SaaSGrid News & Announcements

SaaSGrid Release Notes New Location

Matt Ammerman — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:48:00 GMT

Starting today, June 22, 2010, with release 1.9 of SaaSGrid and SaaSGrid Express Beta, the release notes will posted on the SaaSGrid Release Notes blog. Please look there for 1.9.0 release notes and future release notes.

Thank you,

Apprenda Client Services.

Release Notes - March 1, 2010

Paul Miles — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:12:00 GMT

We are pleased to announce the release of SaaSGrid 1.8.1! Our testing sandbox located at http://saasgridpreview.com has been updated to this version. SaaSGrid licensees are encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible and can contact SaaSGrid Support for the new distribution.

Major Features

As this is a minor release, no major features have been introduced.

Minor Features

We continually strive to improve the SaaSGrid development and usage experience, and have made numerous minor changes to the platform based mostly on the feedback of our customers. This release of SaaSGrid introduces the following minor changes:

The Deployer now validates for missing configuration token replacement, preventing the possible deployment of services with an incomplete configuration definition.
The Service Container now better releases unused ports upon shutdown to avoid port locking problems.
Introduced general usability, browser support, and formatting enhancements to the Provider and Tenant Portals and SaaSGrid Operations Console.

Bug Fix Highlights

The following is a list of selected bugs that are fixed in this particular release of SaaSGrid.

Promotion of an archive with no user interface is now permitted (an empty folder was previously required for applications with no user interface).
Log messages from the Router did not include the version ID, prohibiting them from being filtered correctly.
Packaging error prohibiting SaaSGrid Settings page from loading was resolved.
Packaging error prohibiting NHibernate 2.x based applications from deploying correctly was resolved.
Add Plan and Add Section buttons on Pricebook page now correctly show images.
Cookie parsing problem when Silverlight application was loaded after logging in or resetting password has been resolved.
Invoice listing shows customer name for invoices generated by subscription renewals (note that this is a display issue only).
The Patch Builder is now disabled for versions of applications in Test or Production stage.
Errors originating from a User Interface now consistently include Session, Tenant, and User ID.
Promotion from Test to Production left behind old service instances in certain situations.
Rollback operations for a failed promotion from Test to Production have been improved.
It is now no longer possible to impersonate context for Sessions instantiated via the Remote API.
SaaSGrid consistently returns 200 HTTP status code for all Silverlight client requests that generate service fault exceptions.

Future Releases

Minor releases will continue for SaaSGrid 1.8 every 4 to 6 weeks. The next major release of SaaSGrid is expected in mid-May 2010. The following major features can be expected:

Improvements to Manual Invoicing: applications using manual invoicing will no longer have their subscriptions managed by SaaSGrid as the workflow pertaining to this is quite limited. SaaSGrid will feature improved subscription management capability for providers to address many limitations in this issue.
Improved Installation Mechanism and Tools: a new SaaSGrid installer will help provision and configure new SaaSGrid installations. Additionally, a new tool to assist in packaging application archives will be introduced.
Relaxed Application Definition Rules: SaaSGrid licensees can now use SaaSGrid to deploy applications containing any configuration of user interfaces, services, and databases.
Patching System Enhancements: Many improvements to the SaaSGrid patching system are forthcoming including: population of test data for patched application versions, the ability to add and delete application components, and the ability to upload an archive to define a patch.
SQL Server 2008 Type Support: All native 2008 features of SQL Server will be supported. Note it is currently possible to use SQL Server 2008, but not specific types introduced by it (e.g. geospatial).
SaaSGrid Operation Center Enhancements: Additional administrative capability will be made available.

Also expect in the forthcoming months documentation improvements and an announcement regarding .NET 4.0 Support.

Please contact your Customer Champion or Account Representative with feedback about what features you would like to see in a future release of SaaSGrid.

Release Notes - February 2, 2010

Paul Miles — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:11:00 GMT

We are pleased to announce the release of SaaSGrid 1.8! Our testing sandbox located at http://saasgridpreview.com has been updated to this version. SaaSGrid licensees are encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible and can contact SaaSGrid Support for the new distribution.

