Release Notes - 2017

September 18, 2017

Logic Apps Management and Monitoring

ServiceBus360 is expanding its horizon in Azure services management and monitoring. Next to Azure Service Bus, Relays and Event Hubs, we have introduced management and monitoring of Logic Apps. The user can perform management activities like run trigger, enable Logic Apps and delete Logic Apps from ServiceBus360. In addition to operational capabilities, ServiceBus360 has the capability to monitor the Azure Logic Apps based on the state of the Logic App (Enabled/Disabled).

Data Monitoring

We are introducing the concept of Data Monitoring in ServiceBus360 that will help administrators to keep a watch on specific metrics for a defined time period. In this release, the data monitoring capability is available only for Logic Apps. We will be expanding the data monitoring capability to other services in the future releases.

Activities to process Deadletter messages from Topic Subscription

ServiceBus360 now provides the capability to configure activities for processing dead-lettered messages in Topics-Subscription through the Activities screen within the Messaging entity. Using this activity, the user can perform bulk operations like:

1. Resubmit
2. Resubmit and delete
3. Delete the dead letter message

To configure Dead-Letter activity for a Topic-Subscription, the user can click the Create button in the Activities screen and select the dead letter option from the drop-down. From the Dead Letter Activity Configuration screen, the user can choose to resubmit a dead letter message to a Queue or Topic associated in ServiceBus360 or delete the messages. This activity runs in the background and can process thousands of messages.

API Monitoring

ServiceBus360 allows the users to set up API Monitoring and validate the actual response against the expected return. If there is a mismatch between actual and expected return values like codes or response data, alerts will be sent to the users with appropriate information.

Note: Currently this feature is restricted to monitor up to 10 web endpoints and the user can create only one alarm for Endpoint monitoring.

User Access Policy

ServiceBus360 introduces the next step toward granular level access policy for the Normal Users. In this release, the Account Owner/Super User can configure access privileges for a normal user to restrict access to certain sections or features of the application based on the business requirements.

August 28, 2017

Message retrieval for partitioned Queues & Topics

Earlier in ServiceBus360, retrieved messages count did not match with the expected message count for the entities with Enable Partitioning set to true. Now we have made changes to message retrieval logic so that, expected messages are retrieved

Note: This change in logic will slightly affect the performance during manual resubmission of deferred messages in the dead letter of a partitioned Queue.

Monitoring of Entities with '/' character in their path is not working as expected

Azure Resource Manager API was not supporting the management of entities with special character '/' in its name or path and hence ServiceBus360 was not able to effectively manage and monitor such entities. With enhancement announced to this API, we have fixed this issue. Reference link

August 09, 2017

Transfer of Account Ownership to Super User

The user who signs up for a new ServiceBus360 account will be the Account Owner and that user has the privilege to access the entire application. The Account Owner can add more users to the account either as a Super User or as a Normal User. This feature will allow the Account owner to transfer the ownership to another Super User available in the account. An email notification is sent to the new Account Owner regarding the transfer of ownership.

Operations Management Suite (OMS) notification channel

We have added OMS notification channel to ServiceBus360 that allows customers to receive notifications to their OMS components that are entirely hosted in Azure. In the earlier versions, ServiceBus360 users had the option to send alert notifications to external channels like PagerDuty, SMTP, Slack, Microsoft Teams and WebHook channels.

July 26, 2017

Schedule dead letter message activity configuration

ServiceBus360 now has the capability to schedule activities for dead letter processing from the Activities screen in the Messaging entity. Using this activity, the user can perform bulk resubmit, resubmit and delete, and delete the dead letter message. Earlier the user can only configure the activities for dead letter messages. Now, the activity can be scheduled to run at a set time and day with the options to set reoccurrences. This activity runs in the background and can process thousands of messages.

Webhook notification channel

In the earlier versions, ServiceBus360 users had the option to send alert notifications to external channels like PagerDuty, SMTP, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. Now we have added Webhook notification channel to ServiceBus360 that allows customers to Put/Post message to any REST Webhook. Users can send JSON and XML message content to the webhook with default headers and authorization credentials and keys.

Activity based filter for Activity history

A new filter option is added to the Activity History screen under Governance and Audit section to filter the audit history based on the activities performed on the resources in ServiceBus360. Basically, the Activities History section captures the basic operations performed on Send Messages, Dead Letter and Purge Message activity. The filter option will help the user to find the activities performed under a namespace between a particular time point.

Display only relevant properties

Governanace and Audit section will only display the relevant custom and system properties for the audited information. Earlier, ServiceBus360 displayed a common description template for all the audit records and marked NA for irrelevant properties.

July 05, 2017

Dead letter "Enqueued at or before" configuration is made editable

When a user configures an activity to process a dead letter message, in the "Process Messages Enqueued At or Before" option, the user was only able to pick the date and time using the date picker. Now we have made this as an editable tab, where the user can just place the cursor and type their preferred date and time in the correct format.

Display Activity name in Notifications section

When a user initiates a dead letter processing activity, the activity name was not getting displayed in the notification section. From this release, the activity name will be displayed as expected.

Dead letter Activity Duplication

In some corner cases, when a new dead-letter activity is created the activity is duplicated and shown twice on the Activity screen. This issue was getting resolved automatically after some time when the Activity is initiated. This issue is fixed now and the Activities will not be duplicated.

Missing Refresh button added to Activity history screen

When there are no scheduled Activities listed in the Activities screen, the Refresh button was not visible. We have now fixed this issue and the Refresh button is available even when there are no scheduled activities.

Bulk delete option not working in dead letter Activites

The bulk delete functionality was not working as expected in Activities screen. Only the send message activity was deleted when a user tries to bulk delete activities. The dead letter activities were not getting deleted. This issue is working as expected.

Purge message not working for partitioned -Queue & Subscription

In the partitioned Queue and Topic - Subscription, the purge functionality was not working as expected. When the user tried to purge the messages with the filter set at "ALL", only a few messages were deleted. This issue is fixed now.

Switch the positions of the tabs in Activities Menu

The two existing tabs (In-progress and Configured) in the Activities screen is now repositioned logically.

Purge message count mismatch in Governance and Audit section

Governance and Audit section tracks the number of the messages purged in the Activities section. This data was not getting properly updated in the Governance and Audit section. This issue is fixed now and the precise data is displayed.

Auto Delete on Idle not working for Queues

This functionality was not working as expected for Queues. Queues did not delete automatically when the Auto Delete on Idle property is set. We have now fixed this issue and the idle Queue is deleted based on the settings.

UI cleanup and enrichments

We have made several nifty UI changes to enhance the user experience.

June 23, 2017

Resubmit and delete messages in Topics

ServiceBus360 had the capability to resubmit Dead Letter messages in Topic Subscriptions in peek lock mode. Now, from this release, the users can resubmit the Dead Letter messages from Topic - Subscription to an active Queue or a Topic in receive and delete mode. To achieve this, the user has to get the messages to the defer mode and then resubmit it to an active Queue or Topic or even delete the message. Once the message is deferred from the dead letter the message will be moved to Deferred Dead Letter and it will be no longer available in the dead letter tab. In this case, the user can resubmit the messages from the Deferred Dead Letter tab. This use of Defer mode helps to carry out message re submission or delete without the risk of losing the messages. Users can also go through the message properties and content and take a decision to resubmit or delete or ignore. Users can process 1 to 100 messages in a batch.

Dead letter activity configurations

ServiceBus360 now has the capability to configure activities for dead letter processing from the Activities screen in the Messaging entity. Using this activity, the user can perform bulk:

1. resubmit
2. resubmit and delete and
3. delete the dead letter message
   To configure the activities for dead letter messages, the user can click the Create button in the Activities screen to open a drop-down to select the dead letter option. This activity runs in the background and can process thousands of messages.

Auto delete on idle state

We have added a new option in ServiceBus360 to auto delete the Messaging entity when it is idle for a set time period. The user can set the auto delete configurations when creating a new Queue/Topic in ServiceBus360 or edit the properties for the existing entities.

Configure message & dead letter forwarding

Now ServiceBus360 has the capability to forward messages from one Messaging Entity to another by doing simple configurations. The user can configure a Queue to forward the messages to another Queue, the forwarded messages will only be available in the destination Queue.

Similarly, Users can also configure Forwarding of Dead letter messages from one Messaging Entity to another.

Purge messages

Users can purge active, dead letter and deferred dead letter messages in one go. This option is now enabled for Queues, using this option the user can completely delete all the messages in a Queue from within the Queue dashboard.

Additional system properties for Activities configuration

We have added additional system properties for configuring Activities in the messaging entities. The additional system properties are Message Id, Session Id, To, Correlation Id, ReplyTo, Content Type, Label, Reply to Session Id, Schedule and Time to live.

UI changes to Announcements section

The Announcements section in ServiceBus360 is redesigned and now has a refreshed UI.

June 16, 2017

Analytics

ServiceBus360 now has the capability to represent Analytics data for Azure Service Bus entities. As a precursor, in this release, we have introduced Analytics for dead letter statistics in Queues. Analytics data will be represented in three formats such as pie chart, line graph, and a simple grid view. Currently, the users can view the dead letter statistics for Queues based on various error reasons.

Microsoft Teams added to Notification Channel

In the earlier versions, ServiceBus360 users had the option to receive alert notifications to external channels like Slack, SMTP and PagerDuty. Based on the gaining popularity of Microsoft Teams App and user feedback, now we have added Microsoft Teams to ServiceBus360 Notification Channel. The users can now connect ServiceBus360 alarms to their respective Microsoft Teams channel with the proper Webhook URL and receive alert notifications.

Send messages directly to a queue

We have now enabled an inline option to send the message from a Queue without navigating to the Activities screen. Earlier, the user had the option to send scheduled messages to Queues/Topics from Activities screen. Now the user can send messages from the Queues/Topics dashboard with the inline option. Users can navigate to the Send Message blade by just clicking the Extras menu against the respective Queue/Topic.

Increased bulk re-submission of messages

We have increased the maximum number of bulk re-submission of dead letter messages from 10 to 100.

Change password feature

From this release, ServiceBus360 allows the user to change their account password from the User Profile section. Earlier, the user had the option to reset the password from Trouble Logging In section.

May 19, 2017

Schedule Activities to Messaging namespaces

We have added this new screen "Activities" under Messaging namespace to send messages to any associated Queues and Topics from ServiceBus360. The users can now create new Activity configurations and schedule (future and recurring) the Activities from this screen. This Activities screen also displays the "In progress" and "Configured" Activities in two separate grids. Users can edit the configuration of the saved Activities. The users can create activities and save the configurations to initiate the same activity whenever required.

Resubmit messages in receive and delete mode

ServiceBus360 had the capability to resubmit Dead Letter messages in peek lock mode. Now, from this release, the users can resubmit the Dead Letter messages from Queues to an active Queue or a Topic in receive and delete mode. To achieve this, the user has to get the messages to the defer mode and then resubmit it to an active Queue or even delete the message. Once the message is deferred from the dead letter the message will be moved to Deferred Dead Letter and it will be no longer available in the Dead letter tab. In this case, the user can resubmit the messages from the Deferred Dead Letter tab.

Improvements in notification channel

In the previous release, we have added additional notification channels like Slack, PagerDuty, and SMTP. Now, we have enhanced the option to configure the notification channel from the settings page by adding a new configure channel icon against the notification channel name. Earlier, configuring the notification channel was part of creating New Alarm blade.

May 05, 2017

Notification Channel

From this release, users can configure to receive notifications from ServiceBus360 through multiple channels – Email, PagerDuty, SMTP, and Slack. Say, your organization uses Slack services to keep track of the issues, you can easily trigger the alerts from ServiceBus360 directly to your Slack Channel. Now, by default email notification will be enabled for all the alarms and the user has the choice to add or delete additional notification channels at any time. Earlier to this release, ServiceBus360 had the capability to alert users only through email.

Schedule Activities to Event Hubs

We have added this new screen "Activities" under Event Hubs to manage and send events to any associated Event Hubs from ServiceBus360. The users can now create new Activity configurations and schedule (future and recurring) the Activities from this screen. This Activities screen also displays the "In progress" and "Configured" Activities in two separate grids. Users can edit the configuration of the saved Activities. In the earlier releases, the user can only create activity only for one-time use. Now, Users can create activities and save the configurations to initiate the same activity whenever required.

Home Button

We have added a Home Button in the left navigation panel. The users can click the Home button to navigate back to the Home screen in ServiceBus360.

April 13, 2017

Resubmit dead letter messages from Queues and Topics

ServiceBus360 offers the capability to resubmit dead letter messages. With this functionality, the users can resubmit the dead letter messages to active queue or topic without editing the message and its associated properties. ServiceBus360 allows bulk resubmission up to 10 dead letter messages in one transaction.

Relay endpoint monitoring

In this release, ServiceBus360 allows the users to set up endpoints monitoring for the HTTP relays and validate the actual response against the expected return. If there is a mismatch between actual and expected return values like codes or response data, ServiceBus360 will alert the users with the information.

Display error reason for dead letter messages in operations section

In this release, ServiceBus360 allows the users to view the error reason for the messages in dead letter Queue or Topic from the Operations section. Earlier, the user has to navigate to the message details blade to view this error reason. Now we have added a new column to the grid and added an option to the context menu in the last column of the grid. We have also added a new filter option to sort the queried messages by the error reason.

Unable to manage entities created with forward slash in its name

ServiceBus360 users were unable to manage entities created with a forward slash in the name. When the user tries to perform operations on the entities with a forward slash, ServiceBus portal was displaying a blank screen. This issue is fixed now and it is working as expected.

March 03, 2017

Import Namespace entities

We have added this new functionality for the users to import namespace entities from the XML file exported from Service Bus Explorer. Also, entities can be imported from one namespace to the other, that are mapped in ServiceBus360. The imported entities will also be reflected in the Azure portal. The user can import the entities in bulk or individually. This feature will reduce the effort of recreating the namespace entities in the ServiceBus360 and Azure portals.

Uniform Date and Time zone

From this release, Date and Time zone displayed in the ServiceBus360 portal is retrieved from the user local machine settings irrespective of the browser used by the user. Earlier, Servicebus360 displayed local machine time zone when the user is logged in from the Chrome browser and displayed UTC time zone for the users logged in from other browsers. The date and time format remains the same as dd/mm/yyyy HH:mm:ss

February 17, 2017

Home dashboard

We have added a new Dashboard for the users to get the bird's eye-view information of the associated namespaces in ServiceBus360. This Dashboard displays the associated namespaces in an individual widget view. Each widget has the high-level details of the namespace and a graphical view of the status of alarms mapped with the namespaces.

CRUD operations on Service Bus entities

The users can now create and delete namespace entities like Queues, Topics, Relays (WCF Type) and EventHubs within ServiceBus360 portal. Users need not switch tabs to the Azure portal to create and delete these entities. All these user activities are tracked in Governance & Auditing section.

Associate Relay Hybrid connection

We have added a new option to add the entity path to associate Hybrid Connections in Relay Namespaces. Earlier in ServiceBus360, the users were able to see only WCF endpoints in a Relay Namespace.
Users can also monitor Listener count for Hybrid Connections.

