What's new in IBM UrbanCode Release

6.2.5.11

Release date: 16 October 2023

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes enhancements and security related fixes. This release is recommended for all customers.

Microsoft SQL server database: Added support for Microsoft SQL server 2022 database

RHEL version 9: Added support for RHEL version 9

Windows 2022 server: Added support for Windows 2022 server

Improvements

The following improvements are included in this release to fix the security issues:

Upgraded Apache Tomcat server to 8.5.93
Upgraded bcproc-jdk on jar to 18
Upgraded Guava jar to 32.1.2-jre
Upgraded IVY jar to 2.5.2
Upgraded Jackson-mapper-asl jar to 2.15.2
Upgraded Jettison jar to 1.5.4
Upgraded Velocity engine core jar to 2.3

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.5.10 iFix01

Release date: 31 January 2024

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes security related fixes. This release is recommended for all customers.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.5.10

Release date: 23 June 2023

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes enhancements and security related fixes. This release is recommended for all customers.

Enhancements

Enhanced logs for plug-in integration in IBM UrbanCode Release.

Security enhancements

Upgraded Tomcat server to version 8.5.89 for resolving the security issues.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.5.9

Release date: 21 April 2023

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Enhancements

Enhanced the User Preference Timezone settings.
Added support for Windows 2019 server.

Security enhancements

The following libraries are updated to resolve the security vulnerabilities:

Upgraded Ivy jar to version 2.5.1
Upgraded testng jar to version 7.7.0
Upgraded Tomcat server to version 8.5.87

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.5.8

Release date: 20 December 2022

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Enhancements

URBANCODE-I-413: Ansible URL is available in comment section.

Security enhancements

The following libraries are updated to resolve the security vulnerabilities:

Upgraded ant.jar to version 1.10.12
Removed jquery.jar vulnerability
Upgraded Tomcat server to version 8.5.84

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.5.7

Release date: 26 September 2022

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Security enhancements

The following libraries are upgraded to resolve the security vulnerabilities:

Upgraded log4j.jar to version 1.2.17
Upgraded Jcommander.jar to version 1.81
Upgraded jdom.jar to version 2.0.6.1
Upgraded Xmlsec.jar to version 2.2.3

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.5.6

Release date: 29 June 2022

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Security enhancements: The Apache Tomcat server is upgraded to version 8.5.79 to resolve security vulnerability issues.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.5.5

Release date: 20 December 2021

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Security enhancement: Fixed security vulnerability.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.5.4

Release date: 15 December 2021

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Apache Tomcat server

The Tomcat Server upgraded to version 8.5.69 to resolve the following security vulnerabilities:

CVE-2021-30639
CVE-2021-30640
CVE-2021-33037

Add attachment to approval: Attachments can be added to and downloaded from an approval.

Pause a deployment: You can pause a process and then resume it. This feature allows you to apply fixes between the pause and resume status without requesting a new process. To use this feature, requires that the new Pause Deployment feature flag is enabled.

Security enhancements: Upgraded to resolve Whitesource security vulnerabilities.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.5.3

Release date: 24 June 2021

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Apache Tomcat server: The Tomcat Server upgraded to version 8.5.64 to resolve security issues.

Plugins: Jenkins plugins added for IBM UrbanCode Release. The plugin provides integration with Jenkins to import jobs from Jenkins.

Security enhancement: Upgraded Java to resolve security vulnerability CVE-2015-3253.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.5.2

Release date: 22 March 2021

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Apache Log4j: The integrated Apache Log4j is upgraded to version 1.2.16.

Security enhancements: Upgraded apache-taglibs library to Standard 1.1.2 to fix security vulnerability CVE-2015-0254.

Plugins

You can now use the Slack plugin to create a Slack channel when a deployment is running. The channel name is the same as the deployment name and includes release team members.
Ansible plugin properties are displayed for plugin tasks.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.5.1

Release date: 17 December 2020

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Security enhancements

Updates to fix security vulnerabilities

Upgraded Groovy and groovy-all from 2.1.9 to 2.4.16. Fixes security vulnerabilities CVE-2015-3253 and sonatype-2017-0493.
Removed the unused XStream library from the Groovy package. Fixes security vulnerability CVE-2013-7285,CVE-2016-3674,CVE-2017-7957
Resolved CWE 295-298 Strict Transport Security Misconfiguration

Oracle JRE support for macOS: You can specify to use the Oracle JRE when installing IBM UrbanCode Releasee on a macOS machine. The installation process now includes a prompt to specify the location of JRE.