Major Features

This release of SaaSGrid introduces the following major features:

Multiple Currency Support: Application Pricebooks can now be tied to one of the following currencies listed below. Accordingly all other information derived from the amounts configured on the Pricebook will show the correct currency, such as application invoices.
- Australian Dollar
- Brazilian Real
- Canadian Dollar
- Chinese Yuan
- Euro
- Hong Kong Dollar
- Indian Rupee
- Israeli Shekel
- Japanese Yen
- Mexican Sterling
- Pound Sterling (British Pound)
- Russian Ruble
- United States Dollar
Deployment Enhancements: The display of the main Deployer window has been enhanced to show status of the individual operations. Log messages are grouped with each requested operation. This should greatly improve the usability of the Deployer.
Operations Center Enhancements: The Service Catalog section of the SaaSGrid Operations Center has been fully implemented. It is also possible to create event log overrides as well.
Custom URL for Applications: Customers who purchase your application can now specify a custom domain name that they can use to access it on-line.
NHibernate 2.x Support: NHibernate 2 can now be used as an object-relational mapper tool for database driven applications. This is the third ORM technology natively supported by SaaSGrid; the other two are NHibernate 1.x and LINQ-to-SQL.

Minor Features

Billing Service Improvements: Error messaging relating to the usage of payment methods that are no longer valid have been enhanced to provide clarity as to why the appropriate invoice could not be paid.
Hidden Pricebook Components: It is possible to prevent a Pricebook component from being displayed during the purchasing process. This can be useful if you wish to track a particular feature but not indicate it to the customer. It can also be useful if you want to phase out a feature for the purpose of sales yet still need to include it to permit usage of part of the application.
Enhanced Checkout Process: Besides incorporating multi-currency, the layout of the checkout process pages has been improved.

Bug Fix Highlights

The following is a list of selected bugs that are fixed in this particular release of SaaSGrid.

Initial creation of environment whose DB server uses a default instance is now supported.
It is possible for a user to promote an application without the need for permission to purchase subscriptions to applications.
It is possible to set system settings whose status is checked/unchecked in the SaaSGrid Operations Center.
Recurring payments are being applied properly (also fixed as a patch to 1.7.0).
Event log entry in Provider Portal renders correctly (also fixed as a patch to 1.7.0).
Cancel purchase link that was inoperable in Chrome has been repaired.

Future Releases

Planning for the next release of SaaSGrid is still underway, and a release note for this release will be produced at the conclusion of this planning. Please contact your Customer Champion or Account Representative with feedback about what features you would like to see in a future release.

Release Notes - November 15, 2009

Paul Miles — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:44:00 GMT

We are pleased to announce the release of SaaSGrid 1.7! Our testing sandbox located at http://saasgridpreview.com has been updated to this version. SaaSGrid licencees are encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible and should contact SaaSGrid Support for the new distribution.

Major Features

This release of SaaSGrid introduces the following major features:

IIS 7 True Support: Previous releases of SaaSGrid supported IIS 7 by taking advantage of IIS 6 backwards compatibility. Sites were deployed in “classic” mode and IIS 6 Management tools were used by SaaSGrid’s programmatic control of the web server. In this release, sites will now be deployed in the native IIS 7 mode, and managed using the IIS 7 Management tools.
Unified Configuration: Previous releases of SaaSGrid were pre-configured by SaaSGrid Support, as there was no easy way to manage SaaSGrid’s disparate configuration settings across all of the components for private cloud operators. Additional tools and documentation are provided to allow private cloud operators to change the configuration of their instance of SaaSGrid.
Improved Deployment Tools: An all-new version of the SaaSGrid Deployer Tool is introduced, which provides better error reporting and verification of the operations it takes. Special macros to commission new machines and set server roles are introduced, making it easier for private-cloud operators to manage their instance of SaaSGrid.

Minor Features

Improved Error Reporting during Promotion: Numerous improvements were made to improve the clarity and detail of error messages due to a failed promotion.
Strongly Named Service Addresses: All SaaSGrid services receive a service address based on a unique identifier that makes it possible to use the Remote API to access the service. In addition to this service address, it is now possible to reference services via a predictably named address and SaaSGrid will redirect to the correct service.
Event Log Viewer: Changes have been made to the Provider Portal’s event viewer to display the application name and version instead of the unique identifier.
Browser Support: Internet Explorer 8 and Chrome join the list of supported browsers when using the Provider and Tenant Portals.
API Additions: Both the application ID and version ID are available in the API. Previously only the version ID was available.

