Archer 2024.11 Release Notes (On-Premises)

Archer announces the release of Archer 2024.11, which includes new and updated features, and fixed issues for Archer on-premises clients.

Important: Apply the latest update. All releases are cumulative.

Important: If you are running Archer release 6.2 or earlier, you must first upgrade to Archer release 6.8 and then upgrade to the latest release. To obtain Release 6.8, contact your account representative or open a support case.

Release Updates

The following table lists the release and updates to the 2024.11 release .

Release General Availability Summary

2024.11

November 21, 2024

2024.11.01

February 17, 2025

2024.11.02

March 28,2025

Fixed issues

 

On this page

What's new - Platform

Upgrade Requirements for clients running 6.13 P3 Hotfixes or 6.13 Patch 4

Important: On-premises clients running Archer Platform 6.13 Patch 3 HF 1 or 6.13 Patch 3 HF2 or 6.13 Patch 4 PRIOR to upgrade to 6.14 or later MUST run a script on the database system to revert a change that caused an upgrade error.

For more information see the blog "Invalid Object Error Upon Upgrade from Specific 6.13 Releases" on the Archer Community.

Reports Listing page - Last Viewed (Date) option

A new capability is added to the Reports Listing page, the Last Viewed option in the column chooser. This option displays the date when the report was last viewed. This provides visibility and insights around engagement with various reports.

By Default, the Last viewed checkbox is unchecked.

The image shows the new Last Viewed checkbox option in the column chooser on the Reports Listing page.

When the last viewed option is enabled, a new column is added to the Reports Listing.

The image shows the Reports Lising page with the new Last Viewed checkbox option selected and the Last Viewed column displayed on the screen.

Search users by email address (2024.11.01)

Users will now be able to search within a User Groups or Record Permissions field using a user's email address. This makes it easy to identify the right user among users having same name.

You must upgrade to Platform 2024.11.01 to enable this feature.

Archer Ideas - New functionality

We are excited to enhance the Platform with some of our top 25 Archer Idea requests.

USERDEFAULTEMAIL function

Support to retrieve a user’s default email address using the calculated field function USERDEFAULTEMAIL(user_type) is now added.

For more information see, System Functions: USERDEFAULTEMAIL Function in the Platform Help.

Data Import Ignore Unknown Values

Users can now decide whether to add new values to the values lists or keep it unchanged during import.

For more information see, Importing Data: Task 2: Load your data file and select import options in the Platform Help.

Enhanced Questionnaire Findings

Archer now allows users to select additional fields to display in findings when auto-generated from the questionnaire.

For more information see, Enabling Automatic Generation of Findings for Questionnaires in the Platform Help.

Enhanced Login screen experience

Archer platform password reset functionality now includes a two-step verification. The new functionality generates an PIN that must be entered to allow a user to change their password. The PIN is sent to the email address associated with their User Profile.

This experience matches the newly released Next Generation Experience and implements several Archer Ideas.

Platform updates that change functionality

The following enhancements change existing behavior in the Platform.

Copy Record Permission Field Behavior

If there is a default value set (as Record Creator) for the Record permission field, and a person other than the original record creator creates a copy, the copied record will change the Record Permission field value to the default setting.

New Warning Message for Advanced Workflow Looping Transitions

The Archer Advanced Workflow Service requires that a looping transition only be configured at the end of a loop. The AWF Designer now has validation logic to check for this condition.

For more information see the blog "New Warning Message for Advanced Workflow Looping Transitions" on the Archer Community.

Advanced Workflow component software upgrade

The Advanced Workflow component software has been upgraded in this release to address items related to script evaluation and execution errors.

User Notifications enhancements

Permissions have been implemented on the Notification Sent reports.

  • Users with read access to the Manage Applications page can view all templates, including admin notifications.

  • Users with read access to the Manage On-Demand Notifications page will only see on-demand notification templates.

  • Users with read access to the Manage Subscription Notifications page will only see subscription notification templates.

