Flash Support Change in Chrome 69 - coming on Sept. 4th, 2018

[mmajerus6]

I would like to understand how to best manage through the continual changes by Chrome in how it handles Flash content including the Dispatch Console and the SFM Designer rendering?

On Sept. 4th, the way Flash is supported in Chrome will change with Chrome 69. According to several reputable articles, users will have to manually enable this each and every time they open the DC.

Since this is a change which impacts end users of ServiceMax, I am wondering if there are any strategies recommended by ServiceMax Support and other Customer's strategies for managing this change? Is there a SMax Community communication in the works?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08/chrome-69-will-take-the-next-step-to-killing-flash-roll-out-...

ServiceMax Knowledge​ Lisa Mercer​ Brittany Taylor​

[Nicole_Guzzo]

GEORGE PIPER​ Marie Coon​ Do you have any feedback for Michael regarding manually enabling Flash each and every time they open the DC? Can you please weigh in?

Also @mentioning Mayhul Jain​ since you're king of the dispatch console, and you might have some insight into this?

Thanks all!!

Lisa Mercer​

[mayhul]

Thanks Michael Majerus​ for the comment.  Yes, we are aware of this change and our engineering team is performing tests on this as we speak.  We expect to wrap these up by end of this week and publish a communication by early next week.

[mmajerus6]

Thank you Mayhul Jain​. With this being only 11 days away and with international holidays in between, we will have a very short time-frame to socialize and prepare our global users for a change. Please let us know as soon as possible. Thank you!

Lisa Mercer​ Brittany Taylor​

[Nicole_Guzzo]

See this document for information on this upcoming change!

Google Chrome Version 69 Settings

[george_mullins]

We had issue today with user upgrade to Chrome v69 that disabled Flash.  I found the article below that steps through disabling "Enable Ephemeral Flash Permissions" that allows Flash to load as it did before.  This is working for us for now.

chrome v69.0.3497.81 flash settings - Super User

[mmajerus6]

Thank you George Mullins​! I'm going to test this today and socialize with our business.

[lisa_mercer]

Flint Chandler​  Thought this may be of interest to you.

[lisa_mercer]

Thanks for sharing this, George Mullins​

[nkatoros]

Disabling Ephemeral Flash in settings worked for our dispatchers.  Chrome 69 now remembers the Flash preference set to Allow and users don't need to reset it every time.

[fchandler]

Lisa Mercer​ This looks perfect. I'll have some people test it out and see where the results land us.

We built a plugin for chrome to populate the trusted flash sites on launch but were having concerns about how to deploy it across our user base so this is a much easier option.

[richard_lewis]

Hi Michael Majerus , have you considered using Chrome for Business? This will allow you to prevent the auto upgrade that often causes bugs/changes like this to be automatically pushed to all users. You can then control the upgrade process and push out upgrades when a chrome version is tested and approved. We haven’t used it but have posited it as a solution to this problem.

Regards, Richard

[mmajerus6]

Thanks Richard Lewis​. We just became a "Google house" about a year ago and I bet we have Chrome for business but haven't configured this feature yet. We should definitely look into this internally.

I am hoping that ServiceMax will more closely monitor and communicate out in advance any potential impacts from the platforms on which they are dependent- Salesforce and Google Chrome. Ideally, these impacts would be mitigated and the solutions communicated well in advance to minimize any service disruption. Of course each individual customer can scramble to find our own work-arounds like George Mullins​ found, but really this should have come from SMax weeks before the Chrome update. Thanks again for the Chrome for business tip!

Lisa Mercer​  Brittany Taylor​  ServiceMax Knowledge​  bio-rad​   google chrome​  flash​

[lisa_mercer]

Michael Majerus​  I'll definitely share this feedback in my regular communications with the teams that would have input/control over this. 

[jmsilveira]

There are some other options you could consider:

1. It is possible to have your administrator add URLs to the Allow list for Flash. This is how we manage it. You need to have them add the url of the DC.

2. As an early warning system, we have some IT associates supporting ServiceMax run the beta version of Chrome so we can catch new 'features'. I think beta is about 2-4 weeks ahead of the official release.

[mmajerus6]

Hello Jeff Silveira​. Thanks for the tip. I had added the URLs to the Allow list in the past, but I thought that with Chrome 69 this did not work anymore? Can you confirm if this works for you after the update?

[jmsilveira]

Hi Michael,

I am using Version 70.0.3538.22 (Official Build) beta (64-bit) and I just verified it is still working.

Regards,

Jeff

[angel_estremera]

The Ephemeral Flash flag is gone on chrome v71.

[mirianherold]

Angel, we see the same that the flash is gone:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/9zbnpy/psa_enable_ephemeral_flash_permissions_flag_is/

I am going to be opening a support ticket...as my users are experiencing challenges as chrome updates on their computers.