[Fleet]: Unable to install standalone agent if APM & Fleet is disabled while creating kibana deployment.

[amolnater-qasource]

Kibana version: 7.14.0 Snapshot Kibana cloud environment

Host OS and Browser version: All, All

Build details:

Build: 42089
Commit: 67a71c75d2da40e49fba2620f488c9b4ce2467d2

Preconditions:

1. 7.14.0 Snapshot Kibana cloud environment should be available.
2. APM & Fleet settings must be disabled while creating deployment.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Login to Kibana environment.
2. Navigate to Agents tab and observe no "Add Agent" button.

What's not working:
User is unable to install standalone agent due to unavailability of "Add Agent" button.

Expected Result:
"Add Agent" button should be available if APM & Fleet settings are disabled, so as user should be able to install standalone agent.

Screenshot:

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/fleet (Team:Fleet)

[amolnater-qasource]

@manishgupta-qasource Please review.

[manishgupta-qasource]

Reviewed & Assigned to @EricDavisX

[EricDavisX]

@mostlyjason @hbharding @jen-huang this is an interesting case. I know stand-alone agent on a cloud env isn't the highest priority usage, so I can bump it down from 'high' impact. Do we want to assess and think about it now or no?

Also note, I think an Agent likely could be deployed against ES directly if the user knew what policy to place for the Agent, which may be feasible via docs review.

[mostlyjason]

++ to fix this bug. I believe the add agent button should still show on this page since we want to allow users to add standalone agents. That is the design described in this PR #96867

[jen-huang]

I believe this button got moved with the overall layout changes after Integrations was moved to its own top-level app. As a stop-gap solution maybe we can just add the Add agent button back to the Fleet header? It will be visible regardless of which tab the user is viewing.

cc @hbharding @mostlyjason WDYT?

[mostlyjason]

Sounds fine as a stop gap unless Henry has a better idea in the short term

[hbharding]

Hey there. I caught this recently as well and think @nchaulet should be addressing it in the fleet onboarding issue. I documented this here: #98498

I proposed that we add an "add agent" button to the header, but this button only appears when we show the Fleet Server onboarding prompt, like so:

Once Fleet Server exists and the agent table appears, the button in the header should go away. This is because we show an "add agent" button under the agent's tab / above the agent table. The other tabs in Fleet, "Policies" and "Enrollment tokens", also have a corresponding "add" primary action button, and I don't think it makes sense to have an action for adding agents when users are on these other pages.

[jen-huang]

@nchaulet Assigning this to you as I see you did work for this in #103550.

[amolnater-qasource]

Hi @EricDavisX
We have revalidated this issue on 7.14.0 snapshot and found it fixed now.

• We are able to access Agents tab when APM & Fleet settings are disabled while creating environment.
• We are now able to install standalone agent through it and we have observed datastreams for standalone agent.

Build details:
Build: 42233
Commit: 535bbb5

Screenshot:

Thanks
QAS