  • Users with read access to the Manage SRD Notifications page will only see SRD notification templates.

  • Users with read access to the Manage Admin Notifications page will only see admin notification templates.

The admin notification templates cannot be filtered individually from the dropdown menu; this behavior remains unchanged.

TinyMCE Upgrade

The Archer-created TinyMCE plugin only backs up content affected by the TinyMCE upgrade to 7.x. This reduces the number of backup comments being generated.

Deprecated features - Platform

The Offline Access feature is officially deprecated. The content for the feature will be removed from the Help in a future release.

What's new - Solutions

Audit Management

Audit Engagements & Workpapers

The Archer Audit Engagements & Workpapers use case incorporates the new application, Audit Risk Control Matrix, as a standalone offering. We have implemented following changes:

Audit Risk Control Matrix:

  • The Audit Risk Control Matrix application enables companies to establish associations between risks and controls, which can then be used to fill out an Audit Engagement Template.

  • This information utilizes the Audit Risk and Audit Controls application to develop the risk control matrix.

  • The risk assessment allows you to assign a risk level to the matrix, helping to identify inherent risk and establish a schedule for future engagements.

Renaming of the Application and Referenced Field Names:

  • We have updated an application name and some reference fields. The Plan Entity application has been renamed to Proposed Engagements and their respective reference field names are also updated.

Audit Planning & Quality

The Archer Audit Planning & Quality use case incorporates new application Agile Planning Board as a standalone offering. We have implemented following changes:

Agile Planning Board:

  • The agile planning board is designed to give companies a complete view of their audit plans.

  • It allows you to see current engagements, upcoming ones, a backlog of pending engagements, and those that have been completed. By presenting all engagements this way, companies can be more adaptable, bringing in engagements as necessary to support their business goals and objectives.

  • We have enabled Advanced Workflow Functionality, enabling the board to refresh according to user preferences.

Renaming of the Application and Referenced Field Names:

  • We have updated an application name and some reference fields. The Plan Entity application has been renamed to Proposed Engagements and their respective reference field names are also updated.

ESG

ESG Management

The Archer ESG Management 2024.11 use case includes the following changes and new functionality.

  • The process for setting thresholds has been updated. A new application, Automated Threshold Setting, allows you to set appropriate thresholds for the given Organization or ESG Metric in a calculated manner. For more information, see Generating, Collecting, and Reporting on Metrics.

  • The Corporate Objectives application has been updated to better track ESG targets. A new Actions application allows you to capture both actions (things you need to do to achieve your goal) and activities (individual steps to complete an action).

  • Two new data feeds have been added to allow easier capture of legacy metric results. When you create a new metric result record, they automatically create any missing threshold records and populate the metric result with details from the parent metric record.

  • The Materiality Assessment Campaign advanced workflow has been updated to use data feed launch nodes.

  • User groups and dashboards have been updated.

Double Materiality Calculator

The Double Materiality Calculator 2024.11 use case includes the following changes and new functionality.

  • The double materiality process has been redesigned to place more emphasis on impacts, risks, and opportunities and include the three time horizons (short-, medium- and long-term).

    As part of these updates, a new IROs application has been added, the Material Topic Repository application has been renamed to Sustainability Matters, and the Double Materiality Calculator application has been renamed to Double Materiality Assessment.

  • A new data feed has been added as part of the materiality assessment process.

  • User groups and dashboards have been updated.

Archer Insight

The Archer Insight 2024.11 use case contains the following changes:

  • The Minimum Impact field for economic consequences has been deprecated. The following changes have been made in the use case to support this:

    • The Minimum Impact field has been moved off-layout.

    • The Status calculation has been updated to remove references to Minimum Impact. Minimum Impact is no longer leveraged to determine whether a Consequence record is Included or Excluded from the calculations.

    • An Update Content schedule has been added to reset the Minimum Impact to zero for any included economic consequences, where Minimum Impact is not “0”.

  • A custom object has been added to the Risks record page in Archer to enable navigation to the Add New Risk Event flow in Archer Insight for the current Parent Risk.

  • A link has been added to the Risk Event grid in the Risks record page to enable navigation to the associated assessment in Archer Insight.

Key Indicator Management

The following changes have been made in this release.

  • In the Metrics application, a "Past Due" value has been re-introduced to the Metric Status field. If any of the underlying Metric Results are past due, then the overall Metric becomes past due. You can exclude individual past due metric results from being counted towards the status at the metric level, through a "Past Due Exclusion from Metric" field in the metric result.

  • In the Metrics application, the ability to manually create Metric Result records has also been re-introduced. A new "Metric Result Generation Method" field allows you to select either Automated or Manual.

    • For the Automated selection, metric results continue to be generated by the data feed based on Measurement Frequency and Next Metric Result Due Date. Metric result generation occurs on the Next Result Generation date, which is an indicator of when the automatic generation of the next metric result record will occur based on configurable days prior to Next Metric Result Due Date. In the event a metric result record was manually added for the exact frequency period, the automation will not create a duplication metric result record.

    • For the Manual selection, the data feed does not generate any metric results content. A manual approach allows you to easily implement other integrations or processes around metric result generation.

  • In the Metrics application, the Slope calculation (which drives the Trend Analysis field) has been fixed. The calculation now uses the Completed Metric Result Due Date instead of the Metric Result Generated Date. The field is only calculated when 3 or more Metric Result records exist for the metric.

  • The Metric Results application has been updated to more accurately capture historical values. Parent metric values are pulled into the associated metric result record only until a metric result value is captured, ensuring that the metric result represents a point in time capture.

    • For Metric Results where the Type of Monitoring = Qualitative Threshold or Numeric Threshold, a Metric Result Threshold Status field has been added, where the status of the metric result is determined based on the association to the parent metric at the point in time the metric result value is captured. Other types of monitoring represent a sum of the associated metric results to a parent metric, therefore calculating or displaying status in the metric result is not applicable. Trending, which uses slope, is calculated based on more than a single metric result. Banding uses an Average of all the associated Metric Results. In these two examples, the parent metric is Pass or Fail based on the metric results. Attempting to ‘copy’ down the data, that represents a sum of ALL the metric results into a single, current Metric result can be confusing and a calculation dependency problem.

    Note: If Completed Metric Result Due Date is NULL, then Threshold Status = NULL. If Type of Monitoring <> Qualitative Threshold or Numeric Threshold, then Threshold Status = NULL.)

  • The Engage configuration has been updated to use the Engage tab in Application Builder.

Third Party Engagements

Third Party Profile - Third Party Profile Level

New Fields

Total Annual Actual Spend - Numeric
Updated Fields

Zero-Day Vulnerability Project (Third Parties) -> Renamed Third Party Campaign (Manual Scoped)
New Reports

Supplier Scorecard

Engagements

New Fields

  1. Audit Trail - History Log

  2. Offboarding Checklist - Subform

  3. Communication Date - Date

  4. Close Out Date - Date

  5. Follow Up Date - Date

  6. Internal Distribution List - Text

  7. Third Party Contact Email - Text
Updated Fields

Tab and Section Display: Onboarding Evaluation value renamed as RFP Results; Metric Analysis value renamed as Ongoing Monitoring; Financial Spend renamed as Billing
Layout Changes

Default Layout and related DDEs updated 
Workspace Third Party Management updated to Third Party Risk Management
Dashboard Third Party Management updated to Third Party Risk Management

Third Party Governance

Third Party Campaign

New Fields

  1. Generated Third Party Resilience Assessments: Cross-Reference

  2. Generated Third Party ESG Assessments: Cross-Reference

  3. Scoped Third Parties: Calculated Cross-Reference

  4. Scoped Third Party Engagements: Calculated Cross-Reference

  5. Scoped Product and Service: Calculated Cross-Reference

  6. Scoping Methodology: Values List

  7. Generated Engagement Risk Assessments: Cross-Reference

  8. Product & Service Criticality Rating: Values List (GVL- BIA: Criticality Rating)

  9. Engagement Risk Rating: Values List (GVL: Risk Rating - 5 Level)

  10. Scope: Values List

  11. Criticality Tier: Values List (Global)

  12. Link Scoped Third Parties: CAST

  13. Third Party Engagements: Cross-Reference
Updated Fields

  1. Assessment: Values List - Added new values Engagement Risk, Third Party ESG, Third Party Resilience

  2. Third Parties: Cross - Reference
Layout Updates

Default Layout and DDEs updated
Reports

New:

  1. DFM: Generate DFM: Generate Zero Day Vulnerability and Location Based Risk Assessments

  2. DFM: Generate Third Party Resilience and Third Party ESG Assessments

  3. DFM: Generate Engagement Risk Assessments
Data Feeds

New:

  1. Zero Day Vulnerability and Location Based Risk Campaign - This data feed is used to create zero-day vulnerability assessments and location based risk assessments from third party campaign.

  2. Third Party Resilience and Third Party ESG Campaign - This data feed is used to create third party resilience assessments and third party esg assessments from third party campaign.

  3. Engagement Risk Assessment Campaign - This data feed is used to create Engagement Risk Assessments from third party campaign based on the scoping

Deprecated:

  1. Zero Day Vulnerability Assessments Creation

  2. Location Based Risk Assessments Creation
Workspace Third Party Management updated to Third Party Risk Management
Dashboard Third Party Management updated to Third Party Risk Management

Third Party Risk Management

Third Party Profile - Third Party Profile Level

New Fields

Total Annual Actual Spend - Numeric
Updated Fields

Zero-Day Vulnerability Project (Third Parties) -> Renamed Third Party Campaign (Manual Scoped)
New Reports

Supplier Scorecard

Engagements

New Fields

  1. Audit Trail - History Log

  2. Offboarding Checklist - Subform

  3. Communication Date - Date

  4. Close Out Date - Date

  5. Follow Up Date - Date

  6. Internal Distribution List - Text

  7. Third Party Contact Email - Text
Updated Fields

Tab and Section Display: Onboarding Evaluation value renamed as RFP Results; Metric Analysis value renamed as Ongoing Monitoring; Financial Spend renamed as Billing
Layout Changes

Default Layout and related DDEs updated 

Third Party Campaign

New Fields

  1. Generated Third Party Resilience Assessments: Cross-Reference

  2. Generated Third Party ESG Assessments: Cross-Reference

  3. Scoped Third Parties: Calculated Cross-Reference

  4. Scoped Third Party Engagements: Calculated Cross-Reference

  5. Scoped Product and Service: Calculated Cross-Reference

  6. Scoping Methodology: Values List

  7. Generated Engagement Risk Assessments: Cross-Reference

  8. Product & Service Criticality Rating: Values List (GVL- BIA: Criticality Rating)

  9. Engagement Risk Rating: Values List (GVL: Risk Rating - 5 Level)

  10. Scope: Values List

  11. Criticality Tier: Values List (Global)

  12. Link Scoped Third Parties: CAST

  13. Third Party Engagements: Cross-Reference
Updated Fields

  1. Assessment: Values List - Added new values Engagement Risk, Third Party ESG, Third Party Resilience

  2. Third Parties: Cross - Reference
Layout Changes

Default Layout and DDEs updated 
Reports

New:

  1. DFM: Generate DFM: Generate Zero Day Vulnerability and Location Based Risk Assessments

  2. DFM: Generate Third Party Resilience and Third Party ESG Assessments

  3. DFM: Generate Engagement Risk Assessments
Data Feeds

New:

  1. Zero Day Vulnerability and Location Based Risk Campaign - This data feed is used to create Zero-Day Vulnerability Assessments and location based risk assessments from the Third Party Campaign application.

  2. Third Party Resilience and Third Party ESG Campaign - This data feed is used to create Third Party Resilience Assessments and third party ESG assessments fromthe Third Party Campaign application.

  3. Engagