Orchestrate: Release notes v7.83 Hotfix 4

Access Orchestrate v7.83 — Hotfix 4

We are pleased to announce hotfix 4 release for Access Orchestrate version 7.83. This is an additional release on top of v7.83 (see the v7.83 release notes) and contains the following fixes. No configuration changes are required; all fixes apply automatically on upgrade.

Copy Live to Play has been rebuilt. It is now requested and watched from a dedicated Copy Live to Play window instead of a series of message boxes that had to be left open. The window is not modal, so Orchestrate can still be used while a copy is waiting or running, and closing it does not affect the copy — reopening it, or opening it on another machine, shows the copy already in progress. Before a copy is requested the window shows what will be copied where, whether the Play database exists, how many users are logged in to Play, and the result, timing and requester of the last copy, with a single clearly labelled option for whether the Play users, passwords and permissions are kept or overwritten with Live.

Play users are now given notice, and a copy can be cancelled. They are told that a copy has been requested, who requested it and how long they have left to finish what they are doing, and are signed out when the copy starts. The notice period ends early once everyone has logged out, and is skipped when there is nobody in Play to give notice to. Anyone permitted to run a Copy Live to Play can ask for one to be cancelled, with a message explaining why; the person who requested the copy is shown the request and can accept it, leaving Play untouched, or reject it and restart the notice period. They can also cancel their own copy outright. Play users can log in again as soon as the copy finishes, is cancelled or fails.

The progress of the copy is now visible. The window shows which of the four stages the copy has reached, who requested it and how long is left of the notice period, and, once copying starts, each of the seven steps as it is reached with a progress bar and the elapsed time. It finishes on a page showing how long the copy took, what was copied from and to, whether the Play user information was kept, and the version of the new Play database. A copy that fails names the error, the step it failed on and whether it can be tried again, with a button to copy the detail for reporting it.

This needs Orchestrate 7.84 or later and Orchestrate Service Agent 1.4 or later. Where either is older, Copy Live to Play behaves exactly as it did before, and Orchestrate says so before falling back to it. The setting that enables Copy Live to Play and the user permission it needs are unchanged.

When a Copy Live to Play was asked to keep the Play system's user information, permissions given directly to individual Play users were lost — only users, roles and role permissions were put back, so those permissions had to be set up again after every copy. They are now restored along with the users and roles. The import data sources of the previous Play database are also restored, so Play no longer ends up importing from the Live source systems.

The Orchestrate Service Agent that performs Copy Live to Play has been improved and updated to version 1.4, delivering the message-driven communication between Live, Play and the service that lets a copy be watched, cancelled and recovered as described above. Install or upgrade the Service Agent to 1.4 on the SQL Server holding the Live database to use the new Copy Live to Play; where it is older, Copy Live to Play continues to work as before.