Integration Made Easy
Dovetail 4.15: 3 highlights
The latest change of the integration platform Integration Made Easy by Dovetail is version 4.15.0. This was released in April 2024 and saw many changes which you can find in the release notes:
The release notes however can be a bit long and abstract. In this blog, I want to highlight three changes:
- Lifecycle Management
- Flow Versions
- Manager Overview
All of these changes are meant to make designing and managing integration flows easier. For every feature we do a comparison of the old and new way of doing things and explain the reasons behind the changes.
1. Lifecycle management
Lifecycle management includes everything from starting, pausing, resuming, and stopping flows. Before we look at the changes in 4.15, let’s first look at how things were done in 4.14.
Old way
- Starting
A flow could be started by clicking on the Install button in the Flow Designer page:
When clicked on the Install button the flow was send to the backend. A notification was send after installation, which users saw as a popup.
2. Stopping
The uninstall button in the flow manager (details page) stops and uninstalls a flow:
3. Suspending/Resuming
The suspending (pausing of a flow) and resuming a pended flow was also done from the details page on the flow manager.
Problems
The old way caused several problems:
- Install/Uninstall could not be done from the same page.
- During installation the status wasn’t clear.
- The status of a running flow wasn’t clearly visible.
- It was not easy to tell which version was installed and how to switch between versions.
- It was not clear in which environment (test or production) a flow was installed.
New way
In the new way we used starting/pausing/stopping the same way as you would start, pause or stop a video on YouTube. See from example the buttons below to start or resume a YouTube video:
Like YouTube we implemented the same functionality for Dovetail flows:
When clicking on the start button, the installation starts. The button turns green when installed successfully or red when there is an installation problem. The exact problem can be find in the installation log on the flow manage page.
The color of the lifecycle buttons shows the status. It works a bit like a traffic light:
Green means that the flow is running, orange that it’s paused, and red that something failed. See screenshot below for all colors. This status of a flow can also be filtered in the flow manager page:
2. Flow Versions
Versions are central to Dovetail. For each flow you travel through time and see each version. There are several changes that rolls out the concept of versions even further.
Draft version
In old way you could save a flow, but you could not really see it as a separate version. From 4.15.0 “Draft” is just a version. Note that also that the Save button is moved to the top of the page. Because the Install / Save buttons were moved the canvas to design flows gets more space.
Flow details
Until now it was only possible to see the versions in the flow designer. Now we added this tab also the details page of the flow manager:
All lifecycle actions can also be performed from the manager page. The status and version that is running is should be clearer this way. Because the details page works for each version, it was also possible to show the installation logs or transactions from old versions.
Switching between designer and manager
The design of a flow (build time) and the management of a flow (run time) are basically two perspectives on the same flow. The version tab is the shared point between these two perspectives. By clicking on the button (designer) and edit button (manager) it’s possible to switch from one page to the other.
- Switch from Manager to Designer
Note: You can also use the edit icon next to the version number to switch to the designer.
2. Switch from Designer to Manager
3. Manager overview
The Flow Manager Overview shows now all the flows in one list that can be sorted and filtered. With the flick of a switch you can show/hide uninstalled flows from the list.
The old way
In the old way flows were shown per group and can be searched based on the flow name.
Problems
The old overview had the following problems
- Cannot filter by status
- Only shows running flows
- Filters are limited to text only
- Limited number of columns
New way
In the new way all flows are shown within one table. Groups are now listed in a separate column. Flows can filtered by group or flow name directly on the table.
The filters are now better suited for each column. You can for example filter on the status or transport type. With the toggle it’s also possible to show all flows. With the management view toggle you can see information on who installed the flow and when. Idea for the future is to create custom views.
Video summary
The highlights are summarized in the video below:
