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How To: N-Central API Automation

Table of Content

Table of contents generated with markdown-toc

Overview

N-Central's API is a flexible, programmatic, object oriented, Java based interface by which developers can achieve integration and automation via native SOAP API calls.

For the purposes of this guide we'll be covering connectivity and basic usage with PowerShell based automation through the PS-NCentral module, as well as native WebserviceProxy cmdlet.

The information covering the PS-NCentral is useful for those with starting some experience with PowerShell or need to quickly put together code where module dependency isn't an issue, while the usage of the WebserviceProxy method is for those more familiar with object oriented coding or need code portatability. As of version 1.2 PS-NCentral uses PowerShell 7 for cross compatability to be able to run Windows/Linux or in an Azure function.

PS-NCentral provides cmdlets for 17 Get cmdlets and 4 Set cmdlets (See Appendix B) that cover the majority, so should cover the majority of automation. This can be downloaded from: https://github.com/ToschAutomatisering/PS-NCentral

Or installed from PS-Gallery with the cmdlet

Install-Module PS-NCentral

Connecting

The first step required before connecting is to create a new automation account with appropriate role permissions. With N-Central 2020 or 12.3 HF4 and later you must disable the MFA requirement for the account, so use a long and complex password. The (preferred) API-Only account in N-Central 2021 needs to be set to 'mfa not needed'.

Once the account is created, select the API Authentication tab and click on the ' Generate JSON Web Token' button, save this JWT token somewhere secure, if you lose your JWT, you can generate another one at any time, but it will invalidate the previous one. If you update/change role permissions for the account automation account you will need to regenerate the token, as the asserted permissions are in the JWT.

Note: Activating the MFA-setting after generating the token still blocks JWT-access, as well as an expired password for the originating account (90 days default).

PS-NCentral

Connecting to your N-Central service with PS-NCentral only needs to be done once per session. You first require the following information:

  • The fqdn of your N-Central server, ie: n-central.mydomain.com
  • The JWT from above
  • Username/Password (no MFA) for versions before 1.2.

Then enter the following:

All versions

#Import the PS-NCentral module
import-module .\PS-NCentral.psm1 -Verbose

#$credential = Get-Credential		## This line can be used for a dialog. Skip 2 below.
$password = ConvertTo-SecureString "<Password>" -AsPlainText -Force
$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential ("<User>", $password)

#Connect to NC
New-NCentralConnection -ServerFQDN "YOUR SERVER FQDN" -PSCredential $credential

* Might generate an error on some complex passwords. Avoid using a ^.

Version 1.2 and later

#Import the PS-NCentral module
import-module .\PS-NCentral.psm1 -Verbose

#Connect to NC using the JWT directly
New-NCentralConnection -ServerFQDN "YOUR SERVER FQDN" -JWT "YOUR JWT TOKEN"

which is equivalent to:

#Import the PS-NCentral module
import-module .\PS-NCentral.psm1 -Verbose

#Credentials with JWT
$password = ConvertTo-SecureString "YOUR JWT TOKEN" -AsPlainText -Force
$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential ("_JWT", $password)

#Connect to NC
New-NCentralConnection -ServerFQDN "YOUR SERVER FQDN" -PSCredential $credential

If successful you will get an output similar to the below:

Property Value
ConnectionURL n-central.mydomain.com
BindingURL `https://n-central.mydomain.com/dms2/services2/ServerEI2?wsdl'
AllProtocols tls12,tls13
IsConnected True
RequestTimeOut 100
NCVersion 2020.1.5.425
DefaultCustomerID 50
Error

The session is now stored in the global $_NCSession variable, and will automatically be used as default for following PS-NCentral commands.

Multiple PS-NCentral server connections

If you are an MSP with multiple N-Central servers, or have an NFC server for testing you can leverage the -NCSession parameter available on PS-NCentral cmdlets to quickly call other servers, this is available in all versions of PS-NCentral, but we'll use 1.2 as the example for brevity.

Then enter the following:

#Connect to NC
$Connection1 = New-NCentralConnection "$NCentralFQDN1" -JWT "$JWT1"
$Connection2 = New-NCentralConnection "$NCentralFQDN2" -JWT "$JWT2"

#Get the customer list from each server for later processing
$NC1Customers = Get-NCCustomerList -NcSession $Connection1
$NC2Customers = Get-NCCustomerList -NcSession $Connection2

Another useful pameter when connecting is the DefaultCustomerID, this sets the default scope for when calling cmdlets such as Get-NCDeviceList without a parameter, so if I were to perform the following connection and function call it would only give me all devices associated with CustomerID 333

New-NCentralConnection "$NCentralFQDN" -JWT "$JWT1" -DefaultCustomerID 333
$Customer333Devices = Get-NCDeviceList

You can use Set-NCCustomerDefault to change the value afterwards.

PowerShell WebserviceProxy

Notice the WebserviceProxy is discontinued after PowerShell version 5.1. You can find alternative code in Appendix H - WebserviceProxy Alternative

As a preface to the usage of the New-WebserviceProxy cmdlet, we will focus on the v2 rather than v1 legacy API as the v1 endpoint maybe deprecated at some point.

The main differences between the v1 and v2 endpoints are:

  • The WSDL endpoint
  • Different classes, including the KeyPair constructor class used for adding custom settings for queries and update/change methods
  • V2 has all the newer methods available

It will be necessary to review the Javadocs provided on your server for the lastest information on the classes and constructors, you can find them under your own N-Central server under https://n-central.mydomain.com/dms/

If reviewing other WebserviceProxy powershell code on the internet, you can identify v1/legacy code as it will have the following in the binding URL string: /dms/services/ServerEI?wsdl while v2 has /dms2/services2/ServerEI2?wsdl

For connecting to webservice you will need the same information as with the PS-NCentral which connects in the same way underneath:

  • The fqdn of your N-Central server, ie: n-central.myserver.com
  • The JWT for the account

With our examples we'll use v2 connections and classes, below is a common method seen in examples:

#Example host
$serverHost = "n-central.myserver.com"

# Bind to the namespace, using the Webserviceproxy
$NWSNameSpace = "NAble" + ([guid]::NewGuid()).ToString().Substring(25)
$bindingURL = "https://" + $serverHost + "/dms2/services2/ServerEI2?wsdl"
$nws = New-Webserviceproxy $bindingURL -Namespace ($NWSNameSpace)

$NWSNameSpace here can be most anything of your choosing, the point of the GUID generation is to ensure the namespace for the classes to be used inside the webservice are unique to anything else on your system or current context, you could use a static namespace such as MyNCentralConnection or PowerShellIsAwesome.