Bug Fix Highlights

The following is a list of selected bugs that are fixed in this particular release of SaaSGrid.

Long Promotion Timeout: Archives that took extraordinarily long to promote will no longer result in the display of an error page in the Provider Portal. This is not strictly a SaaSGrid change as this requires special server configuration, and these changes have been documented in the “Physical Host Setup” guide.
Subscription Pro-rating: In some instances purchased subscriptions were being pro-rated incorrectly.
Subscription Groups View: If a subscription group had more than 20 Subscriptions, the paging did not render correctly.
Checkout Process Changes: Centering issues on the checkout page are resolved, and a payment method is no longer required on a $0 purchase.

Future Releases

The final release of SaaSGrid for this year is scheduled for December 18, 2009. Planning for this and other releases is still underway. Please contact your Customer Champion or Account Representative with feedback about what features you would like to see in a future release.

Release Notes - July 28 2009

Abe Sultan — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:32:00 GMT

This release of SaaSGrid introduces the following major features:

Native support for SOAP 1.1 across the services fabric
Application Cloud Control

Please continue reading to learn more about these features. Additionally, several minor enhancements to existing functionality and bug fixes have been completed and rolled out with this release.

Native support for SOAP 1.1

SaaSGrid has always supported communication within the services fabric using SOAP 1.2. By introducing support for SOAP 1.1 SaaSGrid is now able to expose native communication from mobile clients using WCF Mobile as well as native support for clients using technologies that communicate using the BasicHttpBinding protocols. The previous workaround of having to expose intermediary asmx web services that communicate to the backend WCF web services is no longer needed as the communication can now happen natively. In order to facilitate communicating directly with your WCF web services hosted on SaaSGrid, we've exposed endpoint addresses that are available in the Cloud Control area of the Provider Portal. Read on for more...

Application Cloud Control

The other very cool major feature released in this update is the introduction of Cloud Control. Cloud Control gives you insight into how your application is running inside the SaaSGrid ecosystem. You can get information on how to expose your web services to the public as well as information on how many instances of your services as deployed. In a production environment you can actually deploy and un-deploy service instances. This is disabled in our preview environment (saasgridpreview.com). In addition to getting information on your web services you can also get information outlining how your user interfaces and your database schemas are deployed for all of your customers. Similar to the web services layer, you can also control several components on the presentation layer and the persistence layer. You have control to move tenant's data around and partition your resources to your liking. Again, this functionality is visible, but disabled in our preview environment.

A new version of the SaaSGrid SDK has been released containing small bug fixes to the Remote API, and our published documentation for the API has been updated.

Release Notes - May 23, 2009

apprenda — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:53:00 GMT

This release of SaaSGrid introduces the following major features:

Tenant-wide pricing introduction
Checkout process changes
Subscription information display improvements
Remote API

Please continue reading to learn more about these features. Additionally, several minor enhancements to existing functionality and bug fixes have been completed and rolled out with this release.

Tenant-wide Pricing Introduction

The largest and most sweeping change in SaaSGrid for this release is the introduction of Tenant-wide Pricing.

There are now three clear pricing methodologies when monetizing applications that you produce with SaaSGrid:

User-based subscription pricing: originally available since the first release, this pricing structure is defined and applied to every user that is assigned a subscription. Access and usage of features is monitored for the user that the subscription is assigned to.
Tenant-wide pricing: newly introduced, it is now possible to require a tenant to purchase a subscription to your application. It is defined just like the user-based subscription, but access and usage of features is controlled for all users as opposed to a specific user. Note that any metered feature usage is shared among all of a tenant's users. This pricing is optional and need not be defined unless needed.
Concurrent user subscription pricing: introduced recently but now separated into a distinct pricing option, this pricing is applied to charge for the public facing interface portion of a SaaSGrid application. This pricing is optional and applies only to those applications containing a public interface, which you can learn more about here.

