7.8.00 enhancements

This section contains information about the features in version 7.8 of the BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform.

Tip

For information about issues corrected in this release, see Known-and-corrected-issues.

Note

For complete compatibility information about this BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform release, see BMC Solution and Product Availability and Compatibility Utility (SPAC requires a Support login). Log in using your support ID, search for BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform and choose the current release to display compatibility information.

Operating system updates

Added support for operating systems

In this release, support is added for the following operating systems (for BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform, not Development Studio):

Windows Server 2012 R2 64-bit
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x 64-bit

Desktop support has been added for the following operating system (for Development Studio, not BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform):

Windows 8 64-bit

For more information about system requirements, see System-hardware-requirements.

Note

For optimal performance, BMC Software recommends that you use a 64-bit operating system. You can configure an LAP to run on 32-bit operating system, but the allocated memory is limited to 1.5GB.

Discontinued support for operating systems

In this release, BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform does not support the following operating system:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x

Browser support updates

Support is added for the following browsers:

Google Chrome 43
Microsoft Internet Explorer 11
Mozilla Firefox 39

Installation program changes

The BMC Atrium Orchestrator installation now includes the option to install the BMC Atrium Orchestrator dashboard.

Platform – Content compatibility

BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform 7.8 is certified with BMC Atrium Orchestrator Content 20.15.01.

Warning

BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform 7.8. uses Java 7, update 76. If you have created custom adapters, you might need to recompile the adapters with this version of Java. Some adapters might not work if they do not comply with the increased security standards enforced in this version of Java.

Atrium Single Sign-On compatibility

BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform 7.8 is certified with Atrium Single Sign-On (SSO) 9.0.

Infrastructure changes

BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform has been upgraded to work with Tomcat 7.0.59 and Java 7, update 76.

RESTful API support

Administrators can leverage the important properties of RESTful (REST) web services, including uniform interface, addressability, statelessness, and connectedness. The REST API web service offers the following features:

Use of JSON for easier integration into web applications and to streamline data exchange

JSONP support to avoid the need for proxies and avoid cross-domain issues
SSL support for all web communications
SSO integration to avoid transmitting credentials every time we make a request

New REST API methods are available in the following areas:

Authentication

Module management
Process management

For more information, see RESTful-web-service.

Security enhancements

The following security enhancements are available in this release.

Ability to configure secure transport and cipher codes

Administrators can configure settings for the secure protocol type (SSL/TLS) and cipher suite names for BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform HTTPS communications. For more information, see Configuring-secure-transport-protocol-and-cipher-suites-for-HTTPS.

Masking secure data in log files

BMC Atrium Orchestrator masks several commonly identified data items in log files, such as passwords. You can mask other data items in logs by editing the log_config.xml files. For more information, seeHiding-the-display-of-secure-data-in-log-files.

Encrypting an element's contents

You can now add the secure="true" attribute to an XML adapter element XML view to ensure that the element's contents is encrypted when displayed. For more information, see Configuring-adapters.

Logging enhancements

This release includes the following adapter and process (workflow) level logging enhancements:

Administrators can enable custom logging for adapters. If enabled, users can specify a separate adapter log file, the file location, file size, and logging level. Current adapter logging will still occur in the grid.log. For more information, see Configuring-adapters and Enabling-custom-logging-with-custom-adapters.
Adapter-related log entries in grid.log and custom adapter logs (if enabled) will include the following information:
- Peer name
- Adapter name

- JobID when in a job
  The JobID will also be used in the processes.log, so users can more easily associate information in grid.log and processes.log

Administrators can enable custom process (workflow) logging capabilities. If enabled, users can set logging properties at the root process level to turn logging on or off at the root level, to specify a separate log file, and provide the log file name. Log entries for all sub-processes, known as call-processes, will also be stored in this user-specified log (custom process log). Current process logging will still occur in the process.log. For more information, see Enabling-custom-logging-for-processes.
Process-related log entries in processes.log and custom process logs (if enabled) will include the following information:
- Module names and process names
- JobID
  The JobID will also be used in the grid.log, so users can more easily associate information in processes.log and grid.log.
Process log entries have changed. For a description of the changes, see Process-log-changes.

Dashboard updates

A new Value Dashboard provides Value reports for BMC Atrium Orchestrator processes. Value reports indicate the time or money saved by the process runs that occurred during the reporting period.

There are two types of Value reports:

Process Metric reports provide data from completed process runs and the process run value is configured during report creation.
Business Metric reports provide data from process runs for processes that include business metrics.

Administrators create the Value reports and configure the Value Dashboard Home page to display reports.

The Health Dashboard is updated with a new interface.

For more information see Using-the-Health-and-Value-Dashboards.

Development Studio updates

The following enhancements have been made in Development Studio.

Updated Eclipse version

Development Studio is updated for Eclipse 3.7.

While activity

The new While activity is available in Development Studio. The While activity is a conditional loop that will evaluate one or more conditions and, based on the conditions, perform the specified operations inside the loop. For more information, see While-activity.

Audit record enhancements

Audit records can now include the following data:

BMC Atrium Orchestrator user login and logout via Grid Manager and REST API
Jobs (processes) scheduled

For more information, see Audit-records.