4.3 Release notes - 25th January 2017
New Process editor that is based on the bpmn-js BPMN rendering library. The new editor has much better performance and supports highly-requested things like zooming, moving many elements at once, or copy and paste.
New Process elements:
Subprocesses allow you to create small, reusable processes that can be used in other processes.
The expression shape allows you to execute short C# expressions as well as initialize and assign variables
While loop allows you to go through a list of unknown length or e.g. retry some steps.
Improved parameter editors, with XML, JSON and SQL highlighting
The new Process editor will be shown by default to Processes created with the old editor as well, migrating the Process model to match that of the new editor. However, the processes will not be automatically migrated: you will need to saved the Processes in the new editor to start using the new format. You can still use the old editor as well; you can access it from the link at the top of the new editor.
In 4.3, the Process instance data table schema has been tweaked for better performance. When upgrading, these new Process instance tables will be recreated as empty, renaming the old tables. This means any instance history before the upgrade will not be shown in the UI. The instance history data is still available in the database, if needed.
4.3 Service Release 1 (4.3.393) - 23rd February 2017
The main improvements in this release are:
Process error handler: You can now set a subprocess as the error handler to the entire process, allowing you to easily e.g. set up common error reporting. Please see the documentation for details.
Import/export BPMN: You can import BPMN from an XML file to the process editor, allowing you to design the process first with a separate BPMN editing tool and working from that with FRENDS. You can also export the process graph as BPMN or as an SVG image.
Improved internal process logging performance: The log messages are now processed in batches, which speeds up process execution and reduces load on the log database. Also the process and event log history delete performance should be improved.
There are also many bug fixes, e.g. fixing some process parameter editor crashes due to invalid parameters, and HTTP trigger allowing requests with invalid charset values.
NOTE: This service release also updated the NuGet libraries to newer ones that only support three-part version numbers (major.minor.patch). If you have been using custom task packages that are versioned by only changing the fourth part of the version number, the references may not get resolved correctly during build process. This can cause process build failures, especially if task parameters have been changed between the versions. Essentially, if you have two versions, 1.0.0.1 and 1.0.0.2 of a task package imported, the build process will use the older one, even if you explicitly reference the newer task version. The workaround is to create a new version of the task package, with a version that updates e.g. the third version number part, i.e. instead of 1.0.0.2, you use 1.0.1.
4.3 Service Release 2 (4.3.408) - 9th March 2017
This release fixes some issues with the new editor as well as logging:
In 4.3 SR 1, the logged results and parameters of process steps executing at the same time may get mixed up. This was due to an issue in batching the database insert commands, leading result and parameter data to sometimes be written to wrong rows in the database. The actual process execution is unaffected, but the execution graph could show wrong parameter and result values for task and loop executions.
Links for viewing possible process error handler executions are now shown correctly
Variable and result references as well as annotation connections are now correctly validated, also in inclusive branch condition expressions
4.3 Service Release 3 (4.3.422) - 22nd March 2017
Maintenance release, which mainly fixes usability issues like:
Schedule triggers sometimes not being validated correctly
Run once action not being shown for users with execution rights, and
Reference autocomplete adding an extra square bracket to an expression
4.3 Service Release 4 (4.3.432) - 4th April 2017
Minor maintenance release, fixing mainly user interface issues like:
Process list shows erroneous warnings for missing environment variables
Task import allows you to import a task package with four-part version number, potentially causing problems during compilation
Trigger status update fails if there are newly created processes
4.3 Service Release 5 (4.3.443) - 2nd May 2017
Minor bug fix release, mostly for user interface issues like:
Array object default values were not initialized on task update, causing Cobalt updates to fail
“Show subprocess” button is sometimes disabled for failed subprocesses that actually ran
Log service crash if cache warmup query takes too long
4.3 Service Release 6 (4.3.451) - 15th May 2017
Minor bug fix release, fixing issues like:
Basic authentication on HTTP triggers fail for concurrent users
Empty error messages if process migration to new editor version failed
Open process instance list polls backend on every new process execution, causing unnecessary load on the database
4.3 Service Release 7 (4.3.458) - 24th May 2017
This release mainly fixes an issue with subprocess log message processing that caused the processing to queue up and instances not showing in the UI
4.3 Service Release 8 (4.3.477) - 15th June 2017
This release fixes some rare but nasty issues:
The agent could crash when running a process with hundreds of variable references
Executing tasks calling async methods while capturing the context (i.e. not using ConfigureAwait(false)) could hang the process execution
Duplicate process versions could be created due to too aggressive caching
Deploying processes on a cloud installation would take long (minutes) if there already are hundreds of process version packages stored in the package repository