After you've run this the $nws variable will contain all the available public methods from the endpoint, you can interrogate this by running

$nws | Get-Member

From this you will see a lot of | Event |s, Methods and Properties ie.

Name MemberType
versionInfoGetCompleted
Abort Method
accessGroupAdd Method
BeginaccessGroupAdd Method
BeginaccessGroupGet Method

The above output has been shortened, see Appendix A – N-Central Web Service members members for the complete output. In addition you will have a Definition column, and you will observe that your $NWSNameSpace is seen prefixed to the methods/classes noted in them. All classes/methods/constructors available in the Javadocs can be created and called upon through the $nws variable. Eg. The customerListmethod would be called with

$nws.customerList("", $JWT, $settings)

As you will note when connecting with the $nws variable, at no point did you use your username or JWT, as you will observe in the $nws.customerList method called above, the $JWT is used in every get or set, and the username is simply "" as the username is inside of the JWT string.

Underneath the PS-NCentral module it saves these variables with each connection and re-uses each time a cmdlet is used.

Performing Queries

PS-NCentral

Performing queries with the PS-Central module is quick and easy, and several examples are provided in it's own documentation here . The outcomes of the examples are fairly self explanatory. For our example we'll take a common query like the Customer table and join it with the Organisation properties table using the PS-NCentral cmdlets, then in the advanced section we'll give the same example using native cmdlets.

Import-Module PS-NCentral.psm1 -Verbose

$ServerFQDN = n-central.myserver.com
$JWT = "JWT TOKEN"

#Connect to NC
New-NCentralConnection -ServerFQDN $ServerFQDN -JWT $JWT

#Grab the customer list/details
$CustomerList = Get-NCCustomerList

#Get the customer properties
$CustomerPropertyList = Get-NCCustomerPropertyList

#Create array list for table
$CustomerReport = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList

#Merge
foreach ($Customer in $CustomerList) {
    $Properties = $CustomerPropertyList | ?{$_.CustomerID -eq $Customer.customerid}
    $CustomerHashtable = [Ordered]@{}
    $Customer.psobject.properties | ?{$_.Name -ne 'customerid'} | %{$CustomerHashtable[$_.Name] = $_.Value}
    $PropertiesHashTable = [Ordered]@{}
    $Properties.psobject.properties | %{$PropertiesHashtable[$_.Name] = $_.Value}
    $ReportItem = $CustomerHashtable + $PropertiesHashTable
    $ReportItem = [PSCustomObject]$ReportItem
    $CustomerReport.Add($ReportItem) > $Null
}

#Output the report to the screen/Gridview
$CustomerReport | Out-GridView

The important parts of this example are the simple one line calls for the New-CentralConnection , Get-NCCustomerList and Get-NCCustomerPropertyList. With very little effort we can connect, retrieve the data then process into a single table for review.

Advanced PS-NCentral querying

The PS-NCentral module provides ease of access to N-Central API calls with normal verb-noun functions, but you can also perform a direct call through the internal connection class. We could replace the above function calls with these methods:

# Connect to NC
$NCSession = New-NCentralConnection -ServerFQDN $ServerFQDN -JWT $JWT

# Grab the customer list/details
$CustomerList = $NCSession.CustomerList()

# Get the customer properties
$CustomerPropertyList = $NCSession.OrganizationPropertyList()

We can get the list of all the underlying class connection methods by enumerating the members with $_NCSession | Get-Member -MemberType Method to see all 'inside' methods, which reflect the API-methods of N-Central ('http://mothership.n-able.com/dms/javadoc_ei2/com/nable/nobj/ei2/ServerEI2_PortType.html') where applicable.

Most methods have 'Overloads'. These are selected based on the parameter-pattern eg. ([String], [String]) or ([String],[Int]).

#Get the devices for customerid 100
$Customer100Devices = $NCSession.DeviceList(100)
#or
$Customer100Devices = $NCSession.DeviceList(100,$true,$false)

#Get the probes for customerid 100
$Customer100Probes = $NCSession.DeviceList(100,$false,$true)

For a list of all methods see Appendix E - All PS-Central Methods

PowerShell WebserviceProxy

In this section we'll perform the same example as above but using the native cmdlets we'll go through an example of a fully functioning cmdlet that uses native cmdlet calls.

# Define the command-line parameters to be used by the script
[CmdletBinding()]
Param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$serverHost,
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$JWT
)

Here we establish the mandatory variables we'll be using to connect, in this case the username of the automation account used, the server URI and the Java Web Token

We'll then connect using a static namespace, you can equally use the pseudo-unique namespace above.

$NWSNameSpace = "NAbleAPI"

Bind to the namespace, using the Webserviceproxy

$bindingURL = "https://" + $serverHost + "/dms2/services2/ServerEI2?wsdl"
$nws = New-Webserviceproxy $bindingURL -Namespace ($NWSNameSpace)

For many API calls a list of settings are required, in the case of the CustomerList() method we need to specify if the service organisation should be listed or not. The JavaDocs specify you have to use the EiKeyValue KeyPair type or array of EiKeyValuesList per the Javadocs, but it is simpler to create an ArrayList and add a generic hashtable Key/Pair that will be automatically cast to the EiKeyValue.

$settings = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList
$settings.Add(@{key = "listSOs"; value = "True" })

Next we wrap the steps of retrieving the Customer List and Organisation properties list with a try/catch block that exits if there is an error with retrieving the data.

