Cortex Release 8.4 Cortex Release Notes High Level summary document outlining all enhancements, system fixes that have been implemented in Release 8.4. Known system defects documented. Jocelyn Brittain January 2010
1. Contents 1. CONTENTS 2 2. RELEASE OVERVIEW 5 2.1 Pre-Requisites 5 3. ENHANCEMENTS 6 3.1 Cortex User Interface Changes 6 3.1.1 Top Menu Bar 6 3.1.2 Function icons 6 3.1.3 Customer Hierarchy screen 6 3.1.4 OU Management 6 3.1.5 Customer Move 7 3.1.6 Forget Password & Manage Security Questions 8 3.1.7 Navigation of System Management screens 8 3.1.8 Server Property 8 3.1.9 Content Management System 9 3.1.10 User Chevrons 9 3.1.11 Users Table Ability to customize the sort order that is applied 9 3.2 Microsoft Exchange 9 3.2.1 Exchange 2010 9 3.2.2 Windows Mobile 10 3.2.3 PST Export/Import 11 3.2.4 Exchange Public Folder Limits 11 3.2.5 Exchange Offline Address Books 11 3.3 BlackBerry Enterprise 11 3.3.1 BlackBerry 5 11 3.4 SharePoint (WSS03) 11 3.4.1 Add Host Headers to all multiple load balanced front end servers 11 3.4.2 Add IP address to host header 11 3.5 HyperV (Virtual Machines) 11 3.6 AD Synch 11 3.7 CortexAPI 12 3.8 CortexShop 12 3.8.1 Post Pay or Pre-Paid Configuration 12 3.8.2 Customers Provisioned to Cortex after Payment transaction is successful 12 3.9 Trial Customer Accounts (CortexDemoWeb) 12 3.10 Cortex Usage Stats 13 4. DEFECT FIXES 14 P a g e 2
5. CORTEX COMPONENTS 15 5.1 Core components 15 5.2 Service Specific Components 15 P a g e 3
Copyright 2010 EMS-Cortex Limited. This document is the property of EMS-Cortex Ltd and may not be disclosed or copied to a third party, other than to any wholly owned subsidiary of EMS-Cortex Ltd, without consent. All rights reserved. P a g e 4
2. Release Overview Please read these Release Notes and advise EMS-Cortex if there are any aspects of the upgrade that you do not require implementation on your instance. EMS-Cortex will at all times, attempt to meet your specific requirements. This may incur additional costs to the quoted upgrade costs. A revised work quote will be reissued for your approval before commencement of any of the upgrade tasks. Any calls raised post upgrade re: change of system functionality affecting existing business processes and resolution of issues will be charged at normal support rates. To arrange for your Cortex instance to be upgraded to the new 8.4 release, please contact our support team on support@ems-cortex.com to arrange a suitable date. 2.1 Pre-Requisites Exchange SP2 must be applied to all Exchange 2007 servers The Public Folder Create process is now completed via PowerShell commands and uses the IssueWarningLimit property to set the public folder s limits. This property was renamed by Microsoft as part of Exchange SP2 and does not exist in Exchange SP1. Therefore an error will appear when provisioning a customer with exchange and public folders. P a g e 5
3. Enhancements 3.1 Cortex User Interface Changes 3.1.1 Top Menu Bar The Top Menu Bar on Cortex can now be displayed with or without text under the icon. For all default installations, the Menu Options have been re-worded to one word titles. Both the icons and text for the menu bar can enabled/disabled in the back-end via the Cortex Master Page. The menu links have been re-worded (as seen below) and a script can be run during the 8.4 upgrade to update these changes on your platform. Please advise Cortex Support that you would like the menu options to be reworded. 3.1.2 Function icons All function buttons have now been replaced with a image and link. This enhances the support of multi languages and removes the issue where translated text was not appearing in full within the button. There is one exception, the Browse function remains as a button and will not be changed. 3.1.3 Customer Hierarchy screen The Customer Hierarchy screen has been updated to provide more information at a glance. Expanding a customer will now display the services that have been provisioned to the customer and its individual users. The provisioning status is displayed for all of the customer s objects. Selecting a service/user will navigate you to the detailed service/user screen. 3.1.4 OU Management For customers that are set up with User Specified organizations, new functionality has been introduced where the customer administrator can create their organization units via the Control P a g e 6
Panel. These organization units are sub OUs of the customer OU. It allows the Customer administrator having greater control in allocating their users within their own OU s. In addition the customer can set up specific user security groups which are assigned a specific security role and a defined OU(s). End users are then assigned to these user security groups and granted the relevant security permission for that OU. Example A Customer has three OU s; Sales; Marketing and Support. A user security group is created that has User Administrator rights for the Sales and Marketing OUs. This user security group is assigned to User A. User A can create and manage users in the Sales and Marketing OU groups. They can create and move users into the Support OU but cannot view or manage any further user changes for these users as they do not have the permissions. Distribution and Contacts can now be assigned to these organizational units for these type of customers. 3.1.5 Customer Move Functionality has been added to the platform so that the Service Provider can move a customer from one reseller to another within the same domain. A new Customer Move screen can be found under Operational Support. The process involves mapping the From user access levels to To user access levels before committing the change. Cortex will move the customer s organization unit and all of its entities to the new reseller s OU. P a g e 7
Notes: - The To Reseller must be able to sell the services that the customer is provisioned with - This functionality does not support the move of customers across different domains 3.1.6 Forget Password & Manage Security Questions The end user can now reset their own password if they have forgotten it from the Cortex Login page. The user must first configure answers to several security questions which are located under Password >> Manage Security Questions on the Control Panel. The Forget Password feature will then ask for the user to input their answers before allowing them to reset their password. The user s security questions and answers can be displayed on Edit User page if you intend to verify a user that has contacted you by phone before completing a change to the user account. All of the settings for this functionality are found under Configuration >> Configuration Properties, allowing yourselves to set up the feature as per your specific needs. 3.1.7 Navigation of System Management screens The need to impersonate a Customer Exchange Administrator to complete an exchange system management transaction has been removed. The Customer Management menu has been added to these pages so that a Service Provider Administrator / Reseller can search for the customer and complete any changes whilst logged on with their own user-id. The Control Panel has also been updated to display the current Customer in the top left hand corner of the page for the service management screens. This has removed the user confusion for screens such as the Email Notification screen. 3.1.8 Server Property The servers property has been updated so that the user can manually request for a refresh of the server list rather that refreshing the server list every time the service properties iframe window is opened. This has reduced the time delays that are experienced when a large number of servers are configured in the environment. The Service Provider now has the ability to hide all unused servers at the lower hierarchy levels, creating a more manageable list to view at Reseller / customer level. P a g e 8
3.1.9 Content Management System Further enhancements have been made to the Cortex Content Management System including: - Validation errors can now be content managed - Additional strings omitted from 8.3 are content managed - The Content Section drop down list is sorted alphabetically 3.1.10 User Chevrons The role management screen has been updated so that user chevrons can be assigned to different roles or new customized roles. This allows the Service Provider to clearly distinguish users who are attached to the Cortex default administration roles and their own customized administration roles 3.1.11 Users Table Ability to customize the sort order that is applied Cortex UI has been extended so that the Service Provider can determine the sort order that Users will be displayed in the Users Table via the AppSettings section in the CortexDotNet web.config file. Configuration Examples (only one line should be applied): <add key="usersorderby" value="users.firstnames, Users.Surname"/> <add key="usersorderby" value="users.surname, Users.Firstnames"/> <add key="usersorderby" value="users.upn"/> 3.2 Microsoft Exchange 3.2.1 Exchange 2010 Cortex 8.4 includes the support for Exchange 2010, using the same multi-tenancy design used in Exchange 2007. The following functions can be completed on Exchange 2010: - Manage Distribution Groups & Contacts - Create and manage Public Folders - Resource Mailboxes P a g e 9
- Mail Disclaimers In Exchange 2010, the formatting options are not available for configuration A Service Provider can define the default version of Exchange that a new customer will be configured with if both Exchange 2007 & 2010 exist on the same domain. The PST Export/Import is not currently supported for Exchange 2010. Note: - Exchange 2010 cannot be installed a Domain that has Exchange 2003 configured. - This Exchange 2010 release is focused on Enterprises and for technical reasons will only be supported by Microsoft in a single tenant model. Please refer to our EMS-Cortex Blog site to read more information on what EMS-Cortex will support from 8.4. 3.2.2 Windows Mobile The creation of a Windows Mobile CAB file can now be enabled for Exchange users. If enabled, the user will be able to view the CAB file from the Exchange Summary screen and request for it to be SMS d to their mobile phone. If the user is also provisioned with OCS, the OCS CAB file can be downloaded as well. Windows Mobile CAB files can be sent via SMS to multiple users within a customer within a single transaction. This screen is available to all Customer Administrators. Cortex has been developed to use the Clickatell SMS Messaging API. P a g e 10
