Technical bulletin — Impact of Adobe Flash end of life on TrueSight App Visibility Manager

Update: December 9, 2020

BMC has tested Flash-based capabilities with the HARMAN Packaged Browser application—Electron/Chromium version. For updates regarding Limited Support, see "Alternatives for customers who want to continue to use the Flash-based BMC products."

Adobe announced the end of development and distribution of Adobe Flash Player by the end of the year 2020. Flash-based capabilities will no longer work after December 31, 2020.

Refer to this topic for the answers to the commonly-asked questions.

How can I find out if I am impacted by the end of life of Adobe Flash?

If you are using a TrueSight App Visibility Manager 11.3.03 or earlier with .NET or JAVA agents, you will no longer be able to view the diagnostic data using the trace details to access the application flow and code level information through the Presentation Server's TrueSight console. For more information, see KA article - Does TrueSight App Visibility and TrueSight Synthetic Monitoring need Adobe Flash? Open link

Is there an impact on App Visibility Portal, Collector, and Proxy?

There is no impact on App Visibility Portal, Collector, and Proxy components.

Is there an impact on TrueSight Synthetic?

There is no impact on TrueSight Synthetic.

Is there an impact on BMC Real End User Experience Monitoring?

Yes. For details, see Technical bulletin — Impact of Adobe Flash end of life on BMC Real End User Experience Monitoring Software Edition.

When does the limited support for TrueSight App Visibility Manager end?

The limited support for TrueSight App Visibility Management ends on December 31, 2021. For more information, see EOL Customer Communication AppVis Announcement. Open link

Alternatives for customers who want to continue to use the Flash-based BMC products

HARMAN International Packaged Browser solution

HARMAN International has an exclusive agreement with Adobe to provide extended licensing and support agreements for the enterprise Adobe Flash Player until the end of 2023. For details, go to https://services.harman.com/partners/adobe Open link .

BMC Software provides Limited Support for Adobe Flash-based capabilities in BMC products when used in combination with the HARMAN Packaged Browser application—Electron/Chromium version. Limited Support is provided temporarily until Dec 31, 2021, to cover the time period until customers upgrade to the latest BMC product version that has replaced the Flash-based capabilities.

Adobe Enterprise Enablement for legacy browser versions

Important

The ability to run Adobe Flash Player depends upon the browser vendor's support. Running BMC Software products with outdated browser versions requires you to turn off automatic updates. This approach should be carefully considered and should be in alignment with your company's security group recommendations.

With Adobe Flash Player 32.0 Enterprise Enablement, companies can allow Flash Player content to be loaded from a set of trusted URLs by performing these actions:

To allow Flash to run for a BMC product, in a mms.cfg file, enable the AllowListURLPattern option and add the list of trusted URLs as follows:
Example AllowListPattern configuration
EnableAllowList=1
AllowListUrlPattern=http://<TSIM-Server-FQDN>
AllowListUrlPattern=https://<TSIM-Server-FQDN>
AllowListUrlPattern=http://<MidtierServer>:<port>
AllowListUrlPattern=https://<MidtierServer>:<port>
For details about the AllowListUrlPattern options, the location of the mms.cfg file for different platforms, and other recommendations from Adobe, see the Adobe Flash Player 32.0 Administration Guide .
Push the mms.cfg file to all browsers that need to continue to use Flash.
Prevent automatic updates of newer browser versions that will not allow Flash Player to load.
For information about Flash Player automatic updates, go to https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/flash-player-background-updates.html .

BMC Software has validated the Flash Player will continue to run with Flash Player Enterprise Enablement on these browser versions:

Tested browser version	Vendor support
Microsoft Internet Explorer 11	https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/update-adobe-flash-support
Mozilla Firefox 83	https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/end-support-adobe-flash
Google Chrome 86	https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7084871?hl=en