Last month, we started a brand-new webinar, focused on all the latest features and updates that we’ve added to the Atera platform in the previous few weeks. If you missed July’s update, you can catch up here. We’ll be hosting this webinar live once every six weeks, so lookout for an email reminder.

This month, we’ll be covering Customer Management enhancements, our new Mac agent, and third-party patching with the support of Chocolatey. So, let’s dive in!

Mac users – rejoice!

The new Mac agent is a lot more reliable, offering much better performance across the board. We’re going to be gradually replacing Mac agents over time so that all of them will be replaced with the premium version.

If you head to the Mac agent, you can now select a customer and create a customized download link, plus complete this using terminal command. We’ve also made it a whole lot easier to associate a Mac device with a customer, by eliminating the need to input the technician username and password.

If you’re one of the users that alerted us to the bugs related to fan and temperature, you’ll be happy to hear that these have been resolved.

Following quickly from our new Chocolatey integration for Windows, we have now released integration with Homebrew for Macs. This third-party software integration allows you to install software on all Mac devices, with ease. Head to software installation, and you will now be able to see Homebrew installation. Simply find the software you’re looking to install, and then it will be added directly on to the device.

For both Chocolatey and Homebrew, we’ve added admin capabilities like patch management and IT automation, too, so you can patch all your new software installations. Lastly, we’ve added a default list of software that we will be patching, regardless of whether they were already installed on the device, or have been added using HomeBrew or Chocolatey, which will be added to overtime. At the moment, you can see usual suspects such as Dropbox, VLC media player, Mozilla Firefox, Zoom, MS Teams, Skype, and more. Any other software you install using this system will be shown in your automation profiles automatically.

Customer management updates

We’re pretty proud of our scripts functionality, and with your help, we’re making it a whole lot more functional all the time. Users will know that you can run your scripts directly as an IT automation profile, but you can now add scripts from the profile itself, including anywhere else you have script automation available, for example, thresholds. Just click select and you can run them automatically.

While we’re talking about scripts, don’t forget about the Atera shared script library. This is where you can submit your own scripts and utilize them directly from Atera, sharing the love with your fellow MSPs!

We’ve also made it a lot faster to create new customers. Many of you mentioned that the contract and SLA process slowed you down, so you can now create a new customer in moments simply by assigning a name and a contact, and save the contract and SLA creation for later. We do encourage you to head back and set up contracts and make sure that your SLA is connected to the customer so that your billing process runs without a hitch.

Also by popular demand, we’ve added some upgrades to search! You wanted to be able to search by serial number, and now you can. There’s now no need to click into a device because as you’re running the search you can see all the devices, and simply connect via Splashtop or manage them directly. This is all a whole lot more seamless and streamlined.

Devices and tickets – here’s what’s new

Many of you already make great use of our devices list and the folders that can keep them organized, especially for customers in multiple locations. You can now head to devices, select the customer, and see the option for folders right from the customer devices tab. Click on folders, and you’ll be able to see at a glance which devices have not been assigned, under ‘unassigned’. We’ve also added the ability to select a customer and a folder, and then bulk assign devices into a folder.

From the automation profile perspective, you can also see the folders, profiles, and agents that are assigned to a specific customer, by using the new ‘applied to’ button.

We’re always trying to make tickets easier, so also by popular demand, you can now add a contact to a ticket without filling out the whole name. Just use the contact list to search by starting to type any name, and you can add any contact into the CC field.

NEW! Ad-hoc invoicing!

We’re so excited to announce that we’ve added an option for a new kind of ad-hoc invoice. Head to the customer page, or use the plus sign at the top of the billing section, and you can build out a bespoke, ad-hoc invoice. This means that you can now create one-off invoices and categories, and build out your product offering, charging your customer directly via these ad hoc invoices.

This is a great tool for a one-off charge or product. Remember, if you’re adding new products that you want to use again, they won’t be automatically added to your product list. To keep this up to date, you need to go to admin and click on products and expenses and add it for long term use. At the moment, these invoices are not exportable, but this will be available after the next sprint. We hope this will make life a whole lot easier!

A few of you reached out to let us know that you experienced a bug where you couldn’t change your language settings. Well don’t worry – it’s fixed, both on desktop and mobile.

Accounting integrations – if you’re not in Beta, you’re going to want to be!

Now for the exciting bit. If you click on the Accounting tab, you’ll now be able to see the upcoming integrations that we’re planning, including QuickBooks Online which is already in Beta. Just click connect, enter your credentials, and you’ll see the QuickBooks Online Wizard landing page. From here, you can easily sync information, including your products, customers, rates, and taxes, and your information will be consolidated across the system.

It’s really simple. You’ll get a list of Atera products, customers, and rates, alongside your QuickBooks information. You can then match QuickBooks products and services to Atera products, and this will automatically supersede anything in Atera. The same can be done for customers. Side by side, you can see Atera customers and QuickBooks customers, ready to be synced and attached as one profile.

Some things to bear in mind:

  • Changes will only take effect if you finish the wizarding process. Make sure to complete the whole tutorial!
  • Once you’ve set up the integration, you can benefit from automation. For example, if you run a batch and you’ve created a new customer in QuickBooks but not Atera when you run a batch – you will receive a prompt, and the data will be pulled into Atera, too.
  • If you do disconnect this integration, your pre-integration data will be pulled back into Atera, including tax, customers, and billing.

If you would like to join the Beta program, reach out to us via the live chat.

That’s all for August, make sure to tune in next time! If you want to see the latest releases webinar in full, you can check out the recording right here.

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