Combined Release Notes | April 2023

We are back with a huge list of new features and usability enhancements for the Ozone platform! To make it easier for our readers, we’ve come out with combined release notes covering 2023 YTD, followed by periodic updates as and how we progress. 

Here’s what we’ve been up to for most of this year:

1. App-of-app releases, aka release management on Ozone

Having interacted with many teams across diverse industries, the most common challenge faced was managing complex application releases to end-users, especially when a major fix is in place or an app undergoes major updates. In such scenarios, multiple microservices must be rolled out simultaneously and successfully across specific user bases. 

The release management feature on Ozone lets you connect multiple pipelines associated with numerous microservices that form part of the release by dragging and dropping them on a visual canvas called the Ozone Pipeline Studio. The release is then deployed similarly to deploying an application. The only major difference is that this application would be deploying multiple others, hence the term “app of apps.” 

The low-code GUI allows for quick configuration and deployment of releases, regardless of their complexity. 

2. Ozone Pipeline Studio

This studio consists of an infinitely scaling canvas built over the Tekton DAG (directed acyclic graphs) that lets you connect and run multiple tasks in sequence or parallel. This helps quickly configure even the most complex of pipelines in just a few minutes, thanks to the low-code GUI. Here’s some more info:

• Ozone ships with a catalog of 100+ pre-defined task templates that is accessible right inside the pipeline studio. Drag, drop, and connect the required tasks directly onto the canvas and customize the YAML if needed right there. 
• Connect tasks in any order of execution visually with the provision to modify the YAML with just a simple toggle between the visual and YAML editor.
• Map input parameters to your tasks from upstream nodes and save the pipeline. All in under a few minutes!
• Starting from configuring releases that consist of pipelines or the latter that consist of tasks, dive deeper into step-level information for each and every task to gain granular under-the-hood visibility. 
• Real-time release and pipeline run status and logs are made easily accessible across tasks and steps inside them.

Enhancements to the product

1. To make working with pipelines easier, they are now moved out of microservice definitions and can be accessed independently. 
2. Backups are now first-class citizens with their own management console on the UI
3. The user experience has been enhanced, and major workflow improvements have been made in this release. Here’s a snapshot of some of the major UX overhauls:
   • An all-new onboarding flow specially designed to allow new users to pull and deploy a sample application with a bootstrapped cluster and pipeline in just a few minutes
   • Activities related to setting up providers, environments, variables, helm channels, repositories, and clusters can now be done from the “Resources” menu
   • Assigning a role and project/s to new members who are invited to join Ozone can now be done during the time of member onboarding
   • Bulk invites can be sent by uploading a CSV for SSO integrations
   • Unlike the previous workflow, prerequisites for setting up providers or other resources are now handled during their respective configurations.