Archer Community

SusanReadMiller · ‎2022-03-10

Summary

Archer announces general availability of Archer Release 6.11.

Platforms

Archer Suite running on all supported Operating System (OS) platforms.

Details

Archer Release 6.11 is now generally available. This release delivers enhancements for Archer Use Cases and the Archer Platform.

Archer Release 6.11 is immediately available in all languages supported by Archer, including English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, and simplified Chinese.

Release 6.11 focuses on Operational Resilience capabilities for third parties with updates to the following Use Cases:

Archer Third Party Governance use cases:
- The Archer Third Party Engagement use case includes updates to the 4th Parties application, (which has been renamed Subcontractors) providing the ability to catalog vendors from the 4th to Nth party using internal references. An initial risk assessment was added to the use case to calculate risk levels based on responses.
- The Archer Third Party Risk Management use case has been updated to add a Third Party Resilience Assessment consisting of questions across each of the five resilience pillars (cyber, IT infrastructure, facilities, people, and suppliers). Responses to questions in each section are used to calculate a resilience rating, which is aggregated to an overall resilience rating for each third party. This assessment has been preconfigured to operate with Archer Engage for Vendors.
- The Archer Third Party Governance use case includes updates to the Third Party Metrics and Third Party Metrics Results applications to use red, amber, and green numeric and qualitative thresholds. This provides more granularity to metrics results than that of the traditional pass/fail methodology. An added data feed automates the creation of Third Party Metrics Results prior to the next assessment date. Third Party Metrics Results is preconfigured to operate with Archer Engage for Vendors.
- Results of the Third Party Resilience Assessment and Third Party Metrics application roll up to the supplier resilience pillar at the business unit, division, and company levels to impact the resilience rating.

Archer Operational Resilience use cases:
- The Archer Operational Scenario Analysis use case has been updated to incorporate additional dependencies that can be scoped for a Business Processes-focused business impact analysis (BIA), such as devices, applications, facilities, third parties, stakeholders. The Operational Scenario Analysis use case, Third Party Resilience Assessment, and Third Party Metrics application now all impact the Supplier Resilience Ratings at the business unit, division, and company level.
- The Archer Business Impact Analysis use case has been updated with additional dependencies for the Business Impact Analysis application that can be scoped for a Business Processes-focused business impact analysis (devices, applications, facilities, third parties, stakeholders).
The Archer Enterprise Catalog package has been updated to enable the above changes too Archer Third Party Governance and Archer Operational Resilience use cases. Updates were made to the business unit, division and company applications to add data points that impact the Supplier Resilience Rating. The Products & Services application was updated to utilize the Sankey chart, enabling users to visualize relationships between third parties and critical products and services.
The Archer Operational Risk Management use case Custom Control capabilities have been retired with Archer Release 6.11. The custom control was replaced with a report object in version 6.9.2. Customers with the legacy Operational Risk Management use case will no longer be able to add or use the ORM Custom Control within the Self-Assessment application in 6.11. Those who have not updated the Operational Risk Management use case to the latest version via packaging will no longer be able to load or view the record page containing the Operational Risk Management Custom Control in the Self-Assessment application. If you are using the ORM Custom Control, please contact Archer Support for instructions on upgrade. Customers are recommended to update their ORM use case to the current release prior to upgrading their platform to Archer Release 6.11. For detailed information regarding this update, please review the Archer Operational Risk Management Use Case Custom Control Retirement in Release 6.11 technical advisory.

This release includes the following Archer Platform enhancements:

Application Builder enhancements:
- Auto-save, when selected, will automatically save unsaved changes when a user navigates away from an Application Builder tab to another. With Autosave enabled, the floating Save and Discard buttons are still shown to the user. The user is able to save or discard the unsaved changes before navigating away from tabs. Each user can set the option independently, to remain in effect for the current login session.
- Administrators can filter columns in the grid view of Rules and Actions listing pages to narrow the list of Rules and Actions, respectively. Admins can also quickly identify all fields on which actions are applied for the Apply Conditional Layout action.
- Administrators can edit the formula of a calculated field from the Calculation tab.
- Application Builder emphasizes unsaved changes by highlighting the selected field and displaying a warning for unsaved changes before administrators are able to navigate away to another screen.
- Search and Quick Filters are now available in a Minimized Panel for Rules, Actions, Questionnaire - Campaign, Questionnaire - Answer Lists, and Questionnaire - Display Rules. This provides a consistent experience across all minimized listing panels in Application Builder.
- Archer Engage Publish Configuration within Application Builder provides a user-friendly method to map fields for publishing assessment and application records to Archer Engage. Administrators no longer need to use a custom object to publish records to the Engage portal. Admins can now click an Enable Engage checkbox on the Application or Assessment Properties tab and configure the field mapping on a new Engage tab.

Reporting enhancements:
- New Dependency Wheel chart type provides a variation to the Sankey chart and provides visualization of weighted links between entities that are placed on the same level showing a multi-directional flow.
- Two new Bubble chart variations, the Packed Bubble and the Split Packed Bubble, are available when aggregating the statistical search on one field and grouping it into two fields.
- The Sankey chart has been enhanced to improve chart readability and includes up to five pillars in the chart which is dependent on the number of groups in the statistical search. The Sankey chart supports up to 10 entities per pillar.
- Chart legend, labels and data are now resized automatically based on the size of the window or browser.
- Chart color selection improvements:
  - Users can select a new color palette or select custom RGB color values.
  - A limited selection of colors allows for greater ease of use.
  - The chart library ensures that adjacent data points do not use the same color.

As announced in Archer Release 6.10, Archer Help has moved to the Archer Help Center, a cloud-based system. Please review the blog article “Documentation in the Cloud” for details.
- The “mini-Help” introduced in Archer Release 6.10 continues to provide Help topics in Archer Release 6.11 for the most relevant topics for administrators and end users and is available from the Archer Platform navigation menu.
- With Archer Release 6.11, the Archer Help Center provides Help topics for all the Archer products including the Archer Platform, Archer Solutions & Use Cases, Archer Insight, Archer Engage, and Archer Mobile. Documentation previously available in a PDF format on the Archer Community such as the Security Configuration Guide, Installation and Upgrade Guide, the Platform Planning Guide, and more, are now available in the Archer Help Center.
- End users can select to view the Help topics in the supported language of their choice.
- Updates to Help topics will be implemented on an as-needed basis and may occur separately from Archer releases.
- Archer documentation no longer requires an Archer Platform or Archer Community login to view Help topics and it is web searchable.
- Release Notes and HTML-formatted Help files that can be downloaded as .zip files will continue to be posted on the Archer Community.
- Archer Exchange documentation will continue to be posted on the Archer Community.

Elasticsearch capabilities are being retired with Archer Release 6.11 and administrators will no longer be able to use Elasticsearch for search. While admins will still see the options to configure Elasticsearch in the Archer Control Panel (ACP), these ACP options will be removed in a subsequent release. If you are running Elasticsearch in your environment, please contact Archer Support for instructions on its removal.

Recommendations

Archer recommends that customers running Archer Releases 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 6.9.x, and 6.10 apply this latest update. Please note that all releases are cumulative. If you are running Archer Release 6.2 or earlier, you must first upgrade to Release 6.8 and then upgrade to Release 6.11.

Documentation

To read the Release Notes for Archer Release 6.11 and additional release related documentation, please visit Archer Documentation and Archer Release 6.11 on the Archer Community. Not yet a member of the Archer Community on RSA Link? Learn about how to activate and register for an account to obtain access to private Archer Community groups and content.

End of Product Support Policy

Archer has a defined End of Primary Support policy associated with all major versions. For additional details, refer to the Product Version Life Cycle.