Frequently asked questions

Here is a collection of frequently asked questions concerning NightWatchman Enterprise. Browse the list below to find information and resources on NightWatchman basics, Cloud synchronization, WakeUp, and more.

You can see obsolete clients under the client tab in the NightWatchman console. To do this, right-click on the location group or organization group folder in the respective tabs and select show obsolete clients.

No, a machine cannot be woken when it is marked as obsolete.

If you are using Nomad and want to implement the Nomad integration with WakeUp feature, you must enable the ActiveEfficiency option during installation. This feature was previously known as WakeUp integration with ActiveEfficiency.

In previous versions of NightWatchman, ActiveEfficiency was used for synchronization with the 1E Cloud for automatic power consumption catalog updates, but this feature is now obsolete. ActiveEfficiency is now only used for the Nomad integration with WakeUp feature.

1E recommends one WakeUp server per 2,000 subnets when implementing a NightWatchman Management Center strategy.

The evaluation license (that is, when no license key is provided during installation) is fully functional for 30 days.

When WakeUp is installed on a ConfigMgr site server, it registers the ConfigMgr site boundaries (specifically those boundaries that are used for site assignment) with NightWatchman Management Center. As these are defined in ConfigMgr, they cannot be modified in the NightWatchman console, although additional subnets can be added to the WakeUp server through the NightWatchman Console. The pre-defined subnets are read-only.

However, you can add exclusions to the NightWatchman boundaries in the NightWatchman console if there are particular subnets in the boundaries of the ConfigMgr site that you do not want the Wakeup Server to manage.

In a production environment, you would typically install WakeUp either in NightWatchman Management Center mode (if you don’t have Configuration Manager) or in ConfigMgr mode (if you do have Configuration Manager). In some cases, you may have Configuration Manager installed where it does not manage all the clients or subnets. In this scenario, you can manually add the missing subnets to the WakeUp server via the WakeUp Server tab in the NightWatchman Management Console.

The Register tab in the Web WakeUp portal allows a user to register up to 20 computers that they regularly use, which then appear on the My Computers tab.

You can get the details from the TeamViewer DEX Support Portal.

After removing a power policy applied to a specific group of computers, using their location group or organization group in the NightWatchman Management Console, the clients may still inherit power policies from further up the hierarchy, so NightWatchman may still shut down the clients even though no power policy is directly applied to them.

To prevent the inheritance of a power policy with a shut down implemented, you should create a "blank" power policy, which may then be applied to the computers you want to specifically except from the inherited policy.

To prevent power management, it is necessary to apply a policy that has no power management set, rather than simply not apply a policy at all, as it is possible that the client is inheriting a policy from a higher group or may have values defined locally in the NightWatchman registry entries.

A group can be deleted by simply right-clicking it and selecting Delete Group. You will be asked to confirm, but if you do, the group will be deleted immediately. When the group is deleted, any clients in the group when will effectively be orphaned, as they are associated with a group that no longer exists and will be excluded from reports. Even if you recreate a group with the same name, those clients will still be orphaned because the new group will have a different internal ID. It is, therefore, important to move all clients out of the group into another group before you delete the group.

AFWebService uses Anonymous Authentication whereas ReportConsole uses Windows Authentication. Windows Authentication is required on the ReportConsole application as access to reports can be secured using Active Directory groups.

The user account must have App_reporting_console and App_Reporting_Service on the AgilityFrameworkReporting database.

To ensure that NightWatchman does not shut down a machine during any critical operation, it monitors the machine environment at the point when it is scheduled to shut it down and stops if it encounters any of the following:

  • Any user activity, process exception, maintenance window, pending Configuration Manager download, or 1E Nomad download in progress.

  • Configuration Manager pending deployment tasks:

    • States for Configuration Manager running deployments where the registry entry HKLM\SOFTWARE\1E\Nightwatchman\AllowedShutdownJobStates contains any of the following values:

      • WaitingDisabled, WaitingEnvironment, ReportStatusAtReboot, AdvancedDownload, WaitingEnvironment, WaitingContent, WaitingDependency, Ready, Completed, WaitingDisabled, ReportStatusAtReboot, or AdvancedDownload.

    • States for Configuration Manager running deployments where the registry entry HKLM\SOFTWARE\1E\Nightwatchman\AllowedShutdownUpdateStates contains any of the following values:

      • None, Available, PendingSoftReboot, PendingHardReboot, WaitReboot, InstallComplete, Error, WaitingServiceWindow, None, Available, PendingSoftReboot, PendingHardReboot, WaitReboot, InstallComplete, Error, WaitInstall, Installing, or Verifying.

If you want to ignore all the observers, running deployments, and software updates and always shut down machines, then set the value 0 (zero) in the following key on the client machines: HKLM\SOFTWARE\1E\Nightwatchman\ConsideredApplicationEvaluationStates.

For Application Assignment Jobs on Configuration Manager 2012 clients, the evaluation states specified in this registry are considered as Configuration Manager Jobs in progress. All other states are ignored. This behavior is different from the previous two types of jobs, where the list is a list of states we ignore and continue with the shutdown.

In the Clients section of the NightWatchman Management Console, there is a Queries tab that enables you to focus on a set of computers by querying their properties and displaying specific details for each computer that matches the query. There are two main parts to a query:

  • The Query and related Criteria part: This defines what information on the computers you are going to check and what values that information will contain.

  • The Display part: This defines what information from the matching computers gets displayed in the console.

Queries and Criteria are used to define which computers are displayed on the Queries tab. You can retrieve computers using Queries related to their NetBIOS names, OUs, particular subnets or applied NightWatchman power policies. The criteria then specify the values for the properties you are checking for. For example, you can check for NightWatchman power policies to retrieve all computers that have the myNWMPolicy applied.

The available query options are the following: All computers, By AD OU, By Hardware, By IP address, By Location Tier, By NetBIOS Name, By Organizational Tier, By Power Policy, and By Subnet.

The display part lets you set what data you want to see from the computers that match the Query and Criteria. For example, whether you want to see hardware information, Adapter details, or Power details.

The available display options are the following: Hardware, Hierarchy, Network Adapters, Power, Software, Summary, and Time in State.

You can extend the actions that are available to you when right-clicking on computers or computer groups in the NightWatchman Management Console. These are normally formatted as a parameterized command line, which is based on the context of what has been selected. There are three scopes where you can right-click: Computer, ComputerSet, and Tier, and you can create different options for each of these.

The default extensions for the three scopes are the following:

  • When right-clicking on a single client computer: Action > ping.

  • When right-clicking on a group of client computers: Action > Create SCCM collections.

  • When right-clicking on a location or organization tier: Action > Power consumption over the last 30 days.

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