Summary
Electric Cloud is pleased to announce the general availability of the ElectricFlow 8.5 feature release (FR). For more information about types of releases, please go to ElectricFlow Release Strategy.
ElectricFlow 8.5 delivers innovation across many vectors such as a new Kanban-style Release view; object tagging for custom reporting and enhanced searchability; and new continuous integration dashboard to track and analyze build processes, failures and successes.
Some of the highlights are:
Release Kanban view: Faster user adoption based on familiar Kanban like form factor
ElectricFlow 8.5 introduces a new user interface based on the familiar Kanban-like paradigm for Releases and Pipelines.
The Release Kanban view provides an easy to use management and execution view of Pipelines, Stages and individual Tasks in one screen. It allows new users to get started with ElectricFlow quickly as it is based on the intuitive Kanban board style UI. The previous ‘Pipeline Stage’ based view remains available and users can pick between the two views to manage their releases and pipelines based on the form factor they prefer. Additionally, selecting task types for releases and pipelines has been simplified for faster authoring.
‘Tagging’ for significantly improved reporting, searching, and navigation
ElectricFlow 8.5 also introduces new tagging functionality on key objects to facilitate better searching and filtering of content. Object tags can also be used to create custom navigation and to provide easy access to objects across projects, improving overall object management. Additionally, tagging information flows over to DevOps Insight to enhance slicing and dicing of data for reports and dashboards.
New ways to search and filter content for personalization
ElectricFlow 8.5 now has ‘custom filtering’ capabilities for all the key objects enabling users to quickly zero in on objects of interest. Users can create simple or advanced queries to locate the objects of interest such as “show Pipelines launched by me” or “show all Environments with the Production tag”, and so on. Additionally, ElectricFlow 8.5 allows users to save their custom filters so that they can personalize their views for later use.
New CI and Code Commit dashboards for better management of build processes
ElectricFlow 8.5 introduces two new out-of-the-box dashboards dedicated to Continuous Integration (CI) processes and Code Commit activity that help identify trends and bottlenecks in the critical ‘build’ phase of Releases.
The new DevOps Insight Dashboard for Continuous Integration allows visibility into the build throughput, success/failure rates, average build durations, longest running builds, commits that caused build failures, and so on.
This visibility is available whether you are using ElectricFlow for CI or some other tool like Jenkins or even if you use multiple CI tools. ElectricFlow 8.5 also has a new ‘Code Commit’ dashboard where you can see trends of code commit frequency, number of commits, number of SCM repositories with highest code changes, and more. Additionally, not just CI jobs but details for all jobs are sent to DevOps Insight allowing users to create custom dashboards on job execution trends.
Software as a Service (SaaS) deployment option
With 8.5 we are introducing SaaS option to consume ElectricFlow. It will allow DevOps teams of all sizes to get up and running without needing to install and manage ElectricFlow servers on-premise. ElectricFlow SaaS seamlessly connects to your endpoints both in public clouds as well as on-premise.
Significantly improved administration and end-user experience
ElectricFlow 8.5 has numerous additional enhancements to improve administration, as well as end-user experience. Here are some key updates:
- Streamlined and faster ‘Release List’ screen with focus on showing more Releases but with just the right amount of details initially.
- Improved security and control over who can ‘Skip stages’ in a pipeline.
- Ability to copy pipeline tasks and application processes for faster authoring.
- Ability to create ‘custom filters’ for the DevOps Insight dashboard for better control and personalization.
- Multiple improvements to DevOps Insight ‘widget creation’ and ‘additional visualization’ options such as negative bar charts, scaling values, and more
- Improved Release Portfolio and SmartMap views for better user experience.
- Administration and installation
- Easily collect logs across multiple ElectricFlow servers, at the click of a button, in a clustered HA setup for faster troubleshooting.
- Easily report on Resource usage for better license control and clean up.
- Flexibility to control whether the default URL points to platform (/commander) or ElectricFlow Release or Deploy (/flow).
- Dedicated installer for DevOps Foresight.
- Option for clustered installation of DevOps Insight server.
- Pure 64-bit installer with non-Root option for ElectricFlow Server on Linux.
Plugins
- EC-Tomcat plugin is enhanced to support JMS, Virtual Environments and Static Deployment.
- EC-Weblogic plugin is enhanced to support JMS and Environment discovery
- Proxy Support for EC-JIRA, EC-Artifactory, EC-Servicenow and EC-EC2 plugins
- Support for Discovering containers running in EC-AzureContainerServices
- Changes in ECSCM-Git and EC-Jenkins plugins to support CI Dashboard
Download Instructions
Download ElectricFlow 8.5 FR from the Electric Cloud Sharefile site.
- Login using your personalized account to the Electric Cloud Sharefile at https://electric-cloud.sharefile.com
- Navigate to: /products/flow/release_8.5/8.5.0.133157 or click here: 8.5.0.133157
- Server and agent installers are located in the directory corresponding to the operating system (for example, windows)
- IDE plug-in installers are located in the /products/commander/integrations directory
- Release notes and product documentation are available online: ElectricFlow Documentation
Supported Configurations
See the “System Requirements and Supported Platforms” section in the ElectricFlow Installation Guide for a complete list of supported platforms and configurations.
Upgrade
Upgrades to ElectricFlow 8.5 FR are supported from ElectricCommander 4.2.x, ElectricFlow 5.x, 6.x, 7.x and 8.0.1, 8.0.2, 8.0.3, 8.0.4, 8.0.5, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 versions. Systems that are pre-4.2 must be upgraded to ElectricCommander 4.2.x before upgrading to ElectricFlow 8.5. For complete upgrade requirements and instructions, please see the ElectricFlow Installation Guide.
Support
Contact Customer Support with questions related to this release at support@electric-cloud.com.
Feedback
Contact the product management team at Electric Cloud for this or any ElectricFlow releases at productmanagement@electric-cloud.com
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