ALM Release 8.8

Introduction to Release Notes

Kovair team is proud to announce the release of version 8.8 for all its products Kovair Omnibus, Kovair DevOps and Kovair ALM. The main features of Version 8.8 release are as following:
  • Support for Kanban
  • Enhanced support for active directory
  • Enhanced monitoring of integration through Omnibus
  • New adapters for Omnibus that increases our support for integrating 110+ commercial tools
  • REST API support
We’ve also enhanced many of our existing features and we’ve fixed bugs to improve the overall experience with Kovair products. By considering the inputs from our customers, product management team, and market research team, we believe that with this release we will enrich the experience of using Kovair products for our customers.

Platform & Browser Support

This release supports the deployment of Kovair on Windows® 8, Windows 7, Windows Server® 2012, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 operating systems. Release 8.8 applications can be accessed by latest versions of Google Chrome, Firefox 54.0.1 and Internet Explorer 11.0.

New features in Release 8.8

Support for Kanban

In this release, we have brought in the support for Kanban methodology in our ALM offering. With this Kovair ALM now has support for Waterfall, and Agile using both Scrum and Kanban methodology. Kovair has brought in a very intuitive Kanban Board. There will be various types of pre-configured Kanban boards which users can use for the execution of their project. Some of the key things that users will be able to accomplish through the Kanban board are given below.
  1. View the backlogs in the first column of the board
  2. Set WIP limits along with their buffer values for every column in the board
  3. Create or import different items in the form of cards within the board
  4. Track the progress of each card in the board
  5. Drag and Drop cards from one lane to the other thus changing the status of the items

URL Data Encryption

Kovair has introduced the support of passing encrypted URL instead of plain text. Every URL visible from the Kovair ALM application will be in encrypted format. This is a preventive measure to restrict the hackers from hacking the plain text URL.

Rest API Support for Kovair Products

Kovair has introduced the support for REST API which will allow users to seamlessly use the functionalities of Kovair ALM and Kovair Omnibus through the APIs. Our customers can now integrate their existing ESB with Kovair Omnibus and increase their integration capabilities. Details of API are available in the API user guide.

End to End Traceability in Reports & Dashboards

Cross tool end to end Traceability has always been one of the appreciated features of Kovair ALM . Users could view the traceability tree on screen and export it to excel only. In Release 8.8, Kovair has extended the functionality of viewing the traceability views from the reports and dashboards as well. Now users can view the end to end traceability in the form of reports and as a graphic gadget for incorporating it into dashboards. In addition, there are options to export this report and gadget

Single AD User Support for Accessing Tools Participating in Integration

In prior release, while registering a tool to the Omnibus platform, Omnibus administrators need to provide a project level admin user’s credentials as ‘De fault User’ available under the ‘Select Project’ tab. For our enterprise customers this became a problem as they must assign an admin user’s credentials for each of the tool’s registrations on the Omnibus platform. Kovair is happy to announce that in release 8.8 the support for using a single AD user account has been introduced. With this feature, administrators do not need to specify a ‘Default User’ separately for each of the tool’s registration. Customer can provide a single common user who has access to all the tools. This user details can be saved at the Kovair workspace level and will be used as the ‘Default User’. For any exception workspace administrator can still set a specific tool user for a given business case for an adapter registration.

Health Report for Omnibus

We have introduced a consolidated Report for providing snapshot of all the integrations currently in-place across all workspace for a given Omnibus instance. The report can be dynamically set to show snapshots for 1, 4, 8, 12 and 24 hours. Health report will be a very helpful feature for Omnibus administrators to monitor which adapters are heavily used and may need to split for better performance.  Users can also detect the tools where maximum transactions are failing. This report is accessible to the site owners.

Support for Data Reflow in Integration Scenarios

In an integrated scenario we have often seen that during the initial phases, the configuration gets changed very often. Based on the data movement, there are needs for adding or removing fields. In this scenario the biggest challenge is how Kovair Omnibus synchronizes the already synched data with the latest changed configuration. In Release 8.8, Kovair has solved this problem by implementing Data Reflow feature. This feature allows the administrator to reflow a single or multiple records from a source tool entity and push to target tool as per the latest configuration definition.

