Cascade CMS 8.13

Cascade CMS 8.13 includes support for OpenJDK 12, an upgrade to Tomcat 9.0.17, Clive integration and improvements to audits and workflows including customizable workflow emails.

  View Requirements

Features/Improvements

  • An integration has been added to easily embed Clive forms and smart content.
  • System dictionary words are now validated to ensure they only contain alpha-numeric and limited punctuation characters (_./+#'&-). Credit: Jayson Grace of Sandia National Labs.
  • This release ships with the Tomcat 9.0.17 servlet container which contains improvements and security fixes to the previously shipped version of Tomcat.
  • A new Assign to Content Owner of Asset Workflow Trigger has been added.
  • Participants of a Task will now be notified when a task is (un)resolved.
  • Improved system performance when removing users manually or through LDAP sync.
  • Improved loading times when viewing audits throughout the application by adding a default date range of one week from the current date (or end date), instead of loading all audits.
  • Minor security-related improvements to audits and the Optimize Database tool.
  •   Reduced memory usage during Accessibility Report generation.
  • You can now customize notification and completion emails sent during workflows using Custom Workflow Emails.
  • Workflow emails no longer require an SMTP server and will come from noreply@cascadecms.com.
  • Improved queries that check if a user has access to a site resulting in faster interface load times for non-administrator users.

Issues Fixed

  • The subject and body of broadcast messages are now properly escaped. Credit: Jayson Grace of Sandia National Labs
  • The TextBlockAPIAdapter.getText method will no longer return a wrapping <system-xml> element with the Block's text content.
  • Errors during search index rebuild will correctly release filesystem resources so as not to prevent future problems accessing and rebuilding the indices.
  • Accessing REST API from another domain via a browser will no longer cause CORS errors.
  • It is no longer possible to use an invalid date range when filtering audits within the application. For example, the start date can not be after the end date.
  • The optimize database tool will no longer remove user profile pictures when the option to remove orphaned records is enabled.
  • Minimum field and group values within a Data Definition group will now be respected when adding additional groups.
  • Fixed an error in workflows that occurred when previewing some working copies when a Transition step is followed by an Edit step.
  • During a site import, structured data fields will now be mapped to Data Definitions if they exist outside  of the imported site.
  • Changing the assignee of a Task will now correctly send a notification to the new assignee instead of the user who changed the assignment.
  • Added missing cache element to cache configuration file that resulted in NullPointerException errors for load-balanced environments.

OpenJDK 12 Required

Cascade CMS 8.13 requires OpenJDK 12. The Windows and macOS installer packages are bundled with the updated JRE; however, any installer that ends in a .jar extension requires that OpenJDK 12 be installed on the system already before running the installer app.

If you're using a ZIP installer, you'll need to ensure you're pointing the application to OpenJDK 12. See this page for instructions on updating Cascade CMS to point to OpenJDK 12. 

Note that the cascade-8.13.0-linux64.zip contains OpenJDK 12 in the /java/jdk directory which can be used to run Cascade. Cascade can be configured to use this OpenJDK 12 package using the aforementioned instructions on updating Cascade to point to OpenJDK 12.

Tomcat 9.0.17 Required

Cascade CMS 8.13 will not run in any other version of Tomcat except Tomcat 9.0.17. For this reason, use of the full installer during upgrade is required. ROOT.war upgrades are not supported.

Oracle 12.2+

There is a known defect with this release which affects on-premise clients using Oracle 12.2.

Upgrading from a version prior to 8.13 will result in an error in the /tomcat/logs/cascade.log file which looks like the following:

Migration failed for change set com/hannonhill/cascade/model/database/updater/updates/standard/2019-06-04-add-unique-constraints-to-wf-emails-oracle.xml::2019-06-04-add-unique-constraints-to-wf-emails-oracle::nadira.yasmeen: 
Reason: liquibase.exception.JDBCException: Error executing SQL ALTER TABLE cxml_workflowemailcontainer ADD CONSTRAINT UQ_WORKFLOWEMAILCONT_PERMS UNIQUE (permissionsId): 
Caused By: Error executing SQL ALTER TABLE cxml_workflowemailcontainer ADD CONSTRAINT UQ_WORKFLOWEMAILCONT_PERMS UNIQUE (permissionsId): 
Caused By: ORA-02261: such unique or primary key already exists in the table

After running into this error, follow these steps to successfully upgrade to Cascade CMS 8.13:

  • Stop Cascade CMS
  • Execute the following queries on the CMS database:
    ALTER TABLE cxml_workflowemailcontainer DROP constraint UQ_WORKFLOWEMAILCONT_LOCK; 
    ALTER TABLE cxml_workflowemailcontainer DROP constraint UQ_WORKFLOWEMAILCONT_PERMISSIONS;
    ALTER TABLE cxml_workflowemail DROP constraint UQ_WORKFLOWEMAIL_METADATA;
  • Start Cascade CMS

First time installation?

Be sure to import our default database schema prior to installing Cascade CMS for the first time. Then follow the appropriate installation instructions for your environment.

Upgrade Steps

  1. Shut down your currently running Cascade CMS environment.
  2. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back-up your production database as well as set up a test environment and perform a trial run of the upgrade. All customers are entitled to a test license for this purpose.
  3. Read the release notes and upgrade guides for all releases between your version and the latest version.
  4. Check the table below to see which installer type is required.

Which installer should I use?

With certain upgrade paths, a full installation of Cascade CMS is required in order to ensure that the application has the latest required libraries. See the table below for a summary of which installer you should use based on the version from which you are upgrading. For any versions that do not require a full installation, using the ROOT.war upgrade method is allowed.

Upgrade Path
Upgrading From Full Installation Required
7.x Yes
8.0.x Yes
8.1.x Yes
8.2.x Yes
8.3 Yes
8.4.x Yes
8.5 Yes
8.6.x Yes
8.7.x Yes
8.8.x Yes
8.9 Yes
8.9.1 Yes
8.10 Yes
8.11.x Yes
8.12 Yes