Categories: RELEASE

Release notes

3.13.5 (minor)

New features

  • Extend ‘RemoteExecutionManager’ and improve documentation

Bug fixing

  • Number of tasks displayed on scheduler list limited to 50
  • Empty execution description when starting plan using the step client
  • Plan of composite Keywords are not hidden
  • Simple expressions in Set controls not working in plain-text syntax

3.13.4 (minor)

Skipped (build deployment error)

3.13.3 (minor)

Bug fixing

  • Import of plans with special characters fails due to encoding issues
  • Issue when selecting existing jar at keyword creation
  • Plan attachments not deleted by housekeeping task
  • Plan is not directly saved after performing a Copy/Paste in plan tree

3.13.2 (minor)

New features

  • Adding “Notification_Send” local keyword to send custom notifications (i.e. emails…)
  • Prevent multi-threaded miss-usage of function group (sessions)
  • Improve error handling of non-existing or restricted scoped variables accesses in groovy expressions

Bug fixing

  • Sporadic IOExceptions observed in controller logs for server side data tables
  • Selecting a new Plan in a scheduler task doesn’t refresh the tasks table
  • NPE errors raised from the current operations view
  • RetryIfFail with report last node only option: last try is not reported if the timeout is reached
  • Javascript incompatibility with IE11 issue was introduced with step 3.13

3.13.1 (minor)

Bug fixing

  • Table filters might stop working under rare conditions
  • Execution view is not refreshed in specific context
  • Duplicated auto refresh of the execution list view causing unnecessary load
  • Editing a scheduler task from the monitoring view is not working
  • Opening the Keyword editor from the plan tree is broken
  • Migration breaks for plans with unexpected ID type
  • Import of plans from previous version is not handled
  • Sleep control is executed in Simulation mode which should not be the case

3.13.0 (major)

New features

Projects (multitenancy)

  • Implement project-based role assigment
  • Implement global projects for common entities (Common Plans, commons Keywords, common Parameters, common Execution Parameters)
  • Implement project support for STEP Client (REST) API
  • Enable definition of project specific screen templates
  • Enable definition of project specific monitoring dashboards

Dashboards

Plan editor

  • Manage plain-text plans exactly like visual editor plans
  • Improve plan editor tree usability
  • Implement a function in the visual plan editor to disable nodes
  • Provide proper filename upon plan export
  • Support keyword with spaces in plain text syntax

Keywords

  • Support package managers (nexus, etc) as repository for Keyword Packages
  • Add field description/documentation to Keyword
  • Package embedded keywords as Keyword package

Execution view

  • Scrolling position of “Execution tree” reset after refresh
  • Redesign the auto refresh
  • Monitoring of current operations in test cases
  • Improve WaitForEvent reports
  • Optimize performance of the execution view
  • Show waiting controls in executions steps

Controls

  • Release Agent Tokens in waiting controls
  • For and ForEach: add the maxFailedLoops parameter to the gui
  • Implement named and global locks via Synchronized control
  • RetryIfFails control: Add switch to persist only last iteration
  • Add checkbox to choose to display failures to the RetryIfFails control
  • Implement data set reset for source type “Directory”
  • Add UserID handle to ForEach (analog to ThreadGroup)

Miscellaneous

  • Add “New” button in Resource view and Scheduler View
  • Disable closing of dialogs when clicked outside
  • Add link to open entity editor from table rows
  • Add tooltips to execution parameters
  • Assign dedicated URLs to “Admin” views
  • Implement move up & down to define order of Screen Template inputs
  • Make the title (STEP) like the favicon configurable
  • Custom HTML Templates for Keywords
  • Placeholder lookup in Keyword properties should also take Keyword Inputs into account
  • Call Timeout and Keyword not passed as property to the Keyword
  • Improve the usability of the Parameter list
  • Add field “Parameters” to the “Edit scheduler task” dialog and remove editable execution parameters from scheduler table
  • Improve configurability of ScreenTemplates
  • Replace legacy datatable directive by st-table
  • Standardize CRUD REST services and migrate Remote Accessors to AbstractCRUDRemoteAccessor
  • Report a business error when a PDF Mask is missing
  • Make scheduler task table configurable
  • Add system chooser to resource loader

