ElectricFlow 9.0 Release Notes

16 minute read

ElectricFlow 9.0 is a long-term support (LTS) release that rolls up the previous feature releases and also brings many new improvements around user interfaces, agent technologies, security, and efficiency. For more information about the ElectricFlow release strategy, see the CloudBees maintenance lifecycle policies.

ElectricFlow® is an enterprise-grade DevOps Release Automation platform that simplifies provisioning, building, and releasing multi-tiered applications. Its model-driven approach to managing environments and applications lets teams coordinate multiple pipelines and releases across hybrid infrastructure in an efficient, predictable, and auditable way.

What’s New

New Features and Functionality

Single Sign-On with Kerberos

You can now enable and configure single sign-on (SSO) in ElectricFlow. This feature currently works with the Kerberos authentication protocol. SSO allows users take action in ElectricFlow without being prompted for login details. (NMB-27725)

For details, see the:

  • "Logging in to ElectricFlow" section in the “Introduction to ElectricFlow” chapter of the ElectricFlow 9.0 User Guide.

  • "Configuring Single Sign-On" section in the “Configuring ElectricFlow” chapter of the ElectricFlow 9.0 Installation Guide.

  • "Single Sign-On" section in the "Automation Platform" chapter of the ElectricFlow 9.0 User Guide.

All found on the Legacy documentation site.

Persona-Based UI Navigation

Customizable, role-based navigation with menu options relevant to the ElectricFlow user’s role is introduced. See "Personas" in the ElectricFlow 9.0 User Guide and "API-Personas" section of the ElectricFlow 9.0 API Guide, all found on the Legacy documentation site. (CEV-20541)

Personalized Landing Page and Favorites List

The new My Work dashboard, available from the header of each ElectricFlow page, provides quick access to user-specific information: (CEV-20543)

  • Favorites—A list of bookmarked pages. Allows users to bookmark ElectricFlow favorite pages and to specify a default landing page.

  • Manual Responses—A list of waiting objects needing the user’s attention.

Parameter Enhancements

This release includes several enhancements to the parameter facility for deploy-side objects:

  • Dynamic drop downs

  • Custom parameter validation

  • Conditional rendering of parameters

  • Dependency on parameters

  • New parameter types: Header, Date, Integer

For details, see the:

  • "Parameters" section in the ElectricFlow 9.0 User Guide.

  • "API-Parameters" section of the ElectricFlow 9.0 API Guide. (NMB-27169)

All found on the Legacy documentation site.

Service Catalog Item Improvements

  • Service Catalog Items now support formal parameter definitions. (CEV-20978)

  • Ability to navigate to object created by service catalog items. (CEV-18945)

Release Webhooks and Triggers

Users now have the ability to configure pipelines and releases to automatically run based on an event. (CEV-20542 and NMB-27081)

  • Use GitHub webhooks to trigger pipelines, releases or procedures.

  • Configure sentry based polling triggers to invoke pipeline and releases.

End User Experience Enhancements

ElectricFlow 9.0 has additional enhancements to improve end user experience. Here are some key updates:

  • Several UI navigation and organizational enhancements. (CEV-20527)

    • Delete and Select buttons are moved to the general navigation row.

    • New tabs in various object dialogs now provide direct access to their sub-dialogs.

    • New Favorites icon for direct access to favorites list.

  • The default landing screen is now relevant to most users. (CEV-19331)

DevOps Insight Dashboard and Reporting Enhancements

Enhancements include the following:

  • The UI for the Release Command Center dashboard now provides a more intuitive and logical way to set up the dashboard. You no longer need to enter parameters into the bundled setup procedures for the plugins that are enabled for Release Command Center in the Electric Cloud project. (CEV-20939)

  • You can now change the effective date and date range in the Release Command Center dashboard to view a relevant timeline of your choice to see more meaningful, historical data. (CEV-20950)

For details about these enhancements, see the 'Release Command Center Dashboard' section in the 'DevOps Insight' chapter of the ElectricFlow 9.0 User Guide found on the Legacy documentation site.

