Scout Enterprise Monitor Release Notes

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5.0.4 January 25, 2008
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Fixed a problem in the EventLog MO. The MO allowed for 25 substitution
strings in an event message. If a log record had more than 25 strings
we would fail with an RTE. Expanded to 64 strings.

Fixed a problem with the Performance Counter MO. It did not retain the
setting of the Log Samples option when the configuration was saved.

Fixed a bug in the installer. On 64-bit systems, it would hang near the
end and not complete. It was found that if you waited long enough, it
would actually finish, but it was delayed waiting for the completion of
the self-extracting zip files that are executed as the last step of the
install process. The self-extracting zips extract correctly, but do not
exit for a number of minutes after completion and the installer would
wait for them. Now, on 64-bit systems the installer does not wait for
the self-extractors to complete.

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5.0.3 January 8, 2008
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Added a new feature to the Skype interface. You can now send alarms via
SMS using the Skype SMS gateway. This can be useful when you cellular
service provider does not have an email SMS gateway. Skype supports SMS
to all service providers world wide and is a fee based service. See the
help on the Skype configuration screen for details on using Skype SMS.

Fixed a bug that turned off the Alternate Interface Screen option if
Scrambler was run as a service.

Fixed a bug that prevented the Disk Log file overflow from working.

Modified the More Options screen to not fail with an RTE if the Micro-
soft Speech Library is not installed. Speech will be disabled if the
library is not installed.

Fixed several bugs that caused RTEs if the host system had no audio
device (or it was disabled) and you accessed the More Options tab or
selected spoken audible alarms.

Fixed several problems with Web Status security checking.

The WinHelp32 library, which we use to display our online help, was
dropped from Windows Vista. This was overlooked during Vista testing.
Our install has been modified to install the WinHelp32 update for Vista
by invoking Microsoft Update. You may also install this update from the
Microsoft web site or by running WinHelp4Vista.msu found in our install
directory.

Fixed a bug in the Quiet Times selection Screen. When using the new
Alternate Interface, if you invoked the Contact Add/Change screen from
a Context menu (right-click) on the Alternate Interface screen, then
entered the Quiet Times selection screen, the context menu used on the
Quiet Times selection screen to set quiet times (by clicking a time of
day box and then right-clicking to set the quiet time value) would not
display. This problem was caused by trying to open a new context menu
while inside the event processing of an existing context menu.

Fixed a problem in the HostVolume MO. When used on VMS systems, the MO
would fail to match reported volumes to the volumes defined in the MO.

You may now customize HostTypes.txt and save to LocalHostTypes.txt so
that your changes are not overlayed during update. LocalHostTypes.txt
if present, is loaded instead of HostTypes.txt.

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5.0.2 October 11, 2007
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Added a new option to Alarm and Contact objects for sending alarm noti-
fications by email. You can select the Simple Format option to have the
email messages formatted with the notification text only. This reduces
the length of the email message to the minimum possible. This improves
sending alerts via SMS using email based SMS gateways.

Fixed several bugs in the new alternate interface screen.

Fixed Axis Camera MO to record downtime in the same manner as other
event based MOs.

Added a log message (level 2) to the Axis Camera MO to record when the
MO captures an image from the camera and stores it on disk.

Fixed a bug where configuration settings for Skype alarm notifications
were not being saved to the registry.

Fixed a bug that caused a Run Time Error when sending a test message
via SNPP.

Fixed a bug that caused a Run Time Error at startup when installed on
a localized, non-English version of Windows.

Fixed a security problem with Web Status. If you set Web Status to req-
uire a user name and password, then once a browser on a client attached
to Web Status and provided the authentication, any browser instance on
that client would be accepted for the duration of our execution. Even
if you closed the browser and restarted, you would not be prompted to
re-authenticate. This problem has been fixed and any new browser ins-
tance from the same client PC will be detected and re-authenticated.

Note that there is no logout mechanism available. The only way to end
a browsers authentication is to close the browser. To assist with this
requirement, there is now a Logout button on the Web Status button menu
which will close the browser window.

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5.0.1 September 10, 2007
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Added a new right-click context-menu choice that will reset the % Down
Time for a monitored object. This is available on the Status window and
the new Alternate Interface Main window. On the alternate interface
this new choice is available for groups of MOs (such as all, by type,
by severity, etc). Warning: if you reset the % Down Time for an MO, any
outstanding alarms will be cancelled and the down time data is reset to
zero immediately. This action is not confirmed and cannot be undone.

Added a registry key Globals\SmtpPort that will override the default
SMTP mailing port number of 25. Use this when your mail server is using
a different port. This sets the port used for sending alarm emails and
the Email Ping MO.

Corrected a problem in the new Alternate Interface Main screen that
caused the status bar at the bottom of the screen to be drawn poorly
when the screen is displayed on a desktop using the XP/Vista native
display themes.

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5.0.0 July 30, 2007
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In an effort to make large configurations more manageable, there is a
new alternate Main window available. This new interface has an explorer
style design and is fully resizable. You may enable the alternate Main
window on the Settings pull down menu. After restarting, the new Main
window will appear. The new Main window has various ways to view and
navigate your configuration and works with Scrambler objects directly.
This new interface is in development and is available now as a preview.
We encourage you to take a look and give us your feedback on the new
interface.

Added new Monitored Object Disk Drives. This MO will monitor attributes
of physical drives on the local or a remote system and raise an alarm
if problem conditions are detected on a drive. See the online help for
details.

Added new Monitored Object WMI Events. This MO uses WMI Events to watch
for events on the local or remote systems. A WMI event is created and
posted to the target system on scan startup. This event then monitors
for occurrences of the defined event on that system. Scout does not
have to scan for such events. If an event occurs, the WMI event monitor
will notify Scout that the event has occurred generating an alarm. This
allows for events to be monitored in an asynchronous fashion and reduce
overhead on Scrambler's hosting system and on the network. See the
online help for details.

It is now possible to have alarms spoken using the Windows support for
Speech. On the Options 2 tab, in the audible alarms box, enter the word
"Speak" and alarm text will be spoken. A new Options tab, called "More
Options", hosts a tab where you can customize the speech. See online
help for details.

It is now possible to send spoken alerts via the Skype VOIP client. You
can configure Alarm objects to send alarms as calls to Skype clients or
to physical telephones via the SkypeOut feature. This requires the Skype
client to be installed on system hosting Scout. Logging via Skype chat
is also supported. See the online help for details.

Scout now supports recording scans, events, alarms and alarm notifica-
tions in an SQL database. This allows for historical collection of
monitoring data and subsequent reporting and analysis. The database
can be created in SQL 2000 or later and Scout can be configured to
record information to the database while scanning. A Report Viewing
application and sample reports are included. The database feature is an
additional charge add-on to Scout. See the online help for more informa-
tion. This feature, while available now, is still being refined and
should be viewed as a "preview" technology. Note that the Report
Viewing feature requires the .Net Framework 2.0 and Crystal Reports 10
runtime to be installed on the system that will run the Report Viewer.

Improved the accuracy of statistical information collected to support
the database feature.

You may now define a global Schedule which is applied to all MOs when
scanning. An MO must pass the scheduling criteria of the global Sched-
ule before any Schedule defined at the MO level is applied.

Added a new log file, Errors.log, that will record processing errors.
You must enable the logging of alarm notifications on the Logging
Options tab to have processing errors recorded in this file.

Modified the alarm notifications log, Notify.log and the new process-
ing errors log, Errors.log, to be subject to the same overflow and
file extension settings as the scan log file, as set on the Logging
Options tab. Scan logging does not have to be enabled to set these
items for the notification and error logs.

If logging of alarm notifications is enabled, Alarm objects would log
any external notifications (email, broadcast, etc) they generate in
the file Notify.log. However, if an Alarm object did not define any
actions, there would be nothing recorded in Notify.log. Alarm objects
have been fixed to record any execution of themselves in Notify.log.

Modified the Disk File MO to add two additional processing options.
Normally, this MO reads all new records in the target file since the
last scan and reports all matches. You can now select to have the MO
stop reading the file on the first record match that occurs. On the
next scan, the MO will pick up reading the file where it left off.
You can additionally have the MO stop reporting matches on the first
match but advance the file to the current EOF, so the next scan will
only new records.

Fixed the NetWare Server MO to report when it is unable to connect to
the server due to a configuration problem instead of reporting this as
the server being down.

Fixed the Host Volume MO to report when there are problems processing
the data returned by target systems with SNMP instead of reporting this
as a volume problem.

Fixed alarm escalation errors on MOs that have monitored sub objects.
These MOs would escalate for each sub object found to be in alarm state
instead of once for the scan of the MO. TCP/UDP Service, Perf Counter,
SNMP Query and Host Volume MOs had this problem.

Fixed bug in the Web Status code that caused audible alarms to fail to
work on Web Status pages.

Fixed bug in the Web Status code that caused problems with IE7. In some
cases, IE7 would repeatedly prompt for permission to display Web Status
pages due to the applets embedded in the pages.

Fixed bug in Scan timer. If you clicked the Stop button while counting
down to the next scan and then restarted scanning with the Start button
the scan interval could be shortened to the the time that was remaining
on the count down when the Stop button was clicked. From that point on
the interval would be short until Scout was restarted.