#Attempt to connect
Try {
    $CustomerList = $nws.customerList("", $JWT, $Settings)
    $OrgPropertiesList = $nws.organizationPropertyList("", $JWT, $null, $false)
}

Catch {
    Write-Host Could not connect: $($_.Exception.Message)
    exit
}

We then create a hash table of all the customer properties with the Customer ID as the Key and the Properties as the value.

$OrgPropertiesHashTable = @{}
foreach ($Org in $OrgPropertiesList) {
    $CustomerOrgProps = @{}
    foreach ($p in $Org.properties) { $CustomerOrgProps[$p.label] = $p.value }
    $OrgPropertiesHashTable[$Org.customerId] = $CustomerOrgProps
}

In the next step we take create an ArrayList in preference to a simple array to increase performance on inserts, then enumerate through the customer list match a custom list of tables and join it to the properties Hash table and output it to the screen.

#Create customer report ArrayList
$CustomersReport = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList

ForEach ($Entity in $CustomerList) {
    $CustomerAssetInfo = @{}
    #Custom select the required columns, use Ordered to keep them in the order we list them in

    ForEach ($item in $Entity.items) { $CustomerAssetInfo[$item.key] = $item.Value }
    $o = [Ordered]@{
        ID                = $CustomerAssetInfo["customer.customerid"]
        Name              = $CustomerAssetInfo["customer.customername"]
        parentID          = $CustomerAssetInfo["customer.parentid"]
        RegistrationToken = $CustomerAssetInfo["customer.registrationtoken"]
    }

    #Retrieve the properties for the given customer ID
    $p = $OrgPropertiesHashTable[[int]$CustomerAssetInfo[customer.customerid]]

    #Merge the two hashtables
    $o = $o + $p

    #Cast the hashtable to a PSCustomObject
    $o = [PSCustomObject]$o

    #Add the PSCustomObject to our CustomersReport ArrayList
    $CustomersReport.Add($o) > $null
}

#Output to the screen
$CustomersReport | Out-GridView

For the complete script see Appendix C – GetAllCustomerProperties.ps1

Note that WebServiceProxy is discontinued by Microsoft in PowerShell versions after 5.1. You can find alternative code in Appendix H - WebserviceProxy Alternative

Updating a Value

A common case for updating a value would be automating the update/change of Organisation or Device properties. Examples of Organisation properties could be: tokens/keys for MSP applications deployed to devices, the customer name to pass through to a script for output or the N-Central API registration token for installation of the agent. Updating these properties is straightforward with either the web proxy or PS-NCentral cmdlets.

At time of writing the normal way for a Registration Token to be generated is through the UI, requiring an administrator to navigate to every customer and every site and click on the Get Registration Token button under Download Agent/Probe ; this will be changed in future.

If you do need to perform mass registration token updating/refreshing there is an AMP provided as a part of the InstallAgent 6 suite that has a workaround and can be found at https://github.com/AngryProgrammerInside/InstallAgent/tree/master/AMPs

PS-NCentral

In the example for PS-NCentral we'll take the Customer name from the Get-NCCustomerList and inject it into custom property called Agent – Registration Token, this is useful if we need to programmatically inject token information into files or registry settings for later use. We'll assume we already have a connection to N-Central:

$CustomerList = Get-NCCustomerList
foreach ($Customer in $CustomerList){
    Set-NCCustomerProperty -CustomerIDs $Customer.customerid -PropertyLabel "Agent - RegistrationToken" -PropertyValue $Customer.registrationtoken
}

Or if we wanted to take the customer's name and inject it into a custom property like Reporting – Customer Name to inject it into an AMP's output for easier to identify the device AMPs run across a service organization:

$CustomerList = Get-NCCustomerList

foreach ($Customer in $CustomerList){
    Set-NCCustomerProperty -CustomerIDs $Customer.customerid -PropertyLabel "Reporting – Customer Name" -PropertyValue $Customer.customername
}

An advantage of the Set-NCCustomerProperty cmdlet is that it can distinguish between the default customer properties, ie. zip/postalcode, street1, externalid, externalid2 and will use the appropriate method to update that. You can find the list of key names in the Java Docs, or refer to Appendix D – Customer Property variables.

For our example, you may have a PSA or perhaps a spreadsheet, and we want to refresh the information from that data source into customer properties. In our example we'll use a spreadsheet/CSV as our datasource, and assume we have already matched the CustomerID with the company name and we have a dataset as below:

customerid firstname lastname email
1 Claire Young Claire.Young@email.com
2 Benjamin Metcalfe Bmetacalfe@usa.com
3 Kimberly King kk@asia.com
4 Michael Mills Mmills@engineer.com
5 Anthony Jackson 008Jac@mail.com


You could then update the respective values in N-Central

$custData = Import-CSV C:\Temp\customerData.csv

foreach ($Customer in $custData){
    #Gather properties to update
    $Properties = $Customer.psobject.properties | ?{$_.Name -ne 'customerid'}

    foreach ($Property in $Properties){
        #Update the property
        Set-NCCustomerProperty -CustomerIDs $Customer.customerid -PropertyLabel $Property -PropertyValue $Property.Value
    }
}

Updating with pipelining

Another advantage of PS-NCentral is that you can easily pipeline information through and set it as a customer property, in the first example we will update the Reporting - Customer Name again except this time utilising the pipe:

Get-NCCustomerList | Set-NCCustomerProperty -PropertyLabel 'Reporting – Customer Name' -PropertyValue $_.customername

In the second example we may have a custom table from a CSV or other source that has the following properties and values:

customerid CustomerSLA
123 1H
124 4H
221 8H
233 8H
321 8H


We then have this table in a variable $CustomerProps and use it to populate a custom property called 'Reporting - Customer SLA'

Get-NCCustomerList |
Select-Object customerid, @{n="CustomerSLA"; e={$CustomerID = $_.customerid; (@($CustomerProps).where({ $_.customerID -eq $CustomerID })).CustomerSLA}} `
| Where-Object {$_.CustomerSLA} `
| % { Set-NCCustomerProperty -CustomerIDs $_.CustomerID -PropertyLabel 'Reporting – Customer SLA' -PropertyValue ($_.CustomerSLA -join ',') }

When multiple records for a customerid are found in $Customerprops all values will be added comma-separated.

The important parts of this example are the table-lookup

(@(<TableObject>).where(<LookupColumn> -eq <LookupValue>)).<ResultsColumn>

and the filter to only return objects which had values added

Where-Object {$_.<AddedCustomField>}

before setting the properties.

Updating Custom Device Properties

Another example would be where we may want to populate a Custom Device Property, in this case 'External ID' based upon the CustomerID using in a customer table $Customers

customerid ExternalID
123 78409377
124 78405890
221 78404905
233 78402984
321 38940384 
Get-NCDeviceList | `
Select-Object DeviceID, `
@{n="ExternalID"; e={$CustomerID = $_.customerid; (@($Customers).where({ $_.customerID -eq $CustomerID })).ExternalID}} | `
Where-Object {$_.ExternalID} | %{Set-NCDeviceProperty -DeviceIDs $_.DeviceID -PropertyLabel 'ExternalID' -PropertyValue ($_.ExternalID -join ',')}

Custom Property options

These options are introduced in PS-NCentral version 1.3.

Encoding

Use the -Base64 option to Encode/Decode a CustomProperty when using Set or Get. Unicode (utf16) by default, -utf8 option available.

Convert-Base64 is available as a seperate command too.

Comma-Separated Values

When a Custom Property holds a string of (unique) Comma-seperated values you can easily Add or Remove a single value with the commands:

  • Add-NCCustomerPropertyValue
  • Add-NCDevicePropertyValue
  • Remove-NCCustomerPropertyValue
  • Remove-NCDevicePropertyValue

Use Get-help <command> to see the options.

Format-properties

Sometimes not all objects in a list have the same properties. This can become an issue when using Format-Table or Output-CSV, which only use the properties of the first object in the list.

The Format-Properties cmdlet ensures all unique properties are added to all objects in a list. It is integrated in several PS-NCentral list-commands but also available as a seperate command.

PowerShell WebserviceProxy

Updating customer properties and without the PS-NCentral cmdlets can take several additional steps as PS-NCentral takes care of some busy work underneath.

Registration token injection

Let's first take the example of injecting taking the registration token from the customerList method and injecting it via the organizationPropertyModify method. As above we'll assume we have a connection $nws already and our list of customers is in the variable $CustomerList, take note of the line where gathering the value of the custom property with the id 123456789.

ForEach ($Entity in $CustomerList) {
    $CustomerAssetInfo = @{}
    ForEach ($item in $Entity.items) { $CustomerAssetInfo[$item.key] = $item.Value }
    
    #Create a custom object for the data
    $CustomerObject = [Ordered]@{
        ID                = $CustomerAssetInfo[customer.customerid]
        Name              = $CustomerAssetInfo[customer.customername]
        parentID          = $CustomerAssetInfo[customer.parentid]
        RegistrationToken = $CustomerAssetInfo[customer.registrationtoken]
    }

    #Skip any Registration tokens that are null/empty
    if ($null -eq $CustomerObject.RegistrationToken -or  -eq $CustomerObject.RegistrationToken) {continue}
    
    #Gather the property value for the specific property ID
    $CustomerProperty = ($OrgPropertiesList | ?{$_.customerId -eq $CustomerObject.ID}).properties | ?{$_.propertyid -eq 123456789}
    $CustomerProperty.value = $CustomerObject.RegistrationToken
    
    #Create a new OrganizationProperties object and populate it
    $ModOrgProperties = New-Object $NWSNameSpace.OrganizationProperties
    $ModOrgProperties.customerId = $CustomerObject.ID
    $ModOrgProperties.customerIdSpecified = $true
    $ModOrgProperties.properties = $CustomerProperty

    #Inject the property
    $nws.organizationPropertyModify("",$JWT,$ModOrgProperties)
}

Gather organization property ID

While the above code works in updating the specific customer org property, one must first interrogate the properties and their associated values in advance. While this is fine for scripts where you will always be updating the same propertyid , you may wish to implement a function that takes care of searching and retrieving the propertyid.

PS-NCentral cmdlets use a class to retrieve this, we can convert it to a function for our use:

function Get-OrganizationPropertyID(
    [Int]$OrganizationID,
    [String]$PropertyName,
    [String]$JWT,
    [System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol]$NcConnection){

    ## Returns 0 (zero) if not found.
    $OrganizationPropertyID = 0
    $results = $null
    Try{
        #Gets the organization and all custom properties
        $results = $NcConnection.OrganizationPropertyList("", $JWT, $OrganizationID, $false)
    }
    Catch {
        $_.ErrorHandler
    }

    #Search through all properties and match the one with the same name
    ForEach ($OrganizationProperty in $results.properties){
        If($OrganizationProperty.label -eq $PropertyName){
            $OrganizationPropertyID = $OrganizationProperty.PropertyID
        }
    }
    Return $OrganizationPropertyID
}

We can then use the function to gather the property ID

#Get the property id for org 123 with the property name Agent – Registration token
Get-OrganizationPropertyID -OrganizationID 123 -PropertyName "Agent - Registration Token" -JWT $JWT -NcConnection $nws

The author notes that at time of writing, the propertyid appears to be the same for all customers/sites created at the same hierarchical level (System/SO/Customer/Site). For cases where you have multiple service organizations with the same named custom property created at the SO level they should be a different propertyid.

For single SO deployments where the custom properties are created at the SO level they are globally unique, you could also create a lookup table for optimising your code to avoid performing a propertyid lookup for each update of a custom property, though we won't be covering that in this document.

Update customer property

Updating a customer property such as the contact details or externalid values is done through the customerModify method, the method is called with the form:

customerModify([string]username,[string]password,[ListEiKeyValue]settings)

You may note in the PS-NCentral example it can update one property, either custom or customer, in a single call; whereas the KeyValue list can contain one or all of the customer values shown in Appendix D – Customer Property variables to be updated in a single call.

