LEAPWORK 2020.1 RELEASE

Empowering enterprises to take a huge step forward in productivity

Download version (2020.1.1109)

Alternative download for Windows: 64-bit.zip

Better management and control of your test and process automation

In this first major release of 2020, we bring you a number of enterprise features that will help you to take back control, whether you want to do more software testing faster or speed up and reduce risk in business processes.

What’s new?

  • A powerful new way to build up run lists

  • The most advanced scheduler and scheduling assistant on the market

  • The ability to easily automate logging in and out of Windows

  • Improved support of Salesforce and Dynamics AX

  • And so much more

In a year that has so far brought with it so much uncertainty, these are timely additions that will support you to take back control and become more productive and efficient with automation.

For more information about getting started with the 2020.1 release of Leapwork, please contact your account manager or send an email to sales@leapwork.com.

Managing what test suite or business process to run with run lists

Whether you are doing test automation or RPA, run lists are quite simply a better way to manage and organize how your automation flows are executed, using a powerful drag-and-drop interface.

Group together and sort those flows that must be run before or after others, manage any dependencies and select the success criteria required to move from step to step.

LEAPWORK_product_shot_run_list

Run lists bring a lot of flexibility to the table. Among those are the ability to:

  • Structure run lists in folder hierarchies

  • Re-order steps and individual flows with drag-and-drop

  • Copy and paste steps across run lists

  • Setup multiple schedules for each run list (see below)

Run lists are available in both Leapwork Enterprise and Platform Editions.

Managing when to run with a new advanced scheduler

We are introducing a brand-new advanced scheduler to go hand-in-hand with the run lists. This gives you full control over when the flows in your run lists are run, and on which environments - either on-demand (such as through API calls to Leapwork) or on a single or recurring schedule.

LEAPWORK_product_scheduler

The new advanced scheduler is a powerful tool for taking control over your automation and optimizing time and resources. Among many things, it includes the following:

  • Granular control to run flows once or more at specific times during the day, in specific time-zones

  • Estimated run-time is automatically calculated based on past performance and parallelization options

  • Recurring schedules can be controlled with working hours windows and queue options

  • Steps in run lists can be easily parallelized, either divided out across selected Agents or run on all

  • Scheduled runs can be skipped or robustly queued based on the Agent Busy Status

  • Scheduled runs can be stopped immediately in case a single flow fails or other limits are exceeded

The new advanced scheduler is available in both Leapwork Enterprise and Platform Editions.

Take full control with the schedule assistant

For the Enterprise Edition, starting with an update to the 2020.1 release in May, the advanced scheduler is expanded with a calendar overview of your Agents usage - both past and future - to help you plan better and understand resource utilization in minute details.

product_shot_scheduler_2_b

The schedule assistant uses the calculated estimated run time for each run list, so it’s easy to understand which Agents are expected to be busy or free at a given time in the future. And when some runs end up taking longer than planned, the schedule assistant gives a quick and visual calendar overview of how run lists are being queued up on your individual Agents.

The new schedule assistant is only available in the Leapwork Enterprise Edition.

Automate Windows login and logout

Leapwork Agents now include a strong security feature to automate logging in and out of Windows. A user is no longer required to be logged into their machine in order to run a flow. Instead, Leapwork can be set up to login on the user’s behalf. Users can also start testing single-sign on between Windows and any other application that reuse the same login credentials.

This means you can now execute automation on any machine in an incredibly secure and robust manner.

To enable this behavior, building blocks to ‘login’, ‘logout’ and ‘lock sessions’ have been added:
LEAPWORK_product_shot_flow

Agent settings also now include an option to either manually or automatically login using a Windows account, and optionally lock sessions automatically after disconnecting from Agents:

LEAPWORK_product_shot_agent_settings

This login and logout functionality works even with machines that have just been started or rebooted, without any prior user sessions, from Windows 7 SP1 and onwards. This makes it very easy to automate tasks on virtual machines and automate testing of complex, data-driven single-sign on (SSO) scenarios.

Note that the functionality is based on a Windows “credentials provider” which does not circumvent any security measures in Windows; it simply lets Leapwork interact directly with the login/logout security feature built-in to Windows.

With this new security addition, support for Leapwork Agent passwords will begin deprecation and is expected to be removed from the product before the end of the year.

Additional features and improvements

On top of the major features described above, the 2020.1 release also features a number of changes, including the ability to globally rename sub-flows, new API endpoints, and multiple other improvements.