Fixed a bug in the Event Log MO. If Scout was unable to find the
message text associated with an event, it blanked out the event message
text in reporting of the event. This was incorrect in that even if the
event message text cannot be found, there is usually still useful in-
formation that can be displayed. This information is now reported in
it's raw form if the message text cannot be found.

The Windows Performance Counter Query MO now has an option to record
the counter samples it takes to the new Archive database. This is simi-
lar to the sample recording already available for the SNMP Query MO. In
the case of the Performance Counter MO, samples are not recorded to a
disk file, only the database. The SNMP Query MO will continue to log
samples to a disk file but will also log them to the database. In both
cases, you must turn on sample logging for each Perf Counter or SNMP
query MO and have database archiving enabled samples to be recorded.

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4.4.5 December 8, 2006
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Fixed bug that caused RTE 9 to occur when SNMP Query MO was reading the
target SNMP MIB.

Fixed bugs in HostVolume/snmp that failed to handle missing objects in
the target mib gracefully.

Fixed WMI Explorer window to be resizable.

Fixed bug in Web Status, Event Console page, that would cause the page
to fail after toolbar button press, if the browser url system address
component was 'localhost'.

Fix bug in Email Ping MO caused by 4.4.3 changes to smtp mailer code
that generates the email subject from the alarm message text. This bug
would cause Email Ping MO to not detect it's ping messages and report
an erroneous failure to ping.

In the Options screen Email Tab, you can now have Email enabled and
leave the Default Recipient blank. This means Email can be enabled but
no messages will be sent unless there is an email recipient defined in
the Alarm or Contact objects.

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4.4.4 October 20, 2006
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Fixed several problems with the WebPage MO that would cause it to fail
when doing a forms based login.

Added a Clear button to the Paging Queue window to allow the paging
queue to be emptied.

Added registry key Gloabls.ApplyQuietToPaging to prevent page requests
from being added to the paging queue during global quiet time.

Fixed the Messaging feature to correct problems connecting to the MSN
servers. Updated to reflect changes to the protocol by Microsoft.

Fixed bug in WebStatus that would cause looping page refresh on Mozilla
browsers.

Fixed bug in emailing that resulted in Run Time Error 5 during mailing
of alarm email messages without subjects.

Previously when installing on Terminal Server systems, you had to set
your session into TS install mode by opening a command box and issuing
the command 'change user /install' before running our installer. Many
users failed to do this which resulted in problematic installs. This
step is now automatically performed by the installer.

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4.4.3 August 21, 2006
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Fixed several bugs in the Network View Screen, one of which could cause
the Network View Screen to rescan the network when the screen was opened
after a restart. Scan should only occur on the very first open of this
screen.

As of release 4.4.2, email alarms include a url that will take the user
to the Web Status page of the MO that generated the alarm email. Some
users do not want to have this url in the alarm email. You can disable
the inclusion of the url by adding the registry key InlcudeMOUrlInEmail
to the Globals section and setting the value to false.

Fixed a bug that was introduced in 4.4.2 that would cause a Run Time
Error if you had the Alarm as Mail Subject option enabled and you sent
a test email from the Options/Email tab.

Fixed a bug that was introduced in 4.4.2 that would cause the Schedule
Object's "Never Check" option to be ignored.

Fixed a design error. The sequence \c is used to mark the alarm clear
message text in the MO alarm text field. But in messages that contain a
disk directory like \c$ or \c: or \c\ the directory be recognized as an
alarm clear marker. We now ignore these 3 character sequences as the
alarm clear message text marker.

When using Web Status with the FireFox browser, the Refresh button did
not work. This is due to a difference in how IE and FireFox are told
not to cache web pages. We now send the correct codes to disable cach-
ing of our pages by FireFox.

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4.4.2 July 18, 2006
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The Bandwidth Monitored Object only worked with network interfaces that
had a physical address. This excluded serial and loopback interfaces.
This restriction is removed and you can now monitor the loopback and
serial interfaces.

Corrected a problem introduced in 4.4.1 where using the alarm message
as the subject of alert emails put too much information into the email
subject, in effect the entire alert mail message. Now, only the alarm
message itself (as it used to be) is put into the email subject.

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4.4.1 April 20, 2006
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Modified the ScriptGlobals.SendMail function to allow the mail subject
and an attachment file to be specified. The function calls new form is:
SG.SendMail recpient, msgtext, subject, filename
The attachment file must be a full path to the file to be included in
the email message.

Modified the Alarm Object to allow the specification of a Task MO to be
executed on Alarm Clear. The existing Task MO is executed on every call
to the Alarm object by MOs that use it. The new On Clear Task will be
executed when the Alarm is cleared.

Fixed a bug in the EmailCheck MO that could result in a run time error
if messages in the mail box being read by the MO had attachments.

The Directory MO has been converted from Descrete type to Persistent
type. This means that the MO style is to detect and report conditions
that may occur, persist for some period of time and clear on their own.
This allows the alarm Delay feature to be added to this MO. The checks
for directory total size and file count against some expected value are
the conditions the MO normally looks for and alarm notification will be
delayed for these conditions if Delay is non-zero. This allows these
conditions to clear if they are transient and not generate false noti-
fications. Note that the alarm on size or file count change checks are
events not conditions, and as such alarm notifications for these checks
are not subject to the Delay setting.

The Win32 Process MO monitors a Windows system with a list of process
names to make sure the processes are present. It alarms if the expected
processes are not present. You can now have the list of process names
function as an approved process list. In this case, processes found on
the target system that are not on the approved list will generate an
alarm.

Emailed alarm notifications have been improved to have more information
about the alarm. If Web Status is enabled, the message will include a
link to the web status page for the Monitored Object that generated the
alarm notification.

The Alarm Text field on the MO add/change screens now allows the alarm
clear message text to be specified. In addition to the \p (prefix),
\x (extended) message separators, the new \c separator allows an alarm
clear message to be defined for the MO. An example of using \c is:

primary message text\xextended message text\calarm clear message text

There is a new option to scan only MOs that have been changed during
the current execution. This is located on the Options 2 tab and if it
is enabled, then only those MOs that have been added or changed since
startup will be scanned. This allows new/changed MOs to be test scanned
without scanning the entire configuration.

Corrected a problem with the UDP Service check MO. Apparently changes
to Windows 2000/2003/XP cause this control to fail with an RTE under
some conditions. This problem has been fixed and the UDP Service Check
has been improved to more accurately check UDP services.

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4.4 February 6, 2006
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Added new Monitored Object, Windows System. This MO functions in the
same way as the NT System, Windows 2000 System and Windows XP system
MOs. It supports all Windows systems in a single MO and adds support
for Windows 2003 and Windows Vista.

Modified SNMP Query Monitored Object to allow you to edit the names of
the SNMP Mib Objects retrieved to something more meaningful.

Modified WebPage Monitored Object to allow you to select if images are
downloaded as part of the web page checking process.

Added an option to make a backup of the configuration before a changed
is saved. Configuration is backed up to the file Backup.cfg located in
the install directory.

Added an option to keep a log of alarm notifications sent in the disk
file Notify.log located in the install directory.

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4.3.7 September 1, 2005
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Fixed bug in duplicate instance check that caused failures if we run as
a service under LocalSystem user instead of a named user.

Fixed bug in license checking of Axis Camera MO.

The internal object id number assigned to each Monitored Object is now
displayed in the caption bar of each MO Add/Change screen.

When installing on a system that is a Terminal Server, you must switch
your session into Install Mode before running our install exe. Open a
CMD window and issue the command: change user /install to switch to
Install Mode. Then run our install. Installation on a Terminal Server
should be avoided if possible.

The SNMPQUERY MO now supports logging the MIB object values (samples)
it retrieves from the target SNMP agent system to a log file. The log
file is called SnmpQuery(systemname).log in the install directory. The
file will contain one record per scan with the current values for each
MIB object separated by commas.

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4.3.6 July 27, 2005
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The IP address of the MSN Messenger Server (used by the logging/notifi-
cation via messenger feature) changed and so caused a failure when the
messenger function tried to logon to the messaging server. This has
been changed to use the DNS name of the server and so get the current
IP address in use by the messaging server.

Fixed bug where we did license checking in Maintenance Mode. The Main-
tenance mode instance should leave license checking to the service.

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4.3.5 June 24, 2005
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The detection of another instance of Scout already running in order to
prevent duplicate instances and support Maintenance Mode (running as a
service) has been an area of ongoing problems. The method of instance
detection introduced in 4.3.2 again proved to be problematic. This rel-
lease tries a new scheme to do instance detection that works reliably
in remote sessions and has no side effects!

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4.3.4 May 4, 2005
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Logging via the .Net Messenger service quit working due to changes in
the Messenger protocol by Microsoft. This is fixed.

HostLogin MOs now require a timeout as having a zero timeout causes the
MO to fail to login. The default timeout is now 10 seconds.

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4.3.3 March 18, 2005
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The implementation of SSH tunneling in release 4.3 had a major design
error and did not work as described in the documentation. This problem
has been fixed in this release. If you are using SSH tunneling, please
read the help file information on SSH and review your SSH configuration
on the Options screen SSH tab.

Fixed a bug in Maintenance Mode where the MM session tried to enable
the SNMP trap socket upon exit if SNMP traps are enabled. This would
result in an error if the instance of Scout running as a service had
the SNMP trap socket already open. The socket should not be opened in
Maintenance Mode.

Fixed a bug in the Axis Camera Monitored object that caused the camera
live video to fail to appear in the Web Status pages for this MO.

Alpha Numeric dial-up paging with the UCP protocol is now supported.
Use the UCP.msg AN script file to send page requests to UCP providers.
Also note that dial-up paging with ATT and T-Mobile has been discontin-
ed by these providers.

As of 4.3, a bug in the Performance Counter Query MO Add/Change screen
would not allow counters to be deleted. This has been fixed.

Fixed a bug in the Disk File MO. If the Alarm on File Found option was
checked, no other options were processed including Delete File After
Scan. All processing options selected are now done after the File Found
option completes it's part of the file scan.

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4.3.2 February 1, 2005
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Fixed a bug that would cause problems with the Axis Camera notification
feature if camera notifications arrived while we are not scanning.

Corrected some HTML formatting errors that might cause the Axis Camera
MO Web Status page to display incorrectly.

Modified the Web Status server code so that Web Status will function
correctly when accessed through a firewall.

Fixed a bug that could cause the Web Status server code to loop in some
rare situations.

It was found that the scheme used to detect an already running instance
of Scout did not work when the second instance was launched in a remote
session. This would cause the new Maintenance Mode to fail. The previ-
ous instance detection scheme has been redesigned to work when Scout
is executed in remote sessions.

When McAfee firewall products are used to block outgoing ports on the
system where Scout is located, the port blocking technique used by
McAfee resulted in a Run Time Error and shutdown in the TCP/UDP Service
Monitored Objects. These MOs have been modified to not to generate RTEs
when the outgoing ports are blocked by McAfee. The errors caused by the
McAfee port blocking will be logged and the MOs will report that they
unable to connect to the target port (service).

The SQL Check MO no longer requires a User Name to be specified so that
the MO will work with SQL drivers that store the User Name in the DSN.

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4.3.1 January 17, 2005
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Previous versions allowed a monitored object to appear more that once
in a MO Group on the Options screen. This is not allowed under 4.3 and
an existing duplicate MO in a Group would result in an RTE when opening
the Options screen. This has been fixed not to fail and to just discard
any duplicate MOs in a Group.

Changes to the emailing support code in 4.3 resulted in email messages
sent by Scout having a trailing null character. Some email systems will
reject mail with null characters in the message. This is now fixed.

Fixed bug that allowed auto start to occur when starting up in the new
Maintenance Mode. Auto start in MM is not supported and would result in
failure.

The Email Options Tab now requires a default mail recipient address if
mail is enabled. This is to prevent the case where email is enabled but
there is no default recipient address and no recipient defined on Alarm
or Contact objects and so email alarm notifications would not be sent.

The Axis Video Camera Monitored Object has been modified to apply the
Schedule (if defined) to motion detection alarms received from cameras.
This allows the user to control when motion detection is reported. Note
that if capturing images on scans, the schedule will apply to both that
scan function and processing of motion detection messages.

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4.3 January 10, 2005
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Added support for SSH secure Telnet access to host systems. SSH tunnels
can be configured to be used for Host Login, Host Process and Host Vol-
ume MOs for secure communication with host systems.

Added new SQL Query Monitored Object. This MO will connect to an SQL
server system and execute a user defined query and generate an alarm if
the query fails or does not return any records.

Added new Axis Video Camera Monitored Object. This MO supports Axis 210
network video cameras and will generate alarms in response to motion
detection done by the camera. When alarms are generated, the current
video image from the camera can be captured. Regular image capture is
also supported. When emailing alarm notifications, the video image is
included in the email. The Web Status page for this new MO also shows
the live video feed from the camera.

Modified the Alarm Object to allow a sound file or system sound to be
associated with an AO and played when an alarm is processed by the AO.

Added a new pre-defined Performance Query MO that will monitor for the
presence of Scout on another system.

Added COCOUNT, COFIND, COGET, COSET functions to ScriptGlobals to allow
limited access to Contact Objects from scripts.

Added new script function, sh.stopscript that allows scripts that have
long running loops to watch for termination signal.

Add option to Disk File MO to delete file after scanning it.

Add option to Disk File MO to alarm on file age.

Because of the large number of fields on the Options screen tabs, the
method for highlighting the focus for check boxes and radio buttons has
changed. Instead of an inverse video highlight on the label as has been
done in the past, the label will have an underline highlight and the
text of the label will change to a contrasting color.

Windows XP Service Pack 2 may cause problems with Scout. WXP SP2
contains the new Windows Firewall service. This service will likely
prevent Scout from performing network based operations against XP SP2
monitored systems and to a lesser extent, when Scout is hosted on SP2.

When Scout is hosted on XP SP2, you must go into the Firewall control
panel applet and configure Scout as an Exception Program.

When Scout is monitoring XP SP2 systems, if you use any Windows
Management Instrumentation based MOs (WMI Query, Win32 Process), you
must enable remote administration in the firewall on the monitored XP
system. You can do this in the Group Policy Object MMC snap-in, in the
Windows Firewall policy section. You can also open a command box and
enter the following command:

netsh firewall set service type=remoteadmin mode=enable scope=all
profile=all

Further, if you use the TCP/UDP Services MO or the SNMP Query MO with
an XP SP2 monitored system, you will have to configure the ports needed
as port exceptions (opening them) on the monitored system.

The Monitored Objects List displayed on the Monitored Objects Tab of
the Options screen can now be displayed as a Tree View. This tree view
organized the MOs into trees by MO type, severity and system. This view
can help manage large configurations. You can right click on MO groups
to perform group enable/disable/delete. Copy is still one MO at a time.

The Monitored Objects List on the Monitored Objects Tab now supports
clicking anywhere on the MO list to select the MO. Multi-select with
the control and shift keys is now allowed. You can right click to per-
form enable/disable/delete on multiple MOs. Copy is still one MO at a
time.

The Status, Event Console and Mib Explorer screens are now resizable.

For those who use Scout in Service Mode, the removal of the configura-
tion display on service pause has been a problem. This has necessitated
stopping the service, making configuration changes, and then restarting
the service. To address this, Scout has been modified to be run as a
desktop application at the same time the Scout service is running. When
this happens, the desktop Scout detects the service Scout and enters
Maintenance Mode. When in Maintenance Mode, the desktop Scout reads the
configuration from the registry and will allow you to change it, all
while the service continues to run. If you save the configuration Scout
will ask if you wish to restart the service so it will load the new
configuration. This should help streamline configuration changes for
service mode users.

Scout now supports a formal way to manage multiple configurations.
Using a new field on the Global Options tab, you can assign names to
configurations, copy configurations and create new configurations. Then
from the Main screen Settings pull down menu, you can select the con-
figuration that will be loaded on the next start of Scout. See the help
for a detailed discussion of this feature.

Scout tracks total monitoring time (scan time) and total alarm time
for each Monitored Object. This information is displayed on the Status
screen and Web Status. Additionally, this information is used to calcu-
late the % Downtime shown in these same locations. By default, these
times are not saved when Scout shuts down. So this information is for
the current execution of Scout only. You can now persist this informa-
tion at shutdown and reload it at start up. Then the monitoring and
alarm time and % downtime displays are cumulative starting at the point
this option is enabled. See the Options screen Logging tab for more
information.

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4.2.4 August 23, 2004
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If you have customized any Host Login scripts, you need to make the
following changes to your scripts when they are run on 4.2 or later.
Scripts will run slowly until these changes are made. Change:

sg.trace -> sh.trace

sg.createobject -> sh.createobject

also, any objects created via sh.createobject should be released by
setting the object to nothing, instead of calling sg.releaseobject.

Fix bug in Processing Error alarms. Alarms caused by Processing Errors
and delivered by broadcast message were incomplete, leaving off the
error description.

Removed errors logged when the alarm messages send by broadcast are
truncated by the Windows operating system.

Fixed Run Time Error in Web Status Manual Page function. Certain char-
acter sequences entered into the message box on the Manual Page web
page were not properly handled after they were encoded by the browser.

Fixed a bug in the HostLogin MO that caused login passwords to not be
stored correctly in the Registry.

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4.2.3 May 5, 2004
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Fixed run time error when browsing directories in the Directory MO. Any
error encountered while browsing resulted in the RTE instead of more
graceful handling.

Fixed SNMP MibExplorer to use the SNMP port entered on the SNMP Query
MO screen instead of hardcoded port 161.

Fixed several bugs in SNPP paging that prevented this paging from work-
ing in all scenarios. Entry of the user name is no longer required if
user name is not required by the target SNPP service provider.

Fixed problems in Host Login script for AS/400 systems.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.2.2 February 1, 2004
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Modified the Web Page monitored Object to identify itself to the target
web server as IE5 so that web pages that do browser validation are read
correctly. Fixed some minor bugs on the MOs add/change screen.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.2.1 January 12, 2004
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a variety of problems in the Out-of-Process Server Library compo-
nent (OPSLib.exe) added in 4.2 release.

When running Scout in a remote VNC session, you must add the registry
key shown here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ORL\VNCHooks\Application_Prefs\OPSLib.exe\
use_Defferal to 0

This will prevent run time errors at startup.

Added new function to ScriptGlobals object available to scripts run by
Task MOs. The match function will compare a string to pattern and will
return TRUE if a match is found, false if not. Calling sequence is:

boolval = sg.match(string, pattern)

The format of the pattern string can be found in the on-line help under
pattern matching in the topic index.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.2 October 1, 2003
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
With this release of Scout, significant changes have occurred in the
design of this product. Please read these notes carefully and consider
the impact of the changes on your use of Scout before you proceed with
this update.

Multi-Threading
Previous Scout releases used multi-threading to keep the user interface
responsive during the time Scout is scanning monitored objects for
alarm events. This was fine for the early releases but as the number of
features has grown the multi-threading technology has become untenable.

In 4.2 the multi-threading design has been changed. The new form of MT
is active at all times so the menu option to enable/disable MT has been
removed. With this new design, a compromise has been found that has
removed the increasing reliability problems of the old MT design and
retained most of the scan speed and user interface responsiveness. This
means (depending on your specific installation setup) the scan time and
user interface may be slightly slower than with old MT turned on. How-
ever it will be much faster than running with old MT turned off, and
will give vastly improved reliability.

For the most part, MOs remain unchanged. One area that does need your
consideration is Task and Host Login MOs. One side effect of the new MT
design is that scripts run slower than before. This will most likely
mean that the timeout value on your Task and Host Login MOs will need
to be increased. The exact impact of this varies with processor speed
and load, so some users may see no problems and some may see timeouts
if they don't increase the existing timeout values.

Service Operation
There are several major changes in Service Mode Operation. Prior to 4.2
if you paused Scout while running as a service, the Scout main screen
would appear and you could interact with that screen. Due to a variety
of interconnected problems with service mode operation, this feature is
no longer supported. With 4.2, if you pause the Scout service, the
service will simply pause operation but no screen will appear. In this
respect, Scout now functions the same as all other services. Services
do not normally present any user interface and doing so was causing
problems that could not be fixed.

During Service Mode Operation, Scout must impersonate some user account
in order to have appropriate security credentials. Prior to 4.2 the
service installed with Local System as the default service logon user
account and then Scout would assume (impersonate) the identity of the
user account that is entered on Options Tab 2, Service Install area.
This after start-up impersonation scheme worked for the most part but
more and more problems came up with this scheme failing to provide the
security context needed for newer Scout features, like WMI and logging
via Instant Messaging.

The solution in 4.2 drops impersonation after service start. Instead,
it will install the service with the user account entered on Options
Tab 2 as the default Logon user account for the service. By doing this,
the security context of that user is successfully assumed by Scout for
all functions when the service is started.

For updating users who run Scout in Service Mode, after update you
will need to go to Options Tab 2 and UNINSTALL as a service. Then you
must enter a user in the boxes on the tab with appropriate privilege
to run the service and support the MOs and features you wish to use.
Then click the Install as a Service button to install the Scout Service
with that user as the default Service logon user. If you leave the user
name blank and click Install as a Service, the Local System account
will be used. Local System is adequate for some MOs but not others.
Selecting an appropriate administrative user account is the better way
to set up the Scout service. See the on-line help for more information
on running Scout as a service.

Processing errors now include identification of the Monitored Object
that caused the processing error.

Microsoft's forced upgrade of MSN Messenger users to version 5.0 or
later, created major problems for our Messenger client logging feature.
Our implementation of MSN Messenger logging was based on version 4.7 of
Messenger. That implementation was not compatible with Messenger 5.0
and later. This required a rewrite of our Messenger support. This new
implementation is contained in the OPSLib.exe file and is not dependant
on any specific Messenger version. In fact, Messenger not longer needs
to be installed on our host system. The file MessengerTool.exe is now
obsolete and can be removed.

Added mew toolbar button the the System View screen that will show only
the defined MO groups and the MOs they contain.

It is now possible to customize the alarm cleared message text that is
sent via email and paging with a registry key. If this is of interest,
please contact tech support for details.

All MOs that use COM ports and the Paging Tab of the Options screen now
display a drop down list of all COM ports that exist on the host system
instead of a fixed list of COM1-COM4.

The ScriptGlobals object that supports Task MO scripts now exports a
function called Shutdown. This function will shutdown the local or a
remote system. A new script sample called Shutdown.txt is included in
the Scripts\Samples directory.

Paging can now be done over a network connection via the SNPP (Simple
Network Paging Protocol) protocol to an SNPP capable paging provider.
SNPP offers and alternative to paging via dial-up using the TAP paging
protocol. TAP is being discontinued by some providers including ATT and
in that case access to such paging providers is by email or SNPP only.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.1.3 August 11, 2003
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a bug in saving configuration to a disk file. On reload, any pass
words read from the .cfg file were corrupted.

You may now set the SNMP query port on the SNMP Query MO. Previously it
was fixed at the standard value of 161. Being able to change the port
allows Scout to support agents using a non-standard port.

Fixed run time error when selecting paging groups on the Manual Paging
screen.

Fixed email return address to be the return address entered on the
Options screen Email tab. Previously, the return address was always
'Scout@systemname'.

Fixed run time error on the Service MO add/change screen.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.1.2 June 2, 2003
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Modify Verizon paging .msg files. Note that VerizonPager.msg works with
Verizon Wireless Messaging PAGERS. Verizon.msg works with Verizon cell
phones. Verizon paging and cell phone messaging are handled by two very
separate divisions. The list of dial up numbers has been updated for
the two Verizon services.

The FTP Get monitored object was extensively reworked to handle the IBM
AS400 system correctly.

Fixed bug in Event Log monitored object that caused a run time error if
an event record contained more than 25 message substitution strings.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.1.1 April 21, 2003
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fix DNS Monitored Object. This MO is included in the DataCenter Edition
of Scout but was incorrectly set up to be in the Enterprise Edition.

Fix the System View screen to be rebuilt the next time it is opened
after MOs have been added, deleted or modified.

The Microsoft part of the Network Scan function would fail if there was
a Terminal Services server present on the network. This has been fixed.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.1 March 24, 2003
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added a new Monitored Object, Bandwidth. This MO monitors the network
interface(s) on a target system and generates an alarm if traffic on
an interface exceeds a user defined threshold.

Added a new Monitored Object, Directory. This MO monitors a windows
disk directory and can generate an alarm if the directory disk space or
file count exceeds user defined thresholds. If can also alarm on any
change to directory size or file count. This MO can also monitor a
specific file for size or size change.

Added a new Monitored Object, Dialup. This MO monitors a dialup modem
line by dialing the line number and confirming that the modem connects
and does so with a time limit. Also supports RAS via Windows Dial Up
Networking.

Added a new Alarm Notification option, Instant Messaging. This feature
allows activity logging and alarm notifications to be sent to Instant
Messaging clients. This feature uses the Microsoft MSN Messenger client
version 4.6 or 4.7 on the system where Scout is installed. A messaging
user is established with the MSN Messaging Service (or the MS Exchange
Messaging Service) for Scout. Messaging users can add the Scout user to
their contact/buddy lists and will receive information from Scout when
it is scanning. See the Help for more information.

Fixed bug that could cause a run time error if running multi-threaded
and a scan was stopped while scanning a TCP or UDP Service Monitored
Object.

The Log File MO has been modified to allow wild cards in the disk file
name. When wild cards are present, the MO searches the target directory
and opens the most recent file meeting the wild card spec. This file is
examined and closed. This allows the MO to monitor a log file that may
have ongoing iterations denoted by date/time or a sequence number in
the file name. The MO selects that most recent interaction of the file
on each scan. The processing of file names without wildcards remains
unchanged.

The SNMP Query and Performance Counter Query MOs have been modified to
allow individual Objects or Counters in the Query to be disabled. If an
Object or Counter is disabled, it's value is still retrieved from the
target system (so the value is available to the option script) but the
value is not automatically evaluated by the MO.

The Web Page MO has been enhanced to allow multi-level link checking.
You can now specify on the MO how many levels of links will be checked.
Level zero checks no links in the target page, which is the same as the
MO has operated in the past. If the Link Level is set to 1, the page
links (A html tag) in the target page are each retrieved. If set to 2,
the Links on the Level 1 pages are each retrieved, and so on. Note that
graphic file references and forms pages are always retrieved.

The Host Process and Host Volume Monitored Objects have been enhanced
to use SNMP as well as Telnet to retrieve process and volume data from
host systems. This allows access to hosts without Telnet support. New
host types added to the Host Type drop down list include VMS via Telnet
and NetWare via SNMP.

In the AlphaNumeric Script paging language, the W (write to log window)
statement used to write text to the main Activity Log window if the Log
Level was 2 or 3. The Log Level must now be 3 for W messages to appear
in the Activity Log window.

Fixed bug in Manual Paging screen that caused a run time error if a
paging Group was selected as the target of a Manual Page.

Added the ReBoot System and Delete Files pre-defined Task Monitored
Objects. These Task MOs can be added from the New Monitored Object sel-
ection screen. The ReBoot System Task executes a script that will re-
start the target Windows system. The Delete Files Task will delete the
specified fileset from a Windows directory.

Added the NetWare Server Health check pre-defined SNMP Query Monitored
Object.

Fixed bug in SNMP Mib Explorer that caused the SNMP objects retrieved
from some MIBs to not have the correct data type.

Fixed a bug in the Disk Log File Viewer screen. Some users encountered
run time errors and some cases where the Print button did not function.

Fixed a bug in the FTP GET Monitored Object that caused it to not work
correctly with VMS systems.

The Licensing and copy protection mechanisms in Scout have been
strengthened in this release. If you have problems with MOs that quit
working, it may be because Scout was not correctly enforcing some of
our licensing rules in the past and allowed use of MOs that are not
part of the license you have purchased.