We'll use an expanded data set from the PS-NCentral as we have more mandatory fields customername , customerid and parentid that are otherwise looked up by an internal helper function in PS-NCentral:

parentid customerid customername firstname lastname email
50 1 Contoso Claire Young Claire.Young@email.com
50 2 Volcano Coffee Benjamin Metcalfe Bmetacalfe@usa.com
50 3 Northwind Traders Kimberly King kk@asia.com
50 4 WW Importers Michael Mills Mmills@engineer.com
50 5 Blue Yonder Anthony Jackson 008Jac@mail.com

You can retrieve the mandatory fields mentioned in the above table by using the CustomerList() covered previously.

In the below example the data is imported, then we generate the appropriate KeyValue array and assuming use the same $nwsconnection variable and $NWSNameSpace from previous examples to connect and update the modified keys.

$custData = Import-CSV C:\Temp\customerData.csv
foreach ($Customer in $custData){
    #Gather properties to update
    $Properties = $Customer.psobject.properties
    #Create an Arraylist of HashTables to update
    $ModifiedKeyList = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList
    $Properties | ForEach-Object{
        $KeyPair = @{}
        $KeyPair.key = $_.Name
        $KeyPair.value = $_.Value
        $ModifiedKeyList.Add($KeyPair)
    }
    $nws.customerModify("",$JWT,$ModifiedKeyList)
}

Add a new Customer

Not every cmdlet is currently available in PS-NCentral, one such cmdlet that could be useful is the automation of the creation of customer accounts. In the below example we use the $nws connection from before and pass through a hashtable of some of the customer properties in in Appendix D – Customer Property variables, note there are two required fields: customername and parentid

Combining the hashtable $newcustomer with the $JWT and $nws to the cmdlet it will create the customer. It will return the new CustomerID value once the job is completed.

$newcustomer = @{
    customername = "New Customer"
    parentid = "50"
    firstname = "john"
    lastname = "doe"
    email = "john.doe@contoso.com"
    city = "Melbourne"
    telephone = "0312345678"
    country = "AU"
}

function Add-NCCustomer(
    [Hashtable]$CustomerTable,
    [String]$JWT,
    [System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol]$NcConnection) {
    $CustomerAttributeList = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList
    foreach ($key in $CustomerTable.Keys){
        $setting = @{key = $key; value = $CustomerTable[$key]}
        $CustomerAttributeList.Add($setting) > $null
    }
    $NcConnection.customerAdd("", $JWT, $CustomerAttributeList)
}

Add-NCCustomer -CustomerTable $newcustomer -JWT $JWT -NcConnection $nws

At time of writing with PS-NCentral version 1.2 it is possible to use the CustomerAdd() method as it is exists inside the core class object now. While there is currently no Powershell function to call this, create a customer with it in the following way:

#Connect to NC
$NCSession = New-NCentralConnection -ServerFQDN n-central.myserver.com -JWT $JWT
$ParentId = 50
$NewCustomerAttributes = @{
    firstname = "john"
    lastname = "doe"
    email = "john.doe@contoso.com"
    city = "Melbourne"
    telephone = "0312345678"
    country = "AU"
}

$NCSession.CustomerAdd("NewCustomerName",$ParentId,$NewCustomerAttributes)

As of version 1.6 you can add all fields (including the mandatory customername and parentid) directly to $NewCustomerAttributes and use this as a single parameter for the CustomerAdd() method.

Similar to the UserAdd-command documented below it is also possible to import a csv with multiple customers, which has the fieldnames as the columnheader. The following command can be used to create a csv with all possible (standard) headers first.

$NCSession.CustomerValidation -join "," | set-content .\CustomerTemplate.csv

You can also create the customer without attributes and fill them out later if you wish by simply calling

$NCSession.CustomerAdd("NewCustomerName",$ParentId)`

The CustomerAdd function will return the value for the new Customer ID, you can then use that Id to perform further automation if needed.

Add a new User

Not every cmdlet is currently available in PS-NCentral, one such cmdlet that could be useful is the automation of the creation of user accounts.

At time of writing with PS-NCentral version 1.6 it is possible to use the CustomerAdd() method as it is exists inside the core class object now. While there is currently no Powershell function to call this, create a user with it in the following way:

#Connect to NC
$NCSession = New-NCentralConnection -ServerFQDN n-central.myserver.com -JWT $JWT
$NewUserAttributes = @{
    email = "john.doe@contoso.com"
    customerID = 50
    password = "ComplexityCompliant"
    firstname = "John"
    lastname = "Doe"
}

$NCSession.UserAdd($NewUserAttributes)

Above are the required attributes only. To see the additional attributes you can type

$NCSession.UserValidation

It is also possible to import a csv with multiple accounts, which has the fieldnames as the columnheader. The command above can be used to create a csv with all possible headers first.

$_ncsession.UserValidation -join "," | set-content .\UserTemplate.csv

After modifying the CSV and saving it as AccountsList.csv you can import

#Connect to NC
$NCSession = New-NCentralConnection -ServerFQDN n-central.myserver.com -JWT $JWT
#Import list of accounts
Import-CSV C:\Temp\AccountsList.csv | $NCSession.UserAdd($_)

The UserAdd function will return the value for the new User ID, you can then use that Id to perform further automation if needed.

It will return -1 when the addition fails. Make sure the email is unique across the system (even if deleted) and the password meets the complexity requirements.

Note: It is not possible to change or add information for the user-account by API after creation.

