What's new in 15.1.20

The following new features and enhancements are introduced in the ALM Octane 15.1.20 release.

SaaS: This topic aggregates all the new features included in this and the previous two updates.

What's new video

Release highlights

Following are some of the highlights of this release:

New model for BDD (behavior-driven development) test design
Test run injection from ALM/QC 15.5
Defect Cost and Escaped Defects tracking in the Automation ROI widget
Define email templates
Assign colors to board cards and backlog items through criteria you define
Set backlog red lines
Consolidated relationships diagram and new grid view
New Days in phase field for aging tracking

Automation ROI analytics

Two new metrics are added to the Automation ROI widget: defect cost and escaped defects.

The defect cost is derived from several factors, including a comparison of the number of defects detected early by automation vs. defects submitted after manual runs.
The escaped defect metric shows how many defects were missed by your testing. It also shows whether your testing time improved

For details, see Automation ROI.

SAFe: Objectives support

You can now create custom widgets in the dashboard to track progress on objectives over time. For details, see Create release objectives.

Document Reports

The following enhancements are now available in document reports:

Area	Enhancement
Include scripts	You can now include the contents of scripts in any of the report's test nodes, such as Manual Tests and Gherkin Tests.
Logo	You can now edit, remove, or reset the Document report logo.
Attachments	You can now include the contents of entity attachments in your Document report.
Defect visibility	User stories included in the report will also show related defects.
Richer Contents tab	The Contents tab allows you to reorder the report's contents by drag-and-drop.

For details, see Analysis and reporting tools.

New BDD model

We are introducing a new model for behavior-driven development (BDD), where each scenario is a separate entity in ValueEdge and ALM Octane.

This offers you the following advantages:

You can run individual scenarios.
You can report on a scenario run level, offering you greater granularity than Gherkin tests.
You can partially automate a BDD spec to only run some of its scenarios.
You can link specific scenarios to specific backlog items.

For details, see Create and run BDD scenarios.

Backlog

The following Backlog enhancements are now available:

Area	Enhancement
Red line	In the Feature tab, you can define with a 'red line' the number of features you plan to deliver in the release. The red line can be defined by number of features or story points. For details, see Set a red line.
Assign colors according to rules	You can now assign colors to backlog items according to filter conditions. You can save the preferences as a Favorite and share with other users. For details, see Refine your display.
Relations tab improvements	Using the improved Relations tab Chart or Viewer , all an item's related entities are displayed in the same map or table. The map displays the entity types in a stack of cards arranged by type. Relations can be added or removed in both the Chart and Viewer layouts. For details, see Relations and dependencies
Track aging backlog items	A new field, Days in phase, lets you track backlog items that have remained in the same phase for an extended period of time. This can reveal bottlenecks in the development process. For details, see Track aged backlog items.
Metaphase view in story board	In the story board, you can toggle between Workflow and Metaphase views. The Metaphase view displays only the metaphase lanes in your story board: New, In Progress, In Testing, Done. All backlog items will be distributed among these lanes. For details, see Use the board view.

Quality

The following Quality enhancements are now available:

Area	Enhancement
Run columns added to test suites	The test suite's Planning tab now shows run-related fields. For example, you can now set Tester and Environment values for all the tests in a suite. For details, see Plan and run test suites.
Plan multiple test suites	You can now plan runs for multiple test suites in a single operation. For details, see Plan and run test suites.
Add manual tests multiple times to test suites	When building a test suite, you can now add a manual test multiple times. This is useful if you want to run the same test on different environments. For details, see Plan and run test suites.
Run with latest version	For manual test runs and test suites running manual tests, a new field Run with latest version lets you indicate whether to run with the original or latest version of the test. For details, see Run with latest version.
Test fields added to the test suite entity	Using the Test Suite's new Planning tab you can now cross filter on all test fields, perform bulk updates, and group tests within a test suite. The Planning tab replaces the test suite's Tests tab. For details, see Create test suites.
Data set field added to Planning tab	The Test Suite's Planning tab lets you show the data set for each test in addition to both external and test-specific data tables.
Gherkin tests	Automation of Gherkin tests now supports Cucumber 4.8.1. For details, see Automate Gherkin tests.
Test runner framework	You can now use data sets when running automated Gherkin tests using a test runner. For details, see Use parameter sets in the test runner job.

