Introducing HCL Accelerate v3.1

HCL Accelerate is continuing to see significant Value Stream Management adoption! With the release of HCL Accelerate 3.1, we brought significant features and performance improvements for our largest customers. If you are not far in your VSM journey, see below for some new onboarding features and guidance. If you are an existing customer, you can download the binaries directly from the FlexNet Operations Portal. If you are a new customer, complete our trial form for a free download!

Optimize Software Delivery

• Custom Reports – Leverage Accelerate’s entire data lake and build your own audit reports. From dashboards, charts, tables, and new metrics, you are in control of your data with a fully customizable report generation toolkit. These BYO reports leverage the same underlying framework that powers our existing Release readiness, State of sprint, and Security audit reports, so you get the same functionality, such as history, sharing, and API control.
• Quick filters search – When searching value streams or swim lanes, you can now fuzzy text search for other Releases, Sprints, Types, and Priorities in the quick filter drop down. The most recent five items are still displayed by default.
• New and Improved Plugins – We are constantly updating our plugins library with new possibilities. Most recently, we published Dependabot, Snyk, Micro Focus Fortify, and WhiteSource to leverage Automated Governance within the pipeline. In addition, we support new work item tools, such as GitLab, Micro Focus Octane, and Planview Leankit for expanded value stream modeling. And lastly, Jira and GitHub are now more in control of their API calls to prevent congestion and timeouts during intensive sync periods. Check out all our new plugins on the HCL Secure DevOps plugins website!
  • Resync – In the overflow menu, many plugins now support a new Resync action to import or re-import items from a selected timeframe. This is particularly useful, if you are syncing for the first time.
  • Blocked Installs – Plugins now support the ability to prevent installs into incompatible versions of HCL Accelerate. If you see this error screen while configuring a new plugin, simply download the latest and try again.

Performance and Stability

• Background Job Service – As customers’ value stream usage grew, we discovered that we needed to separate our complex VSM metric logic from normal requests. This led us to create the new Background Job service which enables HCL Accelerate to calculate metrics, like Lead and Cycle Time, without impacting navigation. If you model your value streams, then you should notice a significant improvement following the upgrade. Learn more in this blog post from one of the developers who built it!
  • Kubernetes or OpenShift is required to take advantage of the Background Job service’s performance gains. It is not available on Docker Compose, so migrate today.
• Release and Deployment Plans – Heavy release management users should notice improved speed when navigating the release and deployment plans. Plans with many tasks or large change histories will notice faster load times. In addition, response rates from completed, started, or failed tasks will be snappier.
• Pipeline Load Times – We have seen customers with over 50 different applications on a single pipeline and recognized load and response times need to improve. On upgrade, you will see significant speed increases to the pipeline page on first time loads and when navigating around page.

Notable Changes

• FlexNet Licensing – On upgrade, your licensing will break and you will be downgraded to the Community Edition mode. Do not fear! A quick reconfiguration will allow HCL Accelerate to reconnect to the license server. No need for a key pair. No need for a command line interface.
• OpenShift Templates Removal – OpenShift installation using templates has been officially removed from support. OpenShift is still supported and since v3.0.4, we have offered migration directions to Helm. Installations will continue to use the Helm path going forward.
• MongoDB 4.2 and 4.4 – MongoDB v4.0 is no longer supported. Please upgrade to v4.2 or v4.4 when upgrading Accelerate on Kubernetes or OpenShift. Docker Compose will install and upgrade to MongoDB v4.2 by default.
• MongoDB Distribution – MongoDB is no longer shipped with our offline installs. For sample directions, see this page. The online installs are unaffected.

Small Enhancements

• AppScan Enterprise scan report – You can now find the new AppScan Enterprise scan report within the Reports page. This report outline general application and scan specific details to better guide your security compliance strategies.
• LDAP Import Check – During the “Import users” action of the LDAP settings page, a configuration check will occur automatically and suggest changes if an error is identified.
• Manual Approval Authorization – If you need a little bit of added security in your “Wait for Approval Tasks”, then specify the `authorized-approval` feature flag to enable user authentication before she can Approve or Deny the task.

Did you see our v3.1 webinar from last month? If not, you can check out the recording here. Click here to watch the replay.