To support these new pricing options, changes were made on both the tenant and provider portals. The Provider Portal Pricebook section has been changed extensively to provide a clearer separation of concerns for pricebook-related functionality. Major re-work of the Subscriptions and Usage section of the tenant portal was conducted to support the new pricing options, described in more detail in a later section. Here is a screenshot of the pricebook as it appears in the Provider Portal:

Checkout Process Changes

The checkout process has also been changed extensively as summarized below:

It now supports and clarifies the three different pricing options specified above as a part of the introduction of tenant-wide features. Note that the very first time a tenant purchases a subscription, if a tenant-wide pricing definition has been specified they must purchase a tenant-wide subscription. Once doing this, they'll be able to purchase user-based subscriptions and concurrent user subscriptions.
It is possible to define a new payment method when purchasing the application, and filtering of the payment method is conducted to honor the billing preferences configured in the deployment settings of the application (see screenshot below).

Subscription Information Display Improvements

The tenant portal has always displayed basic information about a subscriptions purchased for the application. Major enhancements have been made to this area of the application:

Viewing and editing the tenant-wide subscription has been introduced and is shown in the tenant portal for applicable products.
Better navigation and separation of concerns for actions taken regarding a specific subscription have been implemented. It should now be more straight-forward for tenants to monitor the feature usage of a subscription, view invoices related to the subscription, and take actions against the subscription such as re-assignment, modification, or cancellation.
An improved user assignment screen makes it possible to assign multiple users to multiple subscriptions at the same time.

Remote API

We introduced the Remote API to permit connections to SaaSGrid applications from outside the SaaSGrid echo system. By using this API, you can use all of the API metadata remotely and communicate with web services for your particular application using external clients. This provides improved support for writing supplemental tools such as Mobile clients or desktop widgets that can communicate with applications deployed in SaaSGrid. In an upcoming release of SaaSGrid you will also be able to use the Remote API to communicate to SaaSGrid applications using SOAP 1.1 and the BasicHttpBinding.

A new version of the SaaSGrid SDK has been released containing the API, and our published documentation for the API has been updated.

Release Notes - Apr. 12, 2009

apprenda — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:00:00 GMT

This release of the SaaSGrid platform introduces the following major features:

Multiple Payment Methods
Manual Billing and Invoice Management
Deployment Settings & Application Preferences

We've also implemented a number of minor enhancements and bug fixes. Please read on to learn more about what is included in this release of SaaSGrid, as well as what will be included in the next release.

Multiple Payment Methods

Previous versions of SaaSGrid permitted only one credit card based payment method to be specified at any given time. It is now possible for tenants to create as many payment methods as they would like when editing their company profile. Tenants can choose which payment method they would like to use when purchasing applications or create an additional payment method during the purchasing process. Additionally, the payment method to use for that particular application can be specified in the application preferences page which was also introduced.

Manual Billing and Invoice Management

Providers may now create applications that do not utilize SaaSGrid's automatic billing system so that they can accept payments for their applications without requiring a merchant account. Tenants can subscribe to the application as per usual, but the subscriptions will be suspended until the provider has marked the invoice associated with the subscriptions as paid. It is also possible to indicate that an automatically billed invoice has been paid as well, effectively giving providers a way to acknowledge payment via a mechanism outside of SaaSGrid. This feature is particularly useful for providers that don't want an automatic billing system but instead prefer a manual PO/invoicing mechanism were they can accept checks or other payment mechanisms and later be able to manually reconcile the process to grant or revoke application access.

Deployment Settings & Application Preferences

Every application now has a deployment settings section in the Provider Portal under the main Product page. The ability to define the custom URL (e.g. http://myproduct.com) for the application was moved here, and additional settings for specifying the manual payment option and custom stylesheet for login pages were introduced. This section was introduced to start building out the foundation of additional configuration parameters that affect the deployment dynamics.

To read more about how to create a custom stylesheet for your application, read the article How to Create a Custom Login Screen for Your SaaSGrid Application.