Plugin

New plugin to integrate with Ansible Tower to support the execution of workflows and templates through deployment tasks.
Jira plugin enhanced to support mapping of Jira status types instead of an individual status.

Session timeout: You can now control the session timeout value using the new session.timeout.increase.minutes property in the installed.properties file. The default is 30 minutes.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.5.0

Release date: 29 September 2020

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Mark a release as complete: The status of a release can be changed to complete when all deployments are complete or when no deployments are associated with the release. By marking the release complete, no further actions can be performed on it. All release and deployment related operations are disabled for the release.; This feature requires that the Release Completion permission be assigned. By default, this permission is assigned to the Release Manager role.

Support added for Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) SSO connection: You can now connect the IBM UrbanCode Release server using a SAML SSO connection. SAML version 2.0 or later is supported.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.4.1

Release date: 18 August 2020

This release includes an announcement about advanced capabilities using IBM UrbanCode Velocity and IBM UrbanCode Release.

This release includes an announcement about advanced capabilities using IBM UrbanCode Velocity and IBM UrbanCode Release. See IBM UrbanCode Velocity 2.0.4 includes IBM UrbanCode Release and delivers advanced capabilities for your organization's DevOps processes document for details.

Platform: This release of IBM UrbanCode Release includes support for upgrading to Tomcat 8.5.57.

Deployment Count report: Additional filter added to the Deployment Count report. You can filter to display data for a day, week, and month intervals.

License sharing with IBM UrbanCode Velocity: Starting with IBM UrbanCode Release version 6.2.4.1 and IBM UrbanCode Velocity a single pool of licenses can be shared by users of the two products. For example, an user assigned a authorized user license type can use the same license for accessing both IBM UrbanCode Release and IBM UrbanCode Velocity.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.4.0

Release date: 30 June 2020

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Software

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release includes support for upgrading to the following:

IBM Java 8
Oracle 19c

Note:

Do not use the ODBC driver which comes with the Oracle 19c setup. Download the ODBC driver from the Oracle website and placed it in the *urbancoderelease\_directory*/lib/ext directory.
Java 8 is supported for all operating systems except the MAC operating. For the MAC OS only IBM Java 7 is supported.

Application filter on the Pipeline View: You can now filter applications listed on the Pipeline View page. Using the new drop-down menu, you can select to show all application, only those which have versions, or only those which have changes.

Deployment Count Report: The Deployment Count report has been added to allow you gather information about the status of deployment successes and failures. Using the report filters you can narrow or broaden the amount of data collected by date, application, release, environment, and status. Create a Deployment Count Report from the Home page.

Notification scheme for related deployment: The notification scheme can now be set for a Related Deployment event type using plugin_util.jar.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.3.1

Release date: 25 March 2020

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Enhancements to UrbanCode Deploy automated task: Viewing process properties has been enhanced to include the value, default, and property type in a table format. There is an action column identifying the action that you can perform on the property. All properties can be edited to change the value. Properties that have been added in IBM UrbanCode Release can be edited and deleted.; Adding properties is done using the new Add Property dialog box. When adding a property you can type in the value or map the value to a release property.

Display task tags: Task tags can now be viewed from a deployment plan details. Above the list of task details for a deployment plan, there is a Show Tags toggle switch to view a list of tags.

New Calendar format: A grid view has been added. View calendar in grid format by day, 4 days, week, and month.; You can now filter by deployments, release target date, team, environment, and release.

Copy Task: The new Copy Task reduces the amount of time it takes to create tasks with the same attributes or partially the same attributes. This feature available on the Deployment Execution and Deployment Plan pages.

Apache Tomcat server: The IBM UrbanCode Release server runs on Apache Tomcat. The integrated Apache Tomcat level has been upgraded to version 8.5.51.; The supported DB2 database has been upgraded to version 11.5.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.3.0.ifix02

Release date: 17 December 2019

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Capture release metadata: The Release page now contains a Release Properties tab. The Release Properties page contain additional properties stored by release managers. Data stored can be change ticket numbers from Jira, Document Traceability Metric(DTM) number from a DTM system, business rules evaluation results, production readiness check reports, and more.

