Plugin Manager

You can manage your Digital.ai Release plugins directly from the Digital.ai Release user interface. The plugin manager displays the list of installed plugins and their current version. With the plugin manager you can upload a new plugin or a new version of an installed plugin directly from the user interface.

To use the plugin manager, from the top navigation bar, click Settings > Manage plugins.

To view a list of all the installed plugins in Digital.ai Release, from the left navigation pane, click Installed plugins.

important

The Plugins tab is accessible only to the Admin user.

View and Install an Official Digital.ai Release Plugin

To view and install the official Digital.ai Release plugins, do the following steps:

1. From the top navigation bar, select Settings > Manage plugins.
2. Use the search box to search a plugin you wish to install.
3. Click Install now on the respective plugin that you would like to install. At that point (while install is in process) if you wish to abort the installation process, you can click on Cancel installation.
4. If there is a newer version of an already installed plugin available, the button will turn state and show Upgrade to x.x.x.

important

• You must restart Digital.ai Release to finish the plugin installation process.
• Plugins which are shown on the Browse tab of the plugin manager are the official Digital.ai plugins. Ensure there is network connectivity in order to see all the official Digital.ai Release plugins on the Browse tab.

Upload a New Plugin

To upload a new plugin or a new version of an existing plugin, do the following steps:

1. On the navigation bar, click the Settings icon, and then click Manage plugins.
2. Click the Installed plugins tab.
3. Click Upload and then select and upload the plugin file from your local machine. Note: It is possible to upload only 3rd party plugins. There are certain rules with installation of same plugins of different versions. Refer Plugin Synchronization for more information.
4. You can also upload a 3rd party plugin using Plugin Manager CLI.

important

After you upload a plugin, you must restart your Digital.ai Release instance.

Install Container Plugin Without Restart

A new version of an already existing container plugin can now be installed in a ZIP format without a server restart.

Note: The new version of the container plugin can have any new additional properties added. However, if the new version deletes any of the properties from the existing version, an error message is thrown.

You must restart the server for JAR-type plugin uploads.

Test that Plugins are Installed Correctly

In Release there are two types of plugins: a plugin that is visible through the UI, and a plugin that is a background process with no UI. The following procedures describe how to test if a plugin is installed correctly.

If you find that a plugin is not installed correctly, remove and reinstall the plugin. If, after reinstalling, the plugin is not installed correctly, contact Digital.ai Support.

Verify that a Plugin with a UI is Installed Correctly

1. In the top navigation bar, click Settings > Manage Plugins.
2. From the left navigation pane, click Installed plugins.
3. Verify that the plugin is installed by browsing the list of installed plugins.
4. From the left navigation pane, click the Back button next the Users and Permissions group.
5. Under the Reports group, click Dashboards.
6. Verify that the plugin has a tile and a default description.
7. In the top navigation bar, click Settings > Users and permissions, and then click Task access.
8. Verify that plugin related types are listed.

Verify that a Plugin with no UI is Installed Correctly

1. In the left navigation bar, click Connections under the Configuration group.
2. Find the plugin that you want to test and click .
3. Fill out the required fields.
4. Click Test.

Remove a Plugin

important

• Plugins may add new types to Release. Removing a plugin may prevent Release from reading your existing data due to missing types.
• Do not delete the xlr-official folder. The Digital.ai Supported plugins are downloaded to this folder from the plugin manager.

1. Shut down the Release server.

   Operating system	Shortcut
   Microsoft Windows	Ctrl + c
   Unix-based systems	Ctrl + c

2. You can delete Digital.ai Release plugins with the plugin manager command-line interface (CLI) from the database or filesystem. Refer Plugin Manager CLI for more information.

3. Start the Release server: Open a command prompt or terminal, point to the XL_RELEASE_SERVER_HOME/bin directory, and execute the appropriate command:

   Operating system	Command
   Microsoft Windows	run.cmd
   Unix-based systems	run.sh

Configure Proxy for Plugin Manager

If the Digital.ai Release server uses a proxy to connect to the internet, the plugin manager cannot install a plugin from the GUI. The plugin manager must access the https://plugins.xebialabs.com/nexus/ URL to fetch the plugins.

To configure the proxy settings for the plugin manager, add the below configuration to the conf/xl-release.conf file:

xl {
  database {
  }
  reporting {
  }
  features.plugins.servers.xebialabs-plugins.proxy {
                host = "proxy.example.com"
                port = 8888
                credentials{
                username = "user"
                password = "password"
              }
  }
}

Plugin Manager CLI

Limited plugin management is available through command-line interface integrated into the server. Refer Plugin Manager CLI for more information.

Plugin Storage

Plugins are stored in the database and users should be handling them only by using the GUI and CLI.

WARNING: All manual file operations (copying, renaming, moving, removing, etc.) inside the plugins folder is strictly not allowed

For more information, see Plugin synchronization

Wrapper File Changes

From Digital.ai Release version 10.2.0 and later classpath entries for plugins have been removed from xlr-wrapper-linux.conf and xlr-wrapper-windows.conf.

Important: While upgrading to Digital.ai Release 10.2.0 and later, if you have custom entries in the wrapper files please pay attention to not include any folders that contain plugins and plugin hotfixes.

Hotfix Folder Structure Changes

From Digital.ai Release version 10.2.0 and later hotfix folder structure has changed. Core hotfixes need to be placed in hotfix/lib folder and plugin hotfixes go into hotfix/plugins.