We're excited to announce a recent update to the Manage Checks page for CheckCentral. Reordering Groups is now much faster and easier, with all your groups displayed in one place in a sidebar. You can also drag and drop checks directly on the group in the sidebar to move them between groups. In addition, the page and its content have been streamlined to improve the performance and responsiveness for organizations with large numbers of checks.

We hope this update will make it faster and easier to manage your checks. If you have feedback or questions, please let us know!

Updated Manage Checks page

Drag and drop checks between groups

Today we're happy to announce that we've added another two-factor authentication (2FA) method. In addition to the current SMS 2FA method, you can now choose to use time-based one-time password (TOTP) 2FA instead, allowing you to get your 2FA codes through your favourite authentication app.

The TOTP method will work with any app the supports TOTP, including Google Authenticator, Duo, Authy, and more! With TOTP you also get an upgrade in security for your 2FA codes, since they can't be intercepted like SMS messages.

If you've already got SMS 2FA enabled, you'll get a prompt when logging in that suggests switching to TOTP. You'll have to disable SMS 2FA first, then setup TOTP. All of the 2FA configuration is done on your account page: https://www.checkcentral.cc/Account/

TOTP on the Account Edit Page

We highly recommend enabling TOTP 2FA on your account for better security, and as always, if you run into any trouble at all, please don't hesitate to contact us.

We're excited to announce a number of updates to CheckCentral!

We've added the ability to collapse groups on your dashboard to make it easier to see only the information you need to see. The groups you collapse will be remembered whenever or wherever you login to CheckCentral!

A sample CheckCentral dashboard showing collapsed groups.

Repeated Failure Notifications

New options for failure notifications give you more control over when you are alerted about the status of your checks. A check with a configured "failure notification grace period" will wait to send alerts until the specified time has elapsed. If the check returns to success before the alert is sent, it will be canceled.

The repeated failure option provides several options to control failure notifications when a Check receives multiple consecutive failures:

• Notify on every failure: this will send an alert every time a failure message is processed by CheckCentral
• Notify on first failure: this will only send an alert for the first of any consecutive failure messages
• Notify on every failure after N consecutive failures: this will send alerts for every failure message after the limit is reached
• Notify on every N consecutive failures: this will send alerts every time the specified number of failures are processed in a row, e.g. with a setting of "3", you would receive alerts for every 3rd, 6th, 9th failure, and so on

Configuration options for repeated failure notification

Newly Created Check Activity

As well, newly created checks will now have an initial starting activity (set to Success). This will allow the check to become marked overdue once the specified interval has elapsed. To leave the check in a neutral state that will not become overdue until a message has been received, you can delete that created activity.

Newly created check with an initial activity.

In addition to these notification updates, we have also made several UI improvements and fixes, including the text for overdue check alerts and organization logos on PDF reports. If you have feedback or question about any of these updates, or anything else, please let us know!

We're excited to announce the new "setCheckStatus" endpoint for the CheckCentral API! This is the first writable endpoint for the API. SetCheckStatus allows authenticated requests to update the status of a specific check. As well, the request can include an associated message, and optionally send alert notifications for the check as well.

A test call to the setCheckStatus endpoint

Only API tokens that are configured with Read/Write access will be able to make requests to this endpoint. Existing API tokens are set as "Read Only", with all the same permissions they currently have. You can modify a token's access level on your organization's API token management page, available under the "Organization" menu for organization administrators.

Creating a Read/Write API Token

Stats CSV Export

As well as the API update, we've also included the option for CSV export on your organization's stats page. Any search on the stats page can be saved as a CSV report by clicking the "Save CSV" button.

Save Stats Page Reports as CSV

If you have any feedback, suggestions, or questions about the API or CheckCentral in general, please let us know!

We're happy to announce that we have expanded the options for generating PDF reports! PDFs for individual checks can now be generated with activity history for a custom date range, and to cap the displayed history to a configured limit.

As well, you can now generate PDF reports from the Organization Stats page. To help with creating reports, the stats page also provides the option to only display stats for a specific check group. Please let us know if you have any feedback!

In addition, we have released an update to iOS notifications to improve performance and reliability.

PDF Check Report

Stats Page Filtering

PDF Stats Report

We're excited to announce that CheckCentral now has a read-only API available, so that you can pull Check and Issue details into your own custom applications!

To get started, select the API option from the Organization menu when you're on your CheckCentral page. On this page, you can add API tokens that are used when accessing the API from your scripts. Treat the tokens as you would your password!

API Tokens page

After adding a token, you can click the Documentation link to view the available API endpoints, and if you click one of the endpoints, you can test it out right in your browser. The API calls return JSON data that you can use in your programming/scripting language of choice.

A test call to the getChecks endpoint

Here's a sample PowerShell script that gets the details for the Checks in a specific Check Group, and dumps them to a formatted HTML file: CC-API-GetCheckDetailsForSpecificGroup.ps1

If you need any help with the new API or have any questions, please contact us and we'll help you get up and running.

We're very excited to announce some changes to our CheckCentral subscription plans that are rolling out today. We're doing away with the old tiered plans, and moving to a system where you only pay for the checks you need, as you need them. Getting started with CheckCentral has never been easier or more affordable!

Starting today, you'll be able to add or remove checks in groups of 10, with each group costing $5. In addition, all paying customers get access to all of our Enterprise features, including unlimited users, API access, and custom dashboards! We’re also removing the limit on the number of groups that can be configured. Our discounts for pre-paying quarterly or yearly are still available as well.

For our existing customers, you will be grandfathered in at your current subscription rate, and you can easily change the amount of checks on your account via the Subscription page.

If you have any questions or comments about these changes, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

I'm an existing customer. How do I make changes to my check allotment?

After logging in to your CheckCentral organization, click the Subscription link in the top menu. At the top of the Enterprise plan column, there's a slider you can drag left or right to decrease or increase the number of checks you're paying for. The updated monthly subscription cost will be displayed immediately.

I'm a new customer. How many checks do I get during the 60-day free trial?

As many as you like! On the Subscription page, you can adjust the slider to increase or decrease the number of checks at any time during your trial.

What do I do if I'm not sure about these new plans?

Contact us with any questions that you have and we'll be glad to help out!

Add/Remove Checks Dialog

We've rolled out a site-wide update to the look and interface of CheckCentral. The updated design places more emphasis on your organization's information, as well as facilitating future development and improvements. We hope the new look will provide a cleaner, more readable experience. Please let us know if you have any feedback!

In addition, we have updated the email processing system to further improve CheckCentral's stability and reliability.

Dashboard Content

Dashboard Checks

Check View Page

We're pleased to announce the release of on-demand PDF report generation! You can now save snapshots of your organization's status for record-keeping or distribution.

You can save a complete dashboard view from your Manage Dashboards page or directly from the dashboard itself. The Manage Checks page provides links to save a snapshot of the current state of a group or an individual check.

PDF reporting is available on paid subscriptions, and Enterprise organizations will receive PDFs with their own organization branding, suitable for distributing to customers. Look for the icon on your Dashboards and Check pages to download your PDF reports!

PDF Check Report

PDF Dashboard Report

To help configure your CheckCentral account, we've added the ability to send yourself a test notification. On the notifications page, click the "Send Test Message" button to make sure your notification service is properly set up without having to wait for a Check to trigger an alert.

Send Test Message

iOS Notifications

As well, we've released updates to Apple push notifications to improve the reliability of alerts on iOS.