Note: Third Wall is not an authorized Automate Support center.  Suggestions here are intended to share our knowledge of both Automate and Third Wall to improve your experience with those products.  They should not be taken as official best practices.  In regard to these suggestions, all standard disclaimers apply.  When in doubt about any of suggestion, ask an official Automate Support Representative for assistance or refer to the Automate Knowledge Base.

When creating or modifying any professional automation, extensive testing is the key to success.  Any change to the Default Agent Template in Automate should be done very carefully and only after testing to the point of certainty.  This document will show you how to test changes before committing them to the Default Agent Template's server address assignment.  We strongly urge you to take the time to perform these steps before committing your change to production.

All steps should be done as a user account with Super Admin rights assigned.  Also, this document assumes your server is running on a static IP address.  While this applies to any and all production servers;  we strongly recommended you run your Automate server on a dedicated, static IP address!  Otherwise, your entire communications network is wholly dependent on DNS operating properly.

1. Get your current Server Address assignment and use it to create a new Agent Template
   1. On the Control Center, press Automation -> Templates -> Agent Templates.  This will cause a the 'Agent Templates' window to appear, its screen will show your current templates. Double click the 'Default' template. This will again cause a new window to appear. This is your current Default Agent Template:
      
      
      
   2. Copy the value assigned to the 'Server Address' field.  In the example above, it is https://server.twsandbox.local.  Save it for later reference. Close the Default Agent Template. This brings you back to the 'Agent Templates' window
      
      
   3. Press the '+Add' button on the top.  A new 'Add Template' window appears.
      
      
   4. In the 'Template Name' field, enter 'Failover Test'
      
      
   5. With the 'Server Address' first right-click the 'Enable' checkbox to the right of the field, then enter the address saved from the current Default Agent Template and add a pipe ( | ) then 'https://', then your server's public IP address.  Again, with the example above, https://server.twsandbox.local|https://192.168.1.123 was entered.
      
      
      
   6. Save and close the Agent Template.
      
      
2. Create a new test group and assign the new template to it.
   1. Press the 'Groups' tab on the Control Center to open your Groups View.  Right-click 'Groups' (on the top of the list) to create a new group.  This will open a new window, the new group's Editor.
      
      
   2. Within the 'Template' group, select a template.  Use the pulldown to select the 'Failover Test' Agent Template.  Use the 'Priority' pulldown to select 1.
      
      
   3. Save and close the group.
      
      
      
3. Assign a test computer to the group and break its DNS client
   
   
   1. Press the 'Clients' tab on the Control Center to return to the default view.
      
      
   2. Identify your target test computer.  Right-click it and select Send To -> Group.  Click the checkbox next to the 'Agent Template Test'. Press send to assign the selected computer to the group.
      
      
      
   3. Right-click the target computer again, this time select Commands -> Inventory -> Update Config. This will apply the new Agent Template to the remote computer's local settings.
      
      
   4. Confirm those settings have been applied to the test computer.  Open the registry on the test computer and navigate to HKLM\Software\LabTech\Service. Inspect the value for 'Server Address'. It should show the same as was entered in the Failover Test's 'Server Address' field.
      
      
      
   5. If the address isn't there, repeat running the Update Config command on the remote. Automate make take a few cycles to assign the template to the computer.
      
      
   6. Once the address is set in the registry, restart the test computer.  This ensures you are testing on a system with the settings in-place, not newly assigned.
      
      
   7. Test communications to the remote using the Control Center.  All Inventories should work, scripts run, remote control, monitors, etc..
      
      
   8. Once full communications and control has been established, break the test computer's DNS lookup by reassigning the current address to an unresponsive resource.
      
      
      
4. Wait a few
   
   
   1. Immediately upon applying the change to DNS, your remote will stop reporting into your Automate server. Give it up to 15 minutes (three standard heartbeats) to realize the issue and correct itself.
      
      
   2. The remote agent logs connection failures to the local drive at %windir%\ltsvc\lterrors.txt. It is helpful to open that file with a browser so you can refresh with just F5.
      
      
   3. Once you confirm the remote is again reporting into Automate, test a few controls.  The Screen Lock in Third Wall is a good, obvious method to ensure the two are in communications but any successful command, monitor, script, etc.. will work
      
      
   4. Don't forget to check your screen can still Connect with the remote!  Be sure to test remote control functions as well.
      
      
5. Make the change
   
   
   1. Open both the 'Default' and the 'Failover Test' Agent Templates for editing.  Copy the contents of the test template's 'Server Address' and paste them into your 'Default' template.  Save and close.  The new template settings will be dispirsed to your environment and they will now be able to be report in, in the event of a DNS failure.
      
      
   2. Don't forget to remove your test computer from the test group!