Hide groups: Feature flag added to the System Settings page to hide groups from the Roles menu list when creating a task.

Updated Java version: The Java version shipped with IBM UrbanCode Release has been updated to IBM JRE version 7.1.4.50.

6.2.2.7

Release date: 24 September 2019

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

User interface updates: Deployment task comments and attachments can be view using icons on the task summary line on the Deployment Execution page. The icons are displayed if there is a comment or attachment associated with the task.

Bulk Operations of Phase Approvals through API: You can use the REST API and JAVA API Client to create, edit, and delete multiple approval requests to the phases at the same time. After the changes made using the API, the approval can be changed and viewed in the user interface. The new command is Resource Name : phaseApproval.

Apache Tomcat server upgraded to Version 8.5.34: The Tomcat Server shipped with the product has been upgraded to version 8.5.34.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.2.6 ifix01

Release date: 26 July 2019

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Improvements to audit logs

New settings for managing audit logs.

Export audit log within a specified data range as a CVS file. Click Settings > Audit Logs.
Delete audit log history by setting a cleanup schedule. Click Settings > System Maintenance > Audit Log History Cleanup.

The log4j.properties file can be modified. The following properties can be set to value that are appropriate for your environment.


log4j.appender.audit=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender 
log4j.appender.audit.File=../var/log/user_audit.log 
log4j.appender.audit.MaxFileSize=10MB 
log4j.appender.audit.MaxBackupIndex=5 
log4j.appender.audit.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout 
log4j.appender.audit.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSS zzz} - %m 
log4j.additivity.com.urbancode.urelease.domain.AuditAction=false 
log4j.logger.com.urbancode.urelease.domain.AuditAction=DEBUG, audit

Deployment Overview dashboard improvement: There is now a hierarchy view on the Deployment Overview dashboard. Deployments are grouped into a hierarchy view so that you can see how specific teams and line of businesses are performing with their deployments. This view is available when the Overview Hierarchy View feature flag is enabled.

Add owner to a scheduled deployment: You can now set the owner for a scheduled deployment. The owner can be specified manually or the owner can be set automatically to the user who starts the deployment.

Stop dashboard refresh: Specify the amount of time to stop refreshing the dashboard. To use this feature, enable the Stop Refreshing The User Dashboard feature flag.

Late to start task warning: You can now set a threshold on how long a manual task can be in the Waiting to start state before it is set to the Late to start state. This feature provides insight as to why deployments exceed their planned time. To use this feature, enable the Late to start warning feature flag. When enable a new warning icon is visible on the Scheduled Deployment page.

New plugins

XL Deploy Plugin
Slack

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.2.5

Release date: 11 December 2018

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Hover help available for initiatives imported from RTC: Hovering over a work item imported from RTC displays in a preview window some details of the work item.

Task Dependency graph for deployment plans: You can now view a Dependency Graph of a deployment plan. This complements the Scheduled Deployment Dependency graphs that were already available in an earlier release.

Improved auditing for scheduled deployments: The Change History tab of a scheduled deployment now list more events during the execution of a deployment.

Allow editing of failed task: Failed task description can be edited allowing you to update instructions that would need to be synced with the deployment plan for future deployments.

Allow manual versions to be created from the Application and Versions tabs of a scheduled deployment: Manual versions that can be used for manually created applications can be created directly create from the Scheduled Deployment page.

Task owners can be changed while the task is executing: If multiple users work (for example, a shift change occurs while the task is executing) are working on the same task that is in progress, they can assign the task to each other while the task is in progress. Switching users is audited.

Permission to lock and unlock deployments: Permissions have been added locking and unlocking deployments. There is one permission to lock and another one to unlock a deployment.

Permission to edit release dates: New permission available to allow you to edit release dates.

New notification rules: Additional notification rules are now available. For example: Task Re-Opened or when Comments are added to Tasks.

Performance and usability improvements

Search functionality in “Copy From” field in “Create New Deployment Plan” dialog
Performance improved on the Environment Reservation dialog

Beta features:

The following features have been added as a Beta feature. These features require the enabling of a feature flag to use.

