Automox Q&A

I’ve tried multiple ways to change groups a device is in from the commandline on the device, all unsuccessfully.I’ve tried the suggestions from https://help.automox.com/hc/en-us/articles/5384338960020-Deploying-the-Automox-Agent-in-Bulk, and installing with the MSI options to add to a group are ignored - it always ends up in the Default Group only.This command will only install it to the Default Group, ignoring the child group:Start-Process 'msiexec.exe' -ArgumentList '/i "Automox_Installer-latest.msi" /qn /norestart ACCESSKEY=<key> GROUP="Default Group/Dev Group 1"'The PowerShell script just fails silently to even install at all when I run it, using the command as an administrator, although the same is true when run from Windows PowerShell

Hi,In Automox, do we have Dynamic group populated? Instead of static group or manual group? 

We have PCs dotted around the world, although most are in the UK. All of them at some time or another can be a struggle to connect to with automox.I found with a couple recently, I had to use team viewer to connect and remove VNC - because the port was engaged by VNC, it was seen as ‘busy’ when attempting to connect. So you could never connect.After removal, Automox would then re-connect, re-install VNC and all would be well.I could write a worklet to remove VNC I guess, but was wondering how easy it would be just to use a worklet to free up the port? 

I’ve recently noticed that when our 2012 R2 servers restart the Automox Agent service does not automatically start. The service on each server is set to “Automatic” but this fails to happen. Checking the event log I see the Error below. Is this a known issue for Automox on Server 2012 R2, or could this be something specific to our environment? During the boot process this event is logged:“A timeout was reached (300000 milliseconds) while waiting for the Automox Agent service to connect.” After logging in I can manually start the Automox Agent service without issue, it’s just not ideal to need to do that each time the servers restart.

would be nice to mitigate dashboard items faster by triggering multiple patch now actions.clicking on a dashboard hotlink will take me to the softwares that need to be patched or mitigated but then i have to go to over to actions and then patch now.  would be nice if I can select ALL the products I wanted to patch and then do a “patch now” to save myself lots of clicks.  

I don’t think this is a bug per say, but when “removing” a deployment tag from new pc’s the console deleted the tag as a whole! Is there a way to not have this happen?  Also, this isn’t a worklet question, but I can’t post in the platform forum lol!! The category drop down doesn’t list it! =(  

Hi All,We had a strange pop-up on devices during/after a recent deployment using Automox. The message came from a application of executable called CopyCat (followed by a image of a white cat holding silver keys). For our piece of mind, can anyone confirm if this is a standard component of Automox, or do I need to be worried?

Hey all, Just wanted to check to see if Automox has the ability to patch drivers on Windows devices? I.e. how WSUS has this ability? Would like to retire WSUS completely for end user devices, and would be beneficial to tap into the MS Windows driver update channel.

I have created a deployment configuration via the Microsoft Intune dashboard. Before I deployed the app I had to convert it to an intunemac using IntuneAppUtil. In my Intune dashboard, it says the app has been installed on the macOS (Big Sur) device. Using the terminal I can indeed see the agent installed in /usr/local/bin/amagent. But when I checked my Automox devices dashboard I don’t see the device registered. Has anyone done this before successfully what additional steps have you done?

I would like to deploy SQL patches (not the latest version) but a N-1 version leveraging ‘Patch Only’ policy or We need to leverage our script to install a specific package.

We’ve been making good use of the Automox Agent Deployer and it really has helped us get started quickly. As we enter the next phase of our rollout, we want to target deployments with a given Automox Key to a subset of machines that share a Crowdstrike Host Group with machines we don’t want to target - so we’d really like to be able to deploy using FalconGroupingTag and SensorGroupingTag.I think our workarounds would be move machines into different Crowdstrike Host Groups, which would be challenging due to our other integrations, or manually run the script against each host via Crowdstrike RTR, which would require other development work and doesn’t make use of the excellent Automox Agent Deployer that is already built.

