Release date: 7th of August
New general improvements #
1. Relevant Improvements in the Debt Manager view. #
Pre-requisites: The Debt Manager view should be enabled.
Description:
In the creation of the Debt Manager, new functionalities have been added to improve platform governance, team productivity, and performance. This release has focused on enhancing and ensuring consistent nomenclature and design across the product. This has been achieved by creating a new Issue Drawer UX design (grouped into new ‘Overview’, ‘Best Practice’ and ‘Spotted In’ tabs) and using consistent nomenclature in modal pop-ups for saving/editing views and double confirmation messages.
→ How to access the Debt Manager view:
- Go to the Quality Clouds platform.
- Select the platform (ServiceNow, Salesforce or Office).
- Select the Debt Manager view in the drop-down menu.
Impact: Different types of strategies to organize, plan, and evaluate work can be applied through the improvement of new views. This will increase productivity levels while decreasing the risks associated with the entire project delivery.
2. What-If functionality available for Warning issues
Pre-requisites: Have customer Admin permissions to access the Rulesets section in the Admin portal.
Description:
In the Rulesets section of the Admin portal, the What-If functionality is now available for Warning issues. This feature allows users to analyze the potential impact on technical debt and the number of detected issues if a ruleset is enabled for warning severity issues.
→ How to Access the Rulesets Tab to Verify the Impact of a Warning Ruleset Verification:
- Log into the Quality Clouds Admin portal.
- Select the ‘Rulesets‘ tab.
- Choose your instance.
- In the Status tab, select ‘Ignore rules‘.
- In the Severity tab, select ‘Warning‘.
- Select the type of rule you would like to review.
- Click on ‘Edit’.
- Click on ‘What-if I enable the rule‘.
9. Check the projection on data to see what would happen when the rule is enabled.
Impact: To plan the quality of the project to deliver when including specific warning issues. Use the `What-If´ functionality to analyze the impact of including warning issues on the overall project quality.
3. Update Set LiveCheck now retrieves contents of the Update Set directly from the Update Set contents table, which can be found here.
Pre-requisites: Either have a user with the admin profile configured to run full scans, OR, if a non-admin user is configured to run full scans, apply the new non-admin access Update Set.
Description:
Before this change, the Update Set LiveCheck process was retrieving the contents of an Update Set from the versions table. This was because no further configuration was required to access that table with the user which runs the full scans.
In almost all cases, accessing the versions table (sys_update_version) is equivalent to directly accessing the table which holds the contents of each update set (sys_update_xml). However, when the sys_update_xml table is manipulated directly, or when a scoped application is exported to an Update Set, the contents of these tables will not match, and so the Update Set LiveCheck process was returning unexpected results.
In order to fix these issues, the Update Set LiveCheck will now try to access sys_update_xml directly. In order for this query to be successful, either the user configured to run the full scan must have the admin role, or the new version of the Update Set to configure permissions to run full scans with a non-admin user must be applied. The new version of this Update Set contains ACLs which grant read-only access to the the sys_update_xml table for the qc_access role.
Note that if the non-admin configuration Update Set is not applied, the behaviour will default to the current one (i.e. LiveCheck will still extract the contents of an Update Set from sys_update_version), which will generate correct results in most (but not all) cases. In this case, Update Set LiveChecks will now complete with a Warning status.
New ServiceNow Best practices #
New rule for ServiceNow (SN-AVOID-UNDOCUMENTED-DICT-ENTRY)
Description:
This best practice identifies the use of GlideRecord database queries in Flow inline scripts. The use of GlideRecord in Flow inline scripts can cause performance issues, especially if many queries or updates to the database are performed at runtime. This can slow down the system and affect the user experience.
Enabling this best practice helps developers quickly identify glideRecord usage in Flows and learn how to resolve issues by using Script Includes for managing database logic and business rules instead of inline scripts.
New rule for ServiceNow (SN-GLIDERECORD-USAGE-INLINE-SCRIPTS)
Description:
This best practice identifies the use of GlideRecord database queries in Flow inline scripts. The use of GlideRecord in Flow inline scripts can cause performance issues, especially if many queries or updates to the database are performed at runtime. This can slow down the system and affect the user experience.
Benefit: Enabling this best practice helps developers quickly identify glideRecord usage in Flows and learn how to resolve issues by using Script Includes for managing database logic and business rules instead of inline scripts.
New rule for ServiceNow (SN-GLIDERECORDSECURE-USAGE-INLINE-SCRIPTS)
Description:
This best practice identifies the use of GlideRecordSecure database queries in Flow inline scripts. The use of GlideRecord in Flow inline scripts can cause performance issues, especially if many queries or updates to the database are performed at runtime. This can slow down the system and affect the user experience.
Benefit: Enabling this best practice helps developers quickly identify glideRecordSecure usage in Flows and learn how to resolve issues by using Script Includes for managing database logic and business rules instead of inline scripts.
Bug fixes #
1. Accurate Reporting of Dictionary Entries in ServiceNow
Bug explanation:
In ServiceNow inactive dictionary entries were incorrectly recorded as active. This problem led to an over-reporting of active CEs in the QC inventory. As a result, additional issues were mistakenly generated for records that were actually inactive.
Solution:
Inactive Dictionary Entries are now correctly recorded as inactive.
2. Enhanced Configuration Control for Custom Fields and Platform Events in Salesforce
Bug explanation:
In Salesforce Custom Fields and Platform Events from managed packages were always being analyzed, regardless of customer-level settings. This setting should indicate whether configuration elements (CEs) should be scanned or not.
Solution:
Custom Fields and Platform Events are only scanned when they are configured to be scanned according to the customer-level settings.
3. Accurate Alignment of Portal Ruleset and Exported XLS Columns
Solution:
The exported columns from the ruleset now match the columns and order displayed on the ruleset screen.
4. Successful Ruleset Copy Across Instances
Solution:
Customers can now successfully copy customized rulesets from instance A to instance B through all platforms.
