[Interaction] Simplified formatting and display of data in Applications and Modules

Simplifier 9 LTS brings our new Binding designer to let you combine multiple data sources and operators without knowledge of UI5 bindings. The Binding Designer enables the use of an operator’s output as the input for another operator, offering powerful flexibility in designing complex bindings. Currently, supported data sources include variables, constants, and data sources configured within widgets or their parent components. Use operators for concatenation, date and time formats, and number formats to format the output as required. This feature simplifies data manipulation and enhances the flow of information across your applications, helping you build more dynamic and efficient solutions.

For more complex formatting there is still an expert mode, containing also ready-to-use formatting functions to speed up Application creation. (Read more)

[Accessibility] Multilingual Support

Simplifier 9 LTS now supports 37 languages across key components, ensuring a global reach for your applications. Whether you’re building apps, workflows, or using the Launchpad or mobile client, users can interact with Simplifier in their preferred language. This enhancement boosts accessibility and usability for teams and clients worldwide, making your solutions more inclusive and adaptable to diverse markets. (Read more)

[Automation] Workflow Parallel Split

The Parallel Split is a powerful tool in business process automation that enables multiple tasks to be executed simultaneously. Also known as a Parallel Gateway or AND Gateway in BPMN, it allows you to branch out workflows so that various activities can occur in parallel, rather than sequentially.

Use Cases for Parallel Execution:

• Order Processing: Simultaneously check inventory, verify payment, and prepare shipment.
• Travel Booking: Book flights, reserve accommodation, and arrange transportation in parallel.
• Quality Assurance: Run automated, manual, and performance tests concurrently.
• Employee Onboarding: Set up accounts, conduct training, and order hardware all at once.

By leveraging parallel splits, businesses can accelerate processes, optimize resources, and enhance efficiency across operations. (Read more)

Besides we improved the Workflow feature even more by introducing a draft mode to our Standard Workflow Task Module as well as more enhancements to our Workflow API, Workflow Monitoring, and Workflow Designer.

[Integration] Optimized Business Objects & Dynamic Calling

In Simplifier 9 LTS, we’ve introduced Optimized Business Objects that enhance flexibility and performance. With support for ECMA Script 2022 in Server-Side Business Objects, you can leverage the latest JavaScript features for even more powerful and efficient business logic.

Additionally, Simplifier makes dynamic calling more intuitive and efficient. Dynamic calls allow you to execute Server-side Business Objects based on variable names or through dynamic call functions, which are ideal when integrating with various backend systems or applications. This approach avoids the need for hardcoded connections, and optimizing workflows. (Read more)

Furthermore, we have Simplified our Business Object Editor to fasten up creating new functions and integrations. (Read more)

[Governance] Improved governance and performance of Transports

Simplifier 9 LTS introduces key improvements to the Governance and Performance of Transports:

• SSO for Remote Transports: Simplify security and access with Single Sign-On (SSO) support for remote transports, ensuring smooth, secure transitions between environments. (Read more)
• Faster Import Durations: We’ve drastically improved the import process for complex applications, reducing delays and optimizing performance, making deployment faster and more efficient. (Read more)

These upgrades streamline transport management, improve governance, and ensure that your applications move between environments with speed and security.

[Governance] Principal Propagation with SAP BTP

Simplifier 9 LTS now supports Principal Propagation with SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), including integration with the Cloud Connector. This feature ensures that user identities are securely passed between systems, allowing seamless, secure access to SAP services and data across your applications. It enhances security, simplifies user management, and improves integration between your cloud and on-premise systems. (Read more)

[User Experience] Simplified Styling of your Applications

The Designer offers an easy and intuitive way to customize the look and feel of your UI5 apps. Tailor the corporate design to your needs by adjusting primary and secondary colors, as well as styling UI components. Once you’ve made your customizations, simply download your theme and apply it directly to your UI5 app. This makes it effortless to create a personalized and consistent design that aligns with your brand. (Read more)

Simplifier Mobile Client

• [Interaction] New feature to add your favorite apps to the device’s home screen (Read more)
• [Interaction] New zoom feature to scale the UI of your applications (Read more)