Appendix A – N-Central Web Service members

Name MemberType
accessGroupAddCompleted Event
accessGroupGetCompleted Event
accessGroupListCompleted Event
acknowledgeNotificationCompleted Event
activeIssuesListCompleted Event
customerAddCompleted Event
customerDeleteCompleted Event
customerListChildrenCompleted Event
customerListCompleted Event
customerModifyCompleted Event
deviceAssetInfoExportDeviceCompleted Event
deviceAssetInfoExportDeviceWithSettingsCompleted Event
deviceGetCompleted Event
deviceGetStatusCompleted Event
deviceListCompleted Event
devicePropertyListCompleted Event
devicePropertyModifyCompleted Event
Disposed Event
jobStatusListCompleted Event
lastExportResetCompleted Event
organizationPropertyListCompleted Event
organizationPropertyModifyCompleted Event
psaCreateCustomTicketCompleted Event
psaCredentialsValidateCompleted Event
psaGetCustomTicketCompleted Event
psaReopenCustomTicketCompleted Event
psaResolveCustomTicketCompleted Event
SOAddCompleted Event
taskPauseMonitoringCompleted Event
taskResumeMonitoringCompleted Event
userAddCompleted Event
userRoleAddCompleted Event
userRoleGetCompleted Event
userRoleListCompleted Event
versionInfoGetCompleted Event
Abort Method
accessGroupAdd Method
accessGroupAddAsync Method
accessGroupGet Method
accessGroupGetAsync Method
accessGroupList Method
accessGroupListAsync Method
acknowledgeNotification Method
acknowledgeNotificationAsync Method
activeIssuesList Method
activeIssuesListAsync Method
BeginaccessGroupAdd Method
BeginaccessGroupGet Method
BeginaccessGroupList Method
BeginacknowledgeNotification Method
BeginactiveIssuesList Method
BegincustomerAdd Method
BegincustomerDelete Method
BegincustomerList Method
BegincustomerListChildren Method
BegincustomerModify Method
BegindeviceAssetInfoExportDevice Method
BegindeviceAssetInfoExportDeviceWithSettings Method
BegindeviceGet Method
BegindeviceGetStatus Method
BegindeviceList Method
BegindevicePropertyList Method
BegindevicePropertyModify Method
BeginjobStatusList Method
BeginlastExportReset Method
BeginorganizationPropertyList Method
BeginorganizationPropertyModify Method
BeginpsaCreateCustomTicket Method
BeginpsaCredentialsValidate Method
BeginpsaGetCustomTicket Method
BeginpsaReopenCustomTicket Method
BeginpsaResolveCustomTicket Method
BeginSOAdd Method
BegintaskPauseMonitoring Method
BegintaskResumeMonitoring Method
BeginuserAdd Method
BeginuserRoleAdd Method
BeginuserRoleGet Method
BeginuserRoleList Method
BeginversionInfoGet Method
CancelAsync Method
CreateObjRef Method
customerAdd Method
customerAddAsync Method
customerDelete Method
customerDeleteAsync Method
customerList Method
customerListAsync Method
customerListChildren Method
customerListChildrenAsync Method
customerModify Method
customerModifyAsync Method
deviceAssetInfoExportDevice Method
deviceAssetInfoExportDeviceAsync Method
deviceAssetInfoExportDeviceWithSettings Method
deviceAssetInfoExportDeviceWithSettingsAsync Method
deviceGet Method
deviceGetAsync Method
deviceGetStatus Method
deviceGetStatusAsync Method
deviceList Method
deviceListAsync Method
devicePropertyList Method
devicePropertyListAsync Method
devicePropertyModify Method
devicePropertyModifyAsync Method
Discover Method
Dispose Method
EndaccessGroupAdd Method
EndaccessGroupGet Method
EndaccessGroupList Method
EndacknowledgeNotification Method
EndactiveIssuesList Method
EndcustomerAdd Method
EndcustomerDelete Method
EndcustomerList Method
EndcustomerListChildren Method
EndcustomerModify Method
EnddeviceAssetInfoExportDevice Method
EnddeviceAssetInfoExportDeviceWithSettings Method
EnddeviceGet Method
EnddeviceGetStatus Method
EnddeviceList Method
EnddevicePropertyList Method
EnddevicePropertyModify Method
EndjobStatusList Method
EndlastExportReset Method
EndorganizationPropertyList Method
EndorganizationPropertyModify Method
EndpsaCreateCustomTicket Method
EndpsaCredentialsValidate Method
EndpsaGetCustomTicket Method
EndpsaReopenCustomTicket Method
EndpsaResolveCustomTicket Method
EndSOAdd Method
EndtaskPauseMonitoring Method
EndtaskResumeMonitoring Method
EnduserAdd Method
EnduserRoleAdd Method
EnduserRoleGet Method
EnduserRoleList Method
EndversionInfoGet Method
Equals Method
GetHashCode Method
GetLifetimeService Method
GetType Method
InitializeLifetimeService Method
jobStatusList Method
jobStatusListAsync Method
lastExportReset Method
lastExportResetAsync Method
organizationPropertyList Method
organizationPropertyListAsync Method
organizationPropertyModify Method
organizationPropertyModifyAsync Method
psaCreateCustomTicket Method
psaCreateCustomTicketAsync Method
psaCredentialsValidate Method
psaCredentialsValidateAsync Method
psaGetCustomTicket Method
psaGetCustomTicketAsync Method
psaReopenCustomTicket Method
psaReopenCustomTicketAsync Method
psaResolveCustomTicket Method
psaResolveCustomTicketAsync Method
SOAdd Method
SOAddAsync Method
taskPauseMonitoring Method
taskPauseMonitoringAsync Method
taskResumeMonitoring Method
taskResumeMonitoringAsync Method
ToString Method
userAdd Method
userAddAsync Method
userRoleAdd Method
userRoleAddAsync Method
userRoleGet Method
userRoleGetAsync Method
userRoleList Method
userRoleListAsync Method
versionInfoGet Method
versionInfoGetAsync Method
AllowAutoRedirect Property
ClientCertificates Property
ConnectionGroupName Property
Container Property
CookieContainer Property
Credentials Property
EnableDecompression Property
PreAuthenticate Property
Proxy Property
RequestEncoding Property
Site
SoapVersion Property
Timeout Property
UnsafeAuthenticatedConnectionSharing Property
Url Property
UseDefaultCredentials Property
UserAgent Property