Display Active & Deadletter message count

We have displayed new columns in resources (Queues and Topics) dashboard grid to display the Active & Deadletter message count for every entity associated with the namespace.

Shortcut context menu to enable/disable resources, Copy resource URL and Dead Letter URL

We have added a new shortcut burger menu in the resource display grid to enable/disable resources, Copy to Clipboard option to the Entity URL from the Queue & Subscription Listing, this will help the users to copy the Entity URL seamlessly.

‘Refresh’ functionality

We have added the Refresh button in following areas:

1. All entities and sub-entities listing
2. Properties blade for all entities and sub-entities
3. Alarms and Monitoring Dashboard
   This option will help the user to get real-time information by clicking the Refresh button.

In App Chat Support

Users can now reach out to our support team through an in-app chat platform. Click 'Talk to Us' on the bottom left to connect with our support agent.

January 27, 2017

Send Events to Azure Event Hubs

ServiceBus360 allows the users to send events to any associated Event Hub. With Send Events feature in place, the users can configure parameters like Event Message, Partition Key, Think Time, Task Count, Event Data Count, Send Batch, Custom Properties, and Partition Id before initiating the Send Events Process.

Governance and Auditing

We have added this new functionality for the users to track the user activities on "Operations" tab of ServiceBus360. It’s as easy as seeing “Who did what Property changes on which metrics of which entity at what time”.

Also, ServiceBus360 displays the alert history and alert mail sent for the recent 7 days.

Edit Service Bus Entity properties

In the earlier releases, the Properties of the associated namespaces were read-only. The user cannot change/update any metrics in the resource properties. We have now enabled the option to Edit certain properties of Service Bus Queue, Topic and Event Hub within ServiceBus360 UI.

These activities performed for the last 7 days are tracked and can be audited.

Categorize namespaces based on Microsoft Azure announcement

Based on the changes from Azure Infrastructure, we have aligned ServiceBus360 to associate namespace to one specific type - it can be either Messaging, Relay or Event Hub namespaces. Reference Link

Option to copy Entity URL

We have added a Copy to Clipboard option to the Entity URL from the entity properties blade, this will help the users to copy the Entity URL seamlessly.

Display relevant states to be selected in the “Expected State” configuration

ServiceBus360 will display only relevant states to be selected in the “Expected State” configuration in the entities monitoring section.

Custom access key in connection string

In the earlier version, ServiceBus360 allowed users to associate namespaces with default connection string. SerivceBus360 now allows the users to associate namespaces with custom connection strings created using the Manage claims option.

Announcements

If there is a new feature or any releases made available, the portal will display a number (indicating the number of new announcements made) against the Announcements icon next to the Notification icon on the top right corner of the screen. By clicking the icon you can read the details of the announcements made like New Release, Maintenance, and Feature promotions etc.

Trial period for premium features

As the product matures, the licensing plans will evolve. Currently, we have two plans - Free and Professional. We are constantly developing new features and enhancements. These features will be separated categorically for different plans. We will also promote (for a short period of time) the newly built features and enhancements to the customers to try them.

Limit number of alerts per violation

In the earlier releases, "Limit number of alerts per violation" option in Alarms section was not working as expected. The users faced unusual notification behavior when they unchecked this option while creating a new alarm. This issue is fixed and now the users receive notification as expected.

License Terms

From this release, ServiceBus360 licensing terms has been revised for both Free and Professional users.

Terms of Service

We have introduced Fair Usage Policy (FUP) in our Terms of Service.

Unexpected behavior of Up Alert in notifying resource

In the earlier releases, the determination of an entity being monitored for up alerts i.e. recovery from the threshold violations was not working as expected. Occasionally, the users received up alert emails even if the entity continued to stay in the violated state for any of its property being monitored.
This happens when the Azure Resource Manager API times out. We are working on fixing this issue.