Is it possible to create a policy to scan a group of devices for missing critical patches then create a report the breaks out which critical patches are missing.  We do not want to patch those devices with this policy, only scan.  

This doesn’t happen too frequently, thankfully, but when it does it can be very frustrating for end users.A patch that requires a reboot fails to install so Automox tries again on the next scheduled run. As I find I have to run schedules often to keep up with the number of patches, this can mean that a user has to reboot every day.What I’d like is the ability to disable a patch after a number of failed attempts so that this doesn’t happen. I’d also like to be notified about this so that we can investigate the cause.As we get too many failure notifications we’ve actually turned these off for now anyway.Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on this?Thanks

Hello, I would like to notify end users once their patching is completed so that they know if it is okay to shut down their device.If a device is shut down, logged out, or put in sleep mode, the patching will fail. I’ve noticed this multiple times with testing on different devices. There is no real way for an end user to know when their patches have been updated. Furthermore, on Automox I am able to see each “Device Status” as “Refreshing” when updates are being conducted, and “Ready” once they are complete.I would like confirmation that Refreshing = Patching. With that wording it is a little confusing.I have ran manual patches on certain devices that will begin “refreshing” and after completion, they will turn to the “ready” state. Although I will still see the same patches needing an update in the “Software” section of the device. Does anyone know why this is happening? It is as if the patch runs and after completion nothing actually happened wit

Good Afternoon,I’m planning on deploying via GPO using MSI.  I’ve gotten the ACCESSKEY entry added to the MSI using Orca.  I was hoping to assign device group membership as well.  Could someone please provide the syntax for this?  I haven’t had any luck, and am not finding any documentation.  I tried the following with no success:Property: GROUPValue: “Default/Parent Group/Device Group”Thanks!

Actually, we completely reset the PC and wiped it clean, and built the PC from scratch. However, the automox console is showing the pc with the old hostname. How can I clear this up?

Hi there,I’ve been experiencing an issue on certain clients where the Automox device section states “Reboot Required” even when a reboot has been administered, in some cases multiple times. I’ve tried manually restarting, restarting from the Automox client, CLI restarts, etc. The message is persistent. This seems to only apply to macOS devices. Any ideas?Best,Dane

Hi I would need some adviceI use policy “Patch recently released macOS updates”. It shows a pop-up window and if user click on “patch”, e.g. MacOS 14.3.1 is upgraded to 14.4. But I see it has two IFIf user does not click on “patch” button, MacOS is not updated If he does it, MacOS is not restarted. There is just notification in Settings icon, but my users ignore it. Is not there any way to enforce patching even if user does not click “Patch” button? Is not there any way how to significantly show to user he should reboot? And if he does not reboot, reboot is forced e.g in 48 hours? Thank you for you helpAldomoro

greetings with everyone,Is there automox compatibility with Qradar SIEM?I am investigating, if anyone has a similar case, could you give me some guidelines to follow the best path?

Discuss the Hands-On IT Automation 101 podcast here! 

Any solutions to the output below? We have such low compliance because everyone uses Teams. Failed to apply patches ("Teams Machine-Wide Installer..."): Error: Microsoft Teams is unable to patch because it is currently running.

We'd like to switch some of our AWS instances over to Graviton, for the cost/performance improvements, but there isn't currently an Automox agent for ARM.Is this something in the roadmap, or should we be considering an alternative patch management platform which does support it?

Anyone have a guide on setting up MDM to approve this? 

Does automox has an adobe creative cloud patch coming up?

While the need to install critical software is often urgent, we are finding the need to track and remove unwanted software to be equally pressing in some cases. I see that substantial and ongoing work is being done on Automox Worklets which uninstall software. That leads me to wonder whether tracking and removal of software might some day go “mainstream” in Automox and be managed directly through the Automox console. For example, perhaps there could be an Automox Policy which reports ALL packages installed on an end point and can be used to trigger uninstall logic on some subset of these. Am I totally off-track here? Please enlighten!