2022.1.0 Feature Release

Itential is pleased to announce the 2022.1 feature release of the Itential Automation Platform (IAP) with several new functions and improvements to configure, manage, and deploy devices and services across your operational network. Highlights of this release are provided below, by application.

IAP 2022.1 (Long Term Support)

IAP 2022.1 is a Long Term Support (LTS) version of IAP, which provides customers with three years of support. Review the Version Lifecycle page for more information regarding the differences between STS and LTS versions of IAP.

Automation Gateway (IAG)

• Added an http_requests patch API in Automation Gateway that allows a user to add/update device variables without replacing the existing variables that were previously configured for the device. When this API call is executed, the new variables will be merged with the existing variables for the device.
• Added new icons to the main IAG UI sidebar for each of the sliding menus to better align and standardize the navigation panels cohesively between IAG and IAP.
• Added logging to Automation Gateway that displays information to the console and writes to a separate file that is rotated when it reaches a size greater than 1 MB. A maximum of 5 log files are kept in rotation by default.

Automation Platform (IAP)

• Refined the transformation check to ensure an error is displayed to notify the user when an issue arises while rendering a transformation.
• Added a new serverName property to the properties.json file to give Administrators the ability to uniquely identify their IAP servers with a serverId name that is more secure and user-friendly.
• Provided the ability to auto-write passwords to Vault when entered through Admin Essentials. This feature will also mask those passwords from view within the UI. With this feature addition, Itential users have the option to use their own HashiCorp Vault Secrets Manager in a ‘read-only’ mode.
• Made integration improvements with AWS Lambda by adding a key/secret pair and session token to the authorization schema.
• Improved the API caching mechanisms for a better UI experience.
• Boosted recovery efforts when processes die by allowing the platform to restart the service.
• Accelerated the processing performance for large task objects from 2 minutes to 3 seconds.
• Improved log messaging to assist with troubleshooting run failures and other problem scenarios.
• Modified the platform UI infrastructure to improve quality and enable auto-testing in future releases.

Automation Studio

• Fixed the Command and Analytic Template collections to better handle incoming schema objects that are broken or not fully compatible.
• Improved handling of workflows with special characters so they no longer fail on import.

Configuration Manager

• Improved the import function in Golden Configuration to support overwrites and renaming duplicates. This enhancement allows users to easily migrate Golden Configurations between environments such as from development to production.
• Incorporated a new DiffViewer in Configuration Manager to handle large configurations. Previously, the config diff functionality would timeout on extremely large device configurations. It now works in a very timely manner.

Operations Manager

• Applied a new canvas component that allows the Job Details view of Operations Manager to render Gen 2 workflows using the Gen 2 visual style.
• Updated the JST application in Automation Studio to use React to enhance the user experience for integrating JSTs. This will align JST Designer with other apps in Automation Studio and allow it to be better maintained for future releases.
• Fixed several issues in the Auto-Work feature of Operations Manager that sometimes caused Auto-Work mode to become disabled unexpectedly under certain conditions such as closing the Task details modal of an auto-worked task too quickly after resolution of the task or before resolving the task, and when multiple tasks that can be auto-worked are executed in quick succession.

Additional improvements and bug fixes were also incorporated in this feature release. Full details are available on the 2022.1.0 Feature Release Notes.

Itential Academy also offers an e-learning course that discusses some of the more important enhancements with the 2022.1.0 Feature Release. This course is free but will require you to have (or create) an Itential Academy account.