The Install process had a bug which caused a new entry to be added to
the Windows Add/Remove Programs list for each new version, instead of
just updating the existing entry. This is because the version number
was included in the Add/Remove entry name. This caused an accumulation
of out of date entries in the Add/Remove list. Now, the Installer will
add a single entry for this product and update it with each subsequent
install. To remove the redundant entries, use RegEdit and find the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
Delete any subkeys with this product name and a version number.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.0.3 January 14, 2003
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed bug in search string processing that would cause a match to be
found if the search string file contained a trailing blank line and the
target string contained any spaces.

Fixed Run Time Error in SNMP Mib Explorer. Mib Explorer would abort if
the target Mib contained an object id value with a very large number in
any of the object id component parts.

Fixed bug in HostVolume MO. Extraneous output lines on host disk volume
display output were not correctly ignored and fouled up the reading of
volume information for the legitimate volumes.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.0.2 December 16, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed bug in Web Status. Display of activity log failed under some con-
ditions.

Added Windows XP System Health pre-defined Performance Counter MO.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.0.1 December 2, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed bug in Performance Counter MO that caused a Run Time Error.

Fixed bug in Host Volume MO that caused a Run Time Error.

Fixed bug in Manual Page screen that caused a Run Time Error.

Improved formatting of SNMP Trap messages when additional SNMP objects
are sent as addendums to the trap message.

Fixed the Web Page MO to correctly handle the BASE html tag.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.0.0 October 25, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
When installing 4.0.0, you may be prompted to insert the Microsoft
Office CD. This is caused by a bug in a Microsoft component that is
shared by Scout and MS Office. Insert the Office CD and continue.

Added new Monitored Object, Host Process, which monitors processes on
host systems, such as Unix, Linux, VMS, AS400, HP3000. This MO uses
Telnet to connect to specified host systems and obtain a process list.
This list is compared to a list of expected processes and an alarm is
generated for any missing processes. This MO works in a manner similar
to the Host Login MO, but is simpler to configure.

Added new Monitored Object, Host Volume, which monitors disk volume
free space on host systems, such as Unix, Linux, VMS. This MO uses
Telnet to connect to specified host systems and obtain a disk volume
list. Disk volume free space is extracted from this list and compared
to preset thresholds. An alarm is generated when a disk's free space
falls below it's threshold. This MO works in a manner similar to the
Host Login MO, but is simpler to configure.

Added new Monitored Objects, Win 2000 System and Win XP System. These
MOs monitor Windows 2000 and XP systems to see if they are up in the
same manner as the existing Windows NT System MO.

Added new Monitored Object, UDP Services. This MO monitors UPD network
services such as SNMP and generates an alarm if the services are not
active. Note that TCP and UDP services are very similar in nature but
use different protocols. Note: the UDP Services MO only works when
Scout is running on Windows 2000 or XP.

Added new Monitored Object, DNS Check. This MO monitors a Domain Name
Service server to make sure the server is functioning and returning
correct name to address mappings.

Added a new Monitored Object, ePage. This MO monitors an email mailbox
and processes each mail message as a Page request. Contact names are
put in the message subject separated by semi-colons. The first 80 bytes
of the message body is sent as the page text. This allows you to send
pages by sending email to the mailbox that is being monitored.

Added a new Monitored Object, Heart Beat. This MO generates an alarm
on every scan, subject to Interval and Schedule settings. It can be
connected to an appropriate Alarm object to perform notification that
Scout is still up and running.

Added a new Options Tab called Auto Add. This tab displays the list of
known network objects as detected by the Ping, SNMP and Windows auto
discovery scans (also known as Network Scans). From this list of
network objects, you can select a group of objects and automatically
create new Ping Monitored Objects for them.

Added a new feature to aid in displaying large configurations. You can
now organize monitored objects into Groups. You can then select these
Groups for display on the Status screen and Web Status. On the new
MO Groups tab of the Options screen, you can create arbitrary Groups
and added MOs to these Groups. The Groups are then listed in the MO
subset dropdown lists on the Status and Web Status displays.

The Status Screen now has grid lines drawn to separate the rows and
columns to make this screen easier to read.

The Status Screen now displays the Monitored Object Type icons along
with the object type text label.

The Web Status display's list of Monitored Objects will now allow you
to toggle between display of the MO Identifier and MO Description. You
can click on the small white box next to the Identifier column header
to switch between Identifier and Description.

The Monitored Object Selection screen displayed when adding a new MO
has been enlarged so more MO types can be seen without scrolling. You
can also see the available MO types as a list.

Scan time and alarm time for MOs is now tracked and allows for a new
display of percent alarm time (down time) for each MO on the Status
screen and Web Status display. This new display shows the percent of
time an MO spends in alarm state versus the total time the MO has been
monitored. This data will help identify problem network objects by
highlighting those objects that spend excessive time in alarm state.

The Scan Logging function now includes the information collected for
the computation of the percent alarm time. There are new fields for
total scan time and total alarm time. The log file also includes a new
record for alarm end events with the elapsed time of the event. Users
who employ the Scanlog log files should generate sample files with the
column labels included to see the new format.

The Web Status pages used to display 'N/A' in blank fields. Now, blank
fields are just that, blank.

The maximum message length for TAP paging protocol now defaults to 100
characters. This limit can be changed in a .msg script file with the T
statement or you can change the default with a registry key.

The Web Page MO now will insert http:// into the page URL if it is
missing. The Web Page MO add/change screen has been updated to better
display the mini web browser that allows you to verify the URL to be
monitored.

Fixed Disk Volume MO to handle 32 character volume labels correctly.

Fixed Web Page MO to correct handle HTML tags with redundant attributes
specified in the tag.

Fixed Web Status internal web server bug that caused error 24056 to be
intermittently displayed in the log window.

Previously, the Mib Explorer screen would not display any MIB objects
downloaded from the SNMP agent if the STOP button was clicked during
the MIB walk (download). This did not support stopping the MIB walk
early on very large MIBs. Now, if the STOP button is clicked, the SNMP
objects downloaded to that point are displayed and can be selected.

The Disk File MO can now monitor the size of files.

The Search Strings function on various monitored objects now supports
matching on strings not found. Search strings may be prefixed with the
! character to invert or not the result of the search string match to
the target text supplied by the monitored object. See the online help
for string searching.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.0.2 June 11, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Performance Counter Explorer would not display the counters correctly
for a Windows XP target system. Fixed to allow for differences in the
counter information returned by XP systems.

Updated DLL files for SNMP related support from our SNMP tool vendor.

The SNMP MIB Explorer would incorrectly report error 12015 when walking
the MIB of a Windows 2000 system. The Explorer was fixed to correctly
handle the end of MIB indication on W2K systems.

The Email Ping and Email Check MOs would experience Run Time Errors if
they encountered a processing error and the processing error notifica-
tion was turned on and set to email a notification of the processing
error. Fixed to correctly handle this case nested calls to the email
routines.

Expanded the Pre-Defined Monitored Objects list to include several new
Performance Query definitions and Unix Host Logins.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.0.1 May 15, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed several formatting bugs on the System Console screen. Changed the
font used for text to one that better displays on all OS and monitors.
If after installing 3.0.1, if your System Console shows garbled or in-
correctly justified text, click the reload toolbar button to refresh
the display.

Increased the initial size of the Select MO (MO Add) screen and this
screen is now sizeable. Additionally, a list view (instead of icons) of
the Monitored Objects to pick from is now available.

The Email Ping MO has had some problems with Run Time Errors and these
RTE would terminate Scout. This MO has been modified not to terminate
on an RTE, but instead ending the scan of the MO and continuing with
the next MO to be scanned.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.0.0 May 1, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Windows XP is now a supported host operating system along with Windows
NT 4.0 and Windows 2000.

Updated underlying libraries and components. Supported system software
configuration is now Windows NT 4.0 SP6 or later, IE 5.5 or later.

Modified the Email Ping MO to support pinging email relays. This means
that the email ping message can now be submitted to a mail server and
the ping message read from a different server. This allows a ping test
in situations where mail is relayed or forwarded from the submission
server to a different server for delivery.

Fixed the AN script (paging) P command to allow any COM port to be
specified. Was restricted to COM1 or COM2.

Fix Task MO add/change screen. Was not retaining the Interval value.

Fixed problems in Host Login MO scripts. Updated telnet control caused
the scripts to fail when login errors occurred. Updated all of the Host
Login scripts to handle the changed behavior of the Telnet control.

Fix Run Time Error caused by clicking on the System Console Screen
before the systems were loaded and displayed.

Fix error in System Console Screen that caused inconsistent sorting of
systems on the screen.

Modify audible alarm feature to support executing an exe/bat/cmd file
along with sound files. This allows executing an external program to
make noise or voice alarms. An example is voicing alarms with the
ReadPlease application. Enter the following in the audible alarms box
to use ReadPlease: "d:\Program Files\ReadPlease 2002\ReadPlease.exe"
/state=1 /action=close /text=

Improved error checking on the configuration import from file feature.

Improvements and bug fixes to the SNMP Query and Trap MOs. Additional
MIB files added for Novell servers.

Improved the Manual Page screen and Web Status page to have enough room
in the message text box to type and view a complete message up to the
180 character maximum.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
2.0.3 February 14, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed Run Time Error in Web Page MO caused by duplicate attributes on
HTML tags in a web page.

