PlexTrac Update Release Notes — February 11, 2021

Catch up on the Newest Additions to the PlexTrac Platform

February 11, 2020

IMPORTANT NOTES FOR SELF-HOSTED PARTNERS:

PlexTrac has moved to a Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) development model. This means that updates are available almost daily (though certainly not required). While we will continue to send out periodic release notes, administrators are advised to establish a normal update cadence. We recommend every two weeks.
This is a standard update. All that is required to pull the latest code is to run:

./plextrac_run.sh from within your PlexTrac directory.

Tables

We have implemented tables into our Rich Text fields! The tables will export to your .DOCX report via a jinja template to reduce polish after export from PlexTrac. A revision of your current Jinja Template may need to be made to make use of this feature fully, but well worth the time.

You can adjust the text alignment, background color, padding, dimensions and more! Once created, tables can be placed into Custom Narratives in Report Templates for easy addition to future reports (see “Narratives Picker” below)

For a detailed walkthrough of tables and their limitations, please view our official documentation: https://docs.plextrac.com/plextrac-documentation/product-documentation/tables.

Narratives Picker

Custom Narratives in Report Templates are a great way to pre-populate your reports with re-useable narratives such as Executive Summary, Methodology, Scope, etc. Previously, Custom Narratives were brought into a report from the Report Template at the time of Report Creation. While this is still true, you can now add Custom Narratives from as many Report Template sources as desired.

When in the Edit Report Narratives section, simply select the source Report Templates you desire. All narratives from selected templates will be added to the existing Narratives.

This feature greatly simplifies the process of bringing in re-useable narratives for multi-scope engagements. We recommend creating Report Templates for each potential scope (e.g. External Pentest, Vulnerability Assessment, etc) to allow you to select only those you need for a particular engagement.

Note that your export template must include support for any Narratives to be included in the document export. Please contact support@plextrac.com if you require modifications to your existing supported narratives.

Assessments

Custom Answer Sets

In the Assessments module, we have added a feature to allow you to define a set of custom answers into your question, instead of picking from the predefined Answer Sets.

Defining the answer set and adding it to a question makes customizing your assessment to a particular focus that much easier! See https://docs.plextrac.com/plextrac-documentation/product-documentation/assessments/create-a-question/custom-answer-sets.

Copy from Question (Duplicate)

You can now copy a well-built question and duplicate it into another question! This saves countless hours on building large assessments that have the same sections or narratives. Copy the question, make some changes, and save it. For detail, view out documentation: https://docs.plextrac.com/plextrac-documentation/product-documentation/assessments/create-a-question

Jira Integration

Our Integration with Jira now supports generation of child tickets for assets!

This feature is purposefully not enabled by default; contact support@plextrac.com if you would like this feature enabled in your environment.
Closing tickets in Jira with notation adds the notation to the status tracker of the finding/asset, and closes the status in PlexTrac
Parent/Child tickets close separately from each other to allow for control.

WriteupsDBs

We have added a Rich Text editor to the fields in the WriteupsDB! Its now easier than ever to build and import findings into the WriteupsDB.

Writeups from external sources may now be imported into the WriteupsDB via csv. A template and instructions are available here: https://docs.plextrac.com/plextrac-documentation/product-documentation/writeupsdb/bulk-importation-from-csv

Bug Fixes

Addressed issue where reports with large asset counts (> 15K) were sometimes unable to export to .docx.
Fixed an issue in the Rich Text Editors causing certain code blocks to format wrong and new lines to get stripped.
Fixed the search/replace function in reports and narratives.
Fixed a bug with export/import of questionnaires in the assessment’s module.
Fixed a divide-by-zero error when importing reports with in-line images that did not save or specify width and height.

Updating Your Instance

If you are self-hosting your PlexTrac Instance, gain access to all these enhancements by updating to the latest release using the procedures in our documentation.

https://docs.plextrac.com/plextrac-documentation/product-documentation/updated-long-living-db

Encountering a friction point? You can always obtain email support by dropping us a line at support@plextrac.com. Feel like your issue would be better addressed with a screen share? Self-schedule a Zoom support slot using this link:

https://calendly.com/plextrac-success/plextrac-support

Our development roadmap is 100% driven by our customer requirements. If you have an idea for how PlexTrac can better support your needs, drop us a line!

Cheers!

-The PlexTrac Team