With the new Product field, you can now trace epics and their backlog items in ValueEdge Agile to their respective portfolios in ValueEdge Strategy.

For details, see Epic types.

On bar widgets, you can now display bar and segment values permanently, without having to hover over the bars.

For details, see ALM Octane dashboard.

The following release process enhancements are available:

• Process templates: You can now define release process templates and reuse elements in your next release process. For details, see Create a release process.
• Timeline milestone indicators over relevant bars: Release processes timeline now displays milestone indicators over the bars for their associated processes, rather than as vertical lines along the timeline. For details, see View the process timelines.

You can now extend or minimize the width of the timeline view by moving the divider between the timeline and the grid.

For details, see Timeline view.

Users with the new Shared Entities Manager role can now manage shared items, such as shared epics, releases, and milestones. Previously, only shared space admins had such permissions.

For details, see Roles and permissions.

A new CI integration supporting GitHub Actions is now available. For details, refer to the integration's readme file.

For details on functionality available in ALM Octane when integrating with GitHub Actions, see Functionality supported by CI integrations.

You can now set up various Dashboard widgets to report on test runs at the iteration level, so that each iteration with parameters is counted separately as a run. For details, see Generate iteration-level reports (Technical preview) and Generate example-level reports (Technical preview).

Testers can now edit their completed runs, as long as the manual runner remains open.

For details, see Plan and run manual and Gherkin tests.

The timeline is now available in the Slim Grid View, in addition to the Grid View. You can now display the timeline using a dedicated button in the toolbar.

For details, see Timeline view.

Admins can now define mail-related parameters at a space level, in addition to the site level. This helps run email automation tests in individual spaces, and prevent test conflicts.

For details, see Configuration parameters.

You can now see a grid view of all your pipelines in the Pipelines > Manage tab. This is particularly useful if you need to manage large numbers of pipelines.

For details, see Manage pipelines in a central location.

You can now define two data sets for a summary widget. You can then configure the widget to display the ratio between the compared sets of values.

For details, see ALM Octane dashboard.

The following external actions enhancements are available:

• Applications that interact with ValueEdge can now use identity tokens instead of authentication requests to verify the identity of a user that invoked an external action.

• You can now define an external action by uploading a zip bundle with a pre-configured JSON file. Using this method, you no longer need to manually define the JSON configuration directly in the editor.

For details, see Create external actions.

You can now restrict data access to automated tests and all of its derived entities. This is in addition to data access controls on defects, manual tests, and requirements.

For details, see Data access control.

A new top-level timeline view is now available for release processes. The timeline displays key points in the release processes on Gantt charts.

For details, see Release processes.

For ALM Octane auto actions, you can now set a filter to update or add comments only to those items that are associated with the release or milestone of the current release process.

For details, see Create a release process.

For CI server auto actions, the Build Number and Build Status are now included in the Output properties field. You can view these properties in the action details and history.

For details, see Run a release process.

ValueEdge Strategy enables you to connect your corporate strategy with actionable Agile initiatives. Epics that you create in ValueEdge Agile are now synchronized with ValueEdge Strategy.

For details on epics, see Build the backlog. For details on ValueEdge Strategy, look up the new Portfolio & Strategy help center.

Using a Developer license, you can now perform a manual run of a BDD scenario. For details on working with BDD, see Create and run BDD scenarios.

You can now filter the dashboard data by setting a date range. This option is available from the dashboard's global filter, or in the scope of individual widgets.

For details, see ALM Octane dashboard.

You can now create custom fields of type Date. Unlike the DateTime type, the Date type does not include the time component.

For details, see Add custom fields.

Exporting a grid to Excel now includes the grid's related item fields.

For details, see Export data.

A new Value Stream Management dashboard template is now available. It includes widgets with a recommended set of KPIs that reflect the current value stream management status.

For details, see Dashboard templates.

VSM widgets

The following VSM enhancements are available: 

• Flow time trend. A new widget enables you to analyze the trend of your features' flow time. View features with the highest flow time in the insights, and analyze correlations between the development time and quality.

• Done date. The date on which features and backlog items enter the Done metaphase is now captured in a new Done date field. The Done date is now the default value on the x-axis of the VSM widgets.

  You can display the new field in grids and add it to the item details view.

For details, see Dashboard widgets: VSM category.

Dashboard enhancements

The following dashboard enhancements are available:

• Global filter. You can now set a global context filter for the dashboard module. By default, the global filter is applied to all new widgets added to the dashboard. You can override the global filter for individual widgets.

• Cross-workspace reporting. The predefined VSM and cycle time dashboard widgets now support cross-workspace reporting.

For details, see ALM Octane dashboard.

Flow time and waste time tracking is now extended to stories and defects.

For details on waste tracking, see Measure waste. For details on flow time, see Cycle and flow times.

Document report enhancement

When adding a widget to a document report, you can now use a link to open the selected dashboard favorite. This helps you identify the widget that you want.

For details, see Create a report template.

You can now assign teams to programs. You can then assign work items to teams according to their program association.

For details, see Create teams.

The following auto action enhancements are now available:

• You can now add comments to features and backlog items through auto actions.

• Auto actions can now run Deployment Automation application processes using component versions.

For details, see Create a release process.

Multi-branch support for Azure DevOps

Multi-branch jobs are now supported for the Azure DevOps Services extension integration. For details, see Functionality supported by CI integrations.

Admins can now set a custom message that users will see after logging in. For details, see Set a post-login message.

GitLab plugin enhancement

The GitLab plugin now supports running automated tests from the test framework. For details, see Functionality supported by CI integrations.

The following auto action enhancements are now available:

• You can now run Deployment Automation application processes via an auto action.
• Auto actions can now run TeamCity jobs.

For details, see Create a release process.

The names of Dashboard favorites are now displayed next to the module name. For details, see Favorites.

You can now access the Dashboard templates from the toolbar. For details, see Dashboard templates.

Export dashboard to HTML

You can now export a dashboard page as an independent html file. This gives you a static version of the dashboard that you can use as a baseline or for auditing purposes. For details, see ALM Octane dashboard.

The following auto action enhancements are now available:

• You can now send emails via an auto action.
• Auto actions can now trigger Bamboo jobs.
• You can now define parameters for a multi-branch Jenkins job. Also, branch name validation for multi-branch jobs has been enabled.
• For GitLab jobs, you can now use the Branch name field to define the CI tags. Unlike with branches, where jobs run on the latest version of code, tags help you run jobs on specific versions, regardless of the commit time.

For details, see Create a release process.

You can now adjust the names of release types to the methodology adopted by your team, by editing the Agile Type list items.

For details, see Set up a release.

Trend widgets enhancement

You can now see run trends for specific backlog items. You can specify Backlog’s last test runs as an item type in the graph’s scope, and filter run item types by Backlog Coverage. For details, see Configure widget data settings.

You can now run a Azure DevOps pipeline with parameters.

For details, see Run Azure DevOps pipelines.

You can now save all visible configurations, such as filters and widgets, as part of your favorite. You can then apply this favorite configuration to additional pipeline runs, without having to set up the filters and widgets again.

For details, see Customize your pipeline display.

The following enhancements to auto actions are now available:

• You can now create auto actions to trigger GitLab jobs and generate document reports. For details, see Create a release process.
• Aborting an ALM Octane's auto action that runs a PulseUno job now aborts the corresponding job in PulseUno, and vice versa. For details, see Run a release process.

The name of the selected favorite is now displayed in the top banner, next to the favorite icon. For details, see Favorites.

You can now inject BDD test results from SpecFlow, using a report generation template file. For details, see Inject BDD test results from SpecFlow.

You can now track and optimize your value delivery process with the following widgets:

• Flow efficiency - waste time across releases: Track the waste time trend across releases. Use the widget AI insights to identify the top work items with the highest waste time in a scope.
• Waste time grouped by waste category across releases: Identify the main causes of waste in each time period. The widget helps you understand whether you've managed to reduce or eliminate any of the waste causes.

For details, see Dashboard widgets: VSM category.

A new widget type allows you to display KPIs as single-number scorecards. For details, see Dashboard widgets: general.

You can now display metrics on the y-axis as an average. For example, in a features summary graph, display the average number of feature story points assigned to each developer. For details, see ALM Octane dashboard.

You can now identify slow phases in features and epics that exceed the phase time threshold set for your workspace. For details, see Analyze the release.

Risk-based testing analytics now provides insights for recommended tests. The insights help you understand why the tests are recommended. For example, the analytics recommends and prioritizes tests that should provide a good coverage of a selected area and reduce its quality risk. For details, see Quality risk insights.

The Plan Run dialog is now consistent when selecting one or multiple tests. You can set field values for all of the selected tests, including values for user-defined fields. For details, see Plan and run manual and Gherkin tests.