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5.4 Release notes

Shared state cache, Logging improvements, Triggering Processes based on Monitoring rules, UI improvements

E
Written by Erkka Honkavaara
Updated over a week ago

Breaking changes in 5.4

Versions 5.4.0 and forwards require SQL Server 2016 for on-premise Core deployments (UI + Log service)

Updating from pre 5.3 versions: API Trigger query parameters are now typed when passed to the Process, this might affect Processes which expected them to be strings.

Upcoming breaking changes in 5.5

Support for Service Bus for Windows Server is removed, when updating to 5.5 switching to Rabbit for on-premise deployments in mandatory.

5.4.4

3rd of December 2021

This service release contains the following changes/fixes:

General

  • Added support for managed hosting Frends infrastructure in City Cloud in Sweden https://citycloud.com/

    • Added support for OpenStack Ceph as Object Storage

    • Added support for Agent Group specific RabbitMQ users that the UI can create

    • Managed cloud Agents are not currently supported for tenants deployed in City Cloud

Process

  • Bug: Local Subprocesses are now executed concurrently (requires Process recompiling)

  • Bug: Process Task parameters/results with JSON 'undefined' values are now logged as 'null' instead because 'undefined' is not valid JSON and will break the UI JavaScript

UI

  • It is now possible to choose which API Processes are deployed when deploying an API

  • UI will no longer send configuration messages to out-of-date (different major or minor version) Agents to prevent errors.

  • Dashboard's error list now shows the timestamp in the browser's timezone

  • Bug: Process Instance List view no longer shows Development Agent Group's instances instead of the intended Agent Group's instances in some rare cases

  • Bug: Deleted Agent Group's cleanup settings are now removed correctly

  • Bug: It is now possible to remove the last Tag from a Process

  • Bug: Task page no longer fails to get updated Task information from the official Task feed when there's a large amount of Tasks installed

Agent

  • Bug: Shared state 'Try remove' action no longer throws an error when it succeeds

  • Bug: Cross-platform Agent no longer logs Trigger parameters when 'Log trigger parameters and result' is disabled

  • Bug: API Key rate limiting now correctly refreshes quota

  • Bug: Cross-platform Agent now reports Triggers in use correctly when running in limited mode

5.4.3

30th of August 2021

This service release contains the following changes/fixes:

UI

  • Environment Variable import now supports importing secrets

  • It is now possible to disable/enable Monitoring rules

  • Process variable names are now validated more rigorously

  • Bug: Process editor no longer gets stuck when viewing old Process versions with Firefox

  • Bug: Clicking on Task parameter tab on old Process version with Firefox no longer navigates to the Dashboard

  • Bug: Process editor’s Task update button now updates the parameter schema correctly

  • Bug: Improved code generation to fix building Processes targeting .NET Standard which would sometimes fail due to differences between compilers

Agent

  • Canceled Processes are shown more clearly and distinguished from canceled or timed out Tasks

  • Bug: Agent no longer crashes when reporting File Watch Trigger initialization failure

  • Bug: Local subprocesses are now correctly cancelled when the main Process cancels

5.4.2

25th of May 2021

This service release contains the following changes/fixes:

UI

  • Bug: Index used for Process instance deletion modified to fix slow instance cleanup

  • Bug: Fixed slow database migration when there's a huge number of Process instances

  • It is now possible to view Environment variable values in the Process editor

Agent

  • Bug: Cross-platform Agent now correctly logs request and response values

5.4.1

15th of April 2021

This service release contains the following changes/fixes:

UI

  • Bug: Deleting manual trigger parameter no longer misplaces description

  • Bug: Deleting an element from a list type Environment Variable no longer always deletes the last element of the list

  • Bug: Monitoring rules now support ending at midnight

  • Process log retention has a default upper limit of 60 days which can altered by Frends support

  • Log everything is disabled for new environments by default, it can be enabled by Frends support

  • Cross-platform Agent auto-sync is less aggressive, it only sends configurations if the Agent has processed all previous configuration messages

  • Bug: Process instance list filtering by promoted variables was done in memory instead of database

Agent

  • Bug: Fixed an issue where the Gateway Agent would not start

  • Failing to cleanup temporary Process setup files does not fail the Process deployment any more

5.4.0

New feature: Shared state cache

Agents inside of an Agent Group now have a shared cache they can access. This cache is stored in the shared database of the Agent Group and allows storing and fetching key-value based data with a time-to-live.

New feature: Environment specific database splitting for log data

Log data can now be split to separate databases based on the Environment. This can with log performance, as previously log data from all environments was processed from a single queue to a single database which could cause log data for development to wait for a huge burst of production executions to be processed before showing up in the UI. This has to enabled separately, and is only necessary in cases with huge volume of executions.

New feature: Triggering Processes based on Monitoring rules

Processes can now be configured to be launchable from Monitoring rules instead of just sending an email. This allows more complex functionality based on Monitoring rule alerts.

Other improvements and bug fixes

  • Throw shapes can be configured not to be caught by the global error handler

  • Errors only logging can be configured not to log Promoted variable steps

  • Manual Process start from the UI now report if the fail start immediately, instead of getting retried after 5 minutes

  • Automatically created Kubernetes Agents are now cleaned after being stopped

  • Process target framework is now checked on deploy against the Agent Group Agent .NET version

  • Log level settings for Process instance retention are now Agent Group specific instead of Environment

  • Changing Environment log level now requires Admin access

  • Process error acknowledgements can now have a reason specified

  • Task NuGet references with native DLLs are now supported

  • Multiple intermediate returns no longer fail the Process execution

  • Environment variables can now have a description

  • Environment variables can be copied

  • UI fixes

Note:

This is the last version that will support editing old frends 4.2 style Processes, the next version (frends 5.5), they will no longer be supported. If you have old 4.2 style Processes, consider converting them to the new format.

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