SoftActivity

SoftActivity Monitor 12.5 with web console enhancements

March 5th, 2021

SoftActivity is glad to announce the release of new version 12.5 of SoftActivity Monitor, its leading user activity monitoring software that helps teams around the world to improve their employee productivity and protect against insider threats.

This update is recommended to all customers.

What’s new in version 12.5:

  • [web console] added the following info into Attendance (also in PDF export and email reports) to help estimate employee productivity level:
    • daily idle time (when a user is logged-in but inactive);
    • idle percentage;
    • number of typed keystrokes;
    • and average hourly keystrokes rate.
  • [web console] export of Attendance report: select a standard range of dates, such as last 7 days, etc. instead of just two dates.
  • fix: [web console] export of Dashboard to PDF the same number of records as on screen. Previously was always 10.
  • fix: [web console] export of Attendance to CSV had incorrect format of date and time for some records.
  • fix: sometimes it failed to clean up old logs on the server.
  • fix: remote Agent installation via PowerShell script failed.
  • fix: updating Agents sometimes required Windows restart in the end.
  • improved Powershell scripts to install & uninstall Agent remotely. See agent\install-agent-remotely.ps1 and agent\uninstall-agent-remotely.ps1
  • dropped support of Windows Vista for security reasons. Minimum version supported now is Windows 7.
    * if support of Win Vista is needed, we advice to continue using version 12.4
  • numerous other improvements and fixes in web console, desktop app and Agent.
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SoftActivity Monitor 12.4 with idle time tracking

November 18th, 2020

SoftActivity announces the release of SoftActivity Monitor version 12.4, its leading user activity monitoring (UAM) solution helping thousands of organizations improve their employee productivity.

By popular requests it now allows our customers to track employees idle time, which helps improve team productivity, especially for remote teams handling challenges of working from home.

What’s new in version 12.4:

Idle time tracking in SoftActivity
  • Idle time tracking. Attendance view in web console now shows idle intervals, i.e. for how long a user was away. This lets you track if employees are away from their computers, or actually working. Adjust the idle timeout in minutes in All Agents – Properties – Monitoring tab in Monitor app. Default idle timeout value is 5 minutes.
  • Attendance view in web console: Zoom to Sessions button to quickly switch to a work day, instead of manually selecting start & end times.
  • fix: [web console] clean up of old logs previously could take a lot of RAM on the server and fail.
  • other fixes and improvements
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SoftActivity Monitor 12.3 maintenance release

July 15th, 2020

SoftActivity is glad to announce the release of SoftActivity Monitor version 12.3 for monitoring users activity on the company workstations.

Improvements in version 12.3:

  • support of new versions 83+ of Microsoft Edge browser for internet tracking.
  • fixed: broken remote screen view on some Win7 computers.
  • minor fixes and improvements.
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SoftActivity Monitor 12.2 with daily and monthly email reports

May 20th, 2020

SoftActivity announces the release of new version 12.2 of SoftActivity Monitor, its leading user monitoring solution helping thousands of organizations improve their employee productivity.

It’s designed to help during the times when many teams transition to remote work. SoftActivity Monitor can be used for monitoring work computers taken off-premise and connected via private network, office workstations in situations when employees connect from home via Remote Desktop or locally, and your Citrix or VMWare VDI infrastructure.

Admins can now receive daily, weekly or monthly reports on users productivity and attendance. View the reports on the go securely on your phone, without a need to sign-in to the application.

What’s new in version 12.2 release:

  • improved image quality of screenshots and remote screen view.
  • reduced CPU and RAM usage by Agent, even further reducing Agent footprint on a monitored PC. It now uses GPU for hardware-accelerated image processing.
  • fixed: occasional crashes in Agent (samimpl.exe) on some computers.
  • fixed: in some rare cases, download-cache folder was growing on the server and taking a lot of hard drive space.
  • fixed: black box on the screen on a monitored computer around the mouse cursor, when users connect to their workstation remotely via RDP.
  • minor: brought back an option to capture screenshots even when a user is idle, which allows recording screen history of idle computers.

Web console:

  • get a daily and monthly email report of users activity. (Previously there was only a weekly report).
    SoftActivity advises customers to schedule reports by email for managers, as the reports are very useful, and can be viewed even on a smartphone without a need to log into the on-premise webapp. See instructions at the bottom.
  • scheduled email reports now include Attendance report. See it in a separate PDF file attached.
  • new reports in Dashboard export to PDF and by email:
    • Top apps for each user;
    • Top websites for each user;
    • Top users by alerts triggered, with a list of top alerts;
  • minor: export to CSV limit increased to 100,000 lines up from 10,000.
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SoftActivity Monitor 12.1 with less storage space used by screenshots

February 5th, 2020

SoftActivity is glad to announce new version 12.1 of SoftActivity Monitor, its leading employee monitoring solution that helps organizations improve staff performance and security.

Screenshots recorded by the software now take much less storage space on customer’s server. Admins can now adjust snapshot frequency depending on how much details their organization requires for record keeping.

Upgrade is recommended to all users.

What’s new in version 12.1

Desktop app:

  • new: Change screenshots capture frequency in Agent Properties – Screen tab.
    • Admin can adjust how often screenshots are recorded.
    • Reduced storage space requirement on the server, compared to the previous versions.
    • Admin can increase frequency for some users if more detailed logs are required.
  • new: shows estimated space required for screenshots, at the bottom of Screen tab.
  • improved IntelliSnap smart mode of taking screenshots based on users actions.
  • new: Copy and Paste buttons in Agent Properties on Privacy and Files tabs in the lists, for easier editing of long lists.
  • new: added Japanese localization of the software thanks to our new partner in Japan, Technoblest https://www.softactivity.jp
  • a lot of improvements and minor fixes.

Web console:

  • new: added Keystrokes column to CSV export.
  • multiple bug fixes and improvements.
  • new: added Japanese localization (switch languages in bottom right corner)
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SoftActivity Monitor 12.0 major update with privacy mode and reports by email

July 19th, 2019

SoftActivity is announcing the release of SoftActivity Monitor version 12.0. It’s a major update of its leading employee monitoring system used by thousands of organizations for protection from insider threats.

SoftActivity now makes it easier to protect employees privacy (such as for GDRP compliance in EU), while still recording all unsafe user activity that helps your organization improve employee productivity and detect insider threats early. Now it also includes admin audit log for improved HIPAA compliance in healthcare industry.

New version 12.0 allows you to prevent recording of:

  • personal online banking, password management apps, and other personal info of employees and customers. This can help organizations with GDPR compliance.
  • Regulated PHI (personal health information) for health-care industry, for improved HIPAA compliance;
  • corporate financial and other sensitive apps;
  • credit card numbers entered by employees, for PCI compliance;
  • and other sensitive, private or regulated information.

What’s new in version 12.0

  • Private apps and websites:
    • Admin can create a list of private apps and websites.
    • SoftActivity will NOT record screen copies, typed keystrokes and window name for private apps and websites.
    • It will only record a fact and duration of usage for private apps.
    • Edit Private apps list in Agent Properties – Privacy tab for All Agents or on individual level. By default, it’s populated with popular financial websites and password managers.

* click to enlarge
  • completely new modern UI look with support of Dark Mode (optional):
Dark mode in SoftActivity Monitor v12
* click to enlarge
  • switched to x64 architecture for improved performance. Warning! Desktop app does not support x32 Windows editions anymore. Agent still supports both x32- and x64-bit Windows editions.
    Note: if you need x32 version of SoftActivity for the admin’s PC, you have to use older version 11.8. SoftActivity recommends to upgrade your computer with a 64-bit edition of Windows, which also supports more than 4GB of RAM
  • greatly improved performance of Agent: now uses even less CPU than in previous versions.
  • support of the latest versions of web browsers, Windows updates, better compatibility with antivirus products.
  • other improvements and fixes.

New in your on-premise web console:

  • Scheduled email reports with users activity summary. Admins will receive weekly report in PDF format with last week’s stats. To enable this report go to Edit Account – Email Reports tab;
  • Graphical charts added to Dashboard:
Employee monitoring dashboard with charts
*click to enlarge
  • Export reports to PDF from the webapp, including pie charts, and new Attendance report:
Employee attendance report in pdf
*click to enlarge
  • Dashboard: select more than 10 top records to view;
  • Filter all reports by time in addition to days interval. Makes it easier to investigate user activity at a particular time of day;
  • Ability to turn off screenshots panel at the bottom. If you are not using screenshots, you can now turn off the panel completely;
  • Audit Log: view history of web console sign-in and sign-out events, and a log of all changes to the system made by admins and managers. Audit log is stored permanently for a year and cannot be deleted from the webapp. Can be seen only by admins. (Authorization monitoring is a requirement for HIPAA-compliant software);
  • Auto sign-out admins and managers after 14 days, for improved security. Session expiration is a requirement for HIPAA-compliant software. Time can be adjusted by setting SA_TOKEN_EXPIRATION_DELTA=xxxx (minutes) in web-env.txt file
  • View users for Top Websites and Top Programs. Click an arrow next to any app or website to see which users spent the most time on the website:
Top users for website
*click to enlarge
  • Improved performance: webapp uses less CPU on the server;
  • Web console in Spanish. Switch your language at the bottom right corner;
  • Other numerous fixes, improvements and optimizations
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SoftActivity Monitor 11.8 released

January 24th, 2019

SoftActivity is glad to announce the release of new version 11.8 of SoftActivity Monitor, its leading computer monitoring software. It’s used by companies to protect against insider threats and improve employees productivity. This new version makes it easier to manage large lists of monitored computers.

Improvements in version 11.8:

  • new: multi-select in Agents list. Select multiple computers in the list and drag them to a group or dashboard, delete them, or right click and perform other actions: as assign to a group, send a message, shut down selected computers, etc. This could previously be done only with one Agent at a time.
  • new: search in Agents list. Click Search or press Ctrl+F in Agents list.
  • new: Agent update is now optional in some releases. For example, current version 11.8 of Monitor supports previous version 11.7 of Agents and does not require an update. (To force update of Agents manually, right click any Agent and click Update/Repair Agent, select Do this for all computers check box)
  • fix: incorrect duration displayed in Top Programs and Top Websites in webapp if longer than 24 hours.
  • other fixes and improvements
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