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Welcome to issue #69 of the ABS DevOps/SCM/Sustainability E-Newsletter


A Better Solution introduced major releases of their flagship products ClearTrigger 14.0 on 10/12/2024 and iDeployIt 2.0 on 12/02/2024.

A Better Solution holds steady with their DevOps product iApproveIt 1.0 and SCM product ClearReplica 12.1 for IBM ClearCase.


ClearTrigger provides IBM Rational ClearCase Trigger Control

View a 21 minute movie about ClearTrigger... ABS Introduces ClearTrigger 14.0
Enterprise ClearCase Trigger Control


ClearTrigger provides Enterprise Policy Control and Real-time mobile-phone enabled policy for ClearCase.

Release 14.0 is a major release. Recently added features include:

iApproveIt Features Implemented. ClearTrigger's built-in integration with iApproveIt functionality allows all triggers to provide and receive real-time email and mobile-phone-enabled input to create real-time user interactive policy. You no longer have to wait hours/days for approval when managers and approvers can be notified and directly interact with trigger policy in real-time. You can now create Real-time mobile-phone enabled policy for ClearCase.
Functionality Bits:
"ClearCase Region" Processing. ClearTrigger was modified so that existing Restriction List that could execute policy based on Users, Groups, VOBs, Elements, Views or Times can now also be limited base on ClearCase Region Patterns or Environmental Variable Values as well. This functionality was added to:
33 Additional ClearTrigger Environmental Variables were added for use in your own trigger scripts. These were the most often requested variables and are available for you to use in your triggers without you having to make additional cleartool calls or do anything to calculate them yourself.
Other significant features and improvements...

Read more on ClearTrigger or view a 21 minute movie View a 21 minute movie about ClearTrigger... here.

ClearTrigger released on
iDeployIt is a flexible Software Deployment DevOps product for today's software deployment scenarios.

View a 3 minute movie about iDeployIt... ABS Introduces iDeployIt 2.0
A Better Way to Deploy Software


iDeployIt is a flexible Software Deployment DevOps product for today's software deployment scenarios. It allows for local distributions and complex remote multi-server environments deliveries. It provides business logic gates to control and configure software before, during and after deployment, using configurable triggers. iDeployIt integrates with all CM tools or build processes providing version control extraction, software building and post-delivery customization as part of a deployment.

Some new or recent features for release 2.0 include:

  • Real-time Web-Enabled Interface provides a real-time central location to view and compare current and previous deployments and the ability to dig-down and view details of any Deployment.
  • Natural Language CMD Interface provides a simple CMD for starting deployments where you can simply provide the Key Number or Product Name, Destination Location and Release String to deploy a product.
  • Completely Free Receiver Infrastructure is always included for iDeployIt. There is only a cost for the shipping license. There is no license or agent cost for receivers so you can deploy to as many locations as needed.
  • Triggerable Events During Deployment provide opportunities to customize the deployment process before, during and after the deployment. You can customize parts of the deployment at the origination and/or destination locations.
  • Integrates with all CM and Build Tools through an open interface that allow iDeployIt to easily call external products thus adding that products functionality to a "Deployment" while also allowing external products to easily call iDeployIt thus adding "Deployment Functionality" to that product.
  • Multiple parallel shippers/receivers are allowed to improve performance, take advantage of available bandwidth, provide location-specific policy or added security.
  • Drill-down Deployment Details reporting allows you to get to the root cause of a deployment problem in 1-2 clicks.
  • Historical View Windows allow you to view and compare current and previous deployments in real-time as well as provide the ability to drill-down and view details of any Deployment.
  • Deployment Details Dialogs show real-time deployment details with graphical representations of each step and the deployment as a whole. See Deployment Log entries containing details of the deployment including custom content written directly from your deployment scripts.
  • Detailed Bill-of-Materials Dialogs allow you to quickly view all files, directories and deployment triggers that were selected for the deployment.
  • Time Usage Graph Dialogs allow you to identify bottlenecks with easy-to-read Pie Charts. Quickly identify steps that took a significant amount of time and view their details with a single click.
  • Push or Pull Continuous Build or Deployment Capabilities are easily implemented because iDeployIt can call any CM tool to extract a configuration to deploy and those tool call iDeployIt to initial a deployment.
  • Versioned Controlled Deployments allow for repeatable redeployments and easy rollbacks.
  • Fine Grained User Permissions enable you to control who can deploy what products and where those products can be deployed.


Read more on iDeployIt or view a 3 minute movie View a 3 minute movie about iDeployIt... here.

iDeployIt released on
iApproveIt Provides Instant Process and Approval Control.

ABS Continues with iApproveIt 1.0
Instant Real-Time Process and Approval Control


iApproveIt is an application that allows for the real-time interactive approval and notification of watched or controlled events. The insertion of such control was previously cumbersome because it was performed via email which required the email receiver to respond before the process could continue which resulted in delays if the receiver was not currently at their desk to read and respond to the email. Furthermore, the receiver (or approver) could not guarantee that their approval or disapproval of the action was adhered to as emails can be lost, misinterpreted or even ignored.

With iApproveIt, Real-Time Interactive Notifications can be sent directly to an approver's phone or associated channel without having to know the approver's mobile phone number or channel link and the approvers wishes are automatically adhered to in real-time thus lowering process approval and real notification from minutes or hours to just seconds.

Some of the features for release 1.0 include:


Read more on iApproveIt.

iApproveIt released on
A low-cost feature-rich alternative to ClearCase Multisite

View a 12 minute movie about ClearReplica... ABS Continues with ClearReplica 12.1
Alternative to ClearCase Multisite


ClearReplica provides a low-cost feature-rich alternative to ClearCase Multisite.

Release 12.1 is a minor release. Recently added features include:

Enhanced shipper-side and receiver-side replication control of selected labels, branches and attributes.
Site Replication Control for:
  • lock/unlock of lbtypes
  • lock/unlock of brtypes
  • lock/unlock of attypes
  • rmelem rmver rmbranch
  • rm/rntype lb/br/at types
Performance Enhancements.
Smaller foot-print.

Read more on ClearReplica or view a 12 minute movie View a 12 minute movie about ClearReplica... here.

ClearReplica released on