Sometimes you may wish to run Actifile for a certain amount of time and deactivate it afterwards. Obviously, uninstalling the agents is an option. But for some purposes deactivating the agent may be a better option.
Possible use cases for deactivating Actifile:
1. To conduct time limited risk assessments.
2. Periodic QBR reports without installing and uninstalling the agent.
3. Conducting periodic compliance audits.
Advantages/Disadvantages:
1. The agent and driver will be disabled reducing any resource consumption.
2. The updater service will remain awake waiting for a command to reactivate Actifile.
3. Any activity that takes place between activations will not be caught by the system.
4. Latest reports will remain available in the system.
Deactivating/Activating Actifile:
1. Deactivating the devices from the Actifile Management Portal:
In the Deployment tab, choose Installed Devices. Mark all the devices using the top checkbox (see below) and click “Deactivate”.
Notes:
– It can take up to 5 minutes for the deactivation command to be received by the agent (depending on the agent query cycle).
– Deactivation stops the Actifile Agent service and switches it to Manual startup mode. It also removes the driver.
– The Updater Service remains active in order to periodically query the server for subsequent Activation command
2. Activating the devices from the Actifile Management Portal:
To activate the devices, the the same menu (Deployment Tab -> Installed Devices), mark all the devices and click “Activate”. See below:
Notes:
– It can take up to 5 minutes for the activation command to be received by the agent (depending on the agent query cycle).
– Deactivation starts the Actifile Agent service and switches it to automatic startup mode. The driver will then be started if the Enable App / Webapp Analytics setting is set to on.
3. Deactivating and Activating the devices using a script:
For MSPs that wish to control the Actifile agents from the convenience of their RMM, or directly at the endpoint, Actifile is installed with a Support Directory that has scripts that enable direct control of the agents.
The scripts are found under the Actifile installation directory (usually at C:\Program Files (x86)\Actifile Agent\Powershell Support Scripts). The scripts are written in Powershell and require elevated privileges to run.
To disable the Actifile agent run the PowerShell script Disable-Actifile.ps1 (or Kill-Actifile.ps1 which kills the Actifile process instead of gently stopping the process).
To re-enable the Actifile agent run the Powershell script Enable-Actifile.ps1.
Notes:
– The script stops both Actifile Agent and Actifile Updater services, and dismounts the driver.
– Since the Updater service is disabled, and agent deactivated using the script cannot be restarted through the UX but must be restarted with the script.
– The script does not depend on the Updater refresh cycle and thus can be used to disable or enable an agent immediately.