21st of November, 2022

Service

New Features

Microsoft Teams App

We have created a Microsoft Teams application for Loome Assist. This application can be added to Microsoft Teams and group chats to provide direct access to a Loome Assist Project for a team. Once added, users will never need to leave Microsoft Teams to create and use Azure resources and solutions in this Project. This simplifies the creation and usage of resources in Azure for researchers, as it is all easily accessible in one place while the other requirements are taken care of by Administrators.
Users are automatically synced between Teams, group chats and the Loome Assist Project. Admins will need to sign up and create a tenant before using the Loome Assist Teams app to prepare their tenant for their users.

The Loome Assist App has been certified by Microsoft and you can download it right now from the marketplace. Learn how to download and set up the Loome Assist App here.

Notifications

We have introduced a new notification system that can send email notifications as well as in-app notifications.

You will notice a notification hub in the top right corner. In-app notifications will be sent to this hub. You can have a maximum of 50 notifications per user before older notifications will be removed.

Currently you can view agent status notifications in the hub. The agent status notification replaces the agent status bar. When an agent goes offline or comes online, you will now receive notifications via email and in-app. This provides a clearer picture of what is happening with your agents.

You also have the ability to opt out of notifications. Emails will have a link to opt out, however in-app notifications for the agent status are mandatory.

Please let us know if you would like other event notifications. We will expand these notifications in future releases.

Agent Installation and Lifecycle

We have made several improvements to agent installation and lifecycle. - We have replaced the Azure RM PowerShell commands with Azure CLI and Azure Az PowerShell commands to keep inline with current Microsoft tools. - We have also added an option to the installation command line for Windows and Linux to perform a silent installation. - We have also removed the PowerShell remoting requirement for Windows agents and added Sudo as a prefix to the Linux installation to avoid installation permission issues.

Improvements

  • You can now provide a non-unique name for storage repositories. Loome Assist will make this unique when naming the storage repository in Azure.
  • We have improved the messaging around unique solution collection names when provisioning them.
  • Confirmation boxes are now provided for all file downloads.
  • When creating a VM, or solution collection containing a VM, you will be blocked from using reserved usernames on Azure.
  • External links will now open in a new tab and will advise you that you are leaving the application before it is opened.
  • We have made some improvements to the sign out process.
  • We added some minor improvements to the wording on data repository naming.
  • Clickable links across the application now include the tenant name, so you can copy them directly and send them to other users.

Fixes

  • We have fixed an issue with the Windows mounting script for storage repositories.
  • We fixed an issue where Solution Collection costs were not tracked for the remainder of the month after the Solution Collection was deleted.
  • Fixed a bug where you could not invite users in certain scenarios.
  • Resolved a bug where silent renewal of login could prompt an expired login message.
  • We have resolved issues with the licensing service occasionally failing to validate a tenant, and an issue that was causing some users to encounter a licensing error when opening a tenant.

Agent

This update requires agent version - 2022.11.21.1

Please download a new install script and update your agent to use new features, improvements, and fixes.

This version of the agent requires you to download a new install script for the agent from your tenant’s ‘Agent’ page.

New Features

Agent Installation and Lifecycle

We have made several improvements to the agent installation and lifecycle. Please read more above.

Improvements

  • You can now provide a non-unique name for storage repositories. Loome Assist will make it unique when naming the storage repository in Azure.
  • When creating a VM, or solution collection containing a VM, you will be blocked from using reserved usernames on Azure.

Fixes

  • We have fixed an issue where solution collection costs were not tracked for the remainder of the month after the Solution Collection was deleted.