Bug fixing

  • Parsing error in plain-text plans when separating key-values by carriage return
  • executionParameters with an activation expression are not properly evaluated
  • Concurrency issue with the Echo function
  • In .Net, the exception captured when a timeout occurs capture the wrong AppDomain stack
  • Common Keywords not listed under Keywords when a project is selected
  • Double clicking the refresh button of a FunctionPackage creates a duplicate entry of the FunctionPackage
  • Keywords not isolated properly between projects
  • Display errors in the “Current operation” table of the execution view
  • Skip/limit fields on Execution Tree view not working as expected
  • ForEach: infinit loop for empty json map
  • The notation “Application.Keyword” isn’t supported by the Parameter scope definition for the scope Keyword
  • CosmeticsHandler redirects to non secure connection
  • Plans cannot access parameters from which the scope has been changed from application to global
  • Parameters are displayed on 2 rows
  • Fix NPE in ReportNodeStatisticsView and RtmPlugin when a KW cannot be found
  • Items potentially processed several times in parallel controls (For, ForEach, TestSet, ThreadGroup)
  • Encoding issue in the execution errors view
  • Execution parameters sometime hidden
  • QuotaManager not blocking on acquire permit and not propagating errors
  • Escaping of $ in Set controls (Plain-Text) doesn’t work properly
  • Fix various regressions in dashboard presets
  • ConcurrentModificationException in service threadmanager/operations

Migration

Migration guidelines for this release are available here.

3.12.3 (minor)

Bug fixing

  • Items potentially processed several times in parallel controls (For, ForEach, TestSet, ThreadGroup)
  • Global Parameters cannot be used in Keyword Jar-Path placeholders
  • The notation “Application.Keyword” isn’t supported by the Parameter scope definition for the scope Keyword
  • Plans cannot access parameters from which the scope has been changed from “application” to “global”
  • Rename attribute keyword.attributes.app to keyword.attributes.application

New features

  • Implement data set reset for source type “Directory”
  • Placeholder lookup in Keyword properties should also take Keyword Inputs into account
  • Add field “Parameters” to the “Edit scheduler task” dialog and remove editable execution parameters from scheduler table

3.12.2 (minor)

Bug fixing

  • Controller not starting under certain circumstances due to conflicting libraries of the mongo driver

3.12.1 (minor)

Bug fixing

  • Column Package disappears from Keyword table after screen template update
  • Clicking the groovy button while adding a new KW input inconsistency
  • Multitenancy plugin switch off cause errors
  • Filter by IDs on entity does not work
  • Projects dropdown not automatically reloaded
  • Screen template admin view broken when using projects
  • Scheduler entries plan name disappear when migrating to 3.12.0
  • Parameters created using a previous version of STEP disappear from the parameter list after switching the Project
  • Plans aren’t imported to the current project
  • The feature “Export all plans” exports the Plans of all projects
  • When starting an execution in a specific project the parameters of other projects are also applied
  • Toolbar layout of the dashboard view not correct in IE
  • Notification gateways are not visible when selecting a specific (non global) project
  • html elements not aligned properly
  • All keywords referenced in a keyword package take its name when the package is edited
  • Composite keywords not working anymore on agent
  • Custom attributes of a new FunctionPackage are ignored when referencing an existing package
  • Classloaders are loaded twice on the agent side
  • JNI resource management issue as part of a java keyword
  • Remove unnecessary column in Keyword library view (Plan Editor)
  • Keyword name not displayed on “Keyword calls” table when running Plain-text plan (ALM, organizer, etc)

New features

  • Add config variable switch for root true vs false in ALM parsed plans
  • Updating to viz alpha-37+

3.12.0 (major)

Community Edition

Core functionality

  • Introducing a new visualization framework for consolidating and displaying data into Dashboards, allowing for historical analysis, aggregation and real-time monitoring of data and events originating from step itself as well as from foreign data sources. The visualization framework is fully configurative, allowing users to design their own visualization dashlets and provides modular components which will be reused throughout exense’s products.
  • Multiple pre-populated Dashboard presets are provided
  • Introducing Dashboard session entities for built-in persistence and management of dashboard instances
  • Keyword Session artefacts used in Plans now implicitly support multiple token types (for instance, a session can now concurrently handle Java and .NET keyword executions)
  • Complete overhaul of the Performance tab in the execution view for monitoring keywords & transactions (both in a real-time way and summary-oriented way), users can now easily navigate from the default Keyword-based view to a Transaction view (to view their Custom “Measures”)
  • Parameters now support a “scope” which restricts access from keywords depending on the keyword’s context (Global, App-based, Keyword name based).
  • A global maximum number of threads can now be assigned to an execution via the variable execution_threads_auto, serving as a safety cap or garantee of “fair” resource allocation to concurrent executions
  • Fixed issues with search headers in various data tables (among which Keyword Package, Scheduler Task, Resources)

Operations

  • step’s controller and agent can now be run on Oracle’s JRE 11. Step itself is still compiled using JDK 8, thus still allowing the controller and agent to run on JRE 8.

