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Version Date Released Features & Enhancements Resolved Issues Downloads
4.3.7 February 8, 2017
4.3.6 November 18, 2016
4.3.5 November 4, 2016
4.3.4 July 28, 2016
4.3.3  
4.3.2 March 23, 2016
4.3.1 February 11, 2016
4.3.0 November 25, 2015

Overview

Date: 26 November 2015 (Generally Available)

Transact Manager 4.3.0 is a full release that contains new features, enhancements and bug fixes.

Significant New Features in 4.3

This is a significant feature release for Avoka Transact with great new capabilities to accelerate business agility and improvements across the board.

Highlights of this version include:

Application Packages

Added support for bundle form chaining, Groovy scriptable receipts, dynamic task assignment, cancellable tasks, pub/sub data extract sharing, unified navigation support.

AWS KMS

Added support for AWS Key Management System (KMS) data encryption in the Avoka Transact Cloud Service Enterprise VDC edition.

Groovy Service Tests

Added comprehensive Groovy Services test framework to support accelerated development and development best practices.

REST APIs

Added Transactions, Service Definitions and Groovy Service Invoke REST APIs.

Security Hardening

Added security role and group grant leases, improved SEM logging support and Apache Mod Security configurations.

Service Improvements

Added Form Security Filter, Groovy Receipt service types, service versioning support, Groovy Service Logging, improved documentation, service editing and form and service definition Organisation Application Packages.

Transact Integration Gateway

Provides a light weight on-prem. integration module for performing deliveries and proxy calls to internal systems. This module is replacing the TIA and TDA modules.

Release Details

4.3.7

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4.3.6

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4.3.5

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4.3.4

Transact Manager 4.3.4 is a feature and maintenance release that contains bug fixes and some new features and enhancements. 

When performing upgrades please ensure you review the update Transaction Manager Installation Guide 4.3.3 and see section 5.4 "Version 4.3 Upgrade".

Note with all TM releases Form Spaces must be regenerated, deployed and content merged to pickup Security Hardening changes and fixes.  Please see the TM Installation Guide for details on what Form Space content has changed and the Knowledge Base article Managing Form Spaces.

Enhancements and Changes

Licensing Changes

Transact now includes a fully automatic license compliance reporting system. This new licensing system is designed to support more flexible licensing models to better support customers requirements.

When performing an on-premise upgradse or new installations you will need to obtain a Transact License Key for each environment (production, test, etc) before performing the upgrade. Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to obtain license keys. Developers running TM locally will also need to obtain License Key with this version of TM.

Please note TM deployed on premise will need to be able uploading licensing data to Avoka over secure TLS (port 443). All licensing data is completely anonymous and contains no user data or PII.

Desktop Groovy Development

Transact now supports Desktop development of Groovy Services using new Groovy Ant Tasks and REST APIs. This enables developers to integrate Groovy Service development into their existing software development process, source control systems and CI workflows. A new Transact Groovy Ant project template includes Ant build scripts and Ant tasks to perform Groovy service creation, packaging, uploading and testing. This Ant tasks support integration with CI based build systems and Java IDE's.

REST APIs

New Transact REST APIs include:

  • Form Groups API - for querying and creating form access control groups
  • Tasks API - for creating tasks, and updating task data and status

Updated Transact REST APIs include:

  • Delivery API - adds Submission Property and Job Property delivery support
  • Service Definitions API - adding support for Desktop Groovy development
  • Transaction History API - supporting data warehouse ELT integraiton

The Transact Client SDK for Java and Transact Integration Gateway (TIG) has also been update to support new Submission and Job Property delivery attributes. 

Transaction Analytics

The TM Analytics Transaction Trend page has been significantly improved with:

  • Transact Volume chart - including Transaction History and realtime Transaction data
  • Complete Rate chart - providing form completion rate excluding form bounces
  • Form Abandonment chart - which provides Form Stated, User Saved and User Cancel abandonment rates
  • Browser chart - showing break down of browser types
  • Export Excel Data - providing CSV export of backing Transaction History records

To support finer grained Completion Rate reporting Composer 4.3 SP3 forms will send a new Form Start event when the user interacts with the form by entering text or clicking on a button. This enables TM 4.3.4 to tell the different between form bounces where the user opens the form but immediately leaves it, an form starts where the user has started working on an application. Completion Rate excludes form bounces and provides a better indicator of good form design.