In addition to the deployment settings in the Provider Portal, a new section was also introduced in the Tenant Portal to control application preferences. At this point the only preference that is available is the ability to specify the default payment mechanism on how to pay for the application but this section will also grow to include many other preferences over time.

Note: In order to see the application preferences for any application you need to have access to a newly introduced securable that was added to the Tenant Portal called "Manage Application Preferences".

Upcoming Features

The following features will be introduced in upcoming releases of the SaaSGrid platform:

Tenant-wide Features: It will be possible to tie features and their usage to all of the tenant's subscriptions instead of a specific subscription.
Custom URL's for tenant websites: Tenants will be able to specify a custom URL to access the applications they have purchased.
Remote API: A new API will be introduced for accessing SaaSGrid application information from applications external to SaaSGrid. SOAP 1.1 will be supported to permit Silverlight and WCF Mobile based applications to communicate with SaaSGrid without requiring an intermediary asax web service.
UI Enhancements for Subscription Management, Product Offerings, and Custom Login Stylesheets: Existing limitations in these areas will be addressed.
Enhanced Database Patching Support: The ability to specify multiple patch scripts will be added.

Release Notes - Mar. 9, 2009

apprenda — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 02:51:00 GMT

This release of the SaaSGrid platform introduces two major features:

Public Websites
Anonymous Concurrent User Support

Please note that a new version of the SaaSGrid SDK (Version 1.6) has been released to support these new features.

Please read on for additional information about these changes.

Public Websites

It is now possible to define an additional user interface for your SaaSGrid application that is accessible to the general public.

This web site provides a way to expose an application's information or features without having to require a login and subscription for each user. The FAQ Manager sample application demonstrates this functionality. In this sample, the tenant's user interface is responsible for maintaining a comprehensive listing of FAQ's, while the public portion simply displays the FAQ's marked as published.

Access to the public web site is limited to the number of "anonymous concurrent users" that the tenant has purchased. See the next section for additional information.

The new SaaSGrid SDK contains an updated Visual Studio template to create the public web sites. An updated SaaSGrid Mocker utility is included with the SDK as well to assist in testing access to the public web sites.

Developers can now specify and upload the public web site by including the publicinterfaces folder inside the application archive. Here is a screenshot of the application structure after the archive for the FAQ Manager sample has been uploaded:

Anonymous Concurrent User Support

The notion of "anonymous concurrent users" has been introduced in conjunction with the new public website feature above. This special subscription will allow limited access to a SaaSGrid application by those who don't have a regular subscription to the application.

Providers can set the price that is charged for each concurrent user to access the public portion of your application. The tenant can choose to purchase as many concurrent user subscriptions as necessary based on their customer's expected usage. We recommend providing guidance to your tenants on selecting an appropriate amount of concurrent users, as well as handling the scenario when there are no concurrent user subscriptions remaining to service requests.

The pricebook offering matrix will automatically show an option for configuring the price for anonymous concurrent users, as shown in the screenshot below:

A blog posting providing more information about these features has been published here.

Upcoming Features

The following features will be introduced in upcoming releases of the SaaSGrid platform:

Customization of the Login Page: providers will be able to change the appearance of the login screen to your application
Purchasing of Concurrent Users only: tenants will be able to purchase concurrent user subscriptions on a stand-alone basis
Tenant-wide Features: providers can create features that are tied to all subscriptions for the tenant (currently features are tied to a specific subscription)

Note: the next release of the SaaSGrid platform will be scheduled in advance as the date approaches to maximize system availability for our customers.

If you have a question about an upcoming feature, need additional assistance, or have any questions, please comment or post a message to our SaaSGrid Developer Center forums.

Cheers,

The Apprenda Team

Release Notes - Feb. 16, 2009

apprenda — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:10:00 GMT

This release of the SaaSGrid platform introduces two major features:

Database patching support
User interface re-branding

Please read on for additional information about these changes.

Database Patching Support

Database patching has been introduced and can be accessed via the Patch Builder interface in the runtime binaries area of the product definition, as shown in the example below:

You can upload up to three patch scripts, written in SQL, depending on what database modifications are needed for the next version of your application. Schema modification commands (e.g. adding a table) are placed in the standard patch script. Instructions that modify data before or after the schema modifications occur are placed in the pre- and post-patch scripts, respectively. Note that these commands are written against the non-co-mingled database that you use for local development. SaaSGrid will automatically enhance your scripts and apply them correctly to your co-mingled tables. This is also the reason why data changes must be separated from the schema changes.

To better understand how the three scripts are used, consider the following example of a typical database change: for a given table, an existing column must be changed to not permit NULL values, and an additional column whose value is calculated from other data is added. In this scenario, the pre-patch script would contain a statement that sets a default value for any existing NULL value in the column that will be changed. Statements that alter the table structure would go in the standard patch script. Finally, a statement to populate the newly added column would be placed in the post-patch script.

Limitations:

You cannot drop a table and then rename a table to be the same name as a table that was dropped.
Conditional statements are not supported (e.g. conditionally renaming a table) and could result in a loss of the table or column.
It is not possible to rename tables or columns within a stored procedure. Doing so results in the loss of the table or column.
It is not possible to insert data into co-mingled tables, since there is currently no way to specify which tenant(s) to apply the change to.

Enhancements that address the limitations above along with additional options to view and manipulate data will be introduced in future releases of the SaaSGrid platform.

User Interface Re-branding

The SaaSGrid portals now reference the new SaaSGrid logo along with a refreshed color scheme. An example of the top navigation bar from the Tenant Portal Dashboard appears on the left.

The sign-in and sign-up forms have been similarly enhanced as well. The new logo and color scheme brings a unified look across all of the Apprenda web sites, including the SaaSGrid Developer Center website, located at http://community.saasgrid.com.

Upcoming Features

The following is a list of features that will be introduced with the next release of the SaaSGrid platform:

Public Websites: Developers will be available to define a set of user interfaces for public access. These websites won't require authentication with SaaSGrid credentials but the access to these websites will be controlled based on the number of concurrent users using the websites. When a tenant subscribes to an application that has a public website, in addition of buying regular subscriptions for the application, they will also be able to buy a number of concurrent subscriptions to allow it's customers to access the public portion of the application.
"Anonymous Concurrent User" Support: it will now be possible to grant limited access to an application hosted on SaaSGrid without requiring a regular subscription. As a provider you can offer a public portion of your application for your customer's customers and charge accordingly based on the number of concurrent users using the public portion. An example of when this might be used is on a help desk application; many times you would like to have a section for self help where your customer's customer can access information in a limited fashion.
SaaSGrid Remote API: an additional API will be introduced to permit access to SaaSGrid information, such as the tenant context or other application data, from outside the SaaSGrid echosystem. This would allow, for example, the ability to write a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook that shows information from a task management application hosted on SaaSGrid.

A new version of the SaaSGrid SDK that incorporates these new features will be published when the next release of the SaaSGrid platform is deployed.

Note: this release of the SaaSGrid platform will be scheduled in advance to maximize system availability for our customers as the date approaches.

If you have a question about an upcoming feature, need additional assistance, or have any questions, please comment or post a message to our SaaSGrid Developer Center forums.

Cheers,

The Apprenda Team

Weekly release notes - Jan. 08, 2009

apprenda — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:54:00 GMT

New release schedule: Now that SaaSGrid is ready for GA, future releases will occur less often and be scheduled in advance to maximize system availability for our customers.

A new version of the SaaSGrid SDK has been released; there is a small breaking change on the API with the usage of features and securables to have better support for localization. The new version of the SDK introduces a small tool to help mock out the local environment. In the past this used to be done through the creation of SaaSGrid.cfg.xml files, this new tool (The SaaSGrid Mocker) is a front end to the xml files to allow for easier mocking of the development environment. You can read more on how to use it here.

In addition to upgrades to the SDK we also introduced support for LINQ to SQL usage throughout SaaSGrid as your persistence mechanism. Download Taskr With LINQ for code reference.

We ask that you download the latest version of the SDK and build your applications with it as if you are planning on deploying your application in our preview environment they will need to be built against this new version for compatibility purposes.

Lots of cool new features will be released in the next few weeks so stay tuned!

Cheers,
The Apprenda Team.

Weekly release notes - Nov 14, 2008

apprenda — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:03:00 GMT

New release schedule: Now that SaaSGrid is ready for GA, future releases will occur less often and be scheduled in advance to maximize system availability for our customers.

Lots of cool new features will be released in the next few weeks so stay tuned!

Cheers,
The Apprenda Team.

Weekly release notes - Nov. 7, 2008

apprenda — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:25:00 GMT

Every week between 4am and 7am EST on Friday mornings unless otherwise noted, the Apprenda team publishes new features, changes, and bug fixes to the SaaSGrid Technical Preview infrastructure.

Here is a list of changes that have been made since our last release, which was on October 24, 2008:

PROVIDER PORTAL

New Features

Revamped Dashboard

Statistics: the front page now displays monthly and quartely revenue amounts, grouped by whether or not the underlying invoices have been paid. The appearance and layout of all statistics has been enhanced and now appears in a "scoreboard" format.
Notifications: messages are now displayed prominently when there are unpaid invoices, or if there have been recent error or fatal logging events for any of your applications.

Billing Section Enhancements

Landing page: next steps are now displayed when visiting the billing section, reflecting the current status of your merchant accounts and invoices
Invoice listing: it is now possible to view all invoices accross all products and customers, with the option to filter by Paid/Unpaid status

Bug Fixes

Invoice listings are now paged to improve site performance
Javascript errors that prevented the event log listing from appearing have been resolved

Known Issues

For applications already in production prior to Oct. 24, it will not be possible to purchase new subscriptions for them (a server error occurs) until a merchant account is created and linked to that application.
While there are some minor display and presentation related issues that we know about, there are no other known issues in functionality that have been identified at this time.

TENANT PORTAL

New Features

Payment Method Integration

Purchasing subscriptions: A payment source must be specified prior to purchasing any subscriptions*
Manual payment processing: It is possible to submit payment for unpaid invoices via the subscription page as well as the invoice listing page
Application listing enhancement: The application listing page reflects suspended subscriptions instead of presenting the launch button

Pro-rated Billing

Unified billing cycle: If you are purchasing an additional subscription for a product with the same plan and term as another subscription, any charges are "pro-rated" and billed on the same cycle as the original subscription
Invoice line items: The pro-rated amount and its calculation is clearly shown on the invoice line items

Bug Fixes

Invoice listings are now paged to improve site performance

Known Issues

While there are some minor display and presentation related issues that we know about, there are no known issues in functionality that have been identified at this time.

* Note: It is now required to specify a merchant account (as a provider) to promote applications to production and a payment method (as a tenant) to purchase subscriptions to applications. In the SaaSGrid Preview environment, you can use any data for the merchant account ID, and you can use a Visa Credit Card, numbered 4111-1111-1111-1111 for the payment method.

Weekly release notes - Oct. 31, 2008

apprenda — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:06:00 GMT

Every week between 4am and 7am EST on Friday mornings unless otherwise noted, the Apprenda team publishes new features, changes, and bug fixes to the SaaSGrid Technical Preview infrastructure. During the technical preview phase of SaaSGrid, we are steadily continuing along our roadmap for SaaSGrid - implementing core features as well as refining existing features to enhance the experience of using the platform for both tenants and application providers.

Note: No release was made this week. Most of our production roadmap has been completed as of last week's release. We're adding reporting features for both tenants and application providers, as well as general bug fixes and UI enhancements in preparation for our first public release this weekend!

Weekly release notes - Oct. 24, 2008

apprenda — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:35:00 GMT

Since our last release on October 3, we've accomplished a lot! Major pieces of our roadmap are now in place, such as the ability to amend subscriptions, billing and invoicing, and support for custom application URL's. These new areas of functionality, coupled with other enhancements and bug fixes give you a solid foundation to work with as we approach our November 11, 2008 release date. Read on for all of the details about this week's release, and don't forget to review the "Known Issues" at the bottom - particularly if you already placed an application in production on our infrastructure.

PROVIDER PORTAL

New Features

Custom URL mapping: it is now possible for tenants to purchase and access your application at a root URL or sub-domain of your choosing (e.g. http://mycoolapp.com/ or http://myapp.companyname.com/). By default, applications are still accessible via http://saasgridpreview.com/ until you specify otherwise. We'll be publishing an article in the developer center on how to set up your DNS server to take advantage of this feature, but in the mean time please contact us if you need assistance.
Billing & invoicing: it is now possible to charge tenants for their subscriptions and optional features:

Merchant accounts: providers can create merchant accounts, which link applications (and the subscriptions for them) to a billing provider (currently Chase Paymentech). It is now necessary to link products to a merchant account prior to placing them in production. As customers purchase subscriptions and recurring charges occur, SaaSGrid will contact your billing provider to initiate the appropriate charges on your behalf.
Invoice view for providers: it is now possible to view invoices via the Customers section of the Provider Portal interface. Expect more enhancements to the invoice listing in the coming weeks, but at the present moment it is possible to see which product, plan, and amount is billed to each customer.

Duplication of pricebooks and plans: it is now possible for application providers to create a copy of a pricebook or a plan within a pricebook. We understand that many plans and pricebooks are alike, and this should be a big time-saver for most providers.

Bug fixes

Minor stability improvements in our back-end have been introduced in this release.
Help text and formatting changes have been implemented in the customer section of the Provider Portal.

Known Issues:

For applications already in production, it will not be possible to purchase new subscriptions for them (a server error occurs) until a merchant account is created and linked to that application.

TENANT PORTAL

New Features

Billing & invoicing: the purchasing process for subscribing to a product has been implemented:

Payment methods: tenants of your application can now configure a payment method. The payment method is billed when subscriptions are purchased or automatically billed.
Invoice view for tenants: subscribers to your applications can see their invoices in the Applications section of the Tenant Portal interface.
Suspended subscriptions: if tenants purchase a subscription but do not have a payment method defined, or payment processing fails, the applicable subscription(s) are suspended. Until the invoice linked to the subscription is paid in full, the tenant cannot launch and access the application.
Trial plans and subscriptions to your own application: the charges for trial plans or subscriptions to your own application are waived during the checkout process.

Subscription amendments: it is now possible for tenants to make changes to their subscriptions. Any additional charges that result as a part of the amendment process are billed, and the amendments are propogated to the appropriate application. Amendments include a change in the plan that is subscribed to, as well as the purchase of optional features.

Bug fixes

Minor formatting and layout changes have been implemented.
Trial plans are correctly indicated as such when attempting to purchase them.

Known Issues:

It is currently not possible to list the subscriptions that an invoice applies to.
Account information that is entered for the payment method is currently visible after submission (not obfuscated).
It is possible to specify or edit payment information and save it, but it is not possible to save again until the page is reloaded

Weekly release notes - Oct. 17, 2008

apprenda — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:21:00 GMT

Every week between 4am and 7am EST on Friday mornings unless otherwise noted, the Apprenda team publishes new features, changes, and bug fixes to the SaaSGrid Technical Preview infrastructure. During the technical preview phase of SaaSGrid, we are steadily continuing along our roadmap for SaaSGrid - implementing core features as well as refining existing features to enhance the experience of using the platform for both tenants and application providers.

Note: No release was made this week. In order to ensure more-than-adequate testing of the new features listed below, we've decided to defer release until this upcoming week. We may defer the system outage to Saturday morning this week because of the extent of the changes and necessary quality assurance. Check back later in the week, and always feel free to contact us with questions or concerns about the outage time.

Next week's release is currently slated to include the following new features and fixes:

Custom URL mapping - it will be possible for users to access your application at a specific URL (e.g. http://www.yourappdomain.com) instead of only via http://www.saasgridpreview.com
Merchant Accounts for billing - merchant accounts will be introduced, which will permit you to link the applications that you sell with a payment processor (currently Chase Paymentech)
Duplication of pricebooks and plans - it will be possible to create a new pricebook based on an existing pricebook, as well as individual plans within a pricebook
Subscription amendments - customers will be able to alter their subscriptions (e.g. change plans, purchase additional features, etc)
Billing - purchasing of subscriptions will be implemented
Invoicing & payment history - it will be possible for providers to view billing history for their customers
Bug fixes - additional bugs, particularly with the purchase subscription workflow, will be fixed