Overview
As Okta continues to evolve and grow, we understand that there is nothing as important as understanding and meeting the needs of our customers. One of the areas where customers have asked for improvement is in the cadence and methodology of releasing new features and functionality to our service. They have requested more differentiation in our release types as well as delivering changes so that it can be consumed in a more manageable fashion.
Starting in December 2018, Okta is adopting a release model that consists of:
-
Monthly Releases – The first production release of each month
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Weekly Updates – Remaining weekly releases during the month
Release Content
At a high level, Monthly Releases will contain product features (both GA and EA), changes and enhancements to existing functionality, and fixes. The Monthly Release will also include a rollup of all the feature changes that have been delivered weekly into the preview environment since the last Monthly Release. This is illustrated by this diagram:
The chart above illustrates that the Weekly Updates in production will contain only fixes. Monthly Releases are the vehicle for when new features and changes to existing features / functionality will be made in production.
Early Access (EA) Features
Okta understands that there are times when a feature is requested as soon as it is available. Between Monthly Releases, customers can enable some Early Access (EA) features for their org in the admin console without the need to ask Support
Release Versions
To help provide even more differentiation between the Month Release and the Weekly Update, the release version format that you will see in the admin UI is also changing from the year.week, to the year.month.update#. For example:
| Release | Old Naming | New Naming |
|---|---|---|
| December Monthly Release | 2018.49 | 2018.12.0 |
| December Weekly Update #1 | 2018.50 | 2018.12.1 |
| December Weekly Update #2 | 2018.51 | 2018.12.2 |
Release Notes
As part of the overall effort to make release content more consumable, Okta has re-architected the release notes to improve the user interface with tabbed navigation and a more intuitive layout. As we roll out the new release model in December, the Release Notes page will be updated with more information to reflect the new model.