Pipeline and Release Enhancements

ElectricFlow 9.0 introduces several user interface, configuration, and runtime enhancements to pipelines:

  • Users can now approve gate rules and manual stage tasks by email. (CEV-18765)

  • Wait dependencies can now be configured on stage/gate/tasks in a sub-release. (CEV-20662,CEV-20084)

  • Added ability to search on release attributes, including release status. (CEV-20652)

  • Most frequently used plugins are now shown first in the task type selector. (CEV-20486)

  • Contextual property paths such as /myPipeline are now supported for the parameter panel on the UI. (CEV-20407)

  • The fields, plannedStartDate ` and `plannedEndDate , have been added to the `modifyTask ` API command. (CEV-20373)

  • For procedures called from pipeline entry/exit gates, the pipeline run now shows jobs that are in progress. Previously, the job was only accessible from the pipeline run after the job completed. (CEV-19905)

  • Property field for gate approval now provides access to the property picker. (CEV-19750)

  • New "Pipeline Scheduling" section in ElectricFlow User Guide that describes how to schedule pipelines.(CEV-19483)

  • Ability to specify email configuration for task and process step notifications. (CEV-19258)

  • Ability to disable pipeline, stage, and task restart options. (CEV-18942)

  • An appropriate error message is now presented when an application process attempts to use a disabled resource or an empty pool. (CEV-17755)

  • Smart deploy is now available for artifacts stored in EF-Artifact. When so configured, only changed artifacts are deployed at application runtime. (CEV-20792)

Change Tracking Improvements

The Change Tracking feature has the following improvements:

  • The --counter argument of the ectool ` createProperty` , setProperty , and modifyProperty commands is renamed to --suppressValueTracking . This functionality now lets you suppress the tracking of changes that modify only the value even if the new or old values are not numeric. For details about the --suppressValueTracking argument, see the "Property Management"section in the ElectricFlow 9.0 API Guide found on the Legacy documentation site.

    This functionality is now also accessible via a new Track Changes to Value checkbox in the GUI for creating and modifying properties. For details about the Track Changes to Value checkbox, see the "Property Browser" section in the ElectricFlow 9.0 User Guide found on the Legacy documentation site. (NMB-27354)

  • Change Tracking no longer tracks the completion of a stage (because this is generally an automated process), previously-recorded changes of this type are now filtered out of the change history, and the ectool pruneChangeHistory command now has an option to prune them also from the database. (NMB-20838)

  • The performance of change history retrieval from a MySQL database is improved significantly. (NMB-27293)

  • The performance of the ectool pruneChangeHistory command when used with a MySQL database is improved, and the performance impact on the ElectricFlow server while it is running is decreased. (NMB-24151)

Java Runtime Environment Updates

Oracle Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.8.0_131 has been replaced with Zulu OpenJDK JRE version 1.8.0_192.

Security Improvements

The following security-related improvements were made:

  • OpenJDK JRE version 1.8.0_192 has increased the minimum key length to 1024 bits for the Diffie-Hellman algorithm and TLS protocol. ElectricFlow Agents version 6.0.4 and higher must be used with 9.0 release. Similarly, for feature releases, ElectricFlow Agents version 6.3 and higher must be used with 9.0 release. If you have older agent versions, you are required to upgrade them.

  • PHP is upgraded to version 7.2.14. (NMB-27666)

  • OpenSSL is upgraded to version 1.0.2q. (NMB-27325)

  • Apache is upgraded to version 2.4.37. (NMB-26749)

  • Browser cookies now contain the `HTTPOnly ` and `secure ` attributes. (NMB-26235, NMB-21217)

  • The DevOps Insight Server security setting is changed to use TLS v1.2

Plugin Enhancements

The Plugin Manager UI which is used to drill into installed plugins or install a new plugin from the Electric Cloud catalog has now been enhanced to show the Support Level of each plugin. Here are the latest plugin enhancements. See Updated Plugins for a complete list of new or updated plugins.

  • EC-Kubectl: New! A new plugin that integrates with the command line tool, kubectl , to deploy and manage applications on Kubernetes, based on specifications that are file-based (YAML, JSON) and user-entered.

  • Azure tfs-extension: New! A new plugin available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace that can be used to perform the following build tasks from both Azure DevOps Server and Azure DevOps Services.

    • Publish Artifact to ElectricFlow.

    • Run Pipeline in ElectricFlow.

    • Call ElectricFlow Server Rest API.

    • Trigger Release in ElectricFlow.

  • Jenkins electricflow plugin: This plugin, applied as an extension to a Jenkins environment to perform post-build actions, has been enhanced to support the following, apart from other usability improvements.

    • Deploy Application in ElectricFlow.

    • Run Procedure in ElectricFlow.

    • Call ElectricFlow Server Rest API.

    • Trigger Release in ElectricFlow.

  • ECSCM and ECSCM-Git : Supports the ability to trigger releases and pipelines in ElectricFlow through GitHub WebHooks. Plugin configuration can be performed directly from within ElectricFlow.

  • ECSCM, ECSCM-Git, ECSCM-Perforce, ECSCM-SVN, ECSCM-TFS: Supports the ability to trigger releases and pipelines in ElectricFlow through polling and the ability to manage plugin configuration directly from within ElectricFlow.

  • ECSCM-Repo: Supports the ability to manage plugin configuration directly from ElectricFlow.

  • EC-ALM, EC-Jenkins, EC-ServiceNow, EC-JIRA: Supports improved usability of Release Command Center Setup when these are used as data sources.

  • EC-WebSphere: Enhanced with new procedures for cluster management, improved interfaces for existing procedures and improved error reporting.

  • EC-Artifactory: Enhanced to support Smart Deploy using ElectricFlow.

  • EC-JIRA: Enhanced to support authentication using OAUTH in plugin configuration and improved interfaces for certain procedures.

  • EC-Docker, EC-Kubernetes, EC-OpenShift, EC-Artifactory, EC-JIRA: Enhanced to support quicker promotion times.

  • EC-ServiceNow: Certified to work with London and Kington releases of ServiceNow.

Platform Support

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is no longer supported. (NMB-27789)

Database Support

Support for Oracle 11g Release 2 is removed. (NMB-27115)

Browser Support

No changes.

Resolved Issues

  • Smart Deploy option automatically flips back on when changing something in Application Process task. (CEV-20900)

  • The Projects list UI now supports pagination. (CEV-20352)

  • DSL generated for a pipeline which has approver group in a gate in "distinguishedName" format , had the distinguishedName in multiple lines. This dsl import Fails with NoSuchUserOrGroup: Invalid assignee/appprover '[..]' as no such user or group exists. (CEV-20212)

  • Gate condition fails javascript check even if syntax is valid. (CEV-19883)

  • The property shortcut, ` /myTriggeringPipelineRuntime,` is now documented. (CEV-19781)

  • Fixed issue where job step didn’t complete due to ClassCastException. (NMB-27703)

  • Tooltips for fields on the Credentials UI have been fixed to reflect the accurate description (NMB-27530)

  • Fixed regression issue with OutOfMemoryError: Requested array size exceeds VM limit . (NMB-27529)

  • The Installation Guide has been updated to include an explanation for the PKCS#12 file, prompted for by the ElectricFlow DevOps Insight Server installer. (NMB-27288)

  • Doc: How to Upgrade a DOIS Cluster? (no code change needed. doc only). (NMB-27242)

  • DOC: Added Clarification/Warning to the "Upgrade Cluster" documentation that nodes must not be started until the upgrade on primary node has been completed. (NMB-27110)

  • Doc: Document what is the format for the "Stomp Client URI" ?. (NMB-27108)

  • Improved documentation for linking Release Command Center to third-party tools. (NMB-26790)

  • DOC: State recommended Jars to use for MySQL connector Jar is 5.1.nn. (NMB-26787)

  • DOC - Add information how to create the first trusted agent in a new Zone. (NMB-26454)

  • DOC: Full list of intrinsic properties. (NMB-26451)

  • Document clearly what network share files need to be mounted for high availability. (NMB-26218)

  • During agent installation, there is an option to specify the host name for the resource that will be created. (NMB-21923)

  • During repository installation, there is an option to specify the host name for the repository that will be created. (NMB-21923)

Behavior Changes

  • With the introduction of the Release Command Center Setup capability in version 9.0, the “Setup for Command Center” procedures are obsolete, are no longer created for new installations, and are deprecated for upgrades:

    • HP-ALM Setup for Command Center - quality

    • Jenkins Setup for Command Center - build and quality

    • JIRA Setup for Command Center - defect

    • JIRA Setup for Command Center - feature

    • ServiceNow Setup for Command Center - incident

      After an upgrade to 9.0, the descriptions for these procedures appear as follows:

      [DEPRECATED] This procedure is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Go to the Command Center Editor to setup the Command Center for a given release. (CEV-21234)

Updated Plugins

This section lists plugins that have new functionality introduced in this release. The version numbers are provided for convenience: refer to the individual plugin documentation for more details.

Name New Version

EC-ALM

1.2.0.42

EC-Artifactory

1.3.1.126

EC-Docker

1.0.2.22

EC-Jenkins

1.12.0.206

EC-JIRA

1.5.0.223

EC-Kubernetes

1.2.0.211

EC-OpenShift

1.5.1.113

EC-ServiceNow

2.3.0.99

EC-Terraform

2.0.0.26

EC-WebSphere

2.6.1.356

ECSCM-Git

3.9.0.77

ECSCM-Perforce

2.9.0.10

ECSCM-Repo

2.3.0.10

ECSCM-SVN

3.4.0.16

ECSCM-TFS

2.5.1.21

For a complete list of bundled plugins, see the “Plugins That are Bundled with ElectricFlow” appendix in the ElectricFlow 9.0 User Guide, found on the Legacy documentation site

Installation and Upgrade Notes

For complete installation and upgrade information, see the ElectricFlow 9.0 Installation Guide found on the Legacy documentation site.

Upgrading Your Existing ElectricFlow Environment

Before starting an upgrade , make sure to back up your existing ElectricFlow data.

ElectricCommander and ElectricFlow Versions That Are Upgradable

Upgrades to ElectricFlow 9. x are supported only from ElectricCommander 5.0 or any version before 9.0. Upgrades to version 9. x from any ElectricCommander version that is 4.2 or earlier are not supported. For upgrade instructions, see the ElectricFlow 9.0 Installation Guide found on the Legacy documentation site.

Upgrading an Older DevOps Insight Version to Version 9.0 When Upgrading From ElectricFlow 7.3 or Any Version Before 8.5 to Version 9.0

Upgrading from ElectricFlow 7.3 or any version before 8.5 to ElectricFlow 9.0 requires upgrading your older version of DevOps Insight server to DevOps Insight server 9.0. Customers upgrading from 8.5 do not need to upgrade their DevOps Insight server instance which is expected to already be version 8.5 as ElectricFlow 8.5 required DevOps Insight server 8.5.

Upgrading From a Previous Version Running the Built-in Database to an Electricflow 8.x Database

You cannot upgrade from a previous version running the built-in database to an ElectricFlow 8. x database. If you want to continue using the built-in database in ElectricFlow 8. x , follow the database upgrade procedures described in the ElectricFlow 9.0 Installation Guide at Legacy documentation.

Updating Elements Containing applicationServiceMapping in XML Export Files from ElectricFlow 8.0.1 or Earlier

If your XML export file from ElectricFlow 8.0.1 or earlier versions has elements containing applicationServiceMapping , you must change all instances of that string in the file to serviceClusterMapping before importing the file into version 8.1. For example, change the following XML:

<applicationServiceMapping>
  <applicationServiceMappingId>9efcda31-a85f-11e7-8500-0800279f198d</applicationServiceMappingId>
  <applicationServiceMappingName>9efcda31-a85f-11e7-8500-0800279f198d</applicationServiceMappingName>
  …
</applicationServiceMapping>

to

<serviceClusterMapping>
  <serviceClusterMappingId>9efcda31-a85f-11e7-8500-0800279f198d</serviceClusterMappingId>
  <serviceClusterMappingName>9efcda31-a85f-11e7-8500-0800279f198d</serviceClusterMappingName>
  …
</serviceClusterMapping>

(CEV-16237 and CEV-16158)

Backing Up and Restoring Custom Settings in the elasticsearch.yml File for DevOps Insight Versions 8.2 and Earlier

The DevOps Insight installer overwrites the elasticsearch.yml configuration file with a new file. As of DevOps Insight version 8.3, the file includes a Custom Settings section, which lets you add Elasticsearch settings not managed by the DevOps Insight server without being lost during an upgrade. If you added settings to this file in version 8.2 or earlier that you want to preserve, you must back up the file to a separate location before upgrading to version 9.0 or newer versions and then add the settings to the Custom Settings section after the upgrade. During future upgrades, the installer will preserve the settings in the Custom Settings section. (NMB-25850)

Removing init_connect and skip-character-set-client-handshake from Your MySQL Configuration Before Upgrading

Since release 8.0.1, Electric Cloud has instructed customers using a MySQL database to use the following two lines in their MySQL configuration:

init_connect='SET collation_connection = utf8_unicode_ci, NAMES utf8'
skip-character-set-client-handshake

Before upgrading ElectricFlow, you must remove these lines or comment them out. Otherwise, jobs will not start.(NMB-27937)

Ensuring the Correct Default MySQL Default Collation

Since release 8.0.1, Electric Cloud has instructed customers using a MySQL database to ensure that the default collation for their database schema is set to utf8_unicode_ci or utf8_general_ci and that no table in their schema overrides this. As of release 9.0, the ElectricFlow server checks this configuration on startup and logs errors in the server log if it is not set correctly.

If the collation is not configured correctly, then entering non-ASCII text into ElectricFlow might cause errors. For example, setting a release name to a non-ASCII value and attempting a search causes an exception.

If your MySQL database schema or any tables in it are set to a non-UTF-8 collation order, see Knowledge Base article KBEC-00385 - Converting a MySQL Database From Latin-1 to UTF-8 Before Upgrading to ElectricFlow 8.0.1 for detailed instructions about safely converting your schema to UTF-8. (NMB-26521)

Upgrading Agents that Run the ec-groovy Job Step in Multizone Deployments

In multizone ElectricFlow deployments, ElectricFlow agents that are in a different zone than the ElectricFlow server must be upgraded to version 9.0 or later for the ec-groovy job step to run successfully on those agents. You must also upgrade the gateway agents that lead back to the server’s zone including those in any zones in between the agent’s zone and the server’s zone. (NMB-27490)

For details about multiple zones and gateway agents, see the “Gateways and Zones,” “Zones,” and “Gateways” sections in the “Automation Platform” chapter of the ElectricFlow User Guide at Legacy documentation.

Removing the SSL 2.0 Client Hello or SSLv2Hello Protocol from Your Security Configurations

To avoid the following warning in the Automation Platform web UI, we recommend removing the SSL 2.0 Client Hello or SSLv2Hello protocol from your security configurations for all components:

We recommend removing "SSL 2.0 Client Hello format from server configuration and upgrade older agents as indicated on the Cloud / Resources Page to avoid security risk.

To safely remove this protocol, enter the following command on the ElectricFlow server:

$ ecconfigure --serverTLSEnabledProtocol=TLSv1,TLSv1.1,TLSv1.2

When you do this, you would also need to upgrade older agents to the latest version to avoid security risks. You would need to upgrade agents if you are using the following agent versions:

  • Windows, Linux: 6.0.3 or older; 6.2 or older

  • Sun Solaris, HP UX, Mac OS: 8.4 or older

(NMB-27934)

Upgrading the DevOps Insight Server

This section provides information about upgrading the DevOps Insight server from Version 7.3 to Version 9.0 .

Re-Specifying Configuration Settings Not Preserved During the Upgrade

The installers (GUI, interactive console, and silent mode) for the DevOps Insight server do not preserve the configuration setting for the DevOps Insight server host name ( --hostName ) or the setting for the Elasticsearch number of shards ( --elasticsearchNumberOfShards ) during the upgrade from 7.3 to 9.0. If you specified nondefault values during the 7.3 Reporting server installation, you must re-specify these settings during the upgrade. (All other settings are preserved.)

DevOps Insight Server Configuration Notes

For a production environment, Electric Cloud recommends that you install the DevOps Insight server on a system other than systems running other ElectricFlow components (such as the ElectricFlow server, web server, repository server, or agent). If you must install it on the same system (such as for testing or other non-production or trial-basis situations) see “Running the DevOps Insight Server on a System with Other ElectricFlow Components” in the ElectricFlow Installation Guide found on the Legacy documentation site for details.

Configuration Notes

Performing a Full Import

During a full import, the import operation might hang in the following scenarios. To import successfully into ElectricFlow 8.0 and newer versions, perform the appropriate workarounds (CEV-15447 and (CEV-11873):

  • A manual process step in a process has formal parameters. The workaround is to remove the entry related to the property sheet for the job step that is associated with the manual process step.

  • In the exported XML file from the earlier release, two pipelines are in different projects, and both pipelines have no gate tasks. The flow associated with the pipeline is duplicated under both projects. The workaround is to remove the flow element under the projects.

Updating Application Component Plugins

Application components are based on plugins (EC-Artifact, EC-Maven and EC-FileSysRepo) with plugin details (such as name, procedure, and parameters) stored in properties on the component. Before version 5.4, the value for the pluginProjectName property included the plugin name and version (for example, EC-Artifact-1.0.3.4), which closely tied components to specific versions.

When you export your project data before upgrading from ElectricCommander 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, or 5.3 to ElectricFlow 8. x, you must update the application component plugin versions in the export file to the versions on the target ElectricFlow server before importing the data to ElectricFlow 8. x .

For example, if the promoted EC-Artifact plugin version is 1.0.4.1, then in the snippet below, you would change EC-Artifact-1.0.3.4 to EC-Artifact-1.0.4.1:

<property>
  <propertyId>3f509ffd-506b-11e6-9960-f01faf2c26a3</propertyId>
  <propertyName>pluginProjectName</propertyName>
  <counter>0</counter>
  <createTime>2016-07-23T00:20:20.829Z</createTime>
  <expandable>1</expandable>
  <lastModifiedBy>admin</lastModifiedBy>
  <modifyTime>2016-07-23T00:20:20.829Z</modifyTime>
  <owner>admin</owner>
  <tracked>1</tracked>
  <value>EC-Artifact-1.0.3.4</value>
  </property>
<property>

Starting with release 5.4, ElectricFlow uses the plugin key (which does not include the version) when defining a component. (CEV-6679)

Registering a Custom Plugin Procedure for the Step Creation Dialog

You must register a user-developed plugin so that it appears as an option:

  • When you use the plugin to configure a step in a component or application process.

  • In a procedure in the automation platform.

For details, see the “Register your procedure for the step creation dialog” section in the “Examples and Tutorials” chapter of the ElectricFlow Plugin Developer Guide found on the Legacy documentation site. (CEV-3649)

Limitations

  • When an application is cloned from one project (the original project) to another (the destination project), the tier maps for the application will point to the environments with the same names in the destination project. To deploy the application to the environments in the original project, you must create tier maps connecting the application to those environments.

  • When an assignee is added in a manual process step or stage task through the web interface, the Search field displays only the users who have actually logged into the system.

Known Issues

  • If Release Command Center was setup for JIRA for user-stories and defects, and the JIRA project name was mapped to the release project name using the following field mapping: ` projectName:releaseProjectName` then before upgrading to 9.0, the field mapping must be updated to mention the actual release project name using the following field mapping format: ` "release-project-name-in-ElectricFlow":releaseProjectName(CEV-21426)`

  • (Windows platforms only) If the Elasticsearch cluster, which is used by DevOps Insight, is in the red state (in Elasticsearch, this means that it only partly functions and some data is unavailable), then upgrade, reconfigure, or uninstall operations will not work. Because the Elasticsearch service can not be stopped when a cluster is in red state, kill the Elasticsearch service process by the task manager before running the installer for these actions. (NMB-26962)

  • The ability to search by assignee in a Deployment Report is not available in the DevOps Insight report editor. (CEV-19239 and CEV-19259)

  • All subreleases of a release must appear before the release in the DSL for the release-to-subrelease link to be created. ( CEV-18531 )

  • When you do a full import from version 8.0 to version 8.2 or newer and two or more releases have the same name (under different projects) and are associated to the same pipeline, then after import, the runs for all releases might become associated to the first imported release.

