Release Notes

Managed IoT Cloud is usually released every three weeks and in this section you can find the release notes for all releases.

Version 2.61 (2020-11-03)

Important notices

The Cloud API will be removed 30 April 2021.

The Cloud API and all its endpoint have been announced deprecated during 2019. We now announce that it will be removed 30 April 2021. Please review your code to ensure you are not using the Cloud API. Kindly use Cloud REST API and Graph QL API instead.

“Last heard from” name change

The “Last heard from” / “Last heard” in App Board is renamed to “Last update” to ensure the timestamp better reflect its real meaning and interpretation. The timestamp is based on the latest time stamp in the Thing shadow reported state, but excluding connection_status since it can be set by LWT (Last Will and Testament) and therefore is unreliable.

This means we introduce a minor change too: We exclude updates to the desired state when doing the timestamp calculation for “Last update”.

We hope “Last update” will be clearer to all users and an overall UX improvement.

Technical documentation available online

All technical documentation for Managed IoT Cloud, including API specifications, Release Notes, and Getting Started Guides, are available online: https://docs.telenorconnexion.com/mic/

Patch Release 2.60.1

An issue related to the Permissions release was identified and a patch resolving it was deployed on 2020-10-14. The issue resulted in users not being displayed on the Users page under certain circumstances.

Patch Release 2.60.2

Two issues in App Board was identified and a patch resolving these was deployed on 2020-10-19:

Maps in App Board not being displayed properly.
Assigning a role to a Pending user on the Users page in App Board.

Features

Permissions updates

After the launch of Permissions in version 2.61 we have improved both usability and documentation of the new capability.

One of the items in the known limitations list have been solved, below described as it reads in the Permissions Guide.

Some endpoints and actions in the Cloud REST API documentation miss clear specification on what Privileges are needed. This includes optional Privileges on some endpoints.

The Permissions guide will be updated to reflect the above.

In addition the following updates and bug fixes are included in the release:

Updated documentation in the Permissions API clarifying that updating the domainId of the privilege is not allowed.
Updated the configuration of StorageRetention Privilege in App Board to not include any domain selection (since this Privilege has no relation to domain).
Fixed issue with sorting order of Roles and Privileges. The Roles and Privileges listings are now alphanumeric sort with no concern taken to casing.
Fixed issue in Role detail page. Adding a user by searching and quickly hitting return could under certain circumstances leave you with a blank screen.
A few minor UX updates to the App Board Roles section

Documentation on Permissions

Guide to Permissions
User Guide MIC App Board
Presentation “Introduction to Permissions” (available on request as a pdf document)

Further Permissions capabilities will be added

Permissions will be extended with more capabilities over time, both by tackling known limitations and adding new capabilities. Please get in touch should you miss any specific capability.

Minor improvements and corrections

Minor enhancements and bug fixes are delivered by the new release, including:

Fixed time-out issue in the Thing Type list under certain circumstances.
Fixed issue in Thing Type Management under Settings. When clicking cancel on the resource details page, nothing happened. Now you come back to the resource listing as expected.
Fixed issue in Thing Type modal where multiple Thing Types where created if user clicked SAVE button really fast multiple times.
Fixed issue with mouse-over in the dynamic widget configuration.
Fixed issue with wrong font in widget edit under certain circumstances.
Fixed issue is the drop-down menus where clicking the scrollbar closed the menu.
The deprecated MQTT endpoint is removed from App Board About dialogue and documentation.
Fixed issues with old manifest URL being present in some documentation.

Version 2.60 (2020-10-06)

Important notices

Technical documentation available online

All technical documentation for Managed IoT Cloud, including API specifications, Release Notes, and Getting Started Guides, are available online: https://docs.telenorconnexion.com/mic/

Features

Permissions

With this release, we announce the general availability of the Permissions functionality (formerly called Advanced Permissions).

Background

Access to Things in MIC is controlled by a hierarchical domain tree. A user has a home domain, and any access the user has applies to their home domain and all child domains. Access does not flow upward in the tree, nor does it extend to any sibling domains. Until the launch of Permissions, MIC has supported two roles: Read and Read/Write. A user could have only one of them, and it applied to the user’s home domain and any child domains.

Access Control Capabilities

With Permissions, we now introduce further capabilities to control user access.

Fine-grained access control within domains, e.g. allowing access to things, but not to device management
Cross-domain access, e.g. letting a user in one part of the domain tree access data in a different part of the domain tree

Roles & Privileges

Privileges are given to users through Roles. Before Permissions, these roles were limited to Read and Read/Write (now called System Roles), and they applied to the user’s domain (now called home domain). These two System Roles still exist, but Permissions introduces the ability to create additional roles that can be configured by customers. A user can have many different roles, and the privileges of these roles are applied in an additive method. For example, a user with the ReadWrite role in domain A can be given an additional Role that grants privileges in domain B (domain B being a sibling to A).

Each Role has one or more Privileges. The Privileges define what the Role allows a user to do. A Privilege applies to an object type, e.g. “Users”, “Thing Pub/Sub”, or “Observations" (historic Thing data). A Privilege can apply to either the user’s home domain or to any other specified domain.

Scope of first launch

The first launch includes both the fine-grained access and the cross-domain access capabilities facilitated through Privileges. The focus of the release is enabling the new capabilities while ensuring that all pre-Permissions capabilities continue to work seamlessly. All customers can start using the new capabilities introduced, but it shall be noted that some limitations are present (see below).

