Two weeks ago we released Accelerator 5.8.0, today we are releasing Accelerator 5.8.1. This is the first step towards shorter release cycles of Accelerator. We think and hope that we can be more flexible in the way we are developing the Accelerator by releasing more often. This doesn’t mean that you must update every time we ship a new release but every release will contain improved functionality and fixes of things that maybe didn’t work as intended. So always upgrade Accelerator if you have the possibility, it just becomes better and better. We listen to your feedback and the releases will contain the things that you think are important.
This is Accelerator 5.8.1, the best Accelerator ever! Here we go.
Create and manage disabled user accounts
It is now possible to set users as disabled when they are created in Active Directory. This is to support processes where user accounts are prepared before actually being used, and should therefore be disabled when created. In order to create a user account that is disabled, you need to have the Product Question for the Request User Deployment product that says ‘Disable in AD’.
So in order to manage disabled user accounts it is now also possible to search for accounts that are disabled and choosing these accounts as target user. User accounts that are disabled are grayed out and marked with [disabled].
Of course you can turn this functionality on or off by using the Configurator and set ‘Show Disabled Users’.
Support for creating Home Folder
The service ‘Request User Deployment’ has support for creating a home folder when creating a new user. The home folder path is generated based on a root path that is set on the user product and the username of the new user. You can disable the functionality for a certain user product. The product should also have a Product Question that is called Create Home Folder which will be visible in the Request User Deployment service.
The ‘General’ question area visible in Infra Manager services
It is now possible to use product questions from the ‘General’ question area in all of the Infra Manager services. They will be visible when reviewing the order and can provide information that may not be relevant to the external systems.
Several improvements
We have made several improvements such as the service ‘Department Administration’ now adds the default offering to new departments. This is to eliminate the extra step of manually adding the offering when creating departments. We have also improved the SQL reports, fixed issues in Central Exchange and Request Hardware and scenarios involving Product Questions.
So before you upgrade Accelerator in the production environment make sure to always make a backup of the databases, NITO, ProcessManager and ProcessManagerDataStore. Also make a copy of the Web.config and the AcceleratorAuthStore.xml just in case. We try to improve the installation and the upgrade with every new release, so give us your feedback on that as well. Remember to use the same installation paths and the same SQL server when you upgrade.
Now install/upgrade Accelerator 5.8.1 and try it out!