3.2.3 PST Export/Import A property has been added to Cortex to define the number of corrupt items within a mailbox that can be skipped during a PST export/import. This property is found under the Exchange Service Properties, Mailbox Import/Export >> Bad Item Limit. A Bad Item Limit property can also be found under the Exchange Service Properties. This property defines the number of corrupt items that can be skipped during a mailbox move. 3.2.4 Exchange Public Folder Limits The default public folder limits have been increased on Cortex to match the default settings in Exchange. Public folders can now be created with a size greater than 2047MB. 3.2.5 Exchange Offline Address Books A customer s OAB is can now be replicated across multiple public folder servers. A customer can now be migrated from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 and their OAB will point to a Exchange 2007 public folder server. 3.3 BlackBerry Enterprise 3.3.1 BlackBerry 5 Cortex 8.4 supports BlackBerry 5 Enterprise service. For BlackBerry 5, the BES web service is used rather than a specific Cortex-built web service 3.4 SharePoint (WSS03) 3.4.1 Add Host Headers to all multiple load balanced front end servers Cortex will now provision a SharePoint site s host header to all servers that have been selected in the service package where Load Balanced Server property is enabled. 3.4.2 Add IP address to host header Cortex now allows IP addresses to be configured for a SharePoint server (Package Template). If an IP address is selected, all sharepoint sites provisioned to the server will contain the IP address in their host header. If no IP address is specified, Default will be applied to the host header. 3.5 HyperV (Virtual Machines) Added a new Virtual Machine desktop connection page to allow administrators to manage their hyper-v machines from the Cortex control panel. The web desktop connection can also be used for booting up a blank virtual server from an ISO image, installing an operating system and configuring private networks. 3.6 AD Synch Further changes have been made to the AD Synch so that it is more robust and reduces the risk of user error when installing the tool on a remote Domain controller. The key configuration properties have been changed to read only, P a g e 11
The AD Synch tool will now display an error if the customer has not been set up to allow passwords to never expire. 3.7 CortexAPI The following functions have been added to the 8.4 CortexAPI - Service description - Service instance description - Assign specific roles to a customer/user Cortex will now provision a SharePoint site s host header to all servers that have been selected in the service 3.8 CortexShop 3.8.1 Post Pay or Pre-Paid Configuration Service Providers can now configure online whether they want all of their shop customers to be prepaid (pay for the service upfront via a payment provider) or post pay (will be billed monthly for actual usage). If the Post Pay option is selected, a Shop customer will not be directed to the payment provider screens and the services will be automatically provisioned to the customer on Cortex 3.8.2 Customers Provisioned to Cortex after Payment transaction is successful The provisioning of customer account via the CortexShop has been amended so that the provisioning request is only sent after the Shop has received confirmation that the payment transaction was successful. Before 8.4, the customer account was provisioned prior to the payment being made, 3.9 Trial Customer Accounts (CortexDemoWeb) Cortex 8.4 supports trial customer accounts, these can be set up by an anonymous prospective client or by a dedicated sales force. The trial customer account can be set up directly on the Control Panel or via an external website using the CortexAPI to send the requests to the platform. Trial customers accounts are set up with an expiry date, once this date is met, the account is automatically de-provisioned and eventually deleted from the portal. Trial customers are identified with a different icon on the Customers page and the expiry date is displayed in the Edit Customer screen. A new application is included as part of the 8.4 release. This application allows trial customer accounts to be set up on Cortex via an external web site. The application delivers: - Administration Portal This system allows the Service Provider to create multiple Sales Forces (per Reseller) and if required to set up individuals to each Sales Force. These individuals will be logged against each trial customer account that is created. The demo service packages are configured on this system. P a g e 12