Appendix B - PS-NCentral cmdlets

Command Synopsis
Get-NCAccessGroupList Returns the list of AccessGroups at the specified CustomerID level.
Get-NCActiveIssuesList Returns the Active Issues on the CustomerID-level and below.
Get-NCCustomerList Returns a list of all customers and their data. ChildrenOnly when CustomerID is specified.
Get-NCCustomerPropertyList Returns a list of all Custom-Properties for the selected CustomerID(s).
Get-NCDeviceID Returns the DeviceID(s) for the given DeviceName(s). Case Sensitive, No Wildcards.
Get-NCDeviceInfo Returns the General details for the DeviceID(s).
Get-NCDeviceList Returns the Managed Devices for the given CustomerID(s) and Sites below.
Get-NCDeviceLocal Returns the DeviceID, CustomerID and some more Info for the Local Computer.
Get-NCDeviceObject Returns a Device and all asset-properties as an object.
Get-NCDevicePropertyList Returns the Custom Properties of the DeviceID(s).
Get-NCDevicePropertyListFilter Returns the Custom Properties of the Devices within the Filter(s).
Get-NCDeviceStatus Returns the Services for the DeviceID(s).
Get-NCHelp Shows a list of available PS-NCentral commands and the synopsis.
Get-NCJobStatusList Returns the Scheduled Jobs on the CustomerID-level and below.
Get-NCProbeList Returns the Probes for the given CustomerID(s).
Get-NCServiceOrganizationList Returns a list of all ServiceOrganizations and their data.
Get-NCTimeOut Returns the max. time in seconds to wait for data returning from a (Synchronous) NCentral API-request.
Get-NCUserRoleList Returns the list of Roles at the specified CustomerID level.
NcConnected Checks or initiates the NCentral connection.
New-NCentralConnection Connect to the NCentral server.
Set-NCCustomerProperty Fills the specified property(name) for the given CustomerID(s).
Set-NCDeviceProperty Fills the Custom Property for the DeviceID(s).
Set-NCTimeOut Sets the max. time in seconds to wait for data returning from a (Synchronous) NCentral API-request.

Appendix C – GetAllCustomerProperties.ps1

# Define the command-line parameters to be used by the script
[CmdletBinding()]
Param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$serverHost,
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$JWT
)
# Generate a pseudo-unique namespace to use with the New-WebServiceProxy
$NWSNameSpace = NAble + ([guid]::NewGuid()).ToString().Substring(25)

# Bind to the namespace, using the Webserviceproxy
$bindingURL = "https://" + $serverHost + "/dms2/services2/ServerEI2?wsdl"
$nws = New-Webserviceproxy $bindingURL -Namespace ($NWSNameSpace)

# Set up and execute the query
$Settings = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList
$Settings.Add(@{key = "listSOs"; value = "True" })

#Attempt to connect
Try {
    $CustomerList = $nws.customerList("", $JWT, $Settings)
    $OrgPropertiesList = $nws.organizationPropertyList("", $JWT, $null, $false)
}
Catch {
    Write-Host Could not connect: $($_.Exception.Message)
    exit
}

$OrgPropertiesHashTable = @{}
foreach ($Org in $OrgPropertiesList) {
    $CustomerOrgProps = @{}
    foreach ($p in $Org.properties) { $CustomerOrgProps[$p.label] = $p.value }
    $OrgPropertiesHashTable[$Org.customerId] = $CustomerOrgProps

}

#Create customer report ArrayList
$CustomersReport = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList
ForEach ($Entity in $CustomerList) {
    $CustomerAssetInfo = @{}
  
    #Custom select the required columns, us Ordered to keep them in the order we list them in
    ForEach ($item in $Entity.items) { $CustomerAssetInfo[$item.key] = $item.Value }
    $o = [Ordered]@{
        ID                = $CustomerAssetInfo[customer.customerid]
        Name              = $CustomerAssetInfo[customer.customername]
        parentID          = $CustomerAssetInfo[customer.parentid]
        RegistrationToken = $CustomerAssetInfo[customer.registrationtoken]
    }

    #Retrieve the properties for the given customer ID
    $p = $OrgPropertiesHashTable[[int]$CustomerAssetInfo[customer.customerid]]

    #Merge the two hashtables
    $o = $o + $p
    #Cast the hashtable to a PSCustomObject
    $o = [PSCustomObject]$o
    
    #Add the PSCustomObject to our CustomersReport ArrayLIst
    $CustomersReport.Add($o) > $null
}

#Output to the screen
$CustomersReport | Out-GridView

Appendix D – Customer Property variables

These are the default properties returned in the customerlist. After connecting using PS-NCentral this list can also be found in the customervalidation property.

$_ncsession.customervalidation
  • postalcode - (Value) Customer's zip/ postal code.
  • street1 - (Value) Address line 1 for the customer. Maximum of 100 characters.
  • street2 - (Value) Address line 2 for the customer. Maximum of 100 characters.
  • city - (Value) Customer's city.
  • stateprov - (Value) Customer's state/ province.
  • phone - (Value) Phone number of the customer.
  • country - (Value) Customer's country. Two character country code, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO\_3166-1\_alpha-2 for a list of country codes.
  • externalid - (Value) An external reference id.
  • externalid2 - (Value) A second external reference id.
  • contactfirstname - (Value) Customer contact's first name.
  • contactlastname - (Value) Customer contact's last name.
  • contacttitle - (Value) Customer contact's title.
  • contactdepartment - (Value) Customer contact's department.
  • contactphonenumber - (Value) Customer contact's telephone number.
  • contactext - (Value) Customer contact's telephone extension.
  • contactemail - (Value) Customer contact's email. Maximum of 100 characters.
  • registrationtoken - (ReadOnly) For agent/probe-install validation.
  • licensetype - (Value) The default license type of new devices for the customer. Must be Professional or Essential. Default is Essential.

Appendix E - All PS-Central Methods

Name
AccessGroupGet
AccessGroupList
ActiveIssuesList
Connect
CustomerAdd
CustomerList
CustomerListChildren
CustomerModify
DeviceAssetInfoExportDevice
DeviceAssetInfoExportDeviceWithSettings
DeviceGet
DeviceGetAppliance
DeviceGetStatus
DeviceList
DevicePropertyID
DevicePropertyList
DevicePropertyModify
ErrorHandler
GetHashCode
JobStatusList
OrganizationPropertyID
OrganizationPropertyList
OrganizationPropertyModify
ProcessData1
ProcessData2
UserAdd
UserRoleGet
UserRoleList

Appendix F - Common Error Codes

# Connection-error (https): There was an error downloading ..

# 1012 - Thrown when mandatory settings are not present in "settings".

# 2001 - Required parameter is null - Thrown when null values are entered as inputs.

# 2001 - Unsupported version - Thrown when a version not specified above is entered as input.

# 2001 - Thrown when a bad username-password combination is input, or no PSA integration has been set up.

# 2100 - Thrown when invalid MSP N-central credentials are input.

# 2100 - Thrown when MSP-N-central credentials with MFA are used.

# 3010 - Maximum number of users reached.

# 3012 - Specified email address is already assigned to another user.

# 3014 - Creation of a user for the root customer (CustomerID 1) is not permitted.

# 3014 - When adding a user, must not be an LDAP user.

# 3020 - Account is locked

# 3022 - Customer/Site already exists.

# 3026 - Customer name length has exceeded 120 characters.

# 4000 - SessionID not found or has expired.

# 5000 - An unexpected exception occurred.

# 5000 - Query failed.

# 5000 - javax.validation.ValidationException: Unable to validate UI session --> often an expired password, even when using JWT.

# 9910 - Service Organization already exists.

Appendix G - Issue Status

These codes can be used with the -IssueStatus option of the Get-NCActiveIssuesList command. In v1.3 code 1 and 5 naming was incorrect (swapped)

1	No Data
2	Stale
3	Normal        --> Nothing returned
4	Warning
5	Failed
6	Misconfigured
7	Disconnected

11	Unacknowledged
12	Acknowledged

The API does not allow combinations of these filters.

  • 1-7 are reflected in the notifstate-property.
  • 11 and 12 relate to the properties numberofactivenotification and numberofacknowledgednotification.

Appendix H - WebserviceProxy Alternative

The command WebServiceProxy is discontinued by Microsoft in PowerShell versions after 5.1. Below you can find an example of retrieving data with Invoke-RestMethod and compare it to the use of WebserviceProxy.

## Retrieving data from N-Central by SOAP-API

# Settings
$Servername = "ServerFQDN"
$UserName = "API-User-noMFA"    ## Or "" when using JWT
$Password = "P@ssword"          ## Or JWT (preferred)

# Function for retrieving data without Webserviceproxy.
# Works for most (but not all!!) Methods in 
#      https://mothership.n-able.com/dms/javadoc_ei2/com/nable/nobj/ei2/ServerEI2_PortType.html
# Note: Complex passwords may contain characters that invalidate the SOAP-request.
Function GetNCData([String]$APIMethod,[String]$Username,[String]$PassOrJWT,$KeyPairs){

    ## Process Keys
    $MyKeys=""
    ForEach($KeyPair in $KeyPairs){ 
        $MyKeys = $MyKeys + ("
        <ei2:settings>
            <ei2:key>{0}</ei2:key>
            <ei2:value>{1}</ei2:value>
        </ei2:settings>" -f ($KeyPair.Key),($KeyPair.Value))
    }
    
    ## Build SoapRequest (last line must be left-lined for terminating @")
    $MySoapRequest =(@"
    <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:ei2="http://ei2.nobj.nable.com/">
    <soap:Header/>
    <soap:Body>
        <ei2:{0}>
            <ei2:username>{1}</ei2:username>
            <ei2:password>{2}</ei2:password>{3}
        </ei2:{0}>
    </soap:Body>
    </soap:Envelope>
"@ -f $APIMethod, $Username, $PassOrJWT, $MyKeys)
    #Write-Host $MySoapRequest       ## For Debug/Educational purpose
    
    ## Request DataSet
    $FullResponse = $null
    Try{
            $FullResponse = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $BindingURL -body $MySoapRequest -Method POST
        }
    Catch{
            Write-Host ("Could not connect: {0}." -f $_.Exception.Message )
            exit
        }
        
    ## Process Returned DataSet
    $ReturnClass = $FullResponse.envelope.body | Get-Member -MemberType Property
    $ReturnProperty = $ReturnClass[0].Name
            
    Return  $FullResponse.envelope.body.$ReturnProperty.return
}
# End of Function GetNCData

#Start of Main Script
# Extract local configuration Info.
$ApplianceConfig = ("{0}\N-able Technologies\Windows Agent\config\ApplianceConfig.xml" -f ${Env:ProgramFiles(x86)})
# Get appliance id
$ApplianceXML = [xml](Get-Content -Path $ApplianceConfig)
$ApplianceID = $ApplianceXML.ApplianceConfig.ApplianceID

# Prepare Connection
$BindingURL = ("https://{0}/dms2/services2/ServerEI2?wsdl" -f $ServerName)

## Add one or more keypairs to the array, depending on method parameter needs.
$KeyPairs = @()
$KeyPair = [PSObject]@{Key='applianceID'; Value=$ApplianceID;}
$KeyPairs += $KeyPair

## Pre Powershell 7 : Method using WebserviceProxy
#$Connection = New-Webserviceproxy $BindingURL

# Get data from N-Central. Old and New line for comparison and easy conversion of existing scripts.
#$rc = $Connection.deviceGet($UserName, $Password, $KeyPairs)
$rc = GetNCData 'deviceGet' $UserName $Password $KeyPairs

# Extract the Customer-ID and display.
$CustomerID = ($rc.info | where-object {$_.key -eq "device.customerid"}).value
$CustomerID

Credits

Special Thanks go to the following Partners and Community Members for their contributions to the NC-API-Documentation

  • David Brooks of Premier Technology Solutions
  • Adriaan Sluis of Tosch for PS-NCentral and notes
  • Joshua Bennet of Impact Networking for notes on EiKeyValue usage

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