Update List – Visual-Guard 2024.7

The 2024.7 release delivers significant enhancements focused on strengthening security, scalability, and platform compatibility. This build introduces more powerful and flexible MFA capabilities, improves enterprise-scale performance and deployment stability, and enhances migration reliability across supported versions. It also expands integration with Azure and Angular environments while adding support for PowerBuilder 2025, ensuring broader technology coverage and a smoother upgrade experience for organizations of all sizes.

🔐 MFA Enhancements in the New Build

The latest build introduces important enhancements to Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), expanding support across sample applications, adding a new demo application, and improving Azure AD and Active Directory group-based configurations.

• 🚀 Expanded MFA Support Across Sample Applications: MFA support has now been added to the Angular sample application, as well as the ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET WebForms login applications. This ensures consistent multi-factor authentication implementation across modern and traditional application architectures. Organizations can now test and deploy MFA more seamlessly regardless of the technology stack being used.

• 📱 New MVC MFA Demo Application: A new MVC-based MFA demo application has been introduced to showcase multiple authentication methods and enrollment scenarios. It supports Email OTP, Mobile OTP, and Microsoft Authenticator (TOTP), providing flexibility in verification methods. The application also includes both Local and IdentityServer enrollment modes, enabling centralized or application-level MFA onboarding based on organizational requirements.

• 🏢 Azure & AD Group MFA Skip Enhancements: Enhancements have been made to Azure AD and Active Directory group-based MFA skip logic. Administrators now have more precise control over which groups require MFA enforcement and which can be excluded. This improves alignment with enterprise directory structures and allows organizations to apply MFA policies more intelligently without compromising security.

👥 Auto-Provisioning Improvements

The 2024.7 build introduces enhancements to the auto-provisioning mechanism, improving user management and simplifying administrative control. These updates strengthen integration with Windows/Active Directory groups while maintaining secure and flexible access control.

• 🏢 Automatic Provisioning from Windows Groups
  Users can now be automatically provisioned based on their Windows/Active Directory group membership. This reduces manual account creation, ensures alignment with enterprise directory structures, and simplifies user onboarding and access management.

• 🔐 Login Allowed When IsAutoProvisioning = False (MasterAdmin Role)
  Login is now permitted even when IsAutoProvisioning is set to False, provided the user belongs to an AD Group assigned with the MasterAdmin role. This prevents unintended administrative lockouts while preserving controlled access policies.

• ⚙ Improved Administrative Flexibility
  These enhancements provide a better balance between automated provisioning and privileged access control. Organizations can enforce provisioning policies while ensuring critical administrative accounts remain accessible when required.

🖥 PowerBuilder 2025 Runtime (PBL) Support

The 2024.7 build adds support for the PowerBuilder 2025 runtime (PBL), ensuring full compatibility with applications developed using the latest PowerBuilder version. This enhancement enables organizations to upgrade their development environment while maintaining seamless integration with Visual Guard’s authentication and access control features, providing stability, continuity, and a smooth transition to the newest runtime version.

💾 WebConsole Automatic Configuration Backup

The 2024.7 build introduces automatic configuration backup for the WebConsole, ensuring that critical system settings are securely preserved without manual intervention. This enhancement helps protect configuration data from accidental changes, system failures, or deployment issues by maintaining up-to-date backups. It improves reliability, simplifies recovery processes, and strengthens overall configuration management for administrators.

📝 Terminology Updates for Improved Clarity

In the 2024.7 build, certain repository management options have been renamed to improve clarity and prevent confusion during administrative operations.

• 🔄 “Remove” → “Delete VGRepository and its contents”
  The action name now clearly indicates that the repository and all its associated data will be permanently deleted, reducing the risk of accidental data loss.
• 📂 “Delete from the Repository List” → “Exclude from the repository list”
  This update clarifies that the repository is only removed from the displayed list and not deleted from the system, ensuring administrators better understand the impact of the action.

🚀 Deployment Batching for Large Repositories (Bulk Users)

The 2024.7 build introduces deployment batching for large repositories, particularly beneficial when managing bulk users. This enhancement optimizes the deployment process by handling large volumes of user data in controlled batches, reducing performance bottlenecks and minimizing system load. It ensures smoother deployments, improved stability, and better scalability when working with extensive repositories or high user counts.

📦 Published 2024.6 & 2024.7 NuGet Packages

The 2024.6 and 2024.7 NuGet packages have been published, making the latest updates and enhancements readily available for integration. This ensures developers can easily reference the newest versions within their projects, benefiting from recent improvements, security updates, and feature enhancements. Publishing these packages streamlines dependency management and supports a smoother upgrade process across development environments.

☁ Azure Demo Environment Updates

The Azure demo environments have been updated to VG 2024.7, ensuring alignment with the latest features and enhancements introduced in this build. A new gateway-style demo application has been implemented to demonstrate seamless linking between multiple Azure applications, showcasing centralized authentication and access control scenarios. Additionally, a bulk data demo repository has been created to support migration validation and stress testing, enabling performance evaluation and scalability testing in high-volume environments.

🔄 Migration Support Updates

Migration to version 2024.7 is supported from earlier builds, ensuring a smooth and structured upgrade path. Organizations can migrate directly from 2018.1 to 2024.7, from 2019.2 to 2024.7, and from 2024.6 to 2024.7. This extended compatibility simplifies upgrade planning, reduces transition complexity, and allows customers to benefit from the latest enhancements without requiring intermediate upgrade steps.

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Bug Fixes

🔐 WebConsole license validation has been fixed to prevent unauthorized access without proper rights, ensuring stricter enforcement of licensing controls.

🔑 Password policy handling has been improved along with the grace login flow when MFA is enabled, providing a smoother and more secure authentication experience.

📱 An issue in the PowerBuilder application affecting the MFA workflow after password policy changes has been resolved, restoring proper authentication behavior.

🕒 A UTC conversion issue impacting future EndDate values has been corrected to ensure accurate date and time handling.

☁ Null reference errors caused by missing Entra domain configurations are now properly handled, improving overall system stability.

📊 The Event Viewer timeout issue occurring with large log volumes has been fixed, enhancing performance and reliability in high-activity environments.

📧 Handling of missing Mobile and Email claims has been corrected to prevent authentication and user data inconsistencies.

🖥 Windows username display in the Event Viewer during MFA enrollment has been corrected for accurate auditing and traceability.

🗄 An exception occurring during Oracle repository creation has been resolved, ensuring smoother repository setup.

✅ MFA Skip validation and unique email enforcement issues have been fixed to strengthen authentication logic and data integrity.

🧹 Database tables and stored procedures are now properly cleaned up after repository deletion, preventing leftover artifacts and maintaining database consistency.

🔒 An HTTPS configuration issue with IdentityServer has been fixed, ensuring secure and stable communication.

⚙ The SQLConnection initialization issue in .NET Core 3.1 has been resolved, improving application startup reliability and database connectivity.

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