Improved support for Salesforce and Dynamics AX

The 2020.1 release includes a number of improvements to “locator” patterns for finding complex web elements such as custom drop-downs in Salesforce and Dynamics AX. The release also includes improved handling and performance in other web applications with very heavy DOM structures.

Environments are now Agents

Based on a lot of feedback from you and because it was just generally a confusing term, we have renamed the “Environments” section in LEAPWORK Studio to “Agents” and updated the REST API with new endpoints to reflect this as well:

LEAPWORK_product_shot_agents

Changes to the REST API

The REST API has been updated with version 4 endpoints to support the new run lists and advanced scheduler, as well as the transition away from using the term “Environments” in reference to Agents.

product_shot_restAPI

As a result of the introduction of version 4, version 3 of the REST API will begin deprecation and is expected to be removed from the product before the end of the year.

Rename sub-flows globally

It is now possible to rename sub-flows globally from the asset tree by right-clicking and selecting “Rename” or pressing F2. It should be noted that only sub-flows that have not been locally renamed in individual flows (by double-clicking on the building block title) will be renamed.

Added support for Azure SQL Service

The Enterprise Edition of Leapwork, which is built for Microsoft SQL Server, now also supports running on Azure SQL Service, the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering from Microsoft. This comes on top of the existing support for on-premise and cloud deployments of SQL Server in Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings from all vendors.

Improved support for authentication with Azure AD

The 2020.1 release includes several access control improvements for those using Azure AD, and, in a few cases, for those using on-premise AD.

Improved revision history performance

For larger installations of Leapwork, revision history databases have historically grown to very large sizes, which could lead to slowness and management issues with SQLite. Disk space use and general performance of the revision history databases have been significantly improved in the 2020.1 release.

Requires .NET Framework 4.8

The 2020.1 release includes a lot of improvements to performance as well as many bug-fixes to underlying systems. For this reason, Leapwork needs the .NET Framework 4.8 to run. For more information about system requirements, see this KB article which includes a download link for the .NET Framework.

Resolved customer incidents

In the 2020.1 release, we have resolved the following customer incidents:

  • Product release notifications were being sent to non-admin users
  • The login-logout block was not working if the screen was locked
  • Web alert pop-ups appeared then disappeared without performing the required operation
  • For customers using the REST API, HTTP request block headers were being duplicated, causing these requests to return a 500 error
  • In the latest version of SQL, queries returned the first row twice
  • Automating Windows login/logout caused Agent process issues for some users

  • Some AD users with DOMAIN/USERNAME formatting could not be authenticated

  • Some Azure AD users could not be authenticated on servers hosted on Azure

  • Multiple filters in the Reporting section did not work as expected in some scenarios

  • Queuing scheduled runs using the API did not work as expected

  • The start building block “Use any opened” did not work as expected

  • HTTP request block with “content-type: application/json” did not work as expected

  • Selecting ranges in Excel from top to bottom caused issues in some scenarios

  • Running scheduled web flows on machines with locked user sessions failed in some scenarios

  • Capturing and executing flows in some SAP scenarios did not work as expected

  • Load time for large amounts of flows in the Studio was excessive in some scenarios

  • Memory dump analysis showed a memory leak in the Agent process

  • Re-running a previous version of a flow did not show the correct version on the canvas in reporting

  • Some users saw wrong product/protocol version error messages in specific configurations

  • Re-running a schedule with distribution to multiple Agents did not work as expected

  • Passing arguments to the “Start Web Browser” building block did not work in some scenarios

  • Upgrading from version 2019.1 to 2019.2 failed in some edge-case scenarios

  • Web blocks failed intermittently on web applications with very heavy DOM in some scenarios

  • Leapwork Studio crashed when capturing elements in a newly opened tab on a specific web application

  • Flow execution time when running on BrowserStack was reported wrong in some scenarios

  • Clicking on elements in SAP GUI failed in some scenarios when running on remote Agents

  • Capturing web elements in a second pop-up window failed in some scenarios

  • Leapwork now supports Chrome version 84 and FireFox version 79

Experience LEAPWORK 2020.1

How we release


Feature releases

Major releases are typically released two to three times a year. The latest major release is 2020.2.

Bug fixes and patches

Minor updates, bug fixes, and patches, are bundled together for release when ready.

Release frequency

We aim to publish service release updates about once a month.

Architecture and implementation documentation

Architecture

Learn more about Leapwork by diving into its three automation areas: web, desktop UI, or virtual desktops.

Software install guides

Install and set up the Leapwork Automation Platform in a few easy steps.

Full documentation

The complete documentation of the Leapwork automation platform for the latest version release.