v7.0 Delivers an Improved DevOps Experience to Diverse Users and Teams

We’re kicking off the summer with a brand new release of the XebiaLabs DevOps Platform! Version 7.0 delivers a little sunshine to both technical and not-so-technical users, making it easier than ever to deliver great software, super-fast, with super scalability across diverse applications and teams.

Version 7.0 rolls up all the terrific features of our last two releases, v6.1 and v6.2, and delivers new ones as well. Below is a quick overview of some of the highlights. You can find a full list of all the goodness in the release notes on our documentation site.

Streamlined Software Release Flow with New User Experience

A new user interface and powerful features deliver significant time and cost savings when applied over many users and teams, and thousands of releases per month. Enhancements include streamlined deployment tasks, new wizards, improved views and reports, and a more granular search. Also added is blackout period management so teams can specify times during which apps cannot be released, such as holidays or end-of-quarter blackout windows. [caption id="attachment_15772" align="aligncenter" width="2735"] XL Deploy's new and improved user interface streamlines workflows and improves pipeline efficiency[/caption]

Targeted, Clear Communications with Flexible Notifications and Alerts

New notification features add flexibility to the way users can be notified of important release events that require action. To avoid “alert fatigue,” teams have detailed control over who receives which alerts so users won’t “tune out” and ignore the notifications that matter most. Plus, teams can choose their preferred way to be notified with more email options, a new “due soon” notification and integrations with popular ChatOps tools such as Slack, HipChat and Pager Duty. [caption id="attachment_15789" align="aligncenter" width="1075"] The new Notification Settings feature in XL Release offers fine-grained control for sending out notifications on task and release events and for specifying which recipients should receive notifications[/caption]

Enhanced Release as Code Features for Dual-mode Enterprise DevOps

The dual-mode “Release as Code” capability lets teams define releases entirely with code in addition to using the familiar visual user interface. This feature allows experienced developers to write code instead of using a graphical user interface to quickly create new releases, using the same standard DevOps platform and processes as all other users. Additionally, releases can be automatically launched from other code-centric tools like Jenkins, or they can trigger activities in such tools. Release templates can now be exported as code, and the code can be previewed in the user interface. Dual-mode capability gives users the choice of code-centric release definition or XebiaLabs' GUI-centric workflow, letting them work in the way most efficient for them.

Focused Troubleshooting: Release Risk Assessed in Real Time

Enterprise IT teams can now easily tell which releases are in jeopardy with XebiaLabs’ automated risk assessment, calculated in real time for each software release. The platform automatically reviews multiple risk factors to determine an overall release risk score, clearly displaying a green-yellow-red risk status in the Release Overview. [caption id="attachment_15752" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] The automated risk assessment feature in XL Release lets you easily see the status of all your releases so you can quickly spot which ones may be at risk[/caption] Enterprise release managers can see at a glance which ones of their tens or hundreds of ongoing releases are in trouble. They can drill down to see detailed risk information on each individual release’s dashboard so they can review and address the issues that have led to that release’s “At Risk” rating. This DevOps Intelligence provides early warning of problems, giving teams time to solve issues and avoid delays before major trouble occurs.

Learn More

Read more about the features of version 7.0 here and in these blog posts:

• "New Code-Centric Features in XL Release and XL Deploy"
• "XL Release 6.2: A Better Experience for Release Managers"

Try out the XebiaLabs DevOps Platform for yourself here.