Fixed Run Time Error on NT Service MO Add/Change screen.

Fixed Run Time Error that occurred during some Schedule object updates.

Updated SNMP libraries.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
2.0.2 February 1, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Extensive update to Web Page MO to support target pages that use Frames
to load additional pages creating the final view on a user's browser.

Add an un-documented feature to the Web Page MO to support logging into
a web site and downloading the page after the login page. If you are
interested in this feature, contact tech support for details.

Fixed bug in Disk File MO that could result in Run Time Error 13 when
tracing and using Disk File MOs.

Fixed a bug in the use of MAPI for Email Check and Email Ping MOs. When
a login to the MAPI system failed, internal structures were not reset
causing ALL subsequent MAPI logins to fail.

Modified the MAPI message reading function for Email Check and Email
Ping MOs to process unread messages only. Previously, all messages in
the target mail box were processed. It is possible to restore the pro-
cessing of all messages with a registry value. Contact tech support.

When saving the configuration to either the registry or a disk file,
the save confirmation message now states the target of the save, disk
file or registry.

Add explicit error messages when the Microsoft XML Parser 3.0 cannot
be invoked. MS XML is used for the SNMP MOs to handle MIB definitions
and the configuration save to disk file feature. The MS XML Parser is
not included in our install. You can download the free MS XML Parser
version 3.0 from the Microsoft web site.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
2.0 November 1, 2001
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added a new screen, the Network Event Console. This feature provides a
global event history display. EventLog MOs, Syslog MOs, and SNMP Trap
MOs all see every event that occurs, even if no alarm is generated. You
can now enable logging of these raw events to the Network Event History
and view this history with the Network Event Console. This provides a
global, aggregated view of events from multiple systems and sources.
Extensive filtering and sorting options are provided. See the on line
help for more details.

Added a new screen, the System Console. This screen provides a graphi-
cal, system level view of your network and monitored objects. Systems
with monitored objects defined for them or detected by network scans
appear on the screen with appropriate highlighting for systems with
alarms or processing errors in progress. You can display the MO list
for systems and quickly see which MOs are in the alarm state. You can
add/modify/delete/disable/suspend MOs as well as view detailed status
information for MOs. This new screen simplifies viewing your monitored
systems and quickly identifying which systems are having problems. It
can assist in configuration by showing your systems and allowing you to
click on a system to add or update MOs. See the on-line help for more
information.

Added support for Windows Management Instrumentation or WMI. WMI is the
Win32 platform's implementation of the Web Based Enterprise Management
standard (WBEM). WMI essentially functions in a manner similar to NT
Performance Counters or SNMP Mib objects. There is a new monitored
object called a WMI Query. This MO contains a list of WMI object prop-
erties whose values are retrieved from a target system and compared
to threshold values to detect alarm conditions. The MO uses the new
WMI Object Explorer screen to allow the user to explore the WMI objects
and properties on a system and select the items to be added to WMI
Query MOs. This MOs model is very similar to the NT Perf Query MO. See
the online help for more information.

Extensive enhancement to the Web Status feature. The Web Status pages
have been reformatted for improved appearance and readability. The new
Event Console has been added to Web Status as well.

Added new monitored object, Win32 Process. This MO will monitor a list
of processes on a target system and alarm if a process is not running.
Requires WMI 1.5 Core on both local and target system.

Added new feature for event logging. You may now log the status of all
or selected MOs after each scan. This information is a complete picture
of MO state after the most recent scan of the MO. This data is written
to a text file called SCANLOG in the install directory. This logging is
intended to record MO status information long term and is retained when
scanning is restarted. The data in the file is designed to be imported
into spreadsheet and database programs for analysis purposes. Logging
is configured on a new tab which appears on the Options screen. See the
on-line help for more information.

On the Options screen, the tab "More Globals" has been renamed to be
"Globals 2" in anticipation of additional global options tabs to be
added in the future.

Normally, Monitored Object scanning is done in the order that the MOs
were created. You can now set an option to scan in the objects in order
of Severity. Severity scanning scans all Severity 0 MOs, then Severity
1 MOs and so on until Severity 9 is completed. Within a Severity level,
the MOs are sorted by their Description text. You may enable scanning
by Severity on the Options screen, Globals 2 tab.

The Email Options Tab now has a checkbox to enable alarm messages to be
sent as the email subject in email alarm notifications. The default is
to send a generic alarm announcement as the subject and the specific
alarm message in the email body.

The HostLogin and Task MOs now have a checkbox to allow scripts execu-
ted by these MOs to display user interfaces. This means that the script
can display message boxes or other user interface elements available in
the scripting language. Normally scripts are not able to display user
interface elements. This is due to the fact that if a script times out
and user interface is allowed, the script engine automatically displays
an error message box that the user must respond to in order to continue
execution. This can easily hang Scout if a user does not see and
respond to the message box. If you enable the user interface and set a
timeout, be aware of the possibility of a hang. Also note that script
user interfaces are never allowed when Scout is run as a Service.

The FtpGet MO now has a field where you may enter a timeout value to be
applied to ftp communications with host systems. This should prevent
hangs when host system ftp servers fail to respond in a timely manner.

The Monitored Object Status screen has been enhanced to allow you to
control the order of the columns of information displayed for each MO.
See the on line help for details.

The EmailCheck MO has been enhanced with two new features. First, you
may enter a mail recipient address that will subset the mail messages on
the mail server that the EmailCheck MO examines. This will help if the
mail box being examined is used for multiple purposes. Second, this MO
now supports Paging by Email. If you configure an EmailCheck MO to look
at a mail box, and check the new Paging Mode box and enter a recipient
in the Recipient box, the MO will expect mail messages to the recipient
to contain a list of Contact names in the message subject (separated by
semicolons). The first 80 bytes of the message body will be sent to the
Contacts as identified by each Contact's defined paging options. Using
this feature, you can send an email that will trigger paging delivery
of a text message in that email.

Before release 2.0, default alarm notification messages were generated
by each Monitored Object when an alarm was detected. It was possible to
completely replace the alarm default message with user defined text put
in the Alarm Message Text field on each MO, but you could not see or
modify the default format. Further, the second line of detailed alarm
information that appears for some MOs was not controllable by the user
at all. As of 2.0, all alarm messages are created from the content of
the Alarm Message Text field on the MO screens. If the field has not
been modified by the user, then it will contain an appropriate message
template that will create the default message for the MO. So, you can
now control the message format, including editing the default and you
can also control the content of the second alarm message line. For more
information on this topic, please consult the on-line help.

Pager service phone numbers may now contain alpha characters. This will
allow a phone number to entered as (example) 1-800-SKY-PAGE as well as
1-800-759-7243.

Modified the TCP Services Monitored object to support more extensive
testing of services. By default, the MO simply connects to the service.
You can now attach a script file to a service that will be executed if
the MO successfully connects to the service on the target system. The
connected socket is passed to the script, so the script can communicate
with the service and perform whatever testing of the service is needed.
Two samples are included in the install in Scripts\Samples directory.
TcpEchoCheck.txt is really just a sample and performs a test of the echo
service by sending data and reading back the echo. TcpDnsCheck.txt is
an actual check of DNS service function. This script accepts a DNS name
for a system and the expected IP address for that name. The script then
performs an actual DNS name resolution with the target DNS server and
checks that the returned IP address is the one expected. This scripting
function adds a lot of power to TCP Service monitoring.

Fixed licensing control problems that appear when the product is run on
a system with multiple NIC cards.

Fixed a bug in the FTPGET MO that could result in successful retrieval
of files but failure to save them on the local disk.

Fixed bug in some Monitored Objects that caused errors processing alarm
schedules for the objects. This problem manifested itself as a skipping
of rows on the notification schedule. This row 1 would be notified, but
row 2 would skipped, row 3 notified, row 4 skipped and so on.

Updated the Email Ping MO to support sending ping mail messages to SMTP
servers that require authentication to submit mail. The user name and
password used to login to the server and read the ping message are now
also used to submit the message.

The Host Login script "MPE Login.txt" had a bug in it and has been up-
dated. If you use this script, you will need to integrate any changes
you have made to your existing copy in the \Scripts directory into the
new file in \Scripts\Samples and save the new script back to \Scripts.
Using the old script with version 2.0 may result in hangs when running
the script.

You can now click the columns of the Contacts List tab on the Options
screen to change the sort order of the Contacts List.

The Manual Paging screen now supports sending messages to Groups.

Modified the EventLog Monitored Object to support selection of event
logs beyond the basic System, Security and Application logs. All Event
logs available on a system are now listed for selection.

Modified EventLog Monitored Object to correctly handle event records
that use Parameter substitution or event Category message files.

You can now assign an administrative password to Web Status. When this
admin password is used, the Web Status user must logon with the admin
user name and password to access any Web status function that modifies
the operation of Scout. This includes starting/stopping scanning and
clearing alarms.

You can now export the configuration to a disk file. The Options pull
down menu has a choice called "Export Configuration to file". This will
save the current configuration to a disk file with the .cfg extension.
The file is in XML format. This feature requires the Microsoft XML 3.0
parser (msxml3.dll) to be installed. You can obtain this parser from MS
as a free download. This configuration file can be used to make a back
up of your configuration. Importing a configuration file is supported
but requires the assistance of tech support.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.5.3 May 22, 2001
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a bug in the MibExplorer screen that caused run time errors when
run on a system with the German language locale set.

Fixed a bug in the Web Page MO that caused the MO not to handle URLs
with data included in the URL correctly.

Fixed a bug in alarm notification processing. When running in multi-
threaded mode, and the first alarm generated occurs during a quiet time
period, the wait time between retries of the notification process will
be computed incorrectly, causing the retry to occur every second. It
should be set to the Paging Delay value set on the Options screen. If
the notification process is retrying every second, this can be quite
distracting and scroll useful information off of the log screen...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.5.2 February 2, 2001
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a bug in the NT Service MO introduced in 1.5.1 release. The NT
Service MO would identify the Service to be monitored incorrectly. It
appeared to select correctly on the add/change screen, but at scan time
the MO would use an incorrect Service Name to actually connect to the
Service.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.5.1 January 4, 2001
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Alarm Text box on the Monitored Object add/change screens, you
may now use the \n format code in the alarm text to generate a new line
in the message delivered by broadcast, email, pager or to the NT event
log. This allows for multi-line alarm messages to be sent. The \n will
be replace by a space when the message is displayed on the log screen
or if the message is used as the subject of a notification email.

Fixed a bug in the Task MO. When running NT .exe or .cmd files as the
task, handles were not closed at the end of the task. This "leak" of
handles would consume resources until the system would have to be shut
down.

Fixed a problem where some screens and screen elements were not follow-
ing the system control panel color selection. If you selected a color
scheme other than the Windows Standard, the screens would not follow
that setting and appeared incorrectly.

Fixed a problem in the NT Performance Counter Explorer screen. The perf
counter description text was not being displayed when running on Windows
2000.

Fixed a problem in the NT Performance Counter MO. On Windows 2000, if a
performance counter was selected on a perf counter query and the counter
was found not to exist on the target system, a different error code was
returned that on NT 4 and so this error was not handled correctly.

The NT System Health pre-defined NT Performance Query MO has been split
into two versions, one for NT 4 and one for Windows 2000. The counters
selected for system health measurement are located in different places
in the performance counter name space on W2K, so a different System
Health MO is required for W2K. Existing Perf Counter Query MOs will
need to be changed when you update from NT 4 to W2K.

Modified the SNMP Trap MO to allow for multiple MOs to be defined. In a
manner similar to the Syslog MO, you may create as many Trap MOs as you
like, but each must be assigned a unique IP address or name that iden-
tifies an SNMP Agent system or trap source. Traps from a specific Agent
system will be handled by the MO with matching address/name. You may
create one MO with no Agent address to be the default Trap MO. This MO
will handle all traps not handled by an Agent specific Trap MO.

Fixed several problems caused by non-English registry parameter values.
This caused problems with Network scanning and NetWare server access on
systems localized to non-English languages.

Fixed a run time error that occurred when the disk log file viewing
screen was displayed, but disk logging was disabled.

Fixed a bug in the Alarm object when using escalation schedules. If all
10 contacts were used on an escalation line, a run time error occurred.
9 contacts worked fine and now all 10 work correctly.

Fixed a long time problem with the Event Log MO. Events would generate
errors indicating that the event description text could not be found in
the event source file. This was due to certain events that use a spec-
ialized scheme for substituting parameter values into the event desc-
ription text. We were not handling this scheme correctly resulting in
the errors.

Fixed several corner case run time errors in the Network scan code and
in certain MOs.

Fixed a problem in parameter expansion in alarm messages. Substitution
parameters of the form [NAME] were not correctly expanded if NAME was
in lower case. The parameter name can be upper or lower case.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.5 October 20, 2000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added a new Monitored Object, Email Checker. This MO will read email
messages on a mail server and examine the subject and/or body of the
messages for user defined text strings and generate alarms or execute
Tasks if strings are found. See the on-line help for details.

Added a new Monitored Object, Email Ping. This MO will send a unique
email message to a mail server and then try to read that message back
from the server in a set amount of time. Used to monitor timely mail
delivery. See the on-line help for details.

Made improvements to the Web Status code and Web Status html pages to
improve performance.

Added Copy buttons to the Alarms and Contacts Options Tabs.

The default TCP/IP port number for Web Status is now 1088 instead of
81. If you are currently using 81 (or any other port number), that port
will continue to be used.

The Ping MO now includes the description text in alarm messages along
with the IP address for clearer labeling of Ping alarm messages.

The Ping, Web Page and Email Ping MOs now maintain an average response
time while scanning is in progress. This response time can be viewed on
the Status screen under Object Details (right click on MO) or on the
MO detail view of Web Status.

Added an option to apply Global Quiet time to alarm notification by
Email. When this option is checked on the Global Options screen, any
Email alarm notification generated during Global Quiet Time will not be
sent. Note, it will not be delivered after Global Quiet Time ends, as
are paging notifications.

Fixed the missing help for the Mib Explorer screen.

Fixed the problem where the Mib Explorer would not work correctly when
an IP address was used to identify an SNMP agent system instead of a
system name. Name or IP address should work the same to identify the
SNMP agent system on Mib Explorer and SNMP Query MO.

The SNMP Mib Explorer screen now automatically starts the Mib Walking
process when the Explorer screen is displayed. As the Mib Walk is the
first action to be taken after this screen is displayed, it makes sense
to have that action start automatically when the screen appears.

The FTPGET MO will now allow the selection of the character used to
separate the components of the file path on the target system. This
allows this character to be set as appropriate for various host systems
instead of the previous fixed "/". The character defaults to / and will
be set automatically by the Ftp Explorer if the Explorer recognizes the
target system type.

The FTPGET MO has a fixed timeout value of 15 seconds. This value is
not long enough for some ftp target systems. As a temporary fix, a new
Registry key has been added to control the FTPGET timeout. The key is
"Globals\FtpGetTimeOut" and the value is the number of seconds.

The TASK MO has a timeout value that is applied to scripts to prevent
runaway scripts. If a script times out, a message box is displayed
(when running in desktop mode) and the user must respond to the message
box before scanning can continue. This has resulted in "hangs" caused
by message box wait. The message box can only be suppressed by disabl-
ing all user interface access for the script. This has been done as the
new default for script execution. If a timeout occurs processing will
continue and the timeout is logged to the Log Window, but no message
box appears. If a script needs to have a user interface, you can set a
new Registry key to allow script user interface, but if you do, you
will get the message box on script time outs. In this case, you can set
the script timeout to a large value. To enable script user interface,
set reg key "Globals\AllowScriptUI" to the string "true".

The Task MO had a bug that prevented escalating Alarm schedules from
working. This is fixed.

The Schedule Object had an option labeled "One Time". This meant that
the Monitored Object the Schedule was attached to would be scanned just
one time after start of scanning. This option has been deemed to be of
little use and based on user demand, this option has been changed to be
"Once Per Day". This means that the MO will be scanned only once per
day, subject to the other scheduling options. The once per day tracking
is reset if scanning is stopped and restarted.

The WebPage MO accesses web pages (URLs) directly or via proxy based on
the logged on user's Windows Internet Settings (IE). If the user has a
proxy defined in these settings, then the WebPage MO will use the proxy
server. However, since the proxy settings are stored by individual user
this has presented some problems. As a temporary solution, you can now
specify a global proxy server name in a registry key. The WebPage MO
now looks for the registry key "ProxyServer" in the Globals section. If
a server name is set, WebPage MOs will access their URLs via that proxy
server. If a server name is not set, WebPage MOs will access their URLs
using the proxy set (if any) in Windows Internet Settings.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.4.3 April 27, 2000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Corrected a bug in both the HostLogin MO and the Host Login scripts.
Alarms generated by HostLogin MOs would not escalate or clear when the
alarm condition ended. The scripts are responsible for clearing alarms
but the scripts did not have the code to do this. The scripts have been
updated to clear alarms. If you have modified scripts, you will need to
integrate the changes to your custom scripts.

Corrected several bugs in the WebPage MO. These bugs were fairly minor
but a few customers have seen problems with the WebPage MO hanging when
connecting to the web server. We have not been able to prove the bugs
are the cause of the hangs, but they are fixed none the less.

Corrected several bugs in the SNMPQuery and SNMPTrap MOs that prevented
SNMP object IDs from being mapped to their English names as defined in
the SNMP MIBs. Also expanded the alarm message substitution variables
available for the Trap MO. The formatted Trap message is now available
to a Task script attached to the Trap MO.

The EventLog MO now has additional substitution variables for the alarm
message. The formatted EventLog record is now available to a Task
script attached to the EventLog MO.

The new feature in 1.4.2 that saves the network search results in a
disk file for reuse, had a bug in it that would cause the reload of the
disk file on startup to fail, if the comments returned about a system
on the network contained quote characters. This has been fixed.

The pager service phone number box on the Paging Options tab had a bug
that would cause a Run Time Error if you opened the phone number drop
down list, ran the cursor over the list and then clicked outside the
list area. This has been fixed.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.4.2 April 06, 2000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changed the way screen fields are handled. When a screen field is empty
and receives the focus, the field is NO longer highlighted by changing
the background to to an alternate color. The cursor is in the field but
the background remains white. When a field that contains data receives
the focus, the test is highlighted instead of changing the background.
If you move the cursor or type, the highlight is removed so that you
can selected data in the field and see the selection highlight. This
scheme is much closer to the Microsoft standard and should make using
the screen fields easier.

Added a button to the Status screen to reset the Total Alarms and Total
Pages Sent counters.

The Paging Options Tab now allows you to use COM ports 3 and 4.

Reformatted the Schedule Screen to try and make the Schedule function
more clear. Please review the on-line help for the Schedule Screen for
revised documentation of the Schedule object.

Added a Clear button to the Schedule Screen. Clears all schedule fields
and if you click OK while the schedule is blank, the schedule will be
deleted.

Add new scripting capability for string searching. In order to provide
the most powerful and flexible string searching possible, you may now
write a Visual Basic Script routine to perform string searching. On any
MO that supports string searching you can enter a VB script function or
name a disk file containing a VB script function that will be executed
and passed the MO's string information, so the script can perform ex-
tensive analysis of the string to determine if an alarm condition is
present. See the on-line help for String Searching.

The NT Performance Counter Query and SNMP Query Monitored Objects have
been modified to function as Persistent type objects. Both of these MO
were of the Discrete type. This change allows these objects to clear
any alarms they have if all counters/objects being measured return to
normal states after being in alarm state. As discrete objects, alarms
would have to be manually cleared.

The results of network scans and TCP/IP & SNMP address auto discoveries
are now saved and automatically loaded at any location you can select
a system name or address. Buttons have been added to the same screens
so you can request a rescan or rediscovery if your network has changed.
Also, this function has been renamed network search instead of network
scan to remove confusion with monitored object scans.

Fixed a variety of minor bugs introduced in the 1.4 release.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.4.1 February 15, 2000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Correct bugs in sharing of the com port between paging and monitored
objects that use the com port.

Correct bug in Event Log monitored object. Failed to detect errors on
log record read under some conditions and continued to process the log
record when no record had actually been read.

Modified Task object to enclose the name of NT program or command file
in quotes (if you do not) to allow for file names with embedded spaces.

The TCPService and NT System monitored objects were not saving the
schedules assigned to them to the Registry, thereby losing schedules
for these MOs when Scout was restarted. These MOs now save their
schedules correctly.

The MO dependency feature of the MO Schedule object was not working
correctly in cases where MOs are copied to create new MOs. The source
MO and copied MO would incorrectly share the schedule object and dependency
list instead of each MO having a private schedule object. This has been
corrected and every MO has it's own schedule object and dependency list.

Modified the refresh period of the Web Status page refresh function to
be longer than the scan period. We were having problems with web status
refreshes coming at the same time as the start of a new scan and this
would slow down both the scan and the refresh. Increasing the refresh
period to be somewhat longer than the scan interval reduces the problem.

The SMTP mail control used to send SMTP mail alarm notifications was
using too short a timeout and this caused problems with mail delivery.
The timeout has been lengthened from 5 to 15 seconds and can be further
controlled with a Registry key.

The installer incorrectly registered the MSWINSCK.OCX control and this
would cause runtime errors when using the TCPServices MO. The install
has been corrected to install MSWINSCK.OCX properly.

The NT System MO would occasionally encounter error 2114 and was
unable to locate and format a system error message for this error. It
has been determined that error 2114 indicates that the Server service
is not running on the target NT System. Message text to this effect has
been associated with this error so it is now reported as a problem with
probing the NT system, which it is, instead of a message formatting
problem.

The HostLogn MO was not saving the Interval value if one was assigned.
This has been corrected and the Interval value is retained.

The NetWare Server MO has a new feature. If your NT system employs the
NetWare Client32 application for NetWare connectivity, you can select
to have an alarm generated if the target NetWare server is up, but has
no connections available. By default, no connections is not reported as
an error because we have confirmed the server is still up even if there
are no connections available.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.4 December 17, 1999
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Syslog Monitored Object has been enhanced to allow multiple objects
to be defined and associated with Syslog host systems. This means that
a Syslog MO can now be identified with the name or address of a host
system, and syslog messages will only be processed by that Syslog MO.
One Syslog MO can be defined with no name or address to act as default
MO. In this manner, different notification options can be defined for
different Syslog MOs.

Added a new Monitored Object, SNMP Query. This MO queries a network
device that supports SNMP, for selected SNMP MIB variables and tests
the values of the variables against predefined thresholds and generates
alarms for variables that are outside of tolerance. Since many network
devices support SNMP, this MO greatly extends the monitoring reach of
Scout. This MO includes an SNMP Explorer that allows you to peruse the
MIB of a network device and select the variables you wish to monitor
interactively. See the on-line help for more information.

Added a new Monitored Object, SNMP Trap. This MO is of the listener
type and allows Scout to receive SNMP traps sent from network devices.
This enables Scout to record and generate alarms in response to network
problems that generate SNMP traps. See the on-line help for more infor-
mation.

Added a new Monitored Object, TCP Services. This MO monitors the TCP
Service(s) active on a selected system. TCP Services are processes that
listening on various TCP ports on the target system. This new MO will
connect with the defined services and verify that they are available.
TCP Services are also known as TCP ports. This MO allows the user to
select from a list of known services and also allows the user to add
services to the list. See the on-line help for the TCP Services MO for
more information.

Added a new Monitored Object, Host Login. This MO logs onto a host sys-
tem, optionally performs monitoring tasks and logs out. It is used to
check the availability of host systems and perform some host monitoring
tasks. This MO performs the login, logout and monitoring functions via
VBScript scripts. As such, these scripts can be modified by CPL or the
user for customization purposes and to add new monitoring tasks. See
the on-line help for more information and the sample login scripts in
\Scripts\Samples.

All Monitored Objects that are active in nature, that is, are scanning
MOs, now have the Schedule Object as an option. This means that you can
have greater control over when an MO is scanned. Each MO add/change
screen now has a Schedule button you can click to set up a schedule for
the MO.

The Schedule Object has been enhanced to include a list of Dependant
Monitored Objects. This means that a Monitored Object, can be made to
be dependant on other Monitored Objects. That is to say, if MO-1 is
dependant on MO-2, MO-1 will not be scanned if MO-2 has an alarm in
progress. Scanning of MO-1 will resume when the alarm on MO-2 clears.
See the on-line help for the Schedule Object for more information.

MOs which use search strings for record or message content matching are
now able to accept a list of search strings directly instead of using a
search string file. When entering text in the Search Strings/File box
on an MO, the text is examined for the pattern ?:\ in the first 3 chars
of the text. If this pattern is matched, the text is assumed to be a
disk file name. This file is expected to contain a list search strings
as before. If the first 3 chars of the text in the box do not match the
pattern, the text in the box is expected to be a list of search strings
separated by semi-colons.

The Ping MO has been updated to allow retries. You may specify the num-
of times the MO will ping the target device before generating an alarm.

You may cause the position and size of the Main window to be saved and
then used to restore the same window position and size on next startup.
To save the Main window size and location, add a Registry key to the
Global section called "SaveMainWindow" and set the value to "True".

The Monitored Object List tab of the Options screen now allows you to
copy an existing object to create a new Monitored Object. The old MO is
cloned into a new MO and it's add/change screen is presented so you can
customize the new MO. This same list can now sorted by any of the col-
umns in the list. Click on the column title box to change the sort.

You may now specify a dialing prefix on the Options Screen Paging tab.
Any characters entered in this field will be substituted in dialing
scripts for the [PREFIX] substitution keyword.

Fixed a bug in Web Page MO that caused the MO not to retain a search
string file name assigned to the MO.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.3 July 6, 1999
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added a Monitored object, "Task". The Task MO will execute a script, NT
command file or program each time it is scanned. Execution can further
be controlled by a Schedule which indicates when and how often a Task
is executed no matter when and how many times it is scanned. Tasks can
also be triggered by clock ticks independent of scans. Tasks can also
be executed by Alarm objects allowing you to extend alarm processing.
Alarm scripts have extensive access to Scout internal data items and
functions. With this capability, you can use the Task object to create
your own monitored objects. Given the functions available to scripts
from the Windows Scripting Host Object Model (WSHOM.OCX) and Scripting
Run Time (SCRRUN.DLL), Tasks are a very powerful addition to the capa-
bilities of Scout. See the on-line help for a complete discussion of
Task objects. See the \Scripts\Samples directory for sample scripts.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: You must have the Windows Scripting Host installed on your system
to use Task objects. WSH is installed with IE 4.1 and NT 4.0 SP4. You
can also download WSH from the Microsoft web site.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

One of the new script functions available to Task objects is the ReBoot
function. This function allows you to write a simple script to reboot
the local system or a remote system.

The Alarm object now supports repeating an alarm escalation schedule
indefinitely until the alarm condition is cleared. The repeat scheme
varies for discrete or persistent monitored object types. See the help
for Alarm objects.

The NT Performance Counter Add/Change screen has been improved making
the performance counter grid easier to view.

The String Search capability employed on some monitored objects has been
improved. To date, each line in a string search file contained one or
more words of text. Each line was treated as a whole phrase and the
target text was searched for the whole phrase. To give more flexibility
in string searching, pattern matching is now supported. Existing search
files will continue to function in the old manner. You may now specify
a pattern match by enclosing the pattern string in quotes. Only one
pattern per string file line. Pattern matching greatly improves the
capability of string searching. See the on-line help for a detailed
discussion of pattern matching in string searching.

By default, when an alarm notification is emailed, the subject line of
the email contains a generic announcement of a