Launchpad

• [User Experience] Task description is now shown in the Tasklist of task inbox (Read more)
• [User Experience] Auto refresh of task inbox can now be activated in Simplifier Launchpad (Read more)
• [User Experience] App-List is now sorted lexicographically in Launchpad

Admin UI Dashboard

• Optimized Simplifier Admin UI Dashboard. Added Awesome Moments, Tutorials and download information to Simplifier Mobile Client

App Building

• [User Experience] New Visual Binding Editor replaces old binding dialog (Read more)
• [User Experience] New icons and tab titles used in the browser to find tabs faster (Experimental) (Read more)
• [User Experience] Added label to selection of Theme in WYSIWYG Editor to clarify feature
• [User Experience] Extended error messages on removing Widgets from Widget Group
• [User Experience] Added the possibility to offer consultative assistance for Simplifier Users. Assistance will come in the future as guided tours, dynamic in-product help, or temporary information without the need to update your instances
• [Integration] Variables can be nullable when set from anywhere
• [Interaction] Configuration of Date&Time and Numbers was simplified even more (Read more)

Workflows

• [User Experience] New feature to run multiple Workflows in parallel (Read more)
• [User Experience] Value of variables can now be added to the task description by using placeholders (Read more)
• [User Experience] Advanced Filtering Monitoring of Workflows (Read more)
• [User Experience] Workflow API documentation is now available within Simplifier API Explorer (menu item ‘Client’) (Read more)
• [User Experience] Workflows are deployed automatically after importing
• [User Experience] Workflows used in Applications cannot be deleted anymore
• [User Experience] New feature to enable or disable the display of descriptions
• [Interaction] Workflows can now be translated in 37 languages (Read more)
• [Interaction] Simplifier Standard Task Module is now available in 37 languages
• [Interaction] Workflow task data can now be saved as a draft when using the Simplifier Standard Task Module (Read more)
• [Interaction] Personalized notifications can now be used for Task notifications in addition to Templates (Read more)
• [Automation] Custom ordering of Workflow Outcomes is now possible (Read more)
• [Automation] Use fields of structs to assign responsible users and notification task receivers
• [Automation] HTML-Email-Bodies in Workflows can now be up to 64 kb big
• [Integration] Extended Simplifier Workflow API to allow building your own custom Business Workflow Monitoring and custom Workflow Inboxes (Read more)
• [Integration] Extended Simplifier Workflow API to implement draft mode in your custom Workflow Modules (Read more)

Business Objects

• [User Experience] New Layout of Business Object Editor (Read more)
• [User Experience] Saving a Business Object now always creates a new version if there is a change in the code (Read more)
• [User Experience] New experimental feature to debug Server-Side Business Objects (Read more)
• [Integration] ECMAScript 2022 can now be used in Server-Side Business Objects
• [Integration] New feature for dynamic execution of Server-Side Business Objects (Read more)
• [Integration] Fixed corruption of Business Object versions
• [Governance] Set the preferred language of a user is now possible via Server-side Business Object API (Read more)

Connectors

• [Integration] Filter Cookies in Proxy Connector (Read more)
• [Integration] Filter Cookies in OData Connector (Read more)
• [Integration] Multiple equal API query parameters are now possible in REST Connector (Read more)
• [Integration] $ref is now resolved correctly when using OpenAPI3 specifications in REST Connector Wizard
• [Integration] Simplifier REST Connector now supports the customization of the Content-Type Header (Read more)
• [Integration] The default primary key name for Oracle and MSSQL schemas is no longer PRIMARY, but PRIMARY_<table_name>
• [Integration] MSSQL data type DATETIMEOFFSET is now supported
• [Integration] SOAP Connectors now support binding style ‘rpc’
• [Integration] Removed legacy OPC UA Connector
• [User Experience] Simplifier Client-API and Workflow API documentation now supports OpenAPI3.0 format (Read more)
• [User Experience] Extended error messages on errors related to SNC credentials
• [Governance] SAP SSO via RFC now supports SNC connections

