Missing the tail end of your question, but if you're asking how we reconcile agents coming back online, the manual CSV export method you're stuck with is precisely the laggy state problem everyone's circling. The events feed is the answer, but the real gotcha isn't the subscription itself.
It's that the reconnection event often fires *before* the platform's own tag-clearing logic runs. So your external system thinks the agent is back, but the 'dormant' tag might linger for minutes. If your asset management system acts on that tag state, you get conflicting truths.
You need to treat the vendor's tag as an eventually consistent field, not a source of truth. Your event-driven update is the truth; the tag is just a delayed echo. Build logic to ignore it after you've received the event.
Data over dogma.
Yeah, the manual CSV export is what I'm stuck with too, it just doesn't scale.
> the real-time events feed is the answer
That's super helpful. I've been focused on building reports, not listening for events. So you treat the event as the truth and just ignore the tag lag? That makes sense.
We use a SaaS ticketing system, so I'm wondering if I could use the event feed to automatically resolve or update tickets, instead of just creating them. Has anyone tried that?
Absolutely, you can use the event feed for ticket resolution. The pattern we implemented uses the `AgentReconnectionEvent` to trigger a webhook to our ticketing system's API, searching for an open ticket tied to that agent's hostname and transitioning it to a resolved state.
The key nuance is ensuring idempotency. Your ticketing system might receive the same reconnection event more than once if the platform's event feed has at-least-once delivery. Your integration logic needs to check the ticket's current state before attempting a transition to avoid errors. Also, as others noted, you might want to embed a short delay before resolution to allow for the agent's full initialization, or include a link in the resolution comment for a post-reconnection health check report.
—BJ
The idempotency point is critical. We implemented a small state table in our workflow orchestration tool to track processed event IDs, which prevents duplicate API calls to the ticketing system. This also provides an audit trail.
A related caveat with the webhook approach is that the `AgentReconnectionEvent` doesn't guarantee the agent successfully received its policy. We've seen cases where the agent connects, fires the event, but then immediately goes dormant again due to a policy fetch failure. Relying solely on the event for ticket closure can create a loop. Our logic now waits for a subsequent successful check-in event before resolving the ticket, which adds a layer of validation.
Data doesn't lie, but folks sometimes do.
The battery life concern is real, but it's usually a red herring. Most endpoint agents already have exponential backoff baked into their retry logic, so tightening the schedule from, say, 60 minutes to 30 only affects the initial window after disconnection. It doesn't cause perpetual rapid-fire attempts.
The network congestion point is more valid, but you're fighting the wrong battle. The real congestion isn't from retries, it's from the inevitable flood of synchronized updates when a whole sales team hits the office Wi-Fi. That's a downstream problem you manage with queueing on your listener side and batching updates.
My helpdesk SaaS doesn't have specific settings because it shouldn't. It's a data consumer, not the source of truth. Your agent platform should handle the reconnection logic, and your helpdesk system should react to the state change event, not try to orchestrate it. If you're trying to tweak retry schedules inside a ticketing tool, your architecture is backwards.
—davidr
Yeah, that point about the ticketing system being just a data consumer makes so much sense. I was getting lost in trying to make *our* helpdesk system manage the agent state, and that's definitely backwards.
But this feels like a classic SaaS integration headache. If the agent platform's reconnection event can fire before the agent is actually ready, and your helpdesk is just reacting to that event, aren't you still stuck with a broken loop sometimes? Like, a ticket gets resolved automatically, but the asset is still broken. Do you just accept that and handle it with separate health checks?
That's a solid worry about the broken loop. We've used a two-stage check to avoid it. The event triggers a "pending resolution" state in the ticketing system, not an immediate close. Then a separate, simple API call runs a few minutes later to verify the agent's last check-in time is recent and matches a successful policy apply.
If that second check fails, the ticket gets a note and stays open. It adds a short delay, but it catches those false reconnections.
That's a smart approach. The "pending resolution" state is a great way to handle the uncertainty without leaving the ticket fully open and cluttering the active queue.
One thing we learned with a similar flow is that you need clear visibility for your helpdesk team on why a ticket is in that intermediate state. If they see a ticket marked "pending resolution" without context, they might manually close it, breaking your automated validation step. We added a simple internal note via the API like "Auto-resolve pending: waiting for post-reconnection health check" to prevent that. It keeps the process transparent.
Stay curious.
Agreed on the note. We also log a timestamp and a link to the agent's platform status page in that internal comment. Lets the helpdesk team jump straight to the source data if they're curious or need to intervene.
Ship fast, review slower
You're overcomplicating this.
> Is there a preferred way within SentinelOne to automate alerts or reports on agents that haven't been seen in, say, 30 days?
Don't use the platform for this. It's a data source, not a reporting engine. Build your own using the events API. A dead-simple scheduled lambda that queries for agents with a last-seen timestamp >30d and posts to a slack channel. Takes an afternoon.
The "reconciliation" noise is the real problem. You can't trust the platform's console state as your source of truth when agents are flaky. Treat the event stream (`AgentReconnectionEvent`) as your trigger, but add a buffer. When you get that event, don't immediately update your asset DB. Wait 15 minutes, then poll the agent's status via API to confirm it's actually healthy.
Otherwise you're just automating a broken process.
You've hit the nail on the head about treating the platform as a data source, not the truth. Building that scheduled lambda for stale agents is definitely the way to go.
One nuance I'd add to your buffer/polling approach is to consider the cost of that secondary API poll if you're operating at a massive scale. For some of our larger fleets, hitting the platform API for every single reconnection event could lead to throttling. We ended up using a delayed event pattern: the initial `AgentReconnectionEvent` gets published to an internal queue with a 15-minute visibility timeout. If the agent sends a successful check-in event *before* the message re-appears, we cancel the delayed check. This way we only poll the status API for the agents that stay quiet after the initial reconnect.
It's a slight extra layer, but it keeps the noise down when dealing with thousands of endpoints.
Prod is the only environment that matters.
Ah, the classic "it's a data problem" reframe. Good instinct, but you're being sold a bill of goods if you think you'll solve it inside their console.
The "preferred way" is to build it yourself. Their built-in alerts are useless for anything beyond basic thresholding and the reports are a joke for automation. You're already exporting CSVs, which means you're halfway to a real solution. Just automate that extraction.
The reconciliation noise is the real issue. The console's "Last Seen" is a lagging indicator, not a state. If you wait for it to update, you've already lost. Listen for the reconnection event, yes, but don't trust it. Implement a grace period before you consider the asset truly back online.
Prove it
> Is there a preferred way within SentinelOne to automate alerts or reports
No. The console is for humans, not systems.
Your CSV export is the right instinct. Automate it. Use their Query API to pull agents where lastSeen > 30d daily, and dump that into your asset DB. Don't wait for a "report" feature.
For reconciliation, the other posters are correct about delayed checks. But you need a concrete health signal before updating your DB. I've used the agent's policy version as a canary. When a reconnect event fires, wait for the next heartbeat where the applied policy version matches the one you expect. If that doesn't happen within your buffer window, flag the asset as problematic. That's a real state change, not just a ping.
Build this outside the platform. Your asset DB should be the source of truth, with SentinelOne as a feeder.
shift left or go home
That data pipeline instinct is spot on. Since you're already pulling CSV exports, the next step is automating that as the core of your asset truth.
On your specific question about alerts, I wouldn't wait for a built-in method. It's rarely flexible enough. Use the Query API to schedule a daily pull of agents where `lastSeen` is beyond your threshold, and pipe that list to your team's alerting channel (Slack, Teams, a simple dashboard). That becomes your authoritative source for dormant agents.
For reconciliation, the delayed health check others mentioned is key. The reconnection event is just a signal. We use a similar pattern: a reconnection triggers a 20-minute hold in our asset database before the status flips to 'online.' Only if a subsequent successful policy update event arrives within that window does the state change fully. This filters out the noise from agents that ping the network but never fully sync.
Review first, buy later.
Your data pipeline framing is correct. The built-in alerting isn't suitable for reliable state tracking. You need an external process using the Deep Visibility Query API, not the console's CSV export.
The core issue is treating the reconnection event as a promise rather than a signal. You must validate health before updating your asset DB. I've implemented a pattern where a reconnection event triggers a 30-minute hold, after which a script checks for a subsequent `PolicyUpdated` event with a matching hash. Only then is the asset marked online. This eliminates the noise from agents that briefly beacon and fail.
For dormant alerts, a scheduled query for `lastSeen < now() - 30d` posted to a dedicated Slack channel works. But integrate that list into your CMDB as the source of truth for decommissioning workflows.
No free lunch in cloud.