K2 Five (5.3) Release Notes

  • 16 February 2021
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K2 Five (5.3) Release Notes

KB002966

PRODUCT
K2 Five 5.3

 

Introduction

K2 is proud to release K2 Five (5.3), our release that builds on K2 Five and focuses on making it easy to build and use K2 solutions. Use these release notes to download the product, request a product key, and read about new features, including upgrade information and links to helpful resources about K2 Five (5.3).

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Download the installer from K2 Partner and Customer Portal.
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If you're upgrading from K2 4.7 you will need a new license key to install K2 Five (5.3). Get a license from K2 Partner and Customer Portal.
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Main Features

K2 Five (5.3) adds new features and enhancements that help you deliver powerful solutions across your business. Below are some of the main features added in K2 Five (5.3). For a detailed list of the features below and enhancements, please see What's New in K2 Five (5.3)

 

K2 Workflow Designer

  • Save As: Save time by using the new Save As feature in the workflow designer to save a copy of an existing workflow as a new workflow. If you need to create a new workflow with similar requirements to an existing workflow, you can use Save As to copy the existing workflow as a starting point for your new workflow. The workflow references, variables, and steps are copied over, however, you must configure the Start step of the copied workflow and potentially other steps as well. For more information see Create a copy of a Workflow.
  • Task Action result: You can use the Action Result field, which contains the workflow action taken by the task recipient, in multi-steps for events that follow a User Task. Find this new field in the Task User section of the Context Browser and use it, for example, to audit user task decisions or to send confirmation emails. For more information, see How To: Use the Action Result Property to Update a SharePoint List.
   
 

Security and Governance

  • Improve security in your environment by controlling who can Create SmartObjects, views, and forms in the K2 Designer. This new right is part of the Authorization Framework. (With the addition of the Create right, the Publish option for SmartObject Security in K2 Management > Integration > SmartObject Security is deprecated). For more information on the expected upgrade behavior and required configuration, please see KB002667.
  • View Execute rights: This new right gives you the ability to control who is allowed to open and run views. Set the Execute:Deny right or the Execute:Allow right to control who can run views. If Execute:None is set, the user will not be able to run the view or form.
    If you are upgrading from an existing K2 environment, execute rights on categories already exist and views inherit execute permissions from the parent category. You can, as a security administrator, configure permissions on specific views after upgrading.
  • Security Audit SmartObject: Monitor and report on your K2 system's security changes. The Security Audit SmartObject generates an audit log allowing Security Administrators to see who made security changes, when these changes occurred, and the items on which the changes were made.
   
 

Integration

   
 
 

Installer

  • In this release, software prerequisites have changed, support for certain third-party software has been removed, and newer versions of third-party software is now supported. The installer prevents upgrades from previous versions of K2 that do not meet the supported requirements. See the Compatibility Matrix for a list of supported software for K2 5.3. Here is a summary of the changes:
    • Microsoft Windows
      Unsupported:  Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 (the installer will prevent installing or upgrading if these operating systems are detected)
      Supported: Windows Server 2019 
    • SQL Server
      Unsupported: SQL Server 2012 (the installer will prevent installing or upgrading if this version of SQL server is detected)
      Supported:  Support for SQL Server 2014 is ending in July 2019. Until then, K2 will continue to support it and you will be able to install K2 Five 5.3 using that version. However, note that the SmartBox row-level security functionality in K2 Five is built upon functionality that is only available in SQL Server 2016 SP1 or later.
    • Microsoft Exchange
      Unsupported: Exchange 2013 (the installer will prevent installing or upgrading if this version of Exchange is detected)
      Supported: Microsoft Exchange 2016 and 2019
    • Microsoft SharePoint Server 2019
      Supported: SharePoint Server 2019
    • Microsoft .NET
      .NET Core 2.1.7 or later is a new requirement (this .NET version is required for the new internal Configuration Service and you will not be able to install or upgrade K2 without installing this .NET Core version)

 

 

What you need to know when upgrading

  • You can upgrade to K2 Five (5.3) from K2 4.7 or K2 Five (5.0, 5.1 or 5.2).
  • You cannot upgrade directly from K2 4.7 to K2 5.3 if you have 4.7 installed on-premises with the K2 database in Azure SQL. In this case, you must first upgrade your K2 4.7 installation to K2 Five (5.0), then upgrade to K2 Five (5.1), then upgrade to K2 Five (5.2), and then upgrade to K2 Five (5.3).
  • If you are upgrading from a previous K2 version other than K2 Five 5.2, ensure you read the previous release notes to understand the install changes, considerations, changes in the product and requirements in each prior release. Here are the links to the previous release notes, K2 Five (5.0), K2 Five (5.1) and K2 Five (5.2) and KB002045.
  • When upgrading ensure your environment is fully functional and not in a broken state. For example, if you are on K2 Five (5.1) and run the configure option from the installer and errors occur, or the option does not complete successfully, upgrading to a newer version will not fix the environment. Upgrade after fixing the issues in the current K2 environment.
  • .NET Core 2.1.7 or later is a new prerequisite and the installer will prevent you from installing or upgrading if you do not have it installed. The .NET Core 2.1.7 is required for the Configuration Service.
  • The K2 installer blocks installations if your SQL Azure databases do not meet the minimum requirements. See the Compatibility and Support Matrix for the minimum supported version.
  • Before upgrading to K2 Five (5.3) ensure all app items in the category All Items/Apps/K2/Framework/Core, including all child categories of the Core category, are checked in. Failure to do so will result in a failed upgrade. See KB002419 for the resolution if you have already upgraded before checking in the artifacts.
  • If you are using K2 for SharePoint and upgrading from K2 4.7, there is an updated app available. You must upgrade the K2 for SharePoint app and re-run the K2 for SharePoint Registration Wizard.
  • If you are upgrading from K2 Five (5.0, 5.1 or 5.2) and use the K2 for SharePoint app, do not run App Deployment, but only run the Registration Wizard after upgrading.
  • K2 Five (5.3) introduces some styling and feature terminology changes. Because of this, your forms may look slightly different after upgrading and you will notice different terminology when formatting controls, views, and forms. After upgrading to K2 Five (5.3), you can decide if and how you want to update your forms, but no immediate changes are necessary. For more information see KB003071 - Understanding the impact of the new SmartForms Text Styles

Installer Resolved Items in K2 Five (5.3) (5.0004.1000.2)

The following issues were resolved in the .2 version of the installer: 

  • SQL Aliases are now supported when upgrading to K2 Five (5.3)
  • Encryption SQL Script fails with error "Cannot insert NULL Value into column 'AccessToken' , table 'K2.Authorization.OAuthAppOnlyToken': column does not allow nulls. UPDATE fails." when upgrading from an older K2 version.

Installer Resolved Items in K2 Five (5.3) (5.0004.1000.3)

The following items were addressed in the .3 version of the installer:

  1. Enhancements to the installer were made to allow extra characters for license keys with expiration dates beyond 12/31/2022.
  2. The Microsoft Exchange April Update caused a breaking change in the installer when running the Analysis Tool.

Installer Resolved Items in K2 Five (5.3) (5.0004.1000.4)

The following items were addressed in the .4 version of the installer:

  1. After upgrading to 5.3 (5.0004.1000.3), after completing errors relating to an invalid object name on SQL occurred.
After installing K2 Five (5.3) install the latest cumulative update and fix packs.
 

Fix Packs

Fix Packs contain fixes for issues reported in K2 Five (5.3). K2 recommends that you test these Fix Packs before you deploy to a production environment. For a listing of fix packs for this version of K2 Five, see KB003094.


Learn more

 


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