LabStats Client Changes FAQ

Contents

What new improvements are coming to the LabStats Clients?

Clients are being updated and delivered to you in a new way that offers:
- Improved support for deployment tools (installation and ongoing management)
- Upgraded encryption for stronger data protection
- Out of the box support for Mac operating systems that require notarization (Catalina and later)

For Windows:
- Some system requirements have been updated:
  - .NET framework 4.8 (or later)
- The running process name is changing from LabStatsGO to LabStatsClient.
- A single MSI installer file will be used for install, update, and removal and can be used with the interface or via command line. The MSI will now inform Windows of the version number, even through auto updates.
- The client’s Windows service will have automatic delayed start enabled by default.
For Mac:
- The installer and the client itself will now be notarized by Apple for improved security and easier deployment in macOS Catalina and later.
- Some system requirements have been updated:
  - macOS 10.9 Mavericks (or later)

You will need to manually download and reinstall the new Windows Client before August 31, 2021. This version of the client cannot be auto-upgraded. You can obtain your new client from within the Admin menu of your LabStats Portal.
You will need to update your Windows deployment tools to work properly with the new profile of the Windows Client.
Customers who include the LabStats Client as part of their deployment image will need to update that image to utilize the new Windows Client instead of the old one.

You, if you are using a LabStats Client that you obtained before September 17th.

You will not receive the benefits available in the new clients.
If you are a cloud customer, your Windows Clients will stop recording usage data on August 31st. Historical reporting, LabMaps and the Remote Access Dashboard will be impacted. All data collected between August 31st and the date you install the new client will be lost.

The effects would vary depending on what you have set your deployment tools to do with respect to the Windows client. Possible effects include:
- The old and the new Windows clients could run at the same time causing data duplication because a rule or script is set up to ensure the client is installed and always running but that rule doesn’t properly detect the new LabStats Client so it installs and/or launches the old client as well.

If you’re using a Windows deployment image and you don’t update your image to include the new client, then computers that are imaged with the deployment image won’t receive the new improvements. More importantly, the client will also stop functioning on August 31st.

No, you don’t actually need to reimage all your Windows computers right now. You need to install the new client on all your new computers, but you can use other deployment tools to do that (such as Microsoft SCCM). But, don’t forget to update your Windows image to include the new client, rather than the old client, so that later on newly imaged computers get the correct version.

The Station Manager in the LabStats Portal can be used to ensure the new client is installed on all computers. The following version numbers (or greater than that listed) indicate a new client:
- - Windows: 8.20.915.1
  - Mac: 8.20.914.10
Don’t forget that computers that are no longer in service and have not been deleted or decommissioned will still appear in the Station Manager. They will indicate the client version that was present the last time they ran. This is a good opportunity to decommission out of service computers to help ensure all active computers are running the new client.

No. LabStats Clients are built to auto-update for easy maintenance. We do not expect any future updates to require a manual reinstall again.

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