Rollback Support for Omnibus Import

Kovair Omnibus has support for exporting and importing of Omnibus configurations. But once imported, there was no option to roll it back. In release 8.8, Kovair has introduced the Rollback mechanism in the Omnibus platform. Now Omnibus administrators will be able to roll back the imported configuration to the previous one. This is a very crucial feature being requested by most of our customers.

New Adapters

We at Kovair are constantly working on adding more and more tools to our integration suite. The list of tools is decided based on market research, customer feedback and organizational strategy. With this release, now we have a total of 80+ tools integration with us. The entire set is shown below: 80+ Integrations from Kovair

Background Job Processors

Kovair is getting various requests from our customers for background processing of certain jobs without any user intervention. We are happy to announce that in this release; we have successfully implemented such jobs through a set of windows services. Some details of those services are given below.

Batch Retry Service

Kovair Omnibus has customizable built-in reliability mechanisms to ensure that no data is lost during transfer from one tool to other, it is common to encounter scenarios such as the target tool instance is temporarily unavailable which results in the data not getting synchronized. The new feature allows the administrator to set retry mechanism in place where at a regular configured interval failed transactions will be automatically pushed to the target tool. Once this service is set then no manual intervention is required. This service will not be a part of the ALM installer.

Omnibus Transaction Summary Report- By Email

It is often required by the management to have an overall summary report on the existing active integrations for a given site. In Release 8.8, a new Windows service is implemented that generates the summary reports and sends it to the specified recipients at a regular configured interval.

Validation Service to Verify Metadata of Omnibus Configuration

This is a step towards validating the already mapped metadata in an Omnibus configuration, e.g. Entity Mapping, Field Mapping, Lookup Mapping, etc. with respect to the tools’ current metadata like entities, fields, list values, etc. In Release 8.8, the said feature has been introduced through a windows service. This service would validate the connected tool Meta data with the one that is being configured in an existing Omnibus configuration. Any changes in the metadata that disrupts an active synchronization will trigger a notification to the intended recipients for undertaking corrective actions to resume the normal service. It’s often seen that any change in artifacts or attributes in the connected tools leads to a failure in the synchronization process. This service is a regular sanity check in the background for continuous verification of metadata.

Enhancements

Enhanced Support for Active Directory

For large to very large organizations tools access is primarily controlled from Active directory. In this release we have opened a gateway to provide access to AD users directly by validating them against the groups they belong to. The primary objective of the feature is to control tool access of ALM platform against AD groups and thus eliminate the need to manage users individually.  This release has intuitive interface at Site level to connect, Query, and assign AD groups. Moreover, the platform allows to tag ALM workspaces with AD group to control user access over workspaces.

License Dashboard

In release 8.8, Kovair has enhanced the licenses usage monitoring in an integrated environment. Kovair Omnibus integration platform run on concurrent user license. The License dashboard gives an insight of the License consumption on daily and monthly basis for a given period. Moreover the Dashboard shows widgets where License consumptions are in peak and where transaction fails because of unavailability of Licenses. The enhanced dashboard becomes a one stop window to decide actual License required for supporting the current volume of transactions. Additionally, this interface allows to export the consumption data to an excel spreadsheet for further analysis.

Baseline Enhancements

Requirement Baseline is one of the key feature for any Requirement management tool like Kovair ALM . This release has some extended features for end users to collect data, query and compare items in Baseline. Moreover base line scope has been extended to the second level items that are linked with the primary items. The baseline now shows the one level linked items.

Introduction of Filters and Re-execute Action in Sync Monitor Page

Kovair Omnibus has the Sync Monitor functionality for real time monitoring of all items getting synchronized over Omnibus. In release 8.8, Kovair has introduced the filtering mechanism in the Sync Monitor page. Specifying the search criteria, this will help users to quickly search for the required items. Additionally, re-execute option is introduced in the Sync Monitor page, facilitating the users to re-execute the failed transactions.