Pipelines

The following SCM and CI enhancements are available:

Area	Enhancement
Assign pipelines to program	You can now assign pipelines to a program. Their program will be automatically assigned to their test runs as well. For details, see Working with programs in pipelines.
Assign Jenkins user to workspace	When setting up an integration with Jenkins, you can define which Jenkins user is assigned to each workspace. This enables you to control which pipelines can be added to each workspace. For details, see Configure the connection to your ALM Octane server.
Send custom parameters	When planning a suite run using the testing framework, you can now send custom parameters that will be used by your testing tool. For details, see Use custom execution parameters. Custom Execution parameters are supported with the Jenkins plugin version 6.3 or later.
Associate pull requests with ALM Octane items	You can use message patterns in pull requests to associate them with ALM Octane entities. If the specified pattern appears in the title or description of a pull request, the pull request will be associated with the corresponding entity in ALM Octane. For details, see Customize SCM change patterns.
Link pull requests to features	We expanded the pull request tracking capability to enable you to link pull requests directly to features, in addition to other backlog items. For details, see Track pull requests in your SCM system.

Synchronizer

When synchronizing defect links, you can also synchronize relations between ALM Octane defects and their related features or user stories, with the Jira links between bugs and their related entities. For details, see Synchronize defect relations.

Administration

The following administration enhancements are available:

Area	Enhancement
Export and Import spaces	You can import and export spaces together with their settings and data. All of the information is saved to a self-contained file with an osa extension. For details, see Manage spaces (for site admins).
Export and import shared space customization (technical preview)	You can now export data from a shared space customization to a file. You can then import the file to another shared space. For details, see Export and import spaces and space customization. Note: This is a technical preview feature. To enable it, contact Support.
Email customization	We've added customization options to emails sent from ALM Octane: You can now define a template for emails. For details, see Customize emails. You can customize email headers and footers in the space's Defaults tab. For details, see Customize email header and footer.
Add lists on workspace level	Workspace admins can now add lists to workspaces in a shared space. For details, see Sharing lists between workspaces.
Additional protocols for memo links	The default supported protocols for links in memo fields are http;https;td;testdirector;mailto. You can now include additional protocols by adding them to the HREF_PROTOCOLS_WHITE_LIST parameter.
Manual purge	Admins can set the purge policy and perform a manual purge for pipeline runs through the UI. For details, see Manage the site.

Supported environments

The following platforms are now supported:

We now support Elasticsearch 7.6.2, in addition to Elasticsearch 6.8.1 and later 6.8.x versions.
We now support Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Azure Government cloud deployment environments, in the configuration specified in the Support Matrix page. This includes support for SQL Cloud.

OData support:

Support for OData 2.0 in ALM Octane will be deprecated in a future release. You can continue integrating with OData 4.0.

Support for recent CI versions:

We recently released new versions of the ALM Octane plugins for Bamboo, Team City, and GitLab. These provide support for Bamboo 7, Team City 2020, and GitLab 12.7.5.

ALM/QC test run injection

With ALM 15.5, you can integrate between ALM Octane and ALM/QC, to automatically inject test runs from ALM/QC to ALM Octane.

When a test is run in ALM/QC, a corresponding test suite and test will be automatically created in ALM Octane. Test runs will be continuously added under these tests and test suites.

Both manual and automated tests can be injected, and tests can be automatically mapped to application modules.

This will enable you to track progress of your ALM tests within ALM Octane and to leverage your existing tools, for example with testers using ALM, while you manage the rest of your project in ALM Octane.

For details, see Inject test runs from ALM/QC to ALM Octane.

LTP - Long Term Path Version

This version of ALM Octane is an LTP – Long Term Path – version. You can upgrade to it directly from our previous minor version 15.0.20, and you will be able to upgrade directly to our next minor version in 2021.

In order to always be on track and benefit from all the latest features, we highly recommend that you follow our STP track and install all the interim versions. If you need more time in between upgrades – you can take the LTP path.

What's New - earlier versions