Release Notes

Provides a list of new and updated features for this release, as well as any resolved issues, limitations, and known issues.

Beginning with Workflow 2.6, information is available on a single page with links to relevant documentation. Use the following links to navigate to each section on this page.

What's New or Changed in This Release

Workflow 2.6 SP2

This section outlines the new and updated product features for the 2.6 SP2 release.

Workflow 2.6 SP1

This section outlines the new and updated product features for the 2.6 SP1 release.

  • Install Workflow Task Client from the InstallFrontEnd.exe file. The installer adds the task client plugin to Operations Hub. See:
    • Install the Task Client in the Getting Started Guide.
  • Workflow is updated to the latest released version of the Common Licensing software, v18.9.
  • SQL Server 2019 is supported for Workflow. See:
  • Workflow is updated with the latest End User License Agreement (EULA) and copyright stamp, where applicable.
  • Workflow is migrated to the Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable package for both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems.
  • Workflow is integrated with the Web Help system to provide help documentation, which is accessed using any regular browser.

Recommendations

Recommendations provide procedures that may be useful in specific circumstances.

  • When installed on the same machine, GE Web HMI and Workflow both require port 8444 for installations prior to Workflow 2.6. The Workflow 2.6 default port is now 8447, however during an upgrade from versions earlier than 2.6, the port number is NOT changed, and remains 8444. For information about resolution of port conflicts, see Resolve Port conflicts between prior Proficy Workflow installations and Web HMI.
  • Upgraded Workflow 2.6 installations from earlier versions continue to use the existing configured certificates, regardless of the operating system. If you are upgrading or installing Workflow on an older operating system and you want certificates with SAN properties, you can use the Workflow ConfigureCertificates tool to generate new certificates. See Install Certificates on older Operating Systems to generate certificates with the SAN property.
  • You can now configure Workflow to connect to a remote SQL Server instance using Windows Authentication. Prior to Workflow 2.6, it was mandatory to configure the Workflow SQL Server instance to use Mixed Mode Authentication. This requirement has been removed from Workflow 2.6 and it is now possible for Workflow to connect to a SQL Server instance configured for Windows Authentication only. For security reasons, Windows Authentication is recommended as it eliminates the need for Workflow to save the database user name and password to disk. See Configure Windows Authentication for Workflow.

Limitations

Limitations provide notifications about possible application and system constraints or restrictions in this release.

  • Beginning with the Workflow 2.6 release, Vision is not shipped as a part of Workflow. The Vision help topics have not been updated, and only apply to prior Workflow versions. Note that Vision 6.3 can be installed separately and will function with Workflow 2.6.

Resolved Issues

Resolved issues are those defects that have been fixed for the current release.
Note: These fixes are ported to 2.6 SP2 from 2.6 SP1, 2.5 SP4 SIM 5, SIM 6, and SIM 7 releases.

Workflow 2.6 SP2 Fixes:

Tracking ID Description
DE161690 Installation of Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable Package (x86) failed when installing Workflow Task Client 2.6 SP1.
01085838 Proficy Workflow 2.6 SP2 could not connect to the Historian server.
01026968 When loading Workflow Task Client in Operations Hub 2022, a white rectangular border appeared below the Task Client page.
01109095 Equipment Model did not filter in Operations Hub task list.

Workflow 2.6 SP1 Fixes:

Tracking ID Description
US421239 The method DeleteMaterialLotOrSublotWithActuals introduced in 2.5 SP4 SIM4 has been removed from the IMaterial interface. This method did not perform consistently in all cases.
DE136625 Report synchronization failed due to a duplicate key issue in the Dim_WorkflowSchedule and Dim_SegReqEquipmentSpecification packages. To resolve the issue, data staging queries for the two reporting packages have been modified to exclude any duplicate records.
DE136672 There were no alerts or reminders for security certificates that are expiring within a month. This issue has been resolved. Workflow certificates are checked daily for their expiration period. If any certificate is due for expiry within a month, a warning message is displayed to the logged in user.
DE136677 Errors occurred when saving class changes for model objects due to performance issues. This issue has been resolved.
DE136635 Resolved performance issues related to export and import of materials in a model, and also browsing these materials on the Client:
  • For Export: Fixed the redundant data creation, and optimized the export logic.
  • For Import: Improving the export performance resulted in less number of excel files for import. Import logic is also optimized while saving the GUIDs in excel.
DE136626 Workflow instances stopped working due to System.Data.SQLClient.SQLException and had to be terminated. Handled the specific exception by retrying workflow instance completion three more times. This allowed for an extra time frame of total 180 (60*3=180) seconds to resume the network.
DE136627 After restarting the Proficy Server, Workflow calendar based time events do not occur if the event's first occurrence date is in the past. This issue is resolved by setting the Repeat event every __ day field value appropriately. It is set to 1 if the recurrence is needed daily.
DE136631 Export/Import of user solutions failed without throwing any error messages. To fix this issue, a validation logic has been added to check all the dependent displays of the user solution that are added in the content.
DE136628 The communication object could not be used for communication. To fix the issue, the MaxMessageSize attribute needs to be configured in ProficyClient.exe.config and ProficyServer.exe.config by increasing the value from 10485760 to 15728640. The MaxItemsinObjectGraph quota is increased from 300000 to 1500000.
DE136630 Synchronizing tags from Historian to Workflow failed due to conflicts in SQL database collation. This issue has been resolved.
Workflow 2.6 SIM 1 Fixes:
Tracking ID Description
US274688 The Full Name field can be entered for a Workflow user to display assigned task user's full name in the Web HMI Task List. This field is used when displaying assignment and performer information in the Web HMI Task List.
US287276 Enabled to import user's full name when synchronizing users from the Active Directory. A user's full name is retrieved from the domain controller during the authentication process, and is used to populate the Full Name field on the created user account.
DE9510 Previously, you were not able to duplicate the jumps defined in the eSOP task steps from the Task Editor screen. This issue has been resolved.
DE15101 Previously, on duplicating an eSOP task, the email configuration was not duplicated correctly. To fix this, all email configuration is now preserved when duplicating an eSOP task.
DE47848, DE82901 When importing model objects with aspects applied (such as when Plant Applications is used in conjunction with Workflow), it lead to import failure. The import process is fixed now to handle null values in the import file.
DE49185 Equipment provisioning script created records with invalid parents. To resolve the issue, equipment creation commands are now validated for proper parent-child relationships before creating the equipment.
DE50264 Equipment provisioning script "create property" command (6) created property with NULL data type. To resolve this issue, additional checks have been added to ensure that a valid property data type has been specified.
DE52998 Communication exception occurred due to a faulty channel state. As a fix, the communication channels are reclaimed if they are detected to be expired, or in a non-opened state.
DE64489 The workflow instances screen displayed an error whenever a workflow instance in the 'Stopped' state was selected. This issue introduced in 2.5 SP3 has been resolved.
DE68886 Projects and Import/Export functions were allowing to import duplicate process segment specifications. To resolve this issue:
  • Database schema has been modified to prevent creation of process segment specifications with a duplicate S95Id.
  • Projects and Import/Export functions have been modified to fail and display a meaningful error message when an attempt is made to import a process segment specification with a duplicate S95Id.
DE79117 Previously, an exception was thrown when editing a Configure Event Activity. This issue has been resolved.
DE79380 Previously, keywords were not replaced in task level work instructions on the desktop client. This issue has been resolved. Keywords are now replaced as expected in the initial load of work instructions.
DE79400 The Edit Database connection screen was incorrectly limiting port number range, and created incorrect connection string when the port is specified. This issue has been resolved. The valid range for the SQL Server port number is now 1 to 65535. The data source in the connection string excludes the instance name if a port number is also specified.
DE79401 Previously, you were not able to save the database connection with Excel ODBC data provider DSN. This error happened due to a missing database (worksheet) property on the DSN. The error message has been updated.
DE82900 Exporting an equipment failed for the equipment that contained the property with ' (single quote) in its name. The S95 editor also failed to show any properties for the equipment instance when such a property was created. This issue has been resolved.
DE82902 Assigning tasks dynamically made the tasks visible to incorrect users. This issue has been resolved. Assignment context is now correctly determined when the assigned resource is not set until runtime.
DE89213 Previously, indexes duplicating the primary key existed on many SOADB tables. The duplicate indexes are no longer created, and existing duplicate indexes will be removed during an upgrade from earlier versions.
DE83062

Previously, importing personnel class failed if the target system was missing aspects from the source system. Personnel objects can now be imported successfully when the target system does not have all personnel model aspects present on the source system.
DE83916 Configure Server was not updating the port numbers in the UserStartup.dita file. This issue has been resolved. If the server HTTP or TCP ports are modified using the Configure Server tool, the local client configuration is also updated to connect on the new ports.
DE91292 You can now delete a lot or sublot and all associated material actuals from the production responses. A new method has been added to the IMaterial interface: DeleteMaterialLotOrSublotWithActuals. Use this method with caution!
DE91394 Instance class cannot be found during process to create or update material definition properties. This issue has been resolved.
DE95051 The default height of the navigator did not facilitate the visibility of all the models. The navigator has been fixed with more vertical space to display all the default models without the need to scroll through them.
DE95754 The Generate Web HMI Model process failed with the following error: "Unable to cast object of type 'System.DBNull' to type 'System.String'' on Equipment instances with null descriptions." This issue has been resolved to correctly process the equipment instances with null description fields.

Known Issues

Known issues are those issues that are documented in the defect tracking system that affect this release, and may be fixed in a future release.

Tracking IDDescription
DE8399

Browsing OPC Items from RSLinx Classic OPC Server - When browsing OPC items from the server, branches show items from previously expanded branches.

Workaround: Reset the browser by clicking the Browse Server button again, then browse the desired branch.

DE56348

After an OPC connection to a Cimplicity server is added in Workflow, new projects added to the Cimplicity OPC server are not visible from the OPC Item browser in Workflow.

Workarounds:
  • Change the ProgID of the OPC connection to a different value and Save. Then change the ProgID back to the original value and Save.
  • Delete the OPC server connection from Workflow and re-create it.
  • Restart Proficy Server.

Performing any of the above actions will cause the correct list of items to be returned from the Browse action.

DE76343After installation on Windows 10 or Window Server 2016 "General Electric" Start Menu has no content.

This issue is caused by Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

Workaround: Log out of your current Windows session and log back in.

DE136938

Guest user privileges updated in Workflow are not getting updated to Operations Hub task client. As a result, when guest users with no privileges are upgraded to possess administrative rights in Workflow, they still are not able to access their scheduled tasks in the task client widget in Operations Hub.

Workaround: Restart Proficy Server.