User and Permissions

• [Accessibility] Renamed language ‘American English’ to ‘English (American)’
• [Governance] Debug menu now has dedicated permission characteristics for each function (Read more)
• [Governance] Name of new Roles cannot include whitespaces anymore

Data Privacy and Security

• [Governance] Principal Propagation with SAP BTP is now possible (Read more)
• [Governance] JWT encrypted User Profiles and Claims for OpenID Connect are now supported by the Authentication Method OAuth2.0 (Read more)
• [Governance] Improved SAML Settings to validate IssueInstant (Read more)
• [Governance] Enhanced logout settings for SAML Authentication Methods (Read more)
• [Governance] Removed cleartext password from trace logs
• [Governance] Adapted default password policy by increasing the minimum length to 10 and activating all password security options (Read more)
• [Governance] Setting “Disable warnings for illegal domain names for CSRF-Tokens” removed.
• [Governance] Certificate Vendor can accept non-alphabetical characters now (except ‘.’ and ‘:’)
• [Governance] Removed deprecated permission objects ChangeLog, Marketplace, and Permission Template
• [User Experience] On Admin-UI-Login whitespaces at the beginning and end of username and password are now trimmed to avoid copy&paste-related error
• [User experience] New feature user notification before token expiry on SAML and OAuth accounts (Read more)

Logs and Monitoring

• [User Experience] Loading times of statistics have been reduced by up to 98%. This also enables long-term analysis within Simplifier (Read more)
• [User Experience] When the monitoring details are shortened to the maximum allowed length, the string ‘[…]’ is appended
• [User Experience] Calculation of Statistics in case of canceled Processes in Monitoring logs was adapted to deliver consistent results
• [User Experience] Advanced Filtering Monitoring of Workflows (Read more)

Transports

• [Governance] Configured Identity Management Services on the target instance can now be used to authenticate on Remote Transports (Read more)
• [User Experience] Introduced new import strategies ‘Skip existing’ (replaced ‘Do not overwrite’) and ‘Skip unchanged’ to improve Transport performance (Read more)
• [User Experience] System libraries can now be excluded from Transport Packages to improve Transport performance (Read more)
• [User Experience] Existing endpoints to connectors are not deleted anymore on import if endpoint configuration is not part of the imported Transport

Standard Content

• [User Experience] New Login Wizard with one click configuration (Read more)
• [User Experience] Added SSBO SF_Deploy to Standard Content. With this BO you can mass deploy your Apps and Modules. See documentation in BO for details
• [User Experience] Bindings created by Form Assistant can be opened in Visual Binding Editor
• [Interaction] Workflow task data can now be saved as a draft when using the Simplifier Standard Task Module (Read more)
• [Accessibility] Updated used System library of Widgets contained in our Standard Content to OpenUI5 1.96.35
• [Accessibility] Removed deprecated Widgets Table_withSearch, Table_withAdd and f_Avatar (Read more)
• [Accessibility] Set the default value of isTrustedSource to false for Widget PDFViewer (Read more)
• [Governance] Added debug permissions to roles SF_Administrator, SF_AppBuilder and SF_Developer (Read more)
• [Governance] Added preferredLanguage to SSBO SF_User functions ‘create’, ‘getUser’, and ‘getUsers’
• [Integration] Removed deprecated function generateWithConfig from SSBO SF_PDF (Read more)
• [Integration] Removed deprecated parameter useEmptyArrayIfNotSet from CSBO SF_Collection function appendElement (Read more)

Server

• [Operations] Simplifier Containers are now created as multi-architecture images and support x86-64 (Intel, AMD) and ARM Chips like Apple M1-M3, Amazon Graviton, and Raspberry PI.
• [User Experience] Improved performance on all requests sent to Simplifier Servers (Admin-UI and Apps)
• [User Experience] WorkflowRuntime: Parameters maxConnection and maxThreads are now set to the same value to avoid deadlocks
• [User Experience] Workflow Runtime now uses a connection pool for better performance in Workflow execution
• [Integration] The default value for DATABASE_MAX_CONNECTIONS is reduced from 100 to 20

Plugins

• [Integration] All Plugins are now published as open-source. Find our Plugins on GitHub.

Update MySQL DB Server

The minimum version of MySQL hosting your Simplifier database is now 8.0. Update your MySQL server before starting upgrade to Simplifier 9 LTS. (Read more)

See also our General Server Requirements

Update Oracle DB Server

The minimum version of Oracle hosting your Simplifier database is now 19c. Update your Oracle server before starting upgrade to Simplifier 9 LTS. (Read more)

See also our General Server Requirements

Configure new database for Monitoring and Statistics

With release 8 EHP 2, monitoring data is moved to a separate database. This database must be a MySQL database and it may be on the same MySQL server as the main simplifier database, but also may reside on a different MySQL server. In either case, the connection has to be configured separately. (For more details see upgrade instructions for your version below).

Note: Monitoring-Details of successful executions won’t be migrated

Recreate Keystore

If you are using custom certificates, which you imported into a keystore, you need to recreate this keystore. Details can be found in the upgrade instructions.

Add new CORS Headers for OData

To fully support our OData Connector, there are additional CORS Headers required. Please add them to your Reverse Proxy configuration. (For more details see upgrade instructions for your version above)

We have installation instructions prepared based on the versions you are upgrading from:

• Upgrade from Release 8 EHP 4 to Simplifier 9 LTS
• Upgrade from Release 8 to Simplifier 9 LTS

If you are setting up a new instance, please follow our installation guide for Simplifier 9 LTS.

Replace discontinued features

If you are still using discontinued features and functions that are still required in the future, implement other solutions before upgrading to Simplifier 9 LTS.

Remove deprecated Connector API from your Business Objects and Scripts

Please check if you are still using deprecated Connector API for some Business Objects or Scripts.

Check for required changes in your Business Objects

To provide ECMAScript 2022 in Server-side Business Objects we had to switch libraries. In rare cases, changes to Business Objects may be necessary. Please see our documentation for details and check your Business Objects. (Read more)

Check roles to fit new default behaviour for Enhanced Business Object and Enhanced Template Security

After upgrading to Simplifier 9 LTS Business Object Security and Template Security are activated by default on all instances to increase security. This means that the execution of each Business Object and generation of rendered Templates as to be explicitly be permitted in a Global Role or via Project Roles.

Please check your roles are set up accordingly and contain execution permission to all required Server-side Business Objects and read permission to all required Templates and relevant Plugin Permissions. Take care that you use your app relevant/project roles on testing only (and not Standard-Roles like SF_Developer or SF_Administrator)

You still can deactivate the enhanced security options in Simplifier settings, but we strongly advise against this as the settings will be removed in a future Release and activation will be enforced. (See documentation)

Check your SAP settings when connecting to SAP via SNC

Due to the update of the used SAP JCO lib, you need to check your SAP configuration when using SNC on connecting SAP Systems. As soon as SNC SSO Mode is set to 1, fallback to password authentication is no longer performed. (See also SAP Note for more information)

Check Javascript usage in generated PDFs

As with deactivated usage of Javascripts in PDFs generated with PDF Plugin by default, check if you are using Javascript in such cases. If so, either activate Javascript in PDF Plugin or remove Javascript from your PDF content. (Read more)

Update Custom Widgets

Due to the update to switch libraries, there might occur cases, where Widget templates are not in proper JSON structure, but have been accepted by the old libraries. Please make sure that the Templates of your Custom Widgets have proper JSON structure. (Read more)

Replace SSBO SF_PDF function generateWithConfig

The deprecated function ‘generateWithConfig’ is removed from SSBO SF_PDF. Replace it with the function ‘generate’ in the same SSBO or with an own function. (Read more)

Update Standard Content

Update Standard Content to ensure you have all current fixes and features available on your instances. (Download here)

Check changed default behaviors and deleted Widgets in our Standard Content. (Read more)

IMPORTANT: If ‘Default’ is not the active instance configured in your Server Environment (read more), please check your Endpoint Configuration of Connector ‘Appwizard_API_1_0’ on those instances you want to use our Application Wizards. Typically this is relevant for all Dev-Instances. (Read more)

Also, check the endpoint of the other Standard Content connectors. (Read more)

Update UI5 Versions in Applications and Modules

As our support for our Standard Content UI5 1.71 Widgets has ended with Simplifier Release 8 already, please update your applications to our latests UI5 1.96 Widgets. Our ‘Upgrade UI5 Version’ Wizard can help you updating your applications. (Read more)

Check the language of your Workflows

For all existing Workflows default language is set to German. If that does not fit your configuration please change the default language or translate your workflows. (Read more)

Translate your custom Workflow Task Modules

If you decide on translating your Workflows, also translate your custom Workflow Task Modules, to have consistent behavior for your users. (Read more)

Activate validation of IssueInstant property in SAML Authentication Methods

If you have configured Maximum Token Lifetime in your SAML Authentication Methods, these get switched off on migration to Simplifier 8 EHP 4. Check if you want to use the new possibility to validate the IssueInstant property instead. (Read more)

[Integration] Simplifier Mobile Client for Android on Windows

Unfortunately, Microsoft has announced the end of support for Windows Subsystem for Android on March 5th 2025. With the end of support, our Simplifier Mobile Client for Android won’t work on Windows anymore. If you have already installed the Simplifier Mobile Client in Windows Subsystem for Android before March 5th 2024 you will continue to have access to the Simplifier Mobile Client until the end of support. (Read more on microsoft.com)

Deprecated since Simplifier 8 EHP 2; Removal March 5th 2025

[Interaction] Event tab in UI Designer

In our UI designer, there is still the legacy feature to add scripts to events directly in the Event tab. As we want to provide a consistent App Building we will remove this feature with Simplifier 10. Simply use our Process Designer instead.

Deprecated since Simplifier 8 EHP 3; Removal with Simplifier 10

[Integration] Javascript execution in PDFs created by PDF Plugin

Currently, it is possible to add Javascript to PDFs created by PDF Plugin. This is a potential risk for Server Side XSS (PDF Injection) and Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF). The option to add Javascript to PDFs in PDF Plugin is now deactivated but can be activated at its own risk. The activation is subject to be removed in later Releases.

Deprecated since Simplifier 8 EHP 3; Removal tbd

[System requirements] Support of Oracle for Simplifier databases

Oracle support for your Simplifier instances has been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.

Deprecated since Simplifier 8 EHP 4; Removal tbd

[Interaction] Dropped Support for Android 7 and iOS/iPadOS 13+14+15 for Simplifier MobileClient

Simplifier MobileClient released with Simplifier 9 will require at least Android 8 or iOS/iPadOS 16.

[Integration] Removed old legacy OPC UA connector

Our old OPC UA connector is removed with Simplifier 9 LTS.

[Integration] Dropped Support for Session Plugin

We have made the decision to deprecate the session plugin in Simplifier Release 8. After careful consideration and analysis of usage data, we found that the usage of the session plugin was too low to justify its continued support and maintenance.

[Integration] Removed setting to activate deprecated Connector API

The settings to activate deprecated Connector API will be removed with Simplifier 9 LTS. Please make sure you do not use the deprecated Connector API anymore.

[Standard Content] Deleted deprecated widgets and functions from Standard Content

All content marked as deprecated in our Simplifier 8 Standard Content was removed. (Read more)

[System requirements] Dropped Support for outdated Oracle Versions

The minimum version of Oracle hosting your Simplifier database is now 19c. Update your Oracle server before starting upgrade to Simplifier 9 LTS. (Read more)

[System requirements] Dropped Support of Oracle for Logs and Monitoring

For new Logs and Monitoring support of Oracle is dropped. The new database requires a MySQL database. (Read more)

For details see manual changes below.

[System requirements] Dropped Support of MySQL 5.7

The official support for MySQL 5.7 ended in October 2023, so Simplifier also uses the next version 8.0 per default.

[System requirements] Dropped support for Internet Explorer 11

Compatibility Mode for Applications is removed with Simplifier 9 LTS.

Release Date: 20th November 2024

End of Maintenance: Long-Term Support until 3 months after the release of Simplifier 10

All Simplifier releases and updates are provided on Docker Hub Repository.