2023.3 (11.3) Upgrade Guide

Summary

There are many benefits to keeping your current system upgraded. And, remember that upgrades are made easy with SaaS.

  • Get the latest and greatest software to stay ahead of your competition

  • Take advantage of new capabilities and enhancements to improve the user experience and increase both productivity and efficiency

  • Stay current with releases for security, supportability, third-party application versions, latest industry standards, and more

  • Support new business initiatives, which allows for opportunities to expand the use of the solution and increase business value

  • Benefit from improved system performances

Customer action may be required. Before upgrading the platform and its add-on components to 2023.3 (11.3) from an earlier version, customers should be aware of certain system changes. The list that follows may not be comprehensive; however, along with the full release note set, it provides a starting point for upgrade evaluation.

For on-prem deployed systems, it is always recommended to use the latest released version of SPOT (regardless of the current STEP version in use). If upgrading via the --upgrade command, using the latest SPOT version is required.

Details

Use of reflection in JavaScript business rules will be disabled

In JavaScript business rules, reflection has been used to access non-public methods in the API. Since reflection can be a security risk and can potentially lead to performance issues and unexpected issues during upgrade, it will be disabled in a future release. With the current release, a new scheduled healthcheck identifies business rules that use reflection and a warning with the text 'Attempted to call reflection API...' is written to the step.0.log. To prepare for reflection being disabled, rewrite the reported rules to use publicly available methods. If the needed functionality is not public, use the Stibo Systems Service Portal to create an enhancement request to make the functionality public. For more information, refer to the General Enhancements and Changes release note.

OIEP STEPXML Splitter post-processor changes

The STEPXML Splitter logic used for publishing STEPXML to a version control system (VCS) has been changed. Instead of using a collection to package the objects, now, a change package is used and a new folder structure is in place below each published change package, which differs from previous functionality. To eliminate confusion, consider using a new branch when publishing change packages from 2023.3 (11.3). For details, refer to the Configuration Management Improvements release note.

Support removed for 'Website' legacy objects - customer action required before upgrading

In workbench, objects of the legacy object type 'Website' enabled customers to publish STEP data downstream, often to a website. The 'Website' object publication functionality was implemented using a workspace to hold data approved for publishing or tracking published data in files. With release 2023.3 (11.3), support is removed for 'Website' objects, and STEP cannot start if they exist. Therefore, before upgrading to 2023.3 (11.3), customers must manually delete 'Website' objects and any related workspaces. For details, refer to the General Enhancements and Changes release note.

New object type icons available

Updated object type icons are available with this release. All updated icons are of the Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg) file type. SVG images retain image fidelity when resized and are easier to create, edit, and maintain.

Customers upgrading to 2023.3 (11.3) should be aware:

  • Object type icons that were set by a user (i.e., object types for which an icon displays in the ‘Icon’ field for the object type object) can either be retained or updated manually by selecting a new icon from the set of new icons.

  • Object type icons that are system defaults and do not have an icon displaying in the object type object will be automatically updated to one of the new SVG icons.

In the event upgrading customers wish to adopt updated object type icons for the object types not automatically updated, they may edit the icon by right-clicking the 'Icon' field for the object type and selecting the desired icon from the 'Select Icon' dialog that displays.

It should be noted that once an icon has been swapped, the old icon is no longer available. For additional details, refer to the General Enhancements and Changes release note.

Start Page display based on user privileges for SaaS environments

Administrators can update the Start Page so that link categories are hidden if the user does not have the correct privileges assigned to them. This feature is only applicable for SaaS environments in which the user logs in with Keycloak. The 'About STEP' and 'STEP Documentation' links are not controlled through user privileges; therefore, the 'Resources' section will continue to display for all users. Administrators should review the privileges if they do wish to make changes upon upgrade. For more information, refer to the General Enhancements and Changes release note.

BMEcat updates

A number of updates to BMEcat, BMEcat 2005, and BMEcat 2005.1 have been made to support industry standards for ECLASS and ETIM when exporting data. For more information, refer to the Data Exchange Enhancements and Changes release note.

WebSphere receiver and delivery methods are renamed

IBM has renamed their 'IBM WebSphere MQ' product to 'IBM MQ.' To reflect that name change, the OIEP delivery method 'IBM Websphere MQ SSL Delivery' option and the IIEP receiver method 'IBM Websphere MQ SSL Receiver' have been renamed as 'IBM MQ SSL Delivery' and 'IBM MQ SSL Receiver.' For more information, refer to the Data Exchange Enhancements and Changes release note.

Displaying Context and Workspace per user in Web UI

Users and user groups can now control the available Workspaces and Contexts through the intersection of Global Representation Lists and workbench-specified GUI Settings, allowing different users to have different contexts and workspaces available in the same Web UI and improving the user experience for users who only access a subset of data. These restrictions will be reflected in the overall context and workspace selections in the Global Navigation Panel, as well as in components throughout the Web UI where users have a context or workspace selection option, such as Multi Context, Multi Language, and Multi Workspace Screens.

If the user does not have GUI Settings applied, they will not notice a difference in their available options. In implementations where GUI Settings are used, administrators should review existing privilege setups to ensure that end users will have the expected access following upgrade.

Support, platform, and system admin information

Baseline desupport information is as follows:

  • In 2023, support for 10.1 ends December 1st.

  • In 2024, support for the 10.2 release ends May 1st, support for 2023.3 ends September 30th, and support for 10.3 ends November 1st.

Additional Platform and Software Support information as well as information about future changes to deployment architecture for on-premises and private cloud customers can be found in the Platform and Software Support Changes topic in the 2023.3 (11.3) Release notes.

Important: Prior to upgrade, customers should be aware of any maintenance patch updates that came out in earlier releases. The projects below were covered in the 11.2 (2023.2) Maintenance Patch Notes.

New features incorporated via 11.2 (2023.2) maintenance patches

Below is a list of new features or important announcements introduced / published within the 11.2 (2023.2) release cycle:

  • New 'Quarantine' State for Lionbridge Translations (MP2)
  • New 'Self referencing' parameter in the Onboading Mapping Details Screen (MP1)
  • PDX Channel Configurator UI extension (MP1)