ElectricFlow® v6.1 FR is now available

Original Creation Date: 2015-10-15 22:20:09 UTC

Summary

Electric Cloud is pleased to announce the general availability of the ElectricFlow 6.1 FR.  This release is of the type “Feature Release”. For more information about types of releases, please go to ElectricFlow Release Strategy. 

ElectricFlow 6.1 FR introduces the new ElectricFlow Release module for capturing, executing, visualizing, and controlling the lifecycle of multi-application releases. ElectricFlow 6.1 FR contains improvements to the ElectricFlow Deploy module and the ElectricFlow platform as well.

Some of the highlights are:

Pipelines - Pipelines are an entirely new capability that enables you to easily model a reusable pathway to production across multiple stages and environments and provide an aggregated view of all the activity. Pipelines provide:

• Control of delivery process flow – Stages (groupings of tasks) and gates between stages, for automated and manual approvals, to enable high level viewing and control of progress
• Coordinated execution – Flexibility to automate software delivery with tasks that leverage application processes, procedures, workflows, manual tasks and plugins to integrate with 3^rd party tools.
• Visualization of the entire process – Intuitive, contextual status and drill-down troubleshooting of running and completed pipelines activities

Releases - Releases capture, manage, and visualize all the details of multi-application enterprise releases, where outputs from multiple teams are coordinated to produce the final release being pushed into production. This brings a high-level of visibility around the health of releases across the organization, and offers quick access to dig deeper into the details. Releases provide:

• Release dashboard – a bird’s eye view of all the releases that are planned, active, or complete. For each release, teams get quick visibility including: if the release is in progress, milestone dates, if the release is blocked waiting for manual approval, and how far the release has progressed.
• Path to production view – provides at-a-glance visuals to help release teams quickly isolate which environments are not in compliance with the release bill of materials, as well as up to date information on which application versions are installed onto any environment in the release.
• Multi-application enterprise releases – captures, validates, coordinates, and executes on the many details that need to be managed to achieve a successful release. Provides a transparent and collaborative record of the release, all of its activities, and its health.

Deploy Master Component by Reference – Master components are enhanced in 6.1 to support ‘referencing’ in addition to creating by copy. Authors can manage master component definitions centrally and any changes to the definitions are automatically inherited by the relevant applications. The ‘reference’ capability coupled with the ‘copy’ capability allows application authors the flexibility and reusability to drive best practices.    

Various Usability improvements – This release contains usability enhancements such as a new home page, extensible navigation menus, and improved breadcrumbs for better trace-ability.

Flow Help Center – Providing a centralized location for easy access to video tutorials, knowledge base articles, community discussions and assistance, and product documentation.

Maintenance Release roll ups - The 6.1 feature release rolls up the fixes made in the 6.0.1 maintenance release. For more details please see the 6.0.1 announcement.

Download Instructions

Download ElectricFlow 6.1 FR from the Electric Cloud Sharefile site.

• Login using your personalized account to the Electric Cloud Sharefile at https://electric-cloud.sharefile.com
• Navigate to the /products/flow/release_6.1/6.1.0.98785 or click here: 6.1.0.98785
• Server and agent installers are located in the directory corresponding to the operating system (for example, windows)
• IDE plug-in installers are located in the /products/flow/integrations directory
• Release notes and product documentation are available online: Electric Cloud documentation

Supported Configurations

See the “System Requirements and Supported Platforms” section in the ElectricFlow Installation Guide for a complete list of supported platforms and configurations.

Upgrade

Upgrades to ElectricFlow 6.1 FR are supported from ElectricCommander 4.2.x, ElectricFlow 5.x, and ElectricFlow 6.0 LTS and 6.0.1. Any systems that are running on a pre-4.2 version must be upgraded to ElectricCommander 4.2.x before you can then upgrade to ElectricFlow 6.1 FR. For complete upgrade requirements and instructions, please see the ElectricFlow Installation Guide.

New capabilities like Release and Pipelines are part of a separately licensed ElectricFlow Release module.

Support

Contact Customer Support with questions related to this release at support@electric-cloud.com. 

Feedback

Contact the product management team at Electric Cloud for this or any ElectricFlow releases at productmanagement@electric-cloud.com