Ability to archive started scheduled deployments using the Rest API: In previous versions, only scheduled deployment not started can be removed from the user interface. This beta feature provides a rest endpoint so that in progress or completed deployments can be cleaned up.

Reset Approval On Version Change: If a scheduled deployment has been approved and later versions selected changed then the approval will be reset and a new approval will be required for the deployment to start.

Ability to act on a task from an email: It is now possible to start and complete tasks from emails. Buttons for each action can be added to the email notification templates. It simplifies the user experience and facilitate on-boarding.

6.2.2.4

Release date: 7 July 2018

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

IBM™ UrbanCode Deploy for each tag support

Performance improvements

6.2.2.3

Release date: 24 May 2018

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Deployment History Cleanup: Timing data is now stored in the database instead of a cache making data consistent across nodes.

6.2.2.2

Release date: 15 February 2018

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Deployment History Cleanup: Permanently delete deployments that are greater than a specified number or days old either manually or on a schedule.

Max Deployment Duration: Limit deployments so their end time that cannot exceed a specified number of days from their start. You can also clean up deployments based on their end date by aborting in progress deployments and permanently deleting unstarted deployments, either manually or on a schedule.

More Tasks View Extra Timing Columns: This feature allows you to see a tasks planned and actual values for it’s start and end times as well as it’s description on the more tasks view. You can enable this setting by adding feature.more.tasks.view.extra.columns=yes to the installed.properties.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

For information about RFE's, see this page.

6.2.2.1

Release date: 13 December 2017

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

Display Segment names on Timeline View: Segment names on the Timeline View are now displayed to avoid extra clicks for a user to see the name of segments.

External Links on Scheduled Deployments: External Links can be added to the overview page of either scheduled deployments or enterprise release events.

Export / Import Process Checklists: Existing Process Checklists can be exported and completed off line. Then they can be imported from a CSV file and statuses will be updated automatically.

Add Status on Enterprise Release Events: Users can add statuses on Enterprise Release Events to notify other users of the overall health or progress of an entire Enterprise Release Event.

Show Task Index and Deployment Plan Name on Deployment Dashboard and View More Pages

Show descriptions on Outage and Critical Tasks overview dashboard

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

For information about RFE's, see this page.

6.2.2.0

Release date: 31 October 2017

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a maintenance release and includes various bug fixes and enhancements. This release is recommended for all customers.

New installation procedure: IBM Installation Manager is not needed to install IBM UrbanCode Release version 6.2.2 and later. The new installation program is included as part of the program image. It is an interactive command-line based installation program that guides you through the installation process.

Android Support For UrbanCode Mobile

Complete UrbanCode Deploy and Release Approvals
Execute UrbanCode Release Tasks
Real Time Update on Deployment Progress and Health
Automatic Push Notifications

Scheduled Deployment / Enterprise Release Event Note: Free text place holder that can be added to the overview page of a deployment or an enterprise release event.

Enhanced Enterprise Release Event Notifications: Notifications can be sent on-demand or at a defined interval for enterprise release events.

Release and Deployment Enhancements

Tasks completed successfully that had failed previously are easily noticeable.
Task Tags can now be edited
Pipeline Auto Refresh
Approvals in IBM UrbanCode Deploy can now be overridden if the process has been started as an automated task from IBM UrbanCode Release

Official Support on the following features:

Service level agreement tasks: You can use three new task types to manage service level agreements (SLA), such as time-critical events, and planned outages.

Outage tasks: Use outage tasks to manage systems that can only be down for a specified time period. When you create an outage, a begin task and an end task are inserted into the deployment plan. You can add related tasks between the begin and end tasks, and you are alerted if the total duration exceeds the planned-for time. In the following figure, you can see that the outage of 1 hour is exceeded by 5 minutes due to the duration of the related tasks.

Critical event tasks: Use critical event tasks to manage service level agreements that require events to occur at specified times. If tasks are expected to be late, an alert suggests an earlier start time. In the following figure, the server must be back online by 11:30 but the deployment is running behind schedule.

Wait-for-time tasks: Wait-for-time tasks do not complete until a specified time. You can use wait-for-time tasks as buffers to control the deployment pace.

SLA reports: The scheduled deployment’s Overview tab now lists all outages and critical events, and alerts you when they are running ahead or behind schedule, as shown in the following figure. The Overview tab displays progress bars for tasks that fall within an outage or that are on the path of critical events. You can export reports that compare actual to planned service level agreements.

