Contents

Helpful Links

• Release Control 6.2 Release Notes
• August 2016 Plugins Readme
• ALM Connector 6.1.3 Release Notes
• Documentation Center

Supported Configurations

Although plugin support is typically backward compatible, due to major architecture changes for this release, plugin versions 3.0 and later will work only with Release Control 6.2 or later and earlier versions of the plugins will not work with Release Control 6.2 without manual updates. Detailed information about supported platforms and software configuration is available in the Supported Platform List.

Third-party Tools

For more information regarding third-party software copyrights and license information, see the Attribution Report.

Enhancements

The following enhancements are included in the latest plugin releases:

• Release Control Administration Interface

  A new Release Control Administration interface is available for the following:

  • Installing and adding provider plugins and their configurations
  • Creating and managing configurations, including:
    • Easily updating shared content at the base level so that it is inherited by configurations under that base
    • Managing which fields are allowed to be overridden
    • Enabling override of base settings at the configuration level
    • Providing a copy button beside relevant fields for ease of copy/paste into auxiliary tables and the SBM Composer properties editor
  • Creating and managing tags to enable filtering of collection data and configuration overrides for field value selections
• Object Creation
  • You can now create objects in the following integrating products directly through the provider plugins:
    • ChangeMan ZMF change packages
    • Dimensions CM baselines and requests
    • Deployment Automation snapshots
    • JIRA items
    • ServiceNow items
• Provider Polling
  • The system uses an internal scheduler to allow polling for results within plugins, which eliminates the need for callbacks in integrating products. The following plugins include this by default:
    • Jenkins
    • Nolio
    • ChangeMan ZMF
• Provider Generalization
  • An object provider is used instead of separate providers for requests and deployment units. This gives the flexibility of creating multiple objects per plugin. For example:
    • For Dimensions CM, a single plugin now enables requests to be associated as requests and as deployment units
    • For Deployment Automation, a single plugin now handles functionality for component versions and snapshots
  • Tags in Release Control Administration are used to group and identify requests and deployment units.
  • All plugins have been updated to use the new architecture. Functionality available is as follows:

    • JIRA - Add and create JIRA items

    • SBM - Add, create, and transition SBM items

    • ChangeMan ZMF - Add, create, and deploy change packages

    • Deployment Automation - Add, create, and deploy snapshots and add and deploy component versions, all from a single plugin

    • Dimensions CM - Add and create baselines and requests from a single plugin

    • ServiceNow - Add, create, update, and check status of Service Now items
• Provider Independence
  • Providers can now handle notifications in the plugin without needing to change the core system.
  • Any message type is supported.
  • Multiple versions can be run simultaneously.
  • Upgrade support is included.
  • Plugins have been moved to their own location for simpler management.
• Jenkins Plugin
  • The Jenkins plugin has been rewritten. It now uses a single way to execute jobs and uses polling to check for the results.
• CA Release Automation (Nolio) Plugin
  • For Run Process, there is a new polling option that replaces the wait for notification in prior versions.
  • Run Process can be completed by polling and by REST service notification, and whichever is done first completes the request.
  • The notification URL now must be specified in the Nolio rest.integration.properties file has been changed. It is now the following:

    target.url=http://<SbmServer>/rlc/notification/nolio?provider-uuid=<Configuration UUID>&jobId=

• ServiceNow
  • A single ServiceNow table is now selected per deployment task for filtering ServiceNow items.
  • Additional filter fields, including a status field, have been added; these must be mapped to fields in the specified ServiceNow table.

Post Upgrade Activities for Plugins

You must do the following after upgrading to Release Control version 6.2 and the version 3.0 plugins.

1. If you have existing deployment tasks for the upgraded plugins, in each release package in the Deployment Tasks tab, edit and save the deployment tasks to populate them with the provider data that was stored differently in the earlier release.
2. If you have plugin configurations that were created using the August 2016 version of the CA Nolio plugin, you must change the notification URL or use polling only. For details, see the plugin documentation on the Documentation Center.
3. If you have existing requests or deployment units for the upgraded plugins, in each release package in the Requests or Deployment Units tab, click Reload Request Data or Reload Deployment Unit Data respectively to pick up any plugin changes.

Related Upgrades

You need to upgrade other related products when you upgrade to RLC 6.2 and the version 3.0 plugins.

• When you upgrade the ChangeMan ZMF plugin to version 3.0, you must upgrade ALM Connector (formerly known as ZMF Connector) to version 6.1.3 or later. For upgrade instructions, see the ALM Connector Release Notes on the Documentation Center.

Troubleshooting Plugin Upgrades

After upgrading, you may encounter one of the following issues:

• Custom columns you added are no longer in the table

  The columns in the Deployment Units and Requests tabs no longer show fields previously configured in the RLC Custom Columns auxiliary table Default DU Custom Columns and Default Request Custom Columns entities. This means those table entries may have reverted to the defaults. This happens if you upgrade without deselecting the Include entity data check box in the Entities step when promoting the Release Data process app.

  If this occurs, you will need to reconfigure the default custom column entries as needed.

• New configuration fields don't appear in the existing configurations

  After upgrading, the new configuration fields for some plugins do not appear in existing plugin configurations in the Release Control Administration, so it isn't possible to configure them. If you do not do this after upgrading the Dimensions CM plugin, an example error message you may get is the following:

  Could not resolve placeholder 'deploy_unit_custom_attributes' in string value "${deploy_unit_custom_attributes}"

  If this occurs, you will need to open each existing configuration in the Release Control Administration, click Update Configuration, then re-open the configuration and configure the new fields as needed.

Upgrading from Custom or Earlier Versions of Plugins

Any custom plugins are automatically backed up in the ..\Program Files\Micro Focus\Release Control\rlc_lib_backup directory when upgrading to Release Control 6.2 from version 6.1.0 or 6.1.1.

If you're upgrading from 6.0.1, you must manually back up your custom plugins before upgrading SBM.

If you want to upgrade your custom plugins or want to upgrade earlier versions of the plugins, see Knowledgebase item S142171.

Restoring Version 3.0 Plugins

Once you have installed or upgraded to Release Control version 6.2, the default plugins are automatically installed or upgraded. There is no need to upgrade to the default version 3.0 plugins unless you need to restore them.

If you have installed or upgraded to Release Control 6.2 and do not need to restore your plugins, continue to Post Upgrade Activities for Plugins.

1. (For default plugins) Download version 3.0 of the plugin that you want to install from the Release Control plugins section on the Support website.
2. Copy the version 3.0 plugin jar files to the Release Control plugins directory. For example:

   C:\Program Files\Micro Focus\Release Control\Plugins

3. Restart SBM Tomcat.

   Any previously-added plugins and their configuration will automatically use the new jar files.