Keyword API

Ergonomy

  • Fixed an issue where modal dialogs were shut prematurely on mouse release

Enterprise Edition

Operations

  • While Step’s controller and agent can run on JRE 11, the ALM plugin (more specifically, the ALM daemon) requires a 32 bit JVM, which is not available in Oracle’s Java 11 distribution.

Project Entity (multitenancy)

  • Introducing the Project entity for implicit isolation of almost all of step’s entities in the table views. New projects can now be created and entities can be assigned to a project. Lists are automatically listed based on the selector chosen in the top right corner of the screen. Plans, Keywords, Executions, Parameters, Scheduler Tasks, Resources, FunctionPackages are governed via projects. The following entities and views are not covered as of 3.12.0: Monitoring, Dashboards, Reports, Event Broker Monitor.
  • Project creation and migration workflows are made available in a new view under Admin -> Settings -> Projects
  • 2 default projects are pre-created: system (used for instance for housekeeping) and alm (for storing parsed plans and executions from alm)
  • Project management services have been secured and additional default rights created in the access matrix file

Dashboards

  • Specific additional Dashboard presets are made available by default to Enterprise customers: RealtimeSelfMonitoring (containing a Free token per agent dashlet and a Current on-going execution dashlet), UserExecutionDashboard (offering a breakdown of user activity over the last week) and ProjectOverview (providing an overview of the related plan and keyword executions over the last week, after applying the corresponding project entity)

Ergonomy

  • A viz-presets file has been added to the list of customizable cosmetics (conf/cosmetics) for easily modifying and extending dashboard presets
  • Various bugfixes relating to modal popup behavior and text overflows have been performed

Plugins

  • ALM: necessary updates have been made to the daemon and the parser in order to ensure compatibility with project management and keyword and keyword package multi-versioning (this includes path-based resources and multi-version scenarios)
  • EventBroker: services have been secured and additional default rights created in the access matrix file
  • .NET: new annotation-based functionality is supported in .NET (similar to Java)
  • FunctionPackage: redesigned FunctionDiscovery as a managed process, thus unlocking the jar file in path scenarios, preventing concurrency issues and not requiring to open extra network ports anymore (in .NET). Keyword packages now support path-based resources and multi-versioning in Java and .NET. A new field “Reference Package” field has been added in order to preserve (i.e re-apply) any attributes which may already have been added in a previous version of the package or in a different package.

Deprecation & backward compatibility

  • Backward compatibility to step-api 1.0.0 is preserved, however, in order to benefit from new API features (such as property validation), an upgrade to 1.1.0 is needed

Migration

Migration guidelines for this release are available here.

3.11.1 (minor)

Features

  • step Client API

Added new workflow based on the identification of keyword packages via resource name for simplified management.

In this scenario, the developer doesn’t have to worry about storing the FunctionPackage object or its id. The workflow is simple: if the resource changes, the keyword package is refreshed. This means that the old Keywords and Resources are updated (and if necessary, cleaned up). As a consequence, in this scenario, it is assumed that different resources have distinct names and that only one KeywordPackage instance is to be managed per Resource name. FunctionPackage objects can now also be looked up remotely by resource name.

See for example method resourceBasedKeywordPackageCreationAndUpdate in our demo class StepClientDemo

  • KeywordPackage

Upon editing a keyword package and changing its resource(s), old resources are now cleaned up automatically.

Bug fixing

  • .NET Agent

Fixed multiple issues related to error handling and the absence of attachments in cases, such as returned exceptions or in the event of a Timeout. The SetError which had disappeard during Api refactoring is now present again.

  • Performance

Fixed a significant performance issue caused by redundant calls made in the Resource Manager, between the controller and agent. Although this had virtual no functional impact as well as no perceivable latency impact on instances with sufficiant resources, the theoretical maximal throughput of keyword executions was affected (since 3.10).

