What's new in the Boring Toolbox
Less checking. More knowing.
- See the risks in your system.
- Put health checks on a schedule.
- Keep track when failover takes over.
New · Trends in Analytics
See what needs
attention. And why.
Storage running out? Cameras falling short on retention? Trends brings the signals together, ranks the findings, and helps you decide where to start.
Trends combines outage timelines, storage runway, retention gaps, and ranked findings.
Plan before storage fills.See growth rates and estimated days until each recorder is full.
Find the footage gaps.Spot short retention and online cameras with no video retained.
Share the bigger picture.Export an Executive Summary PDF, Excel workbook, or image.
New · Scheduled notifications
Let the checks come to you.
Schedule health checks and get one email digest. Send it only when something is found, or after every run.
19
health checks, on your scheduleHourly, daily, or weekly
New · Failover monitoring
Know when backup steps in.
See when a failover recorder takes over—and when the original returns. Follow the handoff in your dashboard, events, and email digests.
RecorderFailoverRestored
A new dashboard count takes you straight to the affected recorders.
Three kinds of schedules. One place to manage them.
Reports, maintenance, and notifications—with run history and what’s next.
Everything in this release
All the features, improvements, and fixes.
New features 8
Recorder failover monitoringFollow takeovers and recovery across the dashboard, events, and email.
- Live Monitoring now notices when a failover recording server takes over for a recorder, and when the recorder takes back over.
- The dashboard has a new Recorders in failover stat. Clicking it opens the list of affected recorders.
- On the Hardware page, recorders in failover get a Failover chip in the list and in the details panel.
- Failover starts and stops appear in Recent Events and in the Recorder Alert digest email. A recorder that comes back from failover counts as restored.
- The startup summary email now includes a failover count.
Trends tab in AnalyticsCompare periods, investigate findings, and export the bigger picture.
- Trends is the new first tab in Analytics. It compares the last 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days with the period before.
- At a glance: live storage growth, archive storage used, live storage used and offline events, each with a sparkline and a per-recorder breakdown.
- Offline events by recorder: a timeline of outages, plus the most affected cameras and the latest outages for each recorder.
- Storage runway: space used, growth rate and days until each recorder is full.
- Retention gaps: cameras below required retention, with a filter for how far short they are. Online cameras with no video retained are listed too.
- Needs attention: findings ranked by severity, with a "See all" drawer.
- Exports: an Executive Summary PDF, an Excel workbook and copy as image.
- Works for managed sites picked from the parent site.
- Stays responsive on large sites, including ones with tens of thousands of offline events a week.
Analytics chartsDrill into history, compare devices, and explore camera storage.
- Drill-in history: click any chart column to see that item's history, with quick ranges (1W to 1Y). You can overlay other cameras, recorders or storage locations to compare them.
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New Camera Storage tab:
- Live Storage: per-camera used space, with filters for camera, recorder, storage location, size and status.
- SD Card Storage: used and free space, SD card state and brand filters.
- Swap Axes: any chart can flip to horizontal bars so long names are readable. The setting is remembered per chart.
- The overview cards were redesigned, and clicking a stat opens its chart.
Scheduling, all in one placeManage reports, maintenance, and notifications in a single list.
- Reports and Maintenance are now one Scheduling section with a single Schedules list. It has filters, search, a status for each schedule, a strip showing the last 12 runs, and the next run time.
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Each card expands:
- Reports show their run history.
- Maintenance shows upcoming windows and the previous 12 windows.
- Row actions: Run now, Edit, Duplicate, Delete, Cancel an active maintenance window, Reactivate an expired schedule, and Excel download.
- New schedule opens a menu (Report, Notification, Maintenance), and all three types use one shared schedule drawer.
- Validation in the drawer is clearer: fields and sections with problems turn red, and the drawer scrolls to the first one.
- Old Reports and Maintenance links redirect to the new page. Links in report emails you've already sent still work.
Scheduled NotificationsChoose from 19 checks and send a scheduled email digest.
- A new schedule type. Checks run hourly, daily or weekly and send one email digest, either only when something is found or every time.
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There are 19 checks:
- Storage: recorder drive free space, storage bank usage, storage runway, drop in live storage growth
- Availability: camera or recorder offline, cameras offline repeatedly, cameras not recording, rise in offline events
- Retention: below target, cameras newly under their retention policy
- Firmware: different versions on the same model, behind the latest version
- Security: default credentials, weak passwords, passwords not updated, HTTPS not enabled
- SD card: unhealthy
- Trends: new Trends findings
- Each schedule can cover selected recorders or device groups, with preview, run now and run history.
- New permissions control who can view, edit and run notification schedules. Site viewers get read-only access.
Hardware advanced searchMatch names, IP addresses, and MAC addresses with more control.
- Search options let you choose how to match (Contains, Starts with, Ends with, Exact, or Wildcard */?) and which field to search (All, Name, Address, MAC address). IP addresses are now searchable too.
- Matching rows expand automatically, and the header counts follow the filtered list.
Ping / HTTP checks and automatic camera loginTest connectivity and open camera pages with automatic login.
- Hardware and device details panels have Ping and HTTP test buttons.
- Opening offline cameras on the dashboard runs the Ping and HTTP checks automatically, and the results are included in exports.
- Camera email notifications include the Ping and HTTP results.
- Automatic login to a camera's web page, for users allowed to view passwords.
Site addressesOpen sites using the HTTPS address that matches your SSL certificate.
- Choose a primary HTTPS site address whose hostname matches your valid SSL certificate. Links from the Global Dashboard use this address instead of the server's IP address, avoiding certificate-name mismatch privacy errors.
- A site can have up to 5 addresses. The primary address is also used in other links the system generates.
- Addresses are checked when you add them. You can still keep one that can't be verified.
- Managed sites' addresses can be edited from the Managed Sites page.
Updates and improvements 4
View all improvements.NET, Email setup, storage performance, and hardware filters.
- Updated to .NET 10: Upgraded the application runtime from .NET 8 to .NET 10, bringing the latest platform performance and security improvements.
- Configure Site: a custom SMTP server no longer requires live monitoring emails to be on. Send Test Email works either way. CC and BCC stay hidden until added, and the sections are relabeled and cleaned up.
- Camera Storage loads much faster on large fleets. The dashboard storage card, Analytics live storage and Auto Device Groups are faster as a result.
- Hardware filters: the checkbox styling is cleaned up, and the status filter can no longer end up with nothing selected.
Bug fixes 7
View all bug fixesScheduling, digest emails, camera settings, and managed sites.
- Upcoming Maintenance now respects schedule start and end dates.
- The "Set Max Date" checkbox no longer always shows as checked when editing a report or maintenance schedule.
- Fixed upcoming report runs always showing empty, daily maintenance schedules showing no upcoming windows, and an already-finished window being labeled NEXT.
- Daily digest email: offline cameras are tracked correctly again.
- Arecont cameras: resolution settings load again.
- Managed Sites: the details panel no longer closes when you pick some menu actions, such as Change parent site.
- Analytics on managed sites: the picked site is kept when you switch tabs, and shortcuts that only work on the local site are hidden.
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