ER 9.0 Release Notes

ER 9.0 enhancements include:

 

Cash Differences Module Licensing

In this release, licensing for the Cash Differences module has been implemented.

Details about Cash Differences licensing are displayed in the About Us page for both Web-Based Administration and Rich Client. Information includes the license status (Enabled, Disabled, or Expired) and expiration date.

Overriding a Duplicate Rule

A Duplicate Action Availability Rule may be overridden for specific screens. This allows the administrator to create rules specifically for the Item, Match set, or Recon Entity detail screens in order to best meet their business needs.

To override a Duplicate rule, select the Duplicate action and click Override. Select the stack tab on the left of the pop up to choose the screen on which the rule applies. Configure the rule using the fields, functions, and operators available in the editing popup.

For reconciliations with sub-recons, the sub-reconciliation inherits existing Action Availability Rules from the parent reconciliation; however, you may override an Action Availability Rule at any level (in other words, at the top-level or at a sub-reconciliation level).

Global Setting to Disable New and Duplicate Item Actions

Also added in this release are two new parameters that allow the administrator to globally disable the New and Duplicate Item actions.

These parameters, ENABLE_NEW_RECON_ITEM_ACTION and ENABLE_DUPLICATE_RECON_ITEM_ACTION, are located in the ER.properties file and are enabled (true) by default. The administrator may restrict New and Duplicate actions by setting the parameter values to false prior to deployment.

NOTE: Administrators may configure Action Availability Rules for New and Duplicate; these rules override global configurations.

Additional information on the Action Availability Rules is found in the Infogix ER Rich Client help files.

Duplicate Item Editable Fields Restriction

This enhancement allows administrators to configure the availability of editable fields when an item is duplicated. This provides greater flexibility and controlwhen requiring field edits for duplicated items.

If the RESTRICT_DUPLICATE_ITEM_EDITABLE_FIELDS parameter is set to true, only item attributes defined as editable in the User Interface definition of the Item Detail screen are editable; other fields, including system fields, are not editable.

If this property is set to false, all the user-defined fields, as well as the Item Side Indicator field in the ItemAttributes section of the Item Detail screen are editable, even if fields are not marked as editable in the User Interface Definition; other fields, including system fields, are not editable.

The default is false.

Item Filter on the Recon Entity Detail Screen

The Recon Entity Detail screen contains a new Item Search Fields section, which contains user- and system-defined fields as configured by the administrator. This new filter allows users to quickly find items within the Recon Entity Detail screen based on user criteria.

To configure the ItemSearch Fields, open the Define Reconciliations screen and select the reconciliation. Click the User Interface Definition stack tab and select the Recon Entity Detail tab.

Select the Item Search Attribute Group header and click Add Field. In the pop up, locate and select the fields to include and click Select.

NOTE: If no fields are added to the Item Search Attribute Group, the Item Search Fields section is not visible to users.

Mass Edit functionality on the Item Search screen

The Mass Edit functionality is now available on the Item Search screen in addition to the Recon Entity Detail screen. This feature reduces time needed to update multiple items that may have the same field values.

To use this functionality, open and execute an Item Search. Select one or more rows of data in the results list on the Item Search screen. Take ownership of the items by clicking Take; click Mass Edit to open the Mass Edit pop up.

Note that at least one or more rows in the results table must be selected and there must be at least one editable field in the selection forMass Edit to be enabled. Mass Edit is disabled when there are no editable fields in selected items.

To make item fields editable, open the Define Reconciliations screen and select the reconciliation. Click on the User Interface Definition stack tab and select the Item Search tab. In the Search Results Table section, select the Editable checkbox next to the field name and save the definition.

NOTE: In past versions of Infogix ER, none of the fields in the Search Results Table for the Item Search were editable. To support Mass Edit functionality on the Item Search screen, this functionality has been added in this version. Fields that may be marked as editable are user-created fields; no system-created fields may be editable.

Configurable Item Count Limit for Mass Edit

Configuration of a new parameter, ITEM_SEARCH_MASS_EDIT_MAX_ITEMS, allows the administrator to limit the number of items allowed in a Mass Edit action (applies to Item Search screen only).

Double-Click Enhancement

Currently, when a user double-clicks an object in a search results list, the object’s associated detail screen displays. In this version of Infogix ER, an enhancement provides a configurable option to disable double-clicking.

By default, the ENABLE_SEARCH_RESULTS_DOUBLECLICK_VIEWDETAILS parameter is true, allowing users to double-click an object in search results to view the object’s detail screen.

The administrator can set this parameter to false prior to deployment to disable double-clicking to display the detail screen.

Automated Adjustment Aggregate Functions

In past releases, all aggregate functions were fully supported for manual adjustments. Support for automated adjustments, however, was partial; three aggregate functions (min, max, and unique count) were not supported for automated adjustments.

With this release, all aggregate functions are fully supported for both manual and automated adjustments.

Aggregate functions include:

• count
• sum
• min
• max
• unique count

Action Availability Rule Enhancement

Existing Action Availability Rules have expanded functionality to allow the administrator to configure optional rules for the New and Duplicate actions. This allows administrators more granular control over which users can conduct New or Duplicate actions.

To create a New or Duplicate rule, in the Define Reconciliations window select the Action Availability Rules stack tab. In the Items tab, select the New or Duplicate action. Click Edit or double-click the action to open the rule editing pop up.

A New Action Availability Rule may use Recon Entity or User Profile fields; the Duplicate rule may use Item or User Profile fields.

Lazy Rule Compilation on Adjustment Panel

To help speed the creation of the initial entry on an adjustment panel, this release features lazy rule compilation for the Adjustment Panel. This change greatly enhances the adjustment panel performance by requiring rules to be compiled only on execution and only once per adjustment instance.

Configurable DELETE_BLOCK_SIZE

Infogix ER administrators can now configure the block size used for data deletion when a sub-reconciliation is deleted.

The DELETE_BLOCK_SIZE property in the ER.properties file is set to 50000 by default. When a sub-reconciliation is deleted from the Infogix ER application, the application deletes sub-reconciliation data in blocks of 50,000 entries at a time. This setting can be used to optimize deletion performance based on the customer’s needs and requirements by setting the deletion block size larger or smaller.

Web-Based Administration Scheduler Jobs

In the Web-Based Administration, the Scheduler displays all Cash Differences jobs, regardless of license status. Attempting to run Cash Differences jobs when the Cash Differences license is disabled or expired, however, results in log errors and jobs are not executed.

Infogix ER Gateway

If the Cash Differences license is disabled or expired, no Cash Differences data processing will be executed by Infogix Assure® and no Cash Differences data sent to Infogix ER. Error messages are displayed in the Infogix Assure UI and error entries logged in the application log file.

Command Line Utilities

Cash Differences-related command line utilities are executed only when the Cash Differences license is enabled and valid (i.e., not expired).

Attachment Filter for Search Results

In this release of Infogix ER, new functionality has been added to filter search results for objects having one or more attachments.

To use this filter, execute a search on one of the search screens and click Has Attachment. The filter shows only objects from the search having at least one attachment.

By default, Has Attachment is disabled when the search screen is opened. The filter is enabled by clicking Has Attachment and disabled by clicking the button again.

Users may also enable Has Attachment prior to running a search to return only those objects having at least one attachment.

Command Line Import/Export Utilities

In this release, new command line import/export utilities have been developed to allow administrators to perform import and export of component definitions via the command line. This feature allows greater automation and less manual intervention when importing/exporting definitions.

These utilities generate ZIP files containing definitions of exported objects. These files can be imported into an Infogix ER system via the command line or via the UI.

Similarly, definitions that have been exported via the UI may be imported via the command line utility or the UI.

Configurable Server-Side Cache Expiration

The SERVER_SIDE_CACHE_EXPIRATION parameter has been added in this release to allow administrators to set the server-side cache expiration (in seconds).

This property can be set to a custom duration in seconds (>0) which allows the cache to expire after the specified duration.

The default value is -1, which indicates the cache never expires. If this property is set to other negative numbers or zero, it causes the application to default to the platform cache default expiration, which is 1800 seconds (30 minutes) by default.

Work Items Summary Page

This release of Infogix ER includes an enhancement to the Welcome Page. A new tab, called Owned Work Items, has been added on the Welcome Page to allow users to quickly view their owned work items. This feature provides greater insight into items owned by a user across reconciliations, adjustments, and cash differences.

Information displayed on the Owned Work Items tab includes the object’s UUID, the Owned Since date, Source, and Object Name. By default, information is sorted by the Owned Since date in descending order (most recent objects first).

NOTE: If a user is not a work owner, the Owned Work Items tab is not displayed.

Microsoft® Excel® XLSX format

In this release of Infogix ER, functionality has been added to export data from the Rich Client to the Microsoft® Excel® XLSX file format. The XLSX format replaces the older XLS format.

By updating to an XLSX format, users can now export greater numbers of items to Microsoft Excel for additional research or analysis because the new format does not have the 65,000 entry limit of the older XLS format.

Adjustment Entry Upload Optimization

To help speed adjustment entry uploads, a new parameter (ADJ_UPLOAD_APPLY_FIELD_UPDATE_RULES) has been added to the ER.properties file in this release.

This parameter allows the administrator to disable execution of adjustment field update rules during an adjustment entry upload. When uploading a large number of entries, this can improve upload times.

The default value for the ADJ_UPLOAD_APPLY_FIELD_UPDATE_RULES parameter is the value of the ADJ_UPLOAD_EDITABLE_FIELDS_ONLY parameter (false by default).

NOTE: The two Workflow Rules affected by this parameter are the Pre-Update Adjustment Entry Field and Post-Update Adjustment Entry Field rules. If ADJ_UPLOAD_APPLY_FIELD_UPDATE_RULES is set to false, these two workflow rules are not executed during an adjustment entry upload.

 

New Software Supported

• Oracle® Directory Server 11.1.1.7.0 is supported.
• Microsoft® SQL Server® 2014 is supported.

 

WildFly 10.1.0 Support

Infogix products now support WildFly 10.1.0 Application Server, formerly known as JBoss Application Server. WildFly is an open source application server licensed under the LGPL 2.1 License.

The following are some of the differences between WildFly 10.1.0 and JBoss 6.1.0:

• WildFly 10.1.0 uses a port offset value to configure a set of ports like the HTTP and HTTPS ports. This is a different numbering system from previous versions of JBoss deployments as shown in the table below.
  
  

  WildFly PORT_OFFSET	HTTP Port	HTTPS Port
  0	8080	8443
  100	8180	8543
  200	8280	8643
  300	8380	8743
  400	8480	8843
  500	8580	8943

  
  For more information, see the “Application Server Properties” chapter in the Infogix Properties Guide.
• Users who upgrade from a release that used an earlier JBoss version must use the new port numbers as shown in the table above.
• WildFly has a separate security realm for the administrator that can login into the console. This is different from JBoss 6.1.0 where the administrator was the SECURITY_USER.
• WildFly requires Java 8 and will not work with Java 7.
• WildFly requires that the server is running during deployment.

 

Java 8 Support

Infogix products now support Java 8.

Both Java 8 and Java 7 are supported for IBM® WebSphere® 8.5.5.x Application Server.

 

New Browser Support

Infogix products now support the following two new browsers in addition to Internet Explorer® 11.

• Google Chrome™
• Microsoft Edge™

 

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) Support

IPv4 and IPv6 support is now available for Infogix product deployments. Users can specify IP addresses in IPv6 format for both WildFly and WebSphere application servers.

WildFly installations are configured to use IPv4 by default. To use IPv6, remove the JVM argument “-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true” for the WILDFLY_JAVA_OPTIONS property in the appserver.properties file.

WebSphere Application Server supports IPv6, IPv4, and an IPv4/IPv6 combination called mixed mode. The type of TCP/IP stack is controlled by the “java.net.preferIPv4Stack” and “java.net.preferIPv6Addresses” Java Virtual Machine arguments. To create a WebSphere environment using IPv6 requires that “java.net.preferIPv6Addresses” is set to true for the deployment manager, node manager, and server.

 

Enhancements to Embedded Directory Deployments

Infogix supports product deployments using Embedded Directory, where the management of users accessing the products is managed within the product.

Several security, audit and reporting enhancements have been added to Embedded Directory deployments in this release.

Show “Superuser” Attribute

Directory Administrators and Superusers can now visually view the users that have Superuser privileges. This capability enables the administrators to easily identify all Superusers for compliance purposes.

Generate Object Permissions Report

Security Administrators and Superusers can now generate a report that contains information about the users assigned permission sets. You can generate this report from the security profiles page for a complete report of all Security Profiles, or for an individual permission set from the Permissions page.

 

Infogix Administrative Console Improvements

The administrative console enables users to gather and provide information to Infogix Customer Support for use in troubleshooting run-time problems.

Test Email Connectivity

From the Infogix Administrative Console, select “Test Email” link to verify email connectivity.

The top panel displays the email configuration properties specified in the installation properties file for your reference.

In the bottom panel, specify the values for the required fields and click Send to verify that the recipient received the test email.

Delete Thread Dump and Heap Dump Files

In prior releases, users had to rely on an external third party vendor, or a server administrator to delete thread dumps and heap dumps that may have been generated by the application servers. Infogix product owners would have had to open up tickets with their administrators to remove these generated files that often consume significant amount of disk space.

A new Delete button has been added to the Heap Dumps and Thread Dumps page in the Infogix administrative console. Infogix Superusers can delete these dump files to reclaim disk space.

 

Configure Session Timeout Details

Users can define their own site-specific values to configure session timeout parameters. Two new properties, SESSION_TIMEOUT and SESSION_TIMEOUT_WARNING, have been added to the appserver. properties file to configure session timeout duration.