- Trial Customer set-up wizard A series of web pages have been created that allows the end user to populate their details before sending the request to Cortex and setting up the trial customer account. The web pages have been developed with a simple style sheet so that it can be updated to meet the branding requirements of the website that it will be integrated with. - A Scheduled task to de-provision and delete customer accounts after trial period has ended. The Email Notifications function has been updated to include the type of customer that the email will be sent to so that different emails can be sent to your trial customers. There is an additional charge for installing the Trial Customer component onto your Cortex instance, please contact Cortex Support for a statement of work. Note: The application of specific Citrix applications/groups cannot be completed via the trial customer process. 3.10 Cortex Usage Stats The Cortex usage stats have been updated to report usage statistics on the new AD sync service and the number of service instances that have been provisioned on Cortex. EMS-Cortex has implemented a new internal billing system and a change has been made to how the usage data is collected so that it can be easily integrated into the new system. The daily stats are now recorded locally on the Service Provider s CortexSQL database before being submitted to EMS-Cortex. P a g e 13
4. Defect Fixes This table includes all defects that have been identified in Cortex versions prior to 8.4 and have been fixed in this release. Ticket Ticket Description Reference 7343 Exchange failing for users with in their name (Paddy O Brien) 7397 De-provisioning a service fails when an apostrophe exists with the Name 8614 Service Property Permissions Location relevant properties now re-appear back at the Top Environment level and property permissions can now be set without executing a SQL script 9034 Method for CRM Disable User Creation is not working 9084 New Users not being assigned with the customer s default language 9097 Brand Home Page test is not displayed on the Home Page 9098 Resource mailbox provisioning failing 9129 SharePoint package s default language is not displayed on Customer Service screen 9271 CortexShop Language ID is causing issues when attempting to log into the CortexShop 9287 Content Translation page does not recognize the updated spreadsheet 9308 The Brands URL link will not appear in the left hand menu if the user does not have permission to it. 9400 User properties: City, Country and postcode not saved on Cortex platform, linked ot the wrong SQL table. 9416 9115 Unable to de-provision an instance where special characters are present in the instance name 9423 Unable to add a server name with - in properties such as File Share Path Location 9464 Informative message added to Bulk User Import screen advising that spreadsheet must be.xls format. 9515 Management of citrix applications 9516 Special characters not being displayed correctly in excel spreadsheets 9524 Exchange Public Fodler. Public Folder Name could be saved with a trailing space, this will cause an error when mail-enabling the folder 9638 Mail Alias property allows @ symbol 9211 P a g e 14
5. Cortex Components 5.1 Core components The table below details the current core components and whether they are upgraded, replaced or left alone. It also shows new core components being added. Component Name Type Description Upgrade Status CortexWeb ASP.NET Web Application(Framework 3.5) Administration interface for Cortex customers & administrators UPGRADE Cortex Provisioning Engine Windows NT Service Back-end provisioning service UPGRADE Cortex SQL SQL Databases Cortex system SQL Server databases. Scripted changes UPGRADE CortexDirectoryWS.NET Web Service (Framwork 2.0) Web Service for Active Directory manipulation UPGRADE CortexShopWS ASP.NET Web Application (Framework 3.5) CortexShop application UPGRADE Cortex API API for Cortex UPGRADE Cortex Migration Tool Tool for migrating customers / users onto Cortex Reports SQL reports Reports assigned through permissions system UPGRADE CortexDemoWeb ASP.NET Web Application (Framework 3.5) Web Service for setting up trial customer accounts NEW 5.2 Service Specific Components Component Name Service Type Description Upgrade Status CortexExchangeWS Exchange 2003.NET Web Service Web service for exchange management & PST Import/Export UPGRADE & 2007 (Framework 2.0) CortexSharePoint2WS SharePoint 2.0.NET Web Service Web Service for SharePoint 2.0 management (Framework 1.1) CortexSharePoint3WS SharePoint 2.0.NET Web Service Web Service for SharePoint 3.0 management UPGRADE (Framework 2.0) CortexCitrixFarmWS Citrix.NET Web Service Web Service for Citrix management (Framework 2.0) CortexBlackBerryWS BlackBerry.NET Web Service Web Service for query BlackBerry user information UPGRADE P a g e 15
(Framework 2.0) CortexIISWS IIS6 & IIS7.NET Web Service (Framework 2.0) Web Service for IIS Management CortexVirtualMachineWS HyperV.NET Web Service Web Service for HyperV management (Framework 2.0) MailboxStats Exchange 2003.NET Command-line Collects Exchange 2003 mailbox stats application PublicFolderStats Exchange 2003.NET Command-line Collects Exchange 2003 public folder stats application Exchange 2007 Mailbox Exchange 2007 PowerShell Scripts Collects Exchange 2007 mail box and public folder stats and Public Folder Stats update Ideal CortexShop Third Party Payment Provider Integration. Setup files for Ideal UPGRADE UPGRADE P a g e 16
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