This blog post covers some recent and upcoming enhancements to the Central device list.
Slide-out device details
We have introduced a slide-out for device details. Clicking on a device in the device list will no longer take you to the device details page, you will see the device info while still in the context of the device list. You can still click through to a dedicated page from there if needed. The advantage of the slide out is that it lets you see the device details while keeping the context of the device list page, for example if you filtered for bad health devices you can easily click between them in the device list to see each device's details in the slide out.
Agent mode changes
We are simplifying the number of options for deploying/configuring the Sophos agent. The MDR mode has been removed; MDR customers only need the XDR mode agent to be able to get the full MDR service. We have renamed the "Protection" column in the device list to be "Agent Mode" to better accommodate that the XDR sensor mode does not include Sophos protection.
More detail
Originally the MDR agent needed to be differentiated from the XDR agent, for example if you upgraded your license from XDR or MDR you needed to upgrade the endpoints from XDR to MDR as well for the MDR team to be able to perform their full service. We have now converged the agents to be the same so that this license change no longer requires the upgrade; the MDR team would immediately be able to start performing their full service.
Removing the dependency on an agent change allows for fewer options and a simplified experience.
To show that the MDR team are able to manage a device we have added a column "MDR managed" to reassure MDR customers that their XDR endpoints are managed by the MDR team.
We have applied corresponding changes across the UI, including the software packages pages no longer referring to the MDR components, the individual device details having a reworked table showing assigned software and its versions and Account Health Check.
Matching changes in the endpoint and its installer will come in the next available endpoint release (expected to be 2025.2, starting to release around September)
Other recent and upcoming improvements
We have added fields to the new device list view, including encryption status, lockdown status and device hardware serial number (Mac only currently, Windows coming later this year). The column selector allows you to add or remove columns:
Over the next few months we will be adding further improvements:
- Displaying device group and making it searchable
- Adding search on the user column
- Adding tagging so devices can be labelled.
- Improving health to reflect a wider range of potential issues. You will be able to view/filter by different categories of issues, for example to only show devices with updating problems, or only show those that have a broken installation such as missing services.
