BES 5.1 Changes

 BES 5.1 was developed to extend the capabilities of BES 5.0 as well as improve the overall performance and user experience.

Performance Enhancements

A major focus of BES 5.1 was to improve performance of all of the components. Here are the specific changes:
  • Improved BES Console performance - Several aspects of the BES Console were re-worked to allow the BES Console to operate faster and more efficiently. The BES Console will load faster, send actions faster, and general usage will be smoother.
  • Improved database performance - The database access operations were changed to reduce the amount of time it takes to do certain queries and to prevent the database locking behavior, which could lead to slower than normal BES Server or BES Console performance (especially when multiple BES Consoles were active at the same time).
  • BES Clients report results faster - Instead of waiting to do a full evaluation of all Fixlet messages and actions, the BES Client will immediately report pending results. This should make the BES Clients report their action status (Running, Waiting, Fixed, etc.) faster. Also, additional optimizations were added to the BES Client to help it evaluate Fixlet messages faster.

Major Features

Several new major features were added to BES 5.1. Here is a list of the features along with a brief description.
  • New Navigation Bar – A navigation bar has been added to make it easier to move around the BES Console. This will allow BES Console operators to easily move around the BES Console with fewer clicks.
  • New Search Functionality – By popular request from customers, a new search functionality was added to allow you to search Fixlet messages, actions, computers, and more. This should greatly ease the process of finding specific computers and Fixlet messages.
  • Fixlet messages can now be "globally hidden" – Another popular customer request was to allow for BES Administrators to hide Fixlet messages for all users (in previous versions of BES, you could only hide Fixlets on the local BES Console). This feature gives BES Administrators greater control over what the operators can and cannot deploy.
  • Ability to add "Comments" directly in BES – You can now add comments to Fixlet messages, tasks, actions, and computers. These comments can be used in several ways. For instance, comments can be used to communicate between BES Console operators, such as "This patch caused an issue with our custom application" or add additional information about assets, such as "This is the CIO's computer". These comments are searchable.
  • New Grouping Capability – The BES Console now supports direct grouping of computers in the UI. This grouping is available in addition to the "label" functionality in previous versions of BES.
  • Enhanced BES Client Deploy Tool – The BES Client Deploy tool has several enhancements including: deploying the BES Client to multiple computers at the same time, deploying to computers not in an NT/AD domain, better support for large domains, and more.

Other Changes

There were many small changes that address specific issues and generally make BES work better. A full technical changelist is available here.

Click here to see the changes in BES 4.1.
Click here to see the changes in BES 5.0.