The TD DEX product uses the same core platform as TD ITAM. Because of this customers with both products have one fully unified experience of all features. In this documentation we'll focus on the DEX only items and make liberal use of links to the long standing ITAM documentation for the shared functions like Authentication and Client Deployment.
A key difference from ITAM is that DEX is web only from the server and administration side. As such the KeyConfigure desktop admin app will not be used. The client agent deployed to endpoints is the same agent as is used with ITAM, but as of DEX that agent UI has been greatly enriched and updated with modern feel and dynamic interaction features. Because most DEX customers will also be using our hosted service, this makes deploying and managing the product very light weight.
Accessing the Server
The primary admin will be provided with an initial full access account to the instance at the URL your organization chose. This admin can then provision other accounts or even link in authentication to an SSO provider like Azure. Very granular rights can be delegated in the platform, although the use case for DEX likely means limited access outside of the full admins. When combined with ITAM however this becomes a very robust topic of configuration. These topics are covered in great detail in our ITAM documents:
Deploying the Agent
The server has little to offer until there are agents talking to it. The agent is very light weight as mentioned and should not be noticed in normal circumstances, unless of course remediations are being presented to the user. Once the agent is installed, it will check in to the server and you can see the endpoint on the Computers page. Full details on client deployment can be found here.
The agent can be found on the client computers:
- Windows: Control Panel -> TeamDynamix
- MacOS: Applications -> TeamDynamix
In the upper left you will see the connection status, and if an Audit is in progress for ITAM customers an indicator for that process.
If you have configured the Ticketing integration, Request Assistance allows the user to put in a support ticket from the client, or even run on demand Remediations that you have made available in the Assistance configuration.
The Health tab shows the current hardware metrics of the computer, much like you see in the Web UI when viewing a computer record. Further details are seen on the Activity pane (graph icon).
The Device tab shows relevant client record identifiers for its connection to the server.
Available self service Remediations are also available from the "layers" icon.
Settings (gear icon) has toggles for various settings, as well as buttons to use KeyVerify and KeyCheckout, although use of the latter items is very rare these days.
Troubleshooting
The most common things you will need to check on a client is if it has a connection. If it does not, click the Logon button and wait up to a minute to see what message is returned if there is a problem. The next most common is verifying the ID of the computer on the Device tab against a computer record on the server to make sure you're looking at the right record and not one of the same Name.
Organizing Records
While not strictly needed with DEX only, it's VERY useful to organize your computers into what we call Divisions. These are like folders or OUs, allowing you to easily see which systems are where in a logical structure. For ITAM usage reports this is a critical idea, so again if you have both products that use case will drive this topic. But even without ITAM the DEX platform has some lite hardware asset management features, so keeping things organized will be useful. Also, there are Dashboard Widgets (see below) that by default leverage this organization structure. The main impact for Divisions with DEX however is being able to apply custom settings Layers to individual buckets of computers.
See the full documentation on Computers for more information, noting that Devices are an ITAM only feature.
DEX Configuration
The basic functionality with no further configuration will be to collect and monitor health of your systems using the data reported by the agent. The power of DEX however is in taking automated Remediations on endpoints when certain thresholds are crossed. You configure these under Settings -> DEX
Categories
The Categories list in the DEX sidebar has over a dozen health and event areas that you can configure. Each one has a variety of settings to configure thresholds for triggering recording an event and possibly taking a Remediation action. You can manually assign Remediations to a monitor, or visit the Remediations page below to use Recommended assignments. Each item also has an expansion triangle on the left to expose even more granular settings for it.
Note that at the bottom of the General category you can set the Logo you want to appear on the client side popups. This is useful for brand recognition for the user experience.
Note that on the Feedback category, the option for problem reports is by default 6 hours. This means unless you change this a user can only report an issue using the agent UI ever 6 hours and any others will be ignored and not logged. This default is for safety out of the box, we leave it to your choice what your "pester" threshold is.
Assistance
Under the Categories you will see Assistance. Here you can add Remediations that are available for "self service" on the client end. These will be found in the client UI when using the Request Assistance button. After checking a Category, if there are available remediations the Assist button will activate, and once clicked will show available items.
Remediations
For the various metrics like Memory, Disk and CPU, and we provide an "easy button" for enabling default limits.
