Technical bulletin: Impact of Adobe Flash Player end of life on BMC Release Process Management

Update: December 9, 2020

BMC has tested Flash-based capabilities with the HARMAN Packaged Browser application—Electron/Chromium version. For updates regarding Limited Support, see "Alternatives for customers who want to continue to use the Flash-based BMC products."

Adobe announced the end of development and distribution of Adobe Flash Player by the end of the year 2020. For more information, see Adobe Flash Player EOL General Information Page. In turn, most browsers, such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox will no longer support Flash. You will not be able to access Flash-based capabilities in BMC Release Process Management after December 31, 2020.

Impact on BMC Release Process Management

The following table lists the affected components:

Component

Reference topic

Volume Report

Time to Complete Report

Problem Trend Report

Time of Problem Report

Release Calendar report

Environment Calendar report

Deployment Windows Calendar report

You cannot run or generate these reports without Flash.

Alternatives for customers who want to continue to use the Flash-based BMC products

HARMAN International Packaged Browser solution

HARMAN International has an exclusive agreement with Adobe to provide extended licensing and support agreements for the enterprise Adobe Flash Player until the end of 2023. For details, go to https://services.harman.com/partners/adobe.

BMC Software provides Limited Support for Adobe Flash-based capabilities in BMC products when used in combination with the HARMAN Packaged Browser application—Electron/Chromium version. Limited Support is provided temporarily until Dec 31, 2021, to cover the time period until customers upgrade to the latest BMC product version that has replaced the Flash-based capabilities.

Adobe Enterprise Enablement for legacy browser versions

Important

The ability to run Adobe Flash Player depends upon the browser vendor's support. Running BMC Software products with outdated browser versions requires you to turn off automatic updates. This approach should be carefully considered and should be in alignment with your company's security group recommendations.

With Adobe Flash Player 32.0 Enterprise Enablement, companies can allow Flash Player content to be loaded from a set of trusted URLs by performing these actions:

  1. To allow Flash to run for a BMC product, in a mms.cfg file, enable the AllowListURLPattern option and add the list of trusted URLs as follows:

    EnableAllowList=1

    AllowListUrlPattern=http://<TSIM-Server-FQDN>
    AllowListUrlPattern=https://<TSIM-Server-FQDN>
    AllowListUrlPattern=http://<MidtierServer>:<port>
    AllowListUrlPattern=https://<MidtierServer>:<port>
    For details about the AllowListUrlPattern options, the location of the mms.cfg file for different platforms, and other recommendations from Adobe, see the Adobe Flash Player 32.0 Administration Guide.

  2. Push the mms.cfg file to all browsers that need to continue to use Flash.

  3. Prevent automatic updates of newer browser versions that will not allow Flash Player to load.
    For information about Flash Player automatic updates, go to https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/flash-player-background-updates.html.

BMC Software has validated the Flash Player will continue to run with Flash Player Enterprise Enablement on these browser versions:

Tested browser version

Vendor support

Microsoft Internet Explorer 11

Mozilla Firefox 83

Google Chrome 86

Related topic

Adobe Flash Player EOL

 

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