    This is because ElectricFlow cannot differentiate runs between the releases since all runs are under the same pipeline project and have the same name. To work around this issue, rename releases in the export file so that all their occurrences (in deploymentHistoryItem , flowRuntime , and so on) are unique. ( CEV-17164 )

  • Jobs might not appear upon drill-down into the “Clusters With Most Deployments” widget in the DevOps Insight Microservices Dashboard if the service does not contain a deploy step in the process. ( CEV-16930 )

  • A project import might not include the path-to-production view. (CEV-16250)

  • Multiple mapped environments with the same name from different projects are not supported in email notifications. (CEV-16245)

  • The retry count for group tasks or rules using “automated retry on error” is missing from the Pipeline runtime page. (CEV-15829)

  • If an application process step cannot expand to its child steps (because of an invalid run condition or an invalid formal parameter), then the step is not retried even if it uses “retry on error” error handling. The job eventually completes with an error. (CEV-15122)

  • No error prompt appears for failed tasks and retry tasks during a pipeline runtime. (CEV-14689)

  • The stage inclusion status in the Release Dashboard changes color after a stage is renamed. (CEV-12429)

  • Error prompts for runtimes started by a schedule are not visible if the schedule was created with a missed configuration. (CEV-12363)

  • When an application with snapshots created in ElectricFlow 6.1 or earlier is cloned, and a project containing this application is imported to ElectricFlow 6.3 or higher, the import operation fails. (CEV-11106)

  • (Windows platforms only) When installing DevOps Insight, you cannot use parentheses (round brackets) in the installation directory or data directory paths. For example, the path C:\Program Files (x86)\ElectricCommander is not valid. (NMB-26406)

  • Modifications of LDAP user data (such as email addresses) on an Active Directory server after registration in ElectricFlow do not appear properly in user details (in the Automation Platform UI or ectool) until the ElectricFlow server is restarted. (NMB-26021)

  • When you use the Automation Platform UI to upload and publish artifact files with non-English characters in their file names, the operation fails with the following error: Upload file: Exit code 1: ERROR: Publish failure: Unexpected retrieval exception for repository error . (NMB-24949)

  • You can revert changes only for high-level design objects such as applications, procedures, procedure steps, workflow definitions, and state definitions.

    Restarting the ElectricFlow server while new records are created for all tracked objects might take at least as long as an export or import of all projects (10 to 40 minutes for a large project).

  • System performance might decrease if you disable change tracking at the server level and then re-enable it at that level. (Change tracking is enabled by default.) For details about using change tracking, see the “Change Tracking” chapter in the ElectricFlow 9.0 User Guide at Legacy documentation.

  • Enabling Recursively Traverse Group Hierarchy might impact system performance when the LDAP group hierarchy is traversed. The amount of impact varies with the configurations of the ElectricFlow and LDAP servers, the depth of group hierarchy in the LDAP server, and the network latency between the servers. Make sure that your directory provider can handle the additional load for supporting nested group hierarchy traversal.

Documentation and Online Help

Product Documentation

ElectricFlow product documentation is available on the Legacy documentation site as follows:

  • ElectricFlow Installation Guide

  • ElectricFlow User Guide

  • ElectricFlow API Guide

  • ElectricFlow Release Notes

  • Groovy API Guide

  • DevOps Foresight Installation and User Guide

Documentation on the website is updated periodically.

Automation Platform Online Help

The Automation Platform web UI has a complete, robust, context-sensitive online help system. To use it, click the Help button in any page of the web UI.

Rollup of 8.x Features

Besides providing the many new improvements outlined above in these release notes, ElectricFlow v9.0 rolls up previous feature releases since v8.0. Access previous release notes here: release notes.

Troubleshooting and Getting Help

Technical Support

Contact CloudBees technical support:

Be prepared to provide your:

  • Name, title, company name, phone number, and email address

  • Operating system and version number

  • Product name and release version

  • Problem description

CloudBees Flow Knowledge Base

Go to https://support.cloudbees.com/hc/en-us/sections/360006415292-Flow-KB to find in-depth explanations of specific topics and solutions for specific problems.