SLA notifications: There are four new notification rules for service level agreement tasks that let you know when SLA-related events happen in your scheduled deployments. You can configure notifications to be sent when outages or critical events finish late or if they are estimated to be more than x minutes late.

Banner messages: Messages can be displayed in page headers that notify users about important events. Links can be included in the messages. Banner messages are managed on the System Settings page.

User dashboard: The user dashboard is your IBM UrbanCode Release home page. The dashboard home page displays information that is customized for you. From the dashboard, you can access your applications and tasks, schedule deployments, and provide approvals.; The dashboard organizes information by calendar events and tasks. Today’s important events are displayed in one area, where you can claim and edit tasks. Other areas display the events that are scheduled for later this week or later in the month. Depending on your role, other dashboard areas provide links where you can use product features, such as creating releases and scheduling deployments.; The dashboard’s Getting Started area, as shown in the following figure, contains tutorials about important product features, such as creating releases. Each tutorial step provides a link to an associated topic in the online product documentation for IBM UrbanCode Release in IBM Knowledge Center.; The Today section shows your important items for today. Summaries of today’s deployments with links to them are provided. You can access tasks in the Waiting section and claim Unclaimed tasks.; You can act on pending approvals on the dashboard, which also shows the applications gates statuses, as shown in the following figure.; The Quality Status Signoffs sections show deployments with missing quality statuses. The Process Checklists section displays the process checklists either assigned to you, claimable by you, or all other process checklists in your teams. The last section is the list of deployments for the day.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

For information about RFE's, see this page.

6.2.1.3 ifix 30

Release date: 18 October 2017

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release includes new features, performance improvements, and bug fixes. This release is recommended for all customers.

Service level agreement tasks (beta feature): You can use three new task types to manage service level agreements (SLA), such as time-critical events, and planned outages.

Outage tasks: Use outage tasks to manage systems that can only be down for a specified time period. When you create an outage, a begin task and an end task are inserted into the deployment plan. You can add related tasks between the begin and end tasks, and you are alerted if the total duration exceeds the planned-for time. In the following figure, you can see that the outage of 1 hour is exceeded by 5 minutes due to the duration of the related tasks.

Critical event tasks: Use critical event tasks to manage service level agreements that require events to occur at specified times. If tasks are expected to be late, an alert suggests an earlier start time. In the following figure, the server must be back online by 11:30 but the deployment is running behind schedule.

Wait-for-time tasks: Wait-for-time tasks do not complete until a specified time. You can use wait-for-time tasks as buffers to control the deployment pace.

SLA reports: The scheduled deployment’s Overview tab now lists all outages and critical events, and alerts you when they are running ahead or behind schedule, as shown in the following figure. The Overview tab displays progress bars for tasks that fall within an outage or that are on the path of critical events. You can export reports that compare actual to planned service level agreements.

Banner messages: Messages can be displayed in page headers that notify users about important events. Links can be included in the messages. Banner messages are managed on the System Settings page.

User dashboard: The user dashboard is your IBM UrbanCode Release home page. The dashboard home page displays information that is customized for you. From the dashboard, you can access your applications and tasks, schedule deployments, and provide approvals.; The dashboard organizes information by calendar events and tasks. Today’s important events are displayed in one area, where you can claim and edit tasks. Other areas display the events that are scheduled for later this week or later in the month. Depending on your role, other dashboard areas provide links where you can use product features, such as creating releases and scheduling deployments.; The dashboard’s Getting Started area, as shown in the following figure, contains tutorials about important product features, such as creating releases. Each tutorial step provides a link to an associated topic in the online product documentation for IBM UrbanCode Release in IBM Knowledge Center.; The Today section shows your important items for today. Summaries of today’s deployments with links to them are provided. You can access tasks in the Waiting section and claim Unclaimed tasks.; You can act on pending approvals on the dashboard, which also shows the applications gates statuses, as shown in the following figure.; The Quality Status Signoffs sections show deployments with missing quality statuses. The Process Checklists section displays the process checklists either assigned to you, claimable by you, or all other process checklists in your teams. The last section is the list of deployments for the day.

Miscellaneous enhancements:

Login differentiation: The audit log now distinguishes a user login from a plug-in login. This makes it easier to distinguish between the two login types.

New process checklist permissions: The edit process checklists permission is a separate permission and is no longer part of the edit lifecycles permission. More fine-grained permissions give you more control of the product.

User last login date: You can now sort or filter users by the last time they logged in.

Deployment plans filtered by release team: When you create a deployment plan, you can now choose to filter the Copy From list by the currently selected release team.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.1.3 ifix 28

Note: This release has been replaced with version 6.2.1.3 ifix 30.

6.2.1.3 ifix 22

Note: This release has been replaced with version 6.2.1.3 ifix 30.

6.2.1.3 ifix 18

Note: This release has been replaced with version 6.2.1.3 ifix 30.

6.2.1.3 ifix 14

Note: This release has been replaced with version 6.2.1.3 ifix 30.

6.2.1.3 ifix 10

Note: This release has been replaced with version 6.2.1.3 ifix 30.

6.2.1.3

Note: This release has been replaced with version 6.2.1.3 ifix 30.

6.2.1.2

Release date: 27 July 2016

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a Fix Pack release containing performance improvements and bug fixes. This release is recommended for all customers.

Timeline View (Beta Feature): Previously located under the Federated Deployment Dashboard, the Timeline View of scheduled deployments has been updated and associated with deployments in enterprise events. The Timeline will be displayed as a tab on the Event Page of an Enterprise Event and the individual deployments within an event.; The Timeline displays timing information for set of scheduled deployments in the event, allowing users to visually compare the planned times start and end times of each segment to the actual times.; Segments can be colored based on their current execution status or on the tags used on the segment’s tasks.

User Profile and Backups (Beta Feature): Users can now update their contact information, password, and actual name without admin privileges. Users can also add other users as a backup user so that if they were unavailable for any reason it would be easy to find someone else to execute a manual task in their place.; You will be able to easily see contact information about that user and that users backups if you hover over that user for a task they are assigned too.

Create Additional Help Links (Beta Feature): Additional links can now be added to the Help drop-down at the top of the page. This feature can be found on the Settings -> System Settings tab, after the “Help Links” Feature Flag has been toggled on.

Not Applicable Task Reasons: The reasons a task is not applicable are now able to be displayed in the UI. On a not applicable task, simply click on the new help icon for the list of reasons to be displayed. Applicability for this task is recalculated at this moment. So, in the instance that the task’s applicability isn’t updating and the task should really be applicable, clicking the icon will cause it’s applicability to get updated.

Plug-in task types (Beta Feature): The plugin framework has been improved to allow use of plugin tasks in deployment plan.; Plugin Steps can now be turned to Plugin Tasks by adding: extends=”PLUGIN_TASK” and will be made available as tasks when building a deployment plan.; When those tasks are executed the full context will be passed to the plugin step containing information about: Task, Segment, Deployment, Applications, Versions, Release… Then the plugin step will be responsible to update the status of the task using our REST API our the UCR java client. Plugin tasks will help to integrate with various external tools like: Ticketing Systems, Notifications, Custom Deployment Automation tools, Approval Systems… They will also help to solve complex scenarios such as Roll Backs. Plugin task execution logs will be printed as comments in the task dialog.

Plug-in Event Listeners (Beta Feature): As part of new features introduced with the plugin framework, Plugins can now have steps that listen to specific events generated in IBM UrbanCode Release such as: Application was added to / removed from a release, Deployment Failed, Task Failed, Integration Failed, Deployment Started, Task is late… and be triggered when those events occur.; When the step is triggered by the event, it will receive the context: Object triggering the event and related information that is relevant for that step execution.; The plugin steps will have to subscribe to 1 or more events ex:

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.1.1

Release date: 17 June 2016

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a Fix Pack release containing performance improvements and bug fixes. This release is recommended for all customers.

Force Redeployment Option: A new option is available for both scheduled deployments and recurring deployments called “Force Redeployment”. Deployments that autoselect versions will no longer select a version if the latest version passing gates and matching filters is the currently deployed version. It will now select nothing instead. If you enable the new force redeployment option, the deployment will select the latest version as it did in prior versions of IBM UrbanCode Release. All existing deployments will have force redeployment enabled but this option will be disabled by default for all newly created deployments. Along with this new option when creating a deployment, you can also see who selected each version from the Applications & Versions tab.