While each item can be manually configured with remediations in the Categories, going to the Remediations page offers the easy Use Recommended button for activating each remediation on the common recommended metric category at the recommended threshold. This allows for very quick implementation of the entire platform that can be customized over time as you collect health data.
When an event threshold is hit a Remediation can trigger. The client will see an alert message for any that require interaction.
Note that the custom message in the screenshot is added by means of using the Commands function on a given Computer record (see below).
The details on the Remediation indicate if the user (if one is logged in) will be notified, prompted, or required (low, med, high).
Detections
This pane is for future expansion. At initial shipping time we do not have specific Detections built in so this page only lists the Remediations. The concept is they would be scripts that run on the configured cycle and detect a condition and trigger a custom event that would then potentially trigger a remediation. This allows development of highly customized detection-trigger-remediation flows in the future, be they global additions or customer specific developed items.
Layers
Note above the list of Categories there is a pull down menu to pick your Configuration Layer, as well as a + to add a new Layer. When you select a custom layer, in the top right you can Delete the layer, and see the number of overrides in that layer. Clicking the list button will open a sidebar with the overrides and an easy button for each one to change it back to the inherited default.
Layers are put together in this order, with each successive layer's customizations overriding anything in the layer above it:
- Default
- IF there are any customizations at one of the 3 OS layer levels, the relevant one is applied for the computer
- IF there is a custom layer chosen in the Division settings, it is applied
- IF there is a layer set at the bottom of the DEX pane on the computer, it is applied
To apply a Layer to a Division, go to the Computers page, right click a Division, and Edit it. You can pick the DEX Layer in that modal to apply to that division of computers.
When you look at the bottom of the DEX panel on a computer, you can see the full layer set that is applied to it.
Commands
In the Details of a Computer record there is a pane called Commands. This allows you to interact with the agent on that computer in a few ways. This is very targeted as opposed to all the above DEX configuration that is global.
Display a Message - pretty straight forward, send a message to pop up on that endpoint. Note the info link must be full url syntax.
Run a DEX Script - Rather than wait for a Remediation to occur, force a script to run ASAP, optionally asking for user interaction. See Remediations below for more details.
Trigger a DEX Event -
Send DEX Statistics -
Viewing Data
Computer Level
The Information pane on a Computer record will have some health indicators on the right side for various attributes. This is a handy in line reference when you are looking at records, especially when using our full ITAM platform for other asset management tasks. Note it can take up to 24 hours of data collection from an endpoint for the health metrics to appear in the details of its record.
The DEX panel of the computer detail however is the full dashboard of all health metrics and historic trend for that computer record.
The little arrows on the bars indicate Organizational average (top arrow) and Division average (bottom arrow) so you can compare this computer to wider aggregations easily.
On the DEX Events pane you can see the entire history of the computer events so you know date and time when a given threshold was exceeded.
Global Level
Under Settings -> DEX -> Effectiveness you can see an overall rating of how well the Remediations are working in your environment. You can reset the scores if you make significant configuration changes and want to start with a fresh baseline.
Dashboards
As with ITAM, there are a number of highly customizable Widgets you can apply to your Dashboard. Every person can have their own dashboard configured however they want. This is a highly flexible command center for viewing statistics and overall health metrics. See the ITAM documentation on Dashboards for more details. Note that the DEX related Widgets are under the Health tag in the add a widget modal.
Reports
The Reporting options, like Dashboards, are numerous. There are several DEX specific reports, in addition to the vast array of reports if you are also an ITAM customer. Once again, we will refer you to the ITAM documentation on Reports for more details.
Integrations
TD DEX is as mentioned the same core platform as TD ITAM. However this platform is distinct from TD Work Management and TD iPaaS. To make them function as a connected suite, there is built in configuration to directly integrate data flow and automations between them. You can read about the main ITAM to WM Integration here.
Actions
Once you have configured the integration you can then create an Action for each Trigger you want to automatically create a Ticket in WM. When you go to Settings -> Actions and make a new action, you will want to choose the Create a Ticket action type and then fill in the rest of the information as appropriate. You do have to create one Action per trigger event because each type of event may or may not want a ticket created, and may create a different kind of ticket.
See the ITAM documentation on Actions for more details.