UI improvements, but glad it’s a step in the right direction.

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