  • ResourceAccessor

Fixed mismatch in service URL causing for the delete function to fail with an HTTP error.

  • Logging

Fixed minor issue causing warnings to be logged by the web container in Enterprise versions.

  • Ergonomy

Fixed display glitch causing for text to overflow in the Execution Tree view. Fixed an issue causing bootstrap dialogs to close unexpectedly. Fixed a glitch specific to Internet Explorer, causing for custom screen attributes not to be displayed.

3.11.0 (major)

Community Edition

Core functionality

Keyword API

  • Full isolation of Keyword API dependencies to allow desynchronizing keyword dependency upgrades from controller upgrades (users choose when they upgrade their script’s dependencies)
  • Supporting bundling of properties and schemas in keywords

Ergonomy

  • Plan Editor: Resizable panes, modal for value editing, keyboard shortcuts, improved drag&drop support (multiple artefact move)
  • General: new Community style

Enterprise Edition

Operations

  • Automatic Housekeeping via built-in LocalFunctions and admin plan, switch in settings, and “retain execution” policy
  • Batch deployment workflow for Java and .NET via Keyword Package : keywords are now automatically created based on Jar and DLL inspection

Ergonomy

StepClient API

  • Improved performance in local execution
  • Fixed issues in which event payloads were serialized incorrectly or causing errors

Plugins

  • ALM: enabling copy of ALM plans as regular editable plans, worksheet argument in ForEach
  • EventBroker: allowing choice between unicity or duplicates in Group+Name scenario
  • Plan parser / Dual plan editor: support for escaped characters
  • RTM: allowing transaction logging for log-based integration (Splunk, ELK, etc)
  • .NET:
  • dynamic dependencies deployment is now supported just as in Java.
  • Log4Net support: the .NET agent will now log critical errors and keywords can log information into the agent’s log file. See example here.
  • PDB support (simply packed along with dependencies zip)
  • support of keyword call timeout & thread interruption mechanism, similar to Java
  • using multiple assemblies in the context of the local KeywordRunner is now supported

Deprecation / Deletions

  • Removing Selenium as a built-in Keyword type: native Keywords (Java, .NET, Node.JS) + libraries are now the standard approach to deploying Selenium Keywords, this has the major advantage of allowing users to configure their own custom version of Selenium easily and without having to worry about mismatches between their project dependencies and the platform’s dependencies

Migration

Migration guidelines for this release are available here.

3.10.2 (minor)

Features

  • step Client API: First implementation of the RemoteExecutionAccessor client. This includes the functions getAll(), findLastStarted() and findLastEnded()
  • Plain text syntax: Adding the “Delimiter” parameter in the step parser for the ForEach control
  • PDF-Plugin: Improving error handling in keyword PDF_compare
  • Web interface: Adding the field “Parameters” to the “Edit task” dialog

Bug fixing

  • ALM-Plugin: Fixing reporting of empty step names

3.10.1 (minor)

Features

  • Monitoring plugin: Implementing new monitoring plugin
  • ALM Plugin: simplifying installation
  • Plain text syntax: Adding worksheet parameter to ForEach in plaint text syntax
  • Other: Implementing logging of std-out and err-out for ManagedProcess

Bug fixing

  • Web interface: Fixing drag&drop issue when uploading resources in Firefox and IE
  • Web interface: Fixing edition of preferences under MyAccount for non-admin users
  • ALM Plugin: fixing reporting issue of failed-reason and tester fields
  • Plain text syntax: Fixing escaping

3.10.0 (major)

Community Edition

Core functionality

  • Introduced the ResourceManager to allow the upload, management and tracking of central resources on the controller. The ResourceManager is also used to store attachments and thus replaces the old attachmentdir (See http://docs.exense.ch/wiki/step/view/Versions/3.10.x/Migration/ for migration details)
  • Upgraded to RTM 2.2.4
  • Implemented support for write operations in CSV DataSets
  • Added MaxDuration field to ThreadGroup
  • Added support for upload and zipped projects in Node.js plugin
  • Added support for Puppeteer

Enterprise Edition

API (Remote-Client)

  • Implemented JUnit report writer for local and remote executions
  • Renamed ControllerClient to StepClient and refactored the API

ALM-Plugin

  • Implemented reporting of testcase start
  • Implemented asynchronous testcase export
  • Fixed username (tester) reporting issue

Older releases

Information about older releases is available here.

See Also