App Board is intended as a management console for Permissions and user access control. In addition, all capabilities are available through the API, provided with online documentation and a guide. App Board and existing customer applications using the MIC API will work as normal without any need to be updated. To benefit from the new Permissions capabilities, updates are typically needed.

Limitations

Permissions have some important restrictions and limitations

It is not possible to remove the System Role from a user. All users must have one System Role on their home domain.
A role can only have one privilege of each object type. If a user needs Privileges to the same object type (e.g. Things) in more than one domain, multiple roles will need to be used, each containing one Privilege of the desired object type.
If a domain that is used in a ThingPubSub privilege is moved or the domain ID is changed, the privilege will be broken and will have to be removed and recreated.
The ThingPubSub privilege relies on a policy document to work. The policy document has a strict size limitation. If a created or updated privilege results in a policy document that exceeds the size limit, the action will throw a POLICY_DOCUMENT_LIMIT_EXCEEDED error. You then have to adjust one of the following three factors to achieve a successful result:
- The length of the domain ID specified in the privilege
- The depth of each domain in the domain tree
- A user can only have 7 roles with a ThingPubSub privilege.

Further details on limitations is available in the online documentation.

Please note

There are some changes to the APIs formerly released under BETA status, meaning that you will need to revise your code if you have started to experiment with the Permissions API under BETA status.
On App Board Users page, we have removed the Role column. You can find all roles of the user in the user details modal. The system role is present under “Role” and other roles under “Additional roles”.

Documentation on Permissions

Guide to Permissions
User Guide MIC App Board
Presentation “Introduction to Permissions” (available on request as a pdf document)

Further Permissions capabilities will be added

Permissions will be extended with more capabilities over time, both by tackling known limitations and adding new capabilities. Please get in touch should you miss any specific capability.

Minor improvements and corrections

Minor enhancements and bug fixes are delivered by the new release, including:

Fixed issues preventing Networked Things from being created when the MIC instance was using the IoT Gateway.

Version 2.58 & 2.59 (2020-08-25)

Important notices

Technical documentation available online

All technical documentation for Managed IoT Cloud, including API specifications, Release Notes, and Getting Started Guides, are available online: https://docs.telenorconnexion.com/mic/

Features

Advanced Permissions (BETA) -> Will be named “Permissions”

Work is ongoing to complete a first official version of our new Permissions functionality (formerly called Advanced Permissions). Quality assurance and documentation is ongoing. We aim to launch first version in next release and will update you on the progress.

Please note that there will be a few changes to the APIs released under BETA status, meaning that you will need to revise your code if you have started to experiment with the new Permissions API.

Please see the API Documentation for further details.

Minor improvements and corrections

Minor enhancements and bug fixes are delivered by the new release, including:

Improved how App Board displays certain rules that can only be created/managed thorough the API
Fixed issue in App Board preventing creation of continuous Jobs (for device management)
Fixed issue with App Board Update Thing dialog when updating Things using Network Integration option

Version 2.57 (2020-06-16)

Important notices

Technical documentation available online

All technical documentation for Managed IoT Cloud, including API specifications, Release Notes, and Getting Started Guides, are available online: https://docs.telenorconnexion.com/mic/

Patch Release 2.56.1

An issue with backdating of observations was identified and corrected with this patch release, deployed on 2020-05-28. Under certain circumstances, the issue stopped backdated observations from being properly stored in MIC, elevating the importance and criticality of the patch. We apologize for any inconvenience this problem may have caused and kindly ask you to reach out to our support if you have any further questions.

General info and guide on how to use backdated observations: https://docs.telenorconnexion.com/mic/thing-api/topics/#backdating-observations

Features

Improved support for NB-IoT Networks through IoT Gateway

Additional configuration parameters has been added to the integration with IoT Gateway. With the new release, users are allowed to configure all relevant parameters supported by the integration as part of the downlink transform function. It is important to note that all Things within the Thing Type will have (and share) the same transform function and configuration parameters, as the transform is defined per Thing Type.

Furthermore, naming of the different LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) network options have been clarified both in App Board configuration and in the API. They all reside under the new umbrella name “Network Integration”.

Advanced Permissions (BETA)

Work is ongoing to complete a first official version of our new Advanced Permissions functionality. To ensure proper quality assurance and documentation, and furthermore, to avoid deploying a large new functional block just before key stakeholders’ summer breaks, we are targeting a first release after the summer.

Please note that there will be a few changes to the APIs released under BETA status, meaning that you will need to revise your code if you have started to experiment with the new Permissions API.

Please see the API Documentation for further details.

Minor improvements and corrections

Minor enhancements and bug fixes are delivered by the new release, including:

Improved the way the Rule Engine handles failures in processing observations

Version 2.56 (2020-05-26)

Important notices

Technical documentation available online

All technical documentation for Managed IoT Cloud, including API specifications, Release Notes and Getting Started Guides, are available online: https://docs.telenorconnexion.com/mic/

Features

Advanced Permissions (BETA)

Please note that there will be a few changes to the APIs released under BETA status, meaning that you will need to revise your code if you have started to experiment with the new Permissions API.

Please see the API documentation for further details.

Minor improvements and corrections

Minor enhancements and bug fixes are delivered by the new release, including:

Fixed issue preventing creation of data export jobs for domains with an ID containing dots (“.”)
Fixed issue with App Board Analyzer when using nested resources with the subthingType attribute