We are pleased to announce the general availability of Automation Analytics & Intelligence (AAI) 24.4. This release reaffirms our commitment to delivering powerful new capabilities that empower our customers to address their most pressing operational needs.

What are the key features of the AAI 24.4 release?

The enhancements in this latest release are the direct result of feedback from customers like you. The enhancements in AAI 24.4 are focused on three core pillars:

  • Providing deeper operational visibility.

  • Enabling more flexible, precise control of your workflows.

  • Strengthening security and governance.

These enhancements are designed to help you streamline administration, improve security, and manage enterprise workloads with greater confidence and efficiency.

Gain unprecedented visibility and analytics

Understanding system health and performance is now more intuitive than ever. We have fundamentally improved how you can monitor your automation environment, delivering the following capabilities:

  • System-wide machine analytics: A new machine analytics view provides a comprehensive, system-wide overview of machine performance and historical usage. You can access this view directly from the main navigation. This eliminates the need to drill down into individual jobstream runs to assess machine health, enabling more proactive and efficient resource management.

  • Expanded dashboard views: To improve the analysis of large datasets, we've added a "full page" view to dashboards. This feature provides a full-screen display that allows you to inspect detailed data without losing the context of your primary dashboard.

To learn more, watch a video that demonstrates many of AAI’s existing analytics capabilities.

Achieve more flexible control and a refined user experience

AAI 24.4 gives you more precise control over scheduling and a more efficient user experience, featuring several usability enhancements:

  • Time-of-day service level agreement (SLA) support: You can now define multiple SLAs per day for a single jobstream. This provides the flexibility to handle complex business requirements, such as different deadlines for various executions of the same jobstream. With these capabilities, you can better ensure that critical workflows meet their targets under all conditions.

  • Refined navigation and views: Based on customer feedback, we've made several enhancements that give users greater flexibility to customize their views. We’ve added an "expand all" and "collapse all" function for container jobs in the Gantt chart, making it faster to navigate large, deeply nested jobstreams. We also removed minimum width restrictions on columns and added an option to exclude "no status" jobs from data insights.

Strengthen security and governance across your environment

This release introduces several significant features to bolster the security and integrity of your automation environment:

  • Enhanced support and security for Airflow: AAI now supports Airflow 3, extending visibility to the latest evolution of the platform. This highlights our ability to unify observability and analytics across a multi-version Airflow landscape, particularly for organizations where migrations have been prohibitive. Additionally, we have added support for AWS AssumeRole for Airflow MWAA and token-based authentication for Apache Airflow. This provides a more secure and auditable method for connecting to cloud services, helping you align your automation with modern security best practices. (If you’re currently running Airflow, be sure to see a white paper that discusses the “observability tax” and reveals why an intelligent operational layer is so essential.)

  • Forced session logout: If your organization has stringent security requirements, you can now configure a forced logout time limit. This ensures user sessions are automatically terminated after a set duration, mitigating risks associated with unattended sessions.

Final thoughts

With these enhancements, AAI 24.4 delivers a more transparent, adaptable, and secure workload automation experience. By gaining deeper insights and more granular control, your teams can reduce operational risk and manage workloads with newfound efficiency.

Learn more by checking out the release notes for AAI 24.4.

Frequently asked questions

What is the new time-of-day SLA support feature in AAI 24.4?

This enhancement allows you to define multiple SLAs per day for a single jobstream. This enables you to address your specific business requirements, ensuring turnarounds at any given time address user and workflow demands.

How has AAI 24.4 improved support and security for Airflow environments?

AAI 24.4 extends visibility by offering support for Airflow 3. It also strengthens security by delivering added support for AWS AssumeRole for Airflow MWAA and token-based authentication for Apache Airflow.

What new features are available to help monitor system health and performance?

You can now use a new system-wide machine analytics view, which provides a comprehensive overview of machine performance and historical usage. Dashboards also feature an expanded "full page" view that provides intuitive, contextual visibility.