To obtain this improved Completion Rate reporting please upgrade your forms to Composer 4.3 SP3.

Work Space

The Work Space module has much improved search performance and provides good performance on very large databases. A new Form Group search filter has been added to the Task List, History and Review pages. Support for searching encrypted Submission Data Extracts has also been added to the Task List, History, Review and Help Desk pages.

Please note backwards compatibility search options are provided as Work Space configuration Properties.

Performance Improvements

Significant improvements have been made to increase database performance and reduce the occurrence of deadlocks under load. These changes include optimized transaction isolation usage, improved data retention management, query optimization and increase use of caching.

The "AWS Cloud" editions now use Amazon S3 storage service for storing transaction PDF receipts and file attachments. This dramatically reduces the database size and improves data retention management.

All transaction data stored in S3 is fully encrypted using the configured Local, KMS or HSM encryption mode, and is deleted using the system data retention policies. For "On Premise" editions customers managing large transaction datasets should use the File System Storage Service which stores PDF receipts and file attachments on SAN or NAS storage.

An improved background PDF receipt generation system has been introduced. This enables faster receipting and deliveriers and improves server stability under heavy loads. This system uses a queue on each TM Management node which continually generates PDF receipts and better utilizes available compute resources. PDF receipt generation has now been removed from the Transaction Processor job improving delivery performance and reliability.

TM Installer

The TM Setup Wizard installer now provides "AWS Cloud" and "On Premise" deployment modes which automatically use the correct options for the target deployment environment.

New Modules options are provide to install a default "Transact Work Space" and optional "Transact Salesforce Space". The "Maguire" Work Space is now included with the Examples Content.

Development and Operations

Groovy Services now provide an option to enable Debug level log message recording to the Groovy Service Log table even when services successfully complete. This is a handy feature to diagnose operational issues, turn on debug logging to identify the issue, then turn if off once the issue has been resolved.

TM now adds XSS injection attacks protection to the Submission Data Extraction service. This service will reject XML content which contains specifically crafted JavaScript injection strings designed to evade XSS filtering. Please see OWAP XSS Filter Evasion Cheat Sheet for details. Any form XML XSS rejections are recorded against the Transaction as Error Log record with the rejected XML data and request details. If this security filter causes false positives it can be disabled with the "XSS Filter Enabled" option.

A new "Max Checkpoint Delivery Attempts" configuration option has been added to Delivery Processes to prevent run away Delivery Process scripts which are not handling their checkpoints correctly or have a continual processing error. After a configured maximum number of attempts these delivery processes will be automatically stalled and highlighted to administrators as needing attention.

New Features

Reference Module Description Further Information
TPD-2194  Core Services  Add REST Form Groups API Provides a new REST API for creating and updating Form Groups. Form Groups are typically used creating form access control groups for teams of people collaborating on assigned tasks.
TPD-2195  Core Services Add REST Tasks API Provides a new REST API for creating and updating Tasks.  This API can be used to assign form tasks to customer and staff to complete work items.  This API also allows task XML data to be updated and the status of tasks to be modified.
TPD-2258  Core Services Add Groovy Desktop Development Support

Provides support for developing Groovy Service on a desktop computers using traditional software development practices and tools. A new Groovy Service Template project is available which includes Ant tasks and build scripts for service creation, packaging, remote deployment and testing.

TPD-2299  Core Services Add AWS Submission Data Storage Service Added new AWS Submission Data Storage Service which uses S3 for storing PDF receipts and file attachments. This service supports Local, KMS and HSM encryption modes.

Features and Enhancements

Reference Module Description Further Information
TPD-492 Core Services Improve REST API error reporting Improve REST API error response messages removing HTML error page wrapper.
TPD-1734 Installer Add Salesforce Form Space install option TM Setup Wizard now includes an option on the Modules page to install a standard Saleforce Form Space.
TPD-1754 Core Services Add Form Start Abandonment Support

Form Start support enables differentiating between abandoned transactions which are bounces (where the user views the form but then closes the window) and form starts (where the user starts interacting with the form by performing data entry or clicking a button).  This distinction is important when analysing form completion rates, as high bounce rates do not necessarily indicate that the form design is poor.

