What's new in 16.0.200

The following new features and enhancements are introduced in the ALM Octane 16.0.200 release.

Note: The Help Centers for ALM Octane versions 16.0.100 to 16.0.200 are streamlined into a single Help Center. Any version-specific changes are indicated where relevant.

This topic describes the new features and enhancements available in ALM Octane 16.0.200. To view enhancements for 16.0.100, see What's new in 16.0.100.

Reporting and analytics

The following reporting and analytics enhancements are available:

Area	Enhancement
ALM Octane UI plugins	You can now enhance ALM Octane with sidebar plugins. You can develop plugins that interact with the grid data in a variety of modules. For example, a sidebar widget can help you analyze the estimated vs. actual work effort of the selected feature: For details, see Create sidebar plugins.
Enhanced timeline view	The enhanced timeline view for features and epics now displays item phases, cycle times, and the percentage of waste time. Check for phase-specific color representations in the timeline legend. The display of phases and waste time in the timeline is a technical preview. For details, see Analyze the release.
Measure waste(technical preview)	You can now track and measure waste time for your features and epics. It helps you determine the scope of waste per specific phase, release, or team. For details, see Analyze the release.
Define epic values (technical preview)	You can now track epics' perceived and actual business values. This helps you prioritize epics based on the value they deliver, and determine the gap between the initial and final estimation of an epic. For details, see Build the product backlog.
OData reports for multiple workspaces	OData reports can now include data from multiple workspaces. The workspaces need to belong to the same shared space. For details, see OData support for extended reporting.
Improved cycle time calculation	The calculation of the average cycle time has changed. For details, see Cycle and flow times.
List of analysis and reporting tools	ALM Octane help includes a comprehensive list of all ValueEdge and ALM Octane's analysis and reporting tools. For details, see Analysis and reporting tools.

Disclaimer: The technical preview features above may not be part of the ALM Octane Pro or ALM Octane Enterprise editions in future releases.

Backlog and quality

The following backlog enhancements are available:

Area	Enhancement
Fixed ranks for backlog items	With the new ranking method, you can now assign backlog items with fixed ranks. The ranks do not change when the grid is grouped, sorted, or filtered by other fields. For details, see Build the product backlog.
Board view enhancements	The following enhancements are introduced on the board views: You can now add team-specific phases to your team's story board and drag stories to the custom lanes. For details, see Use the board view. You can customize board cards to include additional fields of your choice. For details, see Use the board view.
BDD extensibility and auto complete	The following enhancements are available for BDD testing: Until now, ALM Octane’s integration with BDD had limited platform support, and required code changes. This release includes a new generic utility that enables you to inject test results from all common BDD frameworks, without requiring any changes to your code. For details, see Inject BDD test results to ALM Octane. You can reuse existing BDD steps with an auto-complete mechanism. In addition, you can now run a BDD scenario automatically with a test runner. For details, see Create BDD specifications.
Runs tab	SaaS: A new Runs tab in the Quality module provides a unified grid of runs across all tests, both planned and executed. You can filter the grid as you like and do bulk updates on runs across different tests. This functionality was previously available for on-premises deployments. For details, see Track runs across all tests. On-premises: To prevent performance problems due to a huge number of runs returned, data on runs is now limited to 2,000 runs by default.
Bulk updates	In bulk updates, you can now update up to 10 fields at a time. For details, see Update multiple backlog items.

Release processes - Jenkins auto actions

Enterprise edition: In addition to manual actions, you can now trigger jobs on your Jenkins server with a release process auto action. For details, see Create a release process.

Pipelines and integrations

The following pipeline and integrations enhancements are available:

Area	Enhancement
Cross-pipeline test results	When viewing test results in a pipeline, you now have visibility into the results of the same test in other pipelines as well. For details, see Expand your test failure analysis.
Vulnerabilities	You can now apply business rules to security vulnerabilities. For details on using rules, see Design business rules.
Gherkin support	You can now inject automated Gherkin test results using the Azure DevOps extension integration. For details, see Configure your project.
Fortify on Demand	ALM Octane now supports integration with Fortify on Demand plugin version 6.1.0. For details, see Set up an integration with Fortify.

Administration

The following administration enhancements are now available:

Area	Enhancement
Data access control	Enterprise edition: Data access control is now available for requirements and their related attachments and comments. This is in addition to data access control on defects and manual tests. For details, see Data access control in requirements.
Workflow	Enterprise edition: Workspace administrators can now add phases and customize the transitions between them, at the workspace level. For details, see Customize phases and transitions at the workspace level.
Data import: multi-value fields	Your admin can now change the value delimiter for multi-value fields by modifying the EXPORT_IMPORT_MULTIVALUE_DELIMITER parameter. For details, see Configuration parameters.
Draft mode permission	With the new "Allow draft entity creation" general system permission, admins can now control which roles can create items in draft mode. For details, see Roles and permissions.
Emails	The following email enhancements are available: Emails sent by ValueEdge and ALM Octane are now grouped by conversation in supporting email clients. You can now add a classification tag to email subject lines. For details, see Customize emails.

REST API

The following REST API changes are introduced in this release:

Default fields are not returned for TECH-PREVIEW resources.
As described in the previous release, there is now a limit on the number of records you can receive when fetching the run entity. If your filter exceeds this limit, refine your filter to generate fewer than 2,000 records.

If this limit is too restrictive for your environment, contact Micro Focus Support.