OpCon 19.0: The evolution of our change management module, OpCon Deploy

Automation is the key to increasing speed and efficiency while reducing error. OpCon, the workload automation platform powered by SMA Technologies, delivers on all counts. But OpCon doesn’t just automate—it also enables continuous development cycles that keep your organization one step ahead of the game.

In our previous release of OpCon, we introduced our change management tool, OpCon Deploy. Deploy facilitates fast, agile change processes that are both reliable and easy to manage. Still, we believe there’s always room for improvement.

So, to add even more value to our newest version of OpCon, we’ve improved our Deploy module. With OpCon 19.0, change management is simpler than ever.

Cross-release support

We want to ensure your delivery cycles run as smoothly as possible. The Deploy module now supports deployment schedules across all supported releases. Currently, this includes OpCon versions 18.3 and 19.0, and we will ensure cross-release support of future versions as well. This ensures that your OpCon development environment can deploy to your OpCon production environment regardless of version.

Some features from newer versions may be unsupported in older versions. However, our goal is to empower your organization to benefit from Deploy regardless of version. This is part of our mission to make OpCon flexible, forward-looking, and virtually future-proof.

Check in development schedules

In OpCon 19.0, Deploy includes a few features to make change management even easier than before. One such feature is the ability to “check in” schedules for better version control.

Especially for robust DevOps teams, it’s not uncommon to have many development systems running. In such cases, it’s important to make sure that different groups don’t make simultaneous changes to the same schedules.

To keep things straight, we made it so that checking schedules into Deploy automatically removes them from development environments. Not only will this update keep people from working on the same schedules at the same time, but it also reduces the chance of overwriting any schedules changes made by associates.

Built for the future

There are no workload automation solutions as fundamentally comprehensive as OpCon. So, to ensure we continue delivering extensive automation across all available platforms, we’ve expanded our core functionality. OpCon 19.0 now supports Microsoft SQL on Linux.

Supporting Microsoft SQL is part of a broader initiative to support all of OpCon running on Linux. This move will help broaden the long-term reach, impact, and integration of our automation platform.

And, to further set your organization up for future development and connectivity, we’ve expanded the OpCon API. We’ve added all the features from our Solution Manager to the OpCon API, from which users may now add, modify, or delete daily jobs. Lastly, dependency types are updatable through the API, allowing modification of job, threshold, resource, and expression dependencies.

Our goal is to make OpCon your bridge to the future. However you grow, we’re there to help you along the way. Supporting Microsoft SQL on Linux and expanding our API are critical steps on this journey.

Simple change management enhancements

We wanted to make our Deploy model as easy to use as possible. So, to speed up your change management options, we added some functions that improve the overall user experience.

We started with how Deploy handles packages and schedule updates. In version 19.0, OpCon Deploy won’t force an update of unchanged schedules in a package. Not only does this reduce the overhead sum of deployment, but it also makes version history much easier to read and understand.

Additionally, users can now cancel batch deployments in the Deploy interface. This change simplifies the previous process so that now, anyone with access to Deploy can cancel jobs without having to move into the target environment to manage therein.

Finally, in the same spirit or simplifying access, Deploy now supports Windows authentication. That means you don’t need to remember accounts and passwords—so long as the Deploy user matches the Windows user, they can jump right in. Plus, users can exit Deploy as easily as they signed in with our new logout screen.

All-new OpCon, all-new Deploy

These new changes to our Deploy module further streamline change management in OpCon. Migrating workflows between testing and live environments is much more straightforward. This will help your team stay nimbler and more productive.

Want to see a closer look inside the new features and abilities in OpCon 19.0? Fill out the form below to request a demo!