March 2024 Product Updates

At Harness, we have been hard at work so you can delight your customers without facing software delivery toil. Here is what has been changing in the previous month across Harness Products.  

Continuous Delivery & GitOps

1. New Pipeline trigger expression: We've introduced a new expression that explicitly provides the trigger name used to initiate the execution. You can now utilize <+pipeline.triggeredBy.triggerDisplayName> to access this information
2. Working Directory Enhancement: We enhanced the resolution of the working directory. Now you can determine the working directory based on environment variables. This includes variables provided in shell script steps through input variables, as well as those from the host's environment variables.‍
3. UI Update for module selector: If a feature flag is turned on for a module it will now appear in the module selector for the new navigation experience

Full Continuous Delivery & GitOps Release Notes

Continuous Integration

1. Harness Cloud MacOS image update: The Harness Cloud macOS image was updated to the latest version of macOS Sonoma, which includes an Xcode upgrade to 15.2 (default) and 15.1. This version of Sonoma is not compatible with earlier Xcode versions. If your pipelines rely on a specific Xcode version, you must update your pipelines accordingly for the new version.
2. Additional support for no shell docker images: To support Docker images without a shell, the Command field in Run steps is now optional.
3. Additional support for BUild and Push step settings: Build and Push steps support all kaniko and drone-docker runtime flags. You can specify these flags as environment variables in the Build and Push step settings.
4. New Plugin Support: The Harness Community team has developed two new plugins to help you automate more processes in your CI pipelines:
   a. The Helm Push plugin streamlines packaging and distribution of Helm charts to container registries.
   b. The Image MIgration Plugin facilitates copying images across container registries.
5. Additional support for delegate error messages: The error message text for the no eligible delegates present error now includes additional potential causes.
6. Updated support for TI for Ruby: In TI for Ruby, the default test globs pattern is now **/spec/**/*_spec.rb. Now, by default, TI detects spec directories anywhere in the stage workspace. If you want change this behavior, for example to limit it to directories at the root level or at a certain path, you can use the Test Globs setting to override the default test globs pattern.
7. New Google Cloud Plugin Support: The GCP OIDC Token plugin generates a Google Cloud access token from your OIDC token and then stores the GCP token in an output variable that you can use in subsequent pipeline steps to control Google Cloud Services through API (cURL) or the gcloud CLI.‍
8. Deprecation Notice: app.harness Docker Registry:Harness images are available on Docker Hub and the Harness project on GCR. In a continuation of this effort, and to improve stability when pulling Harness-required images, Harness is deprecating the Harness-hosted app.harness Docker registry effective 15 February 2024

Full Continuous Integration Release Notes

Chaos Engineering

1. New Helm support for Chaos Infrastructure: This release adds API support to install and upgrade chaos infrastructure using Helm.‍

‍Full Chaos Engineering Release Notes

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Cloud Cost Management

1. Overview Forecasting API Enhancement: We added a default value (CURRENT_MONTH) for the overviewTimeFilter parameter in the Overview Forecasting API, ensuring consistency and simplifying usage.
2. Memory and CPU Utilization Optimization: We identified and resolved a high memory and CPU utilization issue in our delegate pods and resolved it; significantly improving system performance and stability.
3. Improved Readability in Perspective UI: With the latest update on the perspective details page, formatted cost will now be clearly visible, and users can access the full value through tooltips for enhanced clarity and usability.
4. SMP UI enhancement: For SMP Environment, we've implemented redirects to the Dashboards module to facilitate viewing BI Dashboards seamlessly.
5. Commitment Orchestrator Flow Enhancement: In Commitment Orchestrator, to avoid confusion regarding the exclusion of resource instances , we've made enhancements to the commitment orchestration setup flow for even better clarity.
6. Access Control Refinement in Perspective UI:  If users lack edit access on perspectives or folders, the "+ New Perspective" button will be disabled. Furthermore, error messages have been refined to provide clearer feedback.
7. Commitment Orchestrator Edit Flow Integration: We've implemented the edit flow for commitment orchestration, granting users the ability to modify their commitment orchestration details seamlessly.
   

Full Cloud Cost Management Release Notes

Internal Developer Portal (IDP)

1. Additional support for IDP API: IDP APIs are now available on our public API docs.
2. New support for notifications: Users can now add email as an input for Slack Notify step in the IDP Stage. When used with <+pipeline.triggeredBy.email>, your service onboarding pipeline can now notify the user!
3. New Custom field extension support: Added support for a new Custom field extension HarnessAutoOrgPicker, which auto populates on project selection. So now when you select an project id as an input the org id gets selected automatically if required as an input.
4. IDP workflow update: The project picker in IDP workflows HarnessProjectPicker now shows the org as well. There is no change in the input/output values.
5. Enhancement for workflow orchestration: You can now optionally remove the pipeline url used to orchestrate the workflow, from the workflow execution logs displayed as output while using the custom action trigger:harness-custom-pipeline. For this you need to use the boolean property hidePipelineURLLog and set the value as true. ‍
6. UI update for connectors: We have added support for displaying warning messages on the connector page, when a connector or secret is deleted.

Full Internal Developer Portal Notes

Software Engineering Insights

1. Additional support for workflow profiles: Added the support to enable the addition of stages based on Jira Status categories as a filter in the Velocity Lead Time type Workflow profile setting. As a result, all the statuses that fall under each category will belong to a particular stage. This feature can be linked to the Lead Time in Stages report and the Jira releases report.
2. Improved Calculation logic for Single Stat Reports: Improved the calculation logic for the average field across various Single Stat reports. Now the field is calculated based on the configured/selected calendar date.
3. Additional Support for time-range in reports: In the SCM PRs Single Stat report, we have added the support to select any time range by using the calendar component to view the PRs based on the selected metric.
4. Updated support for Propel Node: Added the support for a New Propel node that gets the data for a GitHub team (repositories and its members) from GitHub.
5. Updated support for SCM Files Report: In the SCM Files report we have added the ability to view the files as per the configured page size selection in the report settings.‍
6. Updated Support for reports: Added the capability for users to select only those items that have Associated Pull Requests (PRs) in the widget-level settings of the following reports - Issue Lead Time by Stage report, DORA

Security Testing Orchestration

1. UI Update for Issues table: The Issues table in Issue Details and the Exemptions tables now include popups for issues whose original severities were overridden by a Snyk security policy. ‍
2. Updated Snyk step to show original score: You can now configure a Snyk step to show the original score when a Snyk Enterprise security policy overrode the severity for an issue coming from the snyk CLI. You can see this information in Issue Details.

Full Security Testing Orchestration Notes

Infrastructure-as-code-management

1. New Feature Drift Detection: Drift means there is a gap between how the resources are configured in the code and how these resources are in the real world (for example - how they are configured in the cloud environment). Drift is a major concern for teams using IaC practices that can lead to cost and security challenges. IaCM helps teams detect drift automatically and reconcile, preventing discrepancies between the desired and actual state.
2. New Feature Opa Integration: IaCM supports granular OPA rules that can enforce security requirements and best practices on configuration and execution events. This helps to ensure that all operations and setup are done securely, reducing risks and helping follow the organization's guidelines.

Platform

Here are some important improvements to our platform that should enhance your user experience:

1. UI Update for logging: You can now hide sensitive log information in the Harness UI based on regular expression patterns.
2. Updated Support for Azure Key vault Connector: Added support for selecting the environment in the manual credentials option while creating an Azure key vault connector.
3. Additional support for assertions: Added support for encrypted assertions in the SAML response.
4. Enhanced API documentation for validForDays: Enhanced the override-delegate-tag API documentation to include details on validForDays and validTillNextRelease parameters. Additionally, the default value for validForDays has been updated to 180 days, extending from the previous 30 days. For more information, go to Override delegate image tag in the API documentation.
5. Delegate Logs enhancement: Added ability to write delegate logs in JSON format using logstash-logback-encoder library. This can be useful if logs are injected into third party services like DataDog which works better with JSON format.‍
6. Default Delegate YAML update: Harness has updated the default HPA in the Harness Delegate YAML to use autoscaling/v2 instead of autoscaling/v1 which was used in earlier delegate versions
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‍‍Full Platform Release Notes

Self-Managed-Enterprise Edition

1. Added Alternative air gap Bundle download method: Some admins might not have Google account access to download air gap bundles. As an alternative, you can use gsutil. For gsutil installation instructions, go to Install gsutil in the Google Cloud documentation.

‍Full Self-Managed Enterprise Release Notes

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