What has changed
Breaking changes in 5.6 release
Note: These changes were already present in 5.5 and are listed here for visibility
Service Bus for Windows (for pre 5.5 installations)
Support for Service Bus for Windows Server is removed, when updating to 5.5+ switching to RabbitMQ for full on-premise deployments is mandatory. This also means that using the Service Bus Trigger no longer works with Service Bus for Windows Server.
βRemote Subprocesses (for pre 5.5 installations)
Because of changes to the message busses used by Frends, Agent groups within an Environment should be reinstalled at the same time. This is required when Remote Subprocesses are being used.
βFrends.Tasks.Attributes support to be removed
Frends Tasks Attributes was a way of modifying the Parameter editor for Tasks before Frends 4.5.6, when it was deprecated and support for it was removed in 5.5.3. Previously imported Tasks will continue to work normally, but new Task imports will require migration to System.ComponentModel.Annotation to support conditional parameter displays etc.
SQL Server requirements
The minimum supported version of SQL Server is now MS SQL Server 2017 for on-premise deployments.
5.6.5
23rd of November 2023
UI
Improvements
Process compilation speeds improved by improving caching and trimming NuGet package dependency restorations for .NET Framework Processes. This affect subsequent builds after the first build of a Process. Cross-platform Process builds (.NET Standard and .NET) are also sped up and will be further improved in the 5.7 release to match Framework compilation speeds.
Process Instance list view now always shows the execution time range filters, so it's possible to modify if there aren't initially any Instances to show
5.6.4
10th of November 2023
UI
Improvements
Example Processes for new Trials are now updated to .NET 6 Processes and Tasks
Bug fixes
Fixed issue with Triggers being shown as red due to Agent being shown incorrectly offline intermittently
DenyTags access rule no longer prevents viewing the Process list when there's over 2100 Processes
Fixed issue with filtering Process and Subprocess list by Subprocess
Fixed issue with opening Process actions menu in the Process list page not opening or closing instantly when clicked before the page has fully finished loading
Agent
Bug fixes
Linux Cross-platform Agent installation script now creates the log directory and assigns the service user correct access rights
5.6.3
25th of September 2023
Agent
Improvements
Added official support for Managed identity authentication for Service Bus Trigger
Bug fixes
Fixed Cross-platform Agent installer notification for ports not being opened in Windows firewall
Fixed rebuilding Processes with a Global error handler targeting a Remote Subprocess
Fixed importing Processes with a Global error handler
Fixed issue with Process execution duration not showing the duration correctly for executions that took longer than one hour
Fixed issue with rolling back API spec versions
5.6.2
17th of August 2023
UI/Log service
Improvements
Added opt-in support for RabbitMQ Quorum queues
It is now possible to delete old Process versions
It is now possible to select the visible columns in the Process instance list again
It is now possible to filter the Task list with "Show only updatable" to show only Tasks that have available updates
It is now possible to filter the Process list with Trigger type
Process instance list has a new field indicating if it has logged steps
Instead of showing "No instances" the Process instance list now shows instances from the latest execution, e.g. the last 7 days that had executions when there's initially no executions during the last 7 days
Remote Subprocess target Agent group is now possible to be chosen dynamically
Process variables are now deployment specific
Process list pagination is now handled server-side which improves the performance
Changing filters on the Process instance list and Process list are no longer pushed to the page history on the browser, so clicking back will take you to the previous page instead of modifying the filters
Page loads times and performance improved, especially for the API Management
Improved Process instance count update processing speed
Updated to Microsoft.Data.Sql to allow using newer Azure authentication models, such as Managed identities
UI tweaks, fixes and performance improvements
β
Bug fixes
Fixed issue with Process instance list when Promoted variable name contains a dot
Fixed issue with Monaco editor's autocompletion when there's multiple fields
When importing Environment variables the Description field is now updated as well
Disabled changing fields that should not be editable for API Triggers in the Trigger shape
On the Process instance list fixed the time filter from being modified when using the search functionality
Copying Triggers and exclusive decision shapes now correctly copies fields when there is a naming collision
Fixed editing OAuthProvider's WellKnownMetadataLocationOverride to not cause an error
Corrected access rights for getting feedback URL from the backend
Improved database cleanups to prevent cleanups from being timing out
Fixed Process execution counts not updating correctly
Fixed issue with Agent group dropdown not being populated in Process instance list
Log service now processes heartbeats that have been sent at the exact same time
Fixed issue when filtering by tags that contained illegal characters
Fixed compiling cross-platform Processes where the element name contained a double quote
Log service now reads Agent heartbeats in batches which prevents heartbeats from being queued up causing Agents to seem to be offline eventhough they are online
Limited Agent configuration option is now correctly included in the Cross-platform Agent configuration
Agent
Improvements
Updated to Microsoft.Data.Sql to allow using newer Azure authentication models, such as Managed identities
Cross-platform installer now reminds about opening firewall ports when installing the Agent with HTTP(s) ports configured and Windows firewall is in use
Bug fixes
Agent SQLite database locked when running multiple File triggers fixed
Fixed problem with Trigger HTTP endpoint not being accessible if there were routes with overlapping route parameters being used
Cross-platform Gateway Agent now correctly recovers from target Agents being temporarily unreachable
Note: When the HealthCheckApiKey needs to unset on the target Agents and provided to the Cross-platform Gateway Agent so that the Gateway can access the health check endpoint
5.6.1
30th of March 2023
UI
Improvements
Process list can now be exported as a CSV-file
Task execution retry count is now shown in the Process instance view
HSTS is now enforced for Cloud tenants
Added OpenAPI specification file import endpoint in Management API
Support for disposing in Foreach-iterator
Agent warnings are aggregated and shown on the Agent Group view
The default save option for new Processes in the Process editor is "Create new Process" instead of "Create and activate"
Bug fixes
Processes can be filtered by used Tasks (like before)
Promoted result search no longer causes an error
Fixed issue with page loading on Safari
Default role can now be emptied for an OpenId provider
Fixed Process validation to correctly check for Environment variable references when editing Triggers
Process import no longer breaks scandic letters' encoding
Fixed creating a new Environment Variable group and value from the Process Editor
Fixed not being able to select a replacement Task for a freshly imported Process in the Process editor
Fixed copy&paste between Process editor tabs
Fixed Process instance running count being displayed wrongly during race condition with count refreshes
Many smaller fixes related the to UI remake
Agent
Improvements
Service bus client uses message's lockedUntil to determine message log renewal interval
Fixed auto-connect for Agents when using RabbitMQ as the messagebus
Bug fixes
HTTP and API Trigger now ignore (and warn) when an invalid content type is provided for a request
Fixed a concurrency issue with RabbitMQ message processing which affected Remote Subprocesses (when using RabbitMQ as the system bus) and Rabbit Trigger
Queue Trigger now allows multiple connections to the the same ActiveMQ broker
5.6.0
19th of January 2023
UI
The management UI has been rebuilt to provide a more modern and usable user experience. The different pages of the UI have a more uniform way of functioning, making it easier for new users to jump in.
Notable changes, improvements and features:
Dark mode
Process auto-recovery functionality to allow continuing development if the browser crashes
A new Welcome page for new Frends deployments to help new users to start using the product with links to documentation and interactive product tours
From now on it is only possible to create Group Environment Variables on the Root level, i.e. new text, number, secret type Environment Variables can only be created inside of Groups. This was done to guide towards more cleaner maintainable Environment Variable structures
Monitoring rules can now be deployed/copied to new Environments as inactive
Process editor now has a buttons to center back to BPMN graph and see keyboard shortcuts
It is now possible to use expressions for Shared state Time-To-Live
Ctrl+S now does a 'Save as draft' in the Process Editor
New Agent groups will be Cross-platform by default
It is now possible to specify variables to be disposed at the end of a scope
When importing a Process that has an API Trigger, it is now automatically linked to an existing API Specification that matches it
It is now possible to disable Caller cancellation, i.e. this will allow a Process to finish even if the HTTP request which started the Process is cancelled
It is now possible to enforce mandatory Process change descriptions
Needs to be requested separately from support@frends.com
Bug fixes
Fixed Process instance being reported for the wrong time when the Process started and ended on different dates
Fixed failing validation when switching Process' target framework to .NET 6 from .NET Standard
Process diff view now correctly highlights array parameter changes
New feature - Process Variables
Processes can now specify Process Variables. Process Variables are initialized at the start of the execution of a Process and can be accessed through the #var-reference. This feature will support the upcoming improved templating functionality by allowing the change of parameters during import. They will also allow changing the parameter values that use Process Variables without recompiling in the future.
Agent
Improvements and new features
The Agent will execute Remote Subprocesses through the local interface instead of going through the Remote Subprocess pipeline when the target Agent group is the one executing the parent Process
Bug fixes
Agents now report a failed Process instance execution if they cannot execute a Manual Trigger due to a missing Environment Variable