Email Notification on Success or Failed Transaction

Kovair Omnibus has a functionality to set email notifications for intended recipients for every successful and failed transactions. With this release, we have introduced the capability of sending emails to users or group of users for every successful or failed transaction. Moreover, if exclusive retry is set for a specific business flow then the platform will execute retry actions for all the failed transactions. In this release the notification mechanism has also been rationalized in terms of sending email at the last retry cycle not in very cycle.

Enhance Login History

Major enhancements in the Login history page, that is accessible from the Site Setup mode of Kovair ALM application, are implemented to enable the site administrator to query and easily view the users’ login foot print who all are logging into Kovair ALM application.

Report Enhancement

Release 8.8 has put in major focus for Matrix and Trend report in terms of performance and stability. The core report generation engine has undergone some major changes to increase the report generation performance by 20 to 30%.

Lookup Value Consistency Across the Site

Data consistency is a major requirement for any software application. In this release, Kovair has ensured that the lookup values are consistent across the application. This consistency can be ensured if such lookup values that are already in use are prevented from deletion by the admin users. With this view, the current release 8.8 will not allow the administrators to delete such lookup values.  In addition to this, the system will provide all the linked references details to the user.

Non English Character Support

Double byte support is enhanced in ALM in Release 8.8. The release will support non-English characters in basic fields like Single line text, Multiline text, RTF, Lookup value, Form Labels, View Name, Filter Name, Filter condition and Text Search.

Enhancements of Task & Story Boards

In this release, Kovair has provided the users to have a better control on the configuration of Task & Story boards. This will help users to configure these boards as per their organizational requirements.

Excel Import through Windows Service

This enhancement improves the Kovair ALM application performance while importing high volume of records into the application from excel or csv files using the ‘Import’ functionality. In this 8.8 release, this Excel Import functionality will work as an independent Windows service. It will not tax the application performance as the application and the import process will run on two independent threads. This windows service will be automatically installed through the application installer.

Deprecated Features

  •  “SMS” option from Mail Template.
  • “Copy to Other Objects” is restricted to few specific field types (Native type fields are available)
  • Omnibus automatic User mapping has been deprecated and removed the option from user mapping page.

Known Issues

  1. Kanban: Clicking on the Template Title from the Template List page, It should not open in Edit mode.
  2. Kanban: Select All and Deselect All buttons is not present in Board Policy Tab of Create Template Page.
  3. Kanban: While adding column in Kanban Template tooltip is not displayed over the ‘+’ icon.
  4. Kanban: After selecting swimlane values, the details should be displayed at top of the page.
  5. Kanban: If there is no comment in Comment popup of a card in Kanban Board there is no display message like “no comments to display”.
  6. Kanban: Checking ‘Show Relation Link’ checkbox in board policy the icon is not displayed on cards in Kanban board. ‘Show Relation Link’ checkbox should be removed from Kanban Template/Board if the icon is purposely removed from cards.
  7. Kanban: To close a comment popup a cross or close button is not present while moving cards from one column to another in Kanban board.
  8. Kanban: Refresh icon is not given in Kanban Board
  9. Kanban Reports: There is no label for y axis as “Card Count” while previewing Kanban Cumulative Flow Diagram Report.
  10. Kanban Reports: When data table of Cycle Time Control/Cycle Time Distribution/Average Time Chart reports are exported then total column is not displayed in excel.
  11. Entity list: The export to pdf does not displays Chinese characters properly.
  12. Reports: After workspace inherit all the reports are coming in the ‘Default’ folder.
  13. Agile Settings: The ‘Create Sprint’ type of gadget is not showing any value in the Gadget while preview.
  14. Omnibus Statistics: Bar Graph(s) for “Failed Event(s) is/are missing on omnibus Statistics Page.
  15. Omnibus Statistics: Refresh Button is not implemented to refresh the ‘Statistics’ page with same entered data.
  16. Omnibus Statistics: In case of one Service Flow having two Actions, two different Service Flows are getting displayed on Omnibus Statistics Page.
  17. Omnibus Configuration: Mapping different type of field at the time of relationship mapping is not showing the validation in proper way.