206 - Situational Deployment
Hi there, eMagiz developers! In the last few weeks, we have done much work for the Deploy phase. On top of that, we have worked on several store functionalities. Next to this, we have several smaller feedback items from our hackathon efforts that are now released to you.
Release Date Change
As of release 208, released on November 9th, 2023, we will change our release date to Thursday morning starting at 05:00 AM CET (4:00 UTC). We opted for this change as it allows us to control better and manage our releases to uphold the quality standards you have gotten used to from us. Should you have any questions, please get in touch with productmanagement@emagiz.com.
Deployment Plan
Improved deployment plan to make the process better and more predictable
The algorithm for generating a default deployment plan is improved to keep JMS downtime and alerting to a minimum. When stopping a machine, the JMS server is stopped last, and when executing the deployment plan, the JMS server is deployed first. This way, the JMS server is troubled minimally, and all processes are stopped before being deployed again. This provides additional control over the deployment of your release(s) and reduces the likelihood of false-positive logging (and potentially alerting) during and shortly after the deployment.
Editing release properties
With this release, it will be possible to change the description of a property by editing the property.
Container memory settings
A change in memory settings triggers redeployment of the container now.
Properties tab
We have removed the deprecated tab Properties in the Deploy phase.
Cleanup old images
When a release is removed, the related unused images in the on-premises machines will be removed as well.
Performance improvements for loading releases
Performance improvements have been implemented for loading releases in Deploy. Releases should now load faster than before. All functionality should remain exactly the same as before.
Store Improvements
Message definition elements order
We fixed an issue that the order of message definition elements was changed after being imported.
Importing a store item with synchronous message definitions
We fixed an issue that importing a store item with synchronous message definitions went wrong. Now, the imported message definitions should correspond with the exported message definitions.
Importing store items containing static copies
We fixed an issue that store items were missing static copies. Now, store items with static copies are imported correctly.
Importing store content
We fixed an issue that blocked you from importing Store content in the Design phase. The message definitions and message mappings are now imported correctly as the original content in the item of the Store.
Store disclaimer
Users who are not the model owner no longer see the eMagiz Store disclaimer popup, instead they see a popup containing a message that states that the model owner should accept the disclaimer.
Feedback Items
Alerting manual pause
A few releases ago we changed the behavior of alerting in the deployment plan. Now each time when a deployment plan is executed the alerting will be automatically re-enabled when the deployer closes the deployment plan or closes the web browser. The majority of the users are happy with the new behavior, but there are some use cases that you do not want start the alerting immediately. With this release, if alerting has been paused manually, this will not be activated automatically after a release deployment.
Ordering of graphs in Manage
The graphs in Manage are now ordered according to importance. This means that runtime statistics are sorted by "Process CPU usage" (highest first), queue statistics are sorted by "Messages in queue" (highest first), and HTTP statistics are sorted by "Unsuccessful requests" (highest first).
UTC times in Grafana panels
All Grafana panels now show UTC times, which are normally used in eMagiz, instead of local (browser) time zones. This way, it is easier to match graphs with logging events or alerts.
Update flow designer version
The framework used in the flow designer has been updated, improving performance.
Carwash track TLS versions in logging
A new logging feature will be released, enabling us to make better choices in deprecating old encryption standards.
Moving channels in the flow designer
Moving already attached channels in the flow designer has been made sligthly easier.
Topic sizes description change
In the change description (and History) when altering the topic size of a topic the new and old value were switched around creating confusion, this has been resolved.
Password change notification
When an account password change request is made, even when this fails, a mail is sent to the account owner to inform the owner about the action.
Password comparison
When changing a password, it is compared to a list of known database breaches for security. A warning is shown when the password corresponds with a password in the database.
Inactive user alerting
Inactivated users are now removed from all alert settings (included “disabled“ settings) to avoid undesirable notifications.
Alphabetical sorting on user level in HTTP statistics
Variables in the 3rd generation runtimes HTTP statistics detail pages are now sorted case insensitive.
Bug Fixes
Flow designer styling
The styling of the flow designer's left component panel has been restructured, solving a rare bug which would break the styling of certain functionalities.
Partial search for messages
It is now possible to search on messages partially in Manage Monitoring. For example, a search for Uptime can be done by searching for "up" "time" "ptim".
Disk usage after cloud template update
In the last cloud template update there was an issue with disk performance. This has been resolved in this release. You can manually upgrade your cloud template, or rely on automatic updates.
Error handling migration
If there is no custom error handling, when migrating to Gen3, the error channel to “errorChannel” is only created for the first inbound in an entry flow. This has been fixed by adding a migration step, where we set the error channel of all inbounds in a flow to “errorChannel” if the custom error handling is set to false.
Fancy Forum Answers
As always, this is a gentle reminder to ask questions via the Q&A forum. The Q&A forum is available in the eMagiz iPaaS portal, so we can all benefit from the knowledge within the community. For some inspiration, take a look at these forum answers:
- JSON Web Tokens (JWT authentication)
- Determining container sizes & reading architecture pages
- SFTP connectivity - supported algorithms
- Deploy property release results in missing flows in runtime
- MessageDeliveryException: Dispatcher has no subscribers
Key Takeaways
Thanks to all who helped build and those who tested and gave feedback to improve the product. To end this post, here are some key takeaways for you:
- If you have questions surrounding our Program Increment Planning, please get in touch with productmanagement@emagiz.com
- If you have feedback or ideas for us, talk to the Platypus
- Please inform us of new additions to the store (productmanagement@emagiz.com) so we can all benefit from these.
- Clear your browser cache (Ctrl + Shift + Del)
- Check out the release notes here
- Start thinking about how the license tracker can aid your development
- Start thinking about major, minor, and patch
- Upgrade to the latest build number
- Keep making great integrations
Let's stay in touch and till next time!