Additional timing information on Scheduled Deployments: After a deployment is completed, the clock widget displays the end time as well as the total time; Example dashboard:

Version Creation Date on Pipeline: Versions on the pipeline view will now display when they were created.

Auto refresh on related deployments: Widgets on the related deployment dashboard will refresh automatically.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.1.0

Release date: 4 April 2016

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a major release and includes various bug fixes and many new features. This release is recommended for all customers.

Notification Schemes and Rules

Notification schemes and rules can now be created and maintained in Settings. A notification scheme can be created, reused and assigned to a release or assigned to a scheduled deployment. Each scheme contains a list of notification rules. Each notification rule consists of several attributes.

Notifications can be associated with different entities: Task, Segment, Deployment, Approval and Release
Notifications can be assigned to occur at varying times and on certain events: Task is about to start, Task started, Task is skipped, etc.
The user setting up the notification scheme can choose who is notified (specific user, group, users with a certain role, or just an email address) and which template is used for email notification.

Assigning a Notification Scheme to a Scheduled Deployment

Configuring the settings of a Notification Scheme

Notification Templates: Notification templates are definitions for the content and format of notification emails that users can now create. Templates can include Apache Velocity variables to dynamically populate the email with specifics of the rule (e.g. the name of the task or assigned user). Upgrading will include a default set of notification templates containing one basic template for each rule condition. Additionally, users can preview notification templates in the UI before enabling them.

New Settings Page

The Settings page is home to the new Notification Schemes and Templates tabs as well as various logging and system settings that will make troubleshooting faster and easier.

The Log4j file, which contains the logging settings, can now be edited from the Logging tab and the changes take effect without a server restart.
An up-to-date history of the Tomcat Output Logs is now viewable and downloadable from the Output Logs tab.
Audit logs contain the history of every user action taken on Scheduled Deployments, Releases, and Deployment Plans and can be viewed from the Audit Logs tab.
The Public URL, SMTP Configuration, License server URL are now editable from the System Settings Tab. Any feature in the server.properties file that is not displayed in the System Settings tab is still editable from the file itself, but will not take effect without a server restart.
Certain Feature Flags can also be changed from the System Settings tab. These changes take effect immediately after saving.
Authentication Tokens, which can be used to authenticate log-ins in place of the usual username/password combo, can now be added, edited and removed from the Authentication Tokens tab.
The support package, a collection of log files and system property files that can be used for troubleshooting or support issues, is downloadable from the System Settings tab. This will allow users to quickly share relevant information with support in the case that any problems arise with the product.

System Settings Tab

Output Logs Tab

Scheduled Deployment Page

The notifications tab displays information on any notifications that will be sent out when certain actions on the scheduled deployment occur.
Individual tasks are now assigned numbers on the scheduled deployment page. The task dependency icon was updated to give users more information on a task’s dependencies and prerequisites.
Individual tasks now display a link that can be used to directly reach a task on a scheduled deployment to facilitate collaboration between users.
Task tags on the overview tab can now be reordered to create a more customized layout.
Information on the dashboard displayed at the top of the scheduled deployment page will now automatically refresh as the scheduled deployment is executed.

New Notification Tab: Design Updates: Updated dependencies and task numbers; Task Link; Reordering Tags

Event Dashboards: On the Calendar page, users can now either view the dashboard or create a new dashboard for any existing event.

Security Upgrade: Authentication Realms can now be mapped to multiple Authorization Realms. Users imported from the Authentication Realm with be members of all of their associated groups from any of the mapped Authorization Realms.

Recurring Rules: Recurring rules can now be temporarily disabled, preventing any additional deployments from being automatically scheduled and removing any pending deployments using the rule.

UrbanCode Deploy Plugin: Application processes from application templates in UCD can now be imported into Release.; Tasks that were previously stuck in an executing state due to an agent being offline, a UCD gate being failed, or components not being mapped to an application will now have their result updated to match their status in UCD.

New Permissions: Manage System Settings: View and edit the values in the System Settings tab of the new Settings page; View Audit Logs: View the Audit Logs tab of the new Settings page.; Manage Authentication Tokens: View the authentication tokens tab on the new Settings page and create, delete, or edit authentication tokens; Manage Notifications: Edit the notification schemes and notification templates on the Settings page; View Application Environment: View the new Application Environments tab, where the environment reservations for an application are displayed, on the Environments page; Edit Application Environment: Add or remove tags from Application Environments, either on the Application Environments tab or the Release Environments tab.

Performance Improvements

Added new SQL indexes on scheduled deployments
Used threading to significantly reduce the amount of time to add or remove tasks from deployments and plans
Updated widgets on menus used to schedule deployments to be filterable and make smaller requests

For information about bug fixes, see this page.

6.2.0.0

Release date: 4 January 2016

This release of IBM UrbanCode Release is a major release and includes various bug fixes and new features. This release is recommended for all customers.

Modifications on Permissions: The permissions associated with user’s roles have been updated to offer more fine-grain controls on specific actions performed across IBM UrbanCode Release.

Scheduled Deployment Version Detail

An application’s current version and component versions are now displayed in the scheduled deployment contents tab.

An application’s version can be found to the right of an application’s name within a task row.
Version details, including application name, version, components and quality statuses, are displayed in a dialog. This dialog shows when an application with a version is selected within a task row.

A user can now view an application’s current task progress and version components from a scheduled deployment’s Content & Notifications page.

A progress bar is used to represent an application’s task progress. The bar shows the number of tasks within each state as well as the number of total tasks.

Insert Tasks and Segments

New segments and tasks can now be created inline within a deployment plan.

An icon appears above or below an existing task that allows a new task to be created in the specified location.
The same icon that is displayed for the insertion of tasks also appears above or below segments to create a new segment in the specified location

Insert Tasks

Insert Segments

Auto-start Segments: As long as a segment doesn’t have any prerequisites and there is no role or override start time assigned to a segment the segment will automatically start once the deployment plan is started. Additionally, if there is no role assigned but there is an override start time the segment will start at that given time.

UCD Process Properties on Automated Tasks: Users can now set UCD process properties from UCR tasks. At the bottom of the advanced tab on an automated task, there is a text box titled “UCD Process Properties.” Here you can enter properties in the following format:; Property name 1 = value; Property name 2 = value; etc.; These properties will be copied from a deployment plan to new scheduled deployments but will not affect other existing deployments. This allows the user to use the deployment plan as a template by setting the property names but leaving the values blank. When creating a new deployment, the property names will appear and the user can set the values. Any changes made to the scheduled deployment will not affect the deployment plan or any other deployment.; To enable this feature, the following feature flag in your server.properties:; feature.ucd.task.properties.enabled=yes

A task associated to an application can run without having selected a version

There is a new option in the add/edit task dialog box which allows a user with permissions to disable the need for an application version before an application can be run.
This can also allow a user to run an automated task without an available snapshot version.

Improve Conflict Detection for Environment Reservation

Users now have more detail on environment reservation conflicts. Conflicts have now been split into two categories. These are warnings and notes:

Notes are conflicts that arise when two or more release reservations are scheduled at overlapping time frames on the same the same application deployment environment. However, they do not share the same application.
Warnings are conflicts that arise when two or more release reservations are scheduled at overlapping time frames on the same the same application deployment environment and, they share one or more application in the same application.

New way to add trusted self-signed certificates for integration with external tools: In some scenarios IBM UrbanCode Release needs to connect to external tools like IBM UrbanCode Deploy, Rational Team Concert… using SSL. If those external tools are installed using a self signed certificate it might be necessary to add those certificates to the JRE/lib/security/cacerts if that error occurs:; “Caught: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: com.ibm.jsse2.util.h: PKIX path building failed: java.security.cert.CertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target”; Importing the self-signed certificate to the JRE cacerts would solve it. Nevertheless in some versions of IBM UrbanCode Release a new JRE can be installed and will override the cacerts truststore.; In 6.2 the installation manager does make a copy of the cacerts before upgrading and saves it as ibm_ucr.truststore at the following location: UCRelease/server/tomcat/conf/ibm_ucr.truststore.; /!\ Important; If you need to add new self-signed certificate in the future to the list of trusted certificate for IBM UrbanCode Release, they can be added directly to that file ibm_ucr.truststore in order to make sure that they won’t be overridden every time the installation manager is upgrading the JRE.

For information about bug fixes, see this page.