Required Actions:

  • upgrade your Composer forms to 4.3 SP3 to provide Form Start event reporting
 TPD-1957  Security Hardening  Upgrade JDK to 8u92  Upgrade Oracle Upgrade JDK to version 8u92.
TPD-2088 Core Services Upgrade MySQL Connector/J 5.1.39 Library Upgrade MySQL JDBC driver library Connector/J to version 5.1.39.
TPD-2103 Core Services Add REST Transaction History DWH Support Add support loading REST Transaction History API data into external Data Warehouse (DWH) systems via new PUT Confirm Published operation.
TPD-2155 Core Services Licensing Improvements Improve support for customer transaction licensing.
TPD-2160 Installer Add Form Work Space Installer Option Add option to the Avoka TM Setup Wizard to create a default Work Space with the context path /workspace
TPD-2242 Core Services Improve Error Log Reporting Improve Error Log reporting with new error categorization and groovy and critical error classification.
TPD-2299 Core Services Add AWS Submission Data Storage Service Added new AWS Submission Data Storage Service which uses S3 (Simple Storage Service) for PDF receipt and File Attachment storage
TPD-2293 Core Services Improve Background Receipt Rendering Performance Improve PDF backgroup receipt generation performance using new receipt generation queues on each available TM Management Console node. This change also removes PDF receipt generation from Transaction Processing job.
TPD-2400 Core Services Add REST Upload Service Archive Support

Added REST Service Definitions API operation POST Upload Service Archive.

TPD-2413 Manager Improve AJAX Error Logging Improve logging of unexpected AJAX operation errors in the Transaction Manager Console.
TPD-2414 Core Services Add REST Run Unit Test Support Added REST Service Definitions API operation POST Run Unit Test.
TPD-2447 Core Services Add SMTP Email Service Start TLS option Add SMTP Email Service "Start TLS" configuration option for improved email server support.
TPD-2463 Manager Update Transaction Support Search Form Status list to include Expired Add "Expired" form status search criteria to the Management Console Operations > Transaction Support search page.
TPD-2494 Core Services Add FormDynamicDataServlet Global Error Handler Added a global exception handler to the FormDynamicDataServlet to capture information about any unhandled errors.
TPD-2506 Manager Analytics Transaction Trend Improvements  
TPD-2519 Core Services Upgrade AWS SDK 1.11.12 Upgraded AWS Java SDK library to version 1.11.12.
TPD-2531 Core Services Removed obsolete SOAP Portal Web Service API  
TPD-2558 Core Services Add Delivery Process "Delivery Max Check Points Attempts" Parameter

Add new Delivery Process service parameter "Delivery Max Check Points Attempts" which will limit the maximum number of "In Progress" delivery attempts will be performed before the delivery process is stalled.  The default maximum attempts is 20.  This change will help identify transactions with invalid delivery checkpoints which are not able to be delivered.

TPD-2563 Core Services Avoid Forking Nested Groovy Execution Threads Avoid forking additional Groovy execution threads when nested Groovy Service calls are performed. Once a Groovy execution thread has been created, further Groovy service calls by the parent Groovy service will not create additional threads.
TPD-2564 Core Services Add Groovy Debug Logging Config Option

Add new "Groovy Debug Logging" service configuration parameter, which will enable turning on Groovy debug level logging recording the to the Groovy Service Log during normal service execution. By default only if a service execution error occurs will debug level logging be recorded.  This configuration option can be useful for debugging issues occuring on production systems.

TPD-2605 Core Services Upgrade User Agent Utils 1.20 Library Upgraded User Agent Utils library to version 1.20.
TPD-2615 Core Services Add Submission and Job Properties to REST Delivery API Added support for delivering Transaction Submission and Job Property information in the REST Delivery API.
TPD-2634 Core Services Add Very Large Attachment Support Add support for very large form attachments up to 50 MB in size individually and larger than 50 MB in total. Configure upper limit via the Deployment Property "Attachments Max Total Size".

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4.3.3

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4.3.2

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4.3.1

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4.3.0

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Downloads

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