Blog

We have moved the technical documentation for DevOps-as-a-Service, which is publicly accessible on the Internet, from Confluence to X-Wiki. We recommend using the shortcut https://docs.devops.t-systems.net to get to the right place. This URL is also linked in the footer of the DevOps Portal since v1.6.8 as "User Manual".

Please update your bookmarks accordingly. The now obsolete Confluence space will not receive any updates and will be removed in the near future.

New Features

AI Operator

• The Portal now supports the new tool AI Operator. AI Operator is an interactive chat which can answer questions about a project. The knowledge of AI Operator is retrieved from uploaded files which contain project documentation.

Enhancements

• Project admins can now edit and save their projects. This can be used to change the name or description of a project. As always, the change is automatically propagated to all tools.
• A custom plugin was developed for Jira which will now delete screens, screen schemes, and issue-type screen schemes which are no longer used. This is triggered by the DevOps Portal every time a project is deleted. This saves resources and speeds up Jira.

Improvements

• Users with the Portal role CREATOR can now see all users, even when they are not in the default organization. Due to this, they can add now anybody to the projects they have created. For ADMINs this was always possible. Therefore, being not a member of the default organization only limits user visibility for users with a standard portal role.
• When resync roles is invoked on a project, it will also remove users from tools for which they don't have a licence assigned. This is just done for completeness. User are already removed from a tool when the license is unassigned from them.
• Browsers will now use the DevOps-as-a-Service icon instead of a generic icon when installing the DevOps Portal as a web application. The feature is not supported by all browsers at the moment, but works at least in Chrome, also on mobile devices. See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Manifest for compatibility information.
• Adapted URLs for IDEaaS to latest version
• Adapted data retrieval to latest LDAP server version

Security

• Encryption of passwords for technical users was changed to fulfill latest PSA recommendations.
• Access to the portal database is now done using SSL
• The API call for organizations now just returns information required for the permission level of the logged-in user.

Bugfixes

• Unlock user did not work for locked users, which were still assigned to a tool, which has been removed in the meantime from the instance.
• For some users, enabling 2FA did not work. The issue was fixed.

Released on April 25, 2024

Enhancements

• When Jenkins discovers new Git repositories on Gitea, it will now automatically configure webhooks in Gitea, which will trigger Jenkins automatically when new branches or commits are added. In addition, the latest build status is now shown in Gitea for each repository. Therefore, the Gitea-Jenkins integration now offers the same functionality as the Bibucket-Jenkins integration.
• The display names of automatically populated organization folders in Jenkins are now set to "Projectname Bitbucket" and "Projectname Gitea". This helps esp. customers which use both tools to manage Git repositories to properly distinguish these two folders. To activate this for existing projects, simply Edit and Save the project in the DevOps Portal.

Improvements

• The language selected by the user is now remembered across sessions in the persisted user information.
• The Synchronization page is now using the Turbo scrolling with pageless access to all entries.
• The Service Desk link in the footer has been updated to lead to the new support Kanban boards.
• Added the AI Engineer logo.
• For some cases related to role changes, no relogin is required to adapt to the changed permission set.
• The job queue working on outstanding synchronizations has been improved for faster processing of pending actions that need to be retried again.
• Resyncing roles is now faster for Harbor.

We just published a new page, which gives our customers a better transparency regarding:

• Information to the latest release of the self-service portal (release notes)
• Information regarding planned improvements and enhancements (release planning)
• Information about other enhancements and new features, planned for the next months

All this information can be found here: Release Notes

We suggest watching that page to keep informed in case of any changes.

Released on March 27, 2024

Enhancements

• Gitea has been added to the Dashboard. Customers which use Gitea for Source Code Management get a tile for Git Repositories and Pull-Requests:
  
  Customers which use Gitea as an Artifact repository get a tile for Packages:
  
• We have developed an Extended API Plugin which adds missing functionality to Jira. The first version deletes Screens and Screen Schemes that are left behind when a project is deleted. Not deleting them makes Jira slow over time and clutters up the display of some administration pages.

Improvements

• Personal Git repositories on Gitea are now automatically deleted when a user is deleted. The DevOps Portal will show a warning message about this.
• The number of pending synchronizations is now shown on the Synchronization page.
• Clicking on the T-Systems logo on the login related screens will now make the browser go to the DevOps Portal. This can be used if the redirect to the DevOps Portal is not working properly after a password reset. This problem is caused by a known bug in Keycloak https://github.com/keycloak/keycloak/issues/21127 which was not fixed yet.

Known Issues

• Unfortunately, the links to Agile Board and Backlog in the Jira tile of the DevOps Portal homepage do not work properly for users which have more than one project. In fact, the links will lead to the last visited agile board on Jira, independent to the project selection on the homepage of the DevOps Portal. This is caused by the fact, that agile boards are not part of a Jira project, but instead are independent entities. We are striving to find a solution for the problem in a future version.

Released on March 12, 2024

Improvements

• Matching the IDEaaS release, the links to the tool were adjusted to work in all DevOps-as-a-Service instances which have IDEaaS installed.

Bugfixes

• The additional Jira permissions introduced in 1.6.4 now also work on Jira instances without Jira Service Management installed.
• When scrolling through lists, it could happen that additional white space was visible between the rows. This has been fixed.

Known Issues

• Unfortunately, the links to Agile Board and Backlog in the Jira tile of the DevOps Portal homepage do not work properly for users which have more than one project. In fact, the links will lead to the last visited agile board on Jira, independent to the project selection on the homepage of the DevOps Portal. This is caused by the fact, that agile boards are not part of a Jira project, but instead are independent entities. We are striving to find a solution for the problem in a future version.

Released on March 09, 2024

PSA (Privacy and Security Assessment) Compliance

• Updated all PostgreSQL databases to hardened version with additional network access protection.

Enhancements

• Portal CREATORs can now see all users and organizations, like Portal ADMINS, totally independent of their own organization. This is changed, so that every CREATOR can really onboard new users from different companies. If necessary you can at any time change the Portal role of a CREATOR back to USER, when he or she is finished with creating new projects and users. For standard USERs the visibility rule stays like it was: only project admins in the default organization can see users in other organizations.
• The credentials for pulling and pushing to Gitea which are automatically injected into Jenkins projects are now keeping a Gitea token in the password part of the credential. This allows to use the credential directly for any operation, since most package accesses require a token of the user instead of its password. As before, the name of the users in Gitea and of the credentials in Jenkins are PKEY-jenkins-pull-gitea and PKEY-jenkins-push-gitea where PKEY is the project key as defined in the DevOps Portal.
• Automated testing is now using Video Recording for Playwright.

Improvements

• The support for IDEaaS (IDE as a Service) was improved to allow the IDEaaS roll-out to pilot customers.
• To improve the reliability of the auto provisioning process, all outstanding synchronizations are now immediately persisted to the database. Previously this was only done when the first try was not successful.
• Some additional permissions which were added to Jira are now also set by the DevOps Portal. Effectively there is no change of functionality for the project roles.
• When a retired project has been long enough in RETIRED state (usually one day), the delete operation is now automatically enabled. It's no longer required to reload the page.
• Since Gitea is using a common namespace for users and organizations, the DevOps Portal will no longer accept to create a technical user and a project with the same name. In addition, some names reserved in Gitea won't be accepted by the Portal to avoid any problems.
• Automated auto provisioning testing of tool updates is now faster, allowing a quicker roll-out of updated tools.

Bugfixes

• The DevOps-as-a-Service permission scheme in Jira was not correctly set for freshly created projects. This has been fixed and affected projects have been repaired.
• Assigning roles to technical users which have not yet been created on Jira will now correctly fail to be triggered later again.
• Gitea is no longer sending invitation mails to users which manage their password on the DevOps Portal.
• The Gitea organization folder in Jenkins projects was broken after first discovery of a buildable git repository. This is fixed now.

Known Issues

• Unfortunately, the links to Agile Board and Backlog in the Jira tile of the DevOps Portal homepage do not work properly for users which have more than one project. In fact, the links will lead to the last visited agile board on Jira, independent to the project selection on the homepage of the DevOps Portal. This is caused by the fact, that agile boards are not part of a Jira project, but instead are independent entities. We are striving to find a solution for the problem in a future version.

Released on February 22, 2024

Enhancements

• Inside the DevOps Portal Harbor was automatically added to all existing projects and users which are using the DevOps functions Docker registry and Helm chart repository.
• Automated testing is now done with Playwright directly on the Jenkins agents. Test results are presented by Allure Report which is integrated into the DevOps-as-a-Service Jenkins.

Improvements

• Improved error logging
• Prepared for more Jira project customization options

Bugfixes

• Project admins are automatically maintained as administrators for the oldest Agile Board connected with a Jira Project. When a role was saved for a project admin, this could lead to a pending sync when no Agile Board was found for the affected Jira project. Since it's allowed that project admins delete all Agile Boards connected with a Jira Project, this is now fixed.
• Assigning a user to a project which has none of his or her tools lead to a harmless pending sync. This has been fixed.
• Fixed flickering table columns which could occur when scrolling under certain circumstances.

Released on February 15, 2024

New Features

Harbor

• Added support for the new tool Harbor. Harbor is now the standard tool for the DevOps functions Docker registry and Helm chart repository inside DevOps-as-a-Service.
• A new tile for Harbor was added to the dashboard.
• Robot accounts for projects are automatically created in Harbor and injected as credentials into Jenkins projects. This allows the Jenkins Shared Library starting with v2.15.0 to automatically login to the hosted Docker registry and Helm chart repository of the project for pulling or pushing artifacts. The name of the user in Harbor and of the credentials in Jenkins is doaas-PKEY+jenkins-push-harbor where PKEY is the project key as defined in the DevOps Portal.

Gitea

• Added support for the new tool Gitea. Gitea will become the new standard tool for the DevOps function Artifact repository inside DevOps-as-a-Service. Furthermore, it's a viable alternative to seasoned SCM tools like Bitbucket or GitLab.
• Technical users for projects are automatically created in Gitea and injected as credentials into Jenkins projects. This allows your delivery pipelines to automatically login to the hosted Artifact repository of the project for pulling or pushing artifacts. The name of the users in Gitea and of the credentials in Jenkins are PKEY-jenkins-pull-gitea and PKEY-jenkins-push-gitea where PKEY is the project key as defined in the DevOps Portal.

Bugfixes

• A problem with unnecessary white space was fixed, which could occur with the new turbo scrolling feature when a search filter was previously used.

Known Issues

• Unfortunately, the links to Agile Board and Backlog in the Jira tile of the DevOps Portal homepage do not work properly for users which have more than one project. In fact, the links will lead to the last visited agile board on Jira, independent to the project selection on the homepage of the DevOps Portal. This is caused by the fact, that agile boards are not part of a Jira project, but instead are independent entities. We are striving to find a solution for the problem in a future version.

Released on February 07, 2024

Enhancements

• When a project is created, it's now possible to deselect some tools. Therefore, you can now create projects which use just a subset of tools. By editing the project later, you can add at any time more tools. Removing tools after the project creation is not possible to avoid any data loss.
• Introduced tiles for the new tools AI Engineer and IDEaaS on the dashboard.
• Prepared support for the new tool Harbor.

Improvements

• The ApacheDS LDAP server was updated to the latest version
• Text in table columns is now automatically shortened (e.g. very long email addresses) to avoid line breaks or very wide columns.
• Improved OIDC group management to better support upcoming new tools.

Bugfixes

• Searching in the audit log was not working, but is fixed now.
• The selection count now only counts selected and visible elements. Elements can be hidden by a search filter and were previously counted, too.
• On the users page sorting by project role could be wrong when a search filter was used, another project was selected and then the filter removed again. This works now as expected.
• Creating new technical users on Jenkins was broken, but now works again.

Known Issues

• Unfortunately, the links to Agile Board and Backlog in the Jira tile of the DevOps Portal homepage do not work properly for users which have more than one project. In fact, the links will lead to the last visited agile board on Jira, independent to the project selection on the homepage of the DevOps Portal. This is caused by the fact, that agile boards are not part of a Jira project, but instead are independent entities. We are striving to find a solution for the problem in a future version.