FrameFlow Newsletter - October 2020
Keep Up to Date on the Latest FrameFlow News
FrameFlow 2020.8 Released
We are very happy to announce that FrameFlow v2020.8 has been released and is now available for download. Customers with active subscriptions and perpetual licenses can log into their account on our site to download and upgrade.
If you're currently evaluating FrameFlow, download the evaluation version again. Running it will upgrade you to the latest release while preserving all of your settings.
In this month's newsletter we'll focus on the new features and functionality included in the v2020.8 release.
User Interface Refresh
The first thing you'll notice in FrameFlow 2020.8 is a refreshed user interface with a clean new look. We've not only updated styles and colors, we've also made a number of usability updates, some of which you can see in this screen shot:
Throughout the interface, the icons for folders and devices are now displayed more prominently. We've also moved the Actions menu, making it more prominent and closer to the items to which it applies.
In the following example, you can see a few more changes. The new expanded header shows not only the device name but also the device description and IP address. We've also added a few new icons specifically for switches and routers.
All of this makes it easier than ever to navigate in FrameFlow and see the status of your devices and device groups.
Network Diagrams: Curved Lines
Many of our customers use our dashboard panel for network diagrams. Our network diagrams let you show not only the topology of your network but also the current status for each item on the diagram. Think of like Visio but with overlays showing live monitoring data for all of your critical systems.
To build a diagram, you use our chooser to select the devices you want to display and then connect them using lines. In FrameFlow v2020.8 we've added the ability to use curved lines. Curved lines allow you to make better use of the diagram's space and to connect devices in more flexible ways.
SNMP Interface Monitoring
Our SNMP interface monitor is designed to help you get alerts when the status changes on any network interface. It's a great way to get alerts when a cable gets pulled or when anything else goes wrong on a switch, firewall or router.
One of the challenges has always been that there can be a lot of interfaces to monitor. Several of our customers are monitoring 500+ switches with total interfaces counts that are well into the tens of thousands.
FrameFlow 2020.8 adds a convenient new way to monitor specific interfaces that are the most important to your network operations. Now you can instruct your interface event monitor to only check interfaces that have been marked as favorites.
Our tutorial also shows you how to display tags and their values on the status page for your devices.
To set an interface as a favorite, go to the settings tab of the network device and make sure the device type has been set to "Switch / Router". That unlocks the Interfaces tab for the device where you can click on any row to mark it as a favorite. Clicking again rotates the interface between "favourite", "normal" and "ignored".
A common monitoring strategy is to use one SNMP Interface monitor to alert about favorite interfaces, using a high alert level like error or critical, and to use a second event monitor to monitor the rest with warning or info levels.
Two Factor Authentication
Another new feature in v2020.8 is support for two-factor authentication when logging into FrameFlow. With two-factor auth enabled, when you login you will be prompted for your Time-based One-time Password (TOTP) code which you get from your preferred authenticator app. We include support for Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator and may other apps that support standard TOPT authentication.
Setting up two-factor authentication only takes a minute and it's the best way to ensure secure access to your FrameFlow installation.
Current Release: v2020.9
Our current release is v2020.9. It includes all the new features described above as well as a few fixes for issues that were discovered after the initial release. It's our recommended stable build so login and upgrade as soon as possible.
Wrap Up
That's all for this newsletter. As always, if you have questions or feedback that you would like to share, get in touch because we're always eager to hear your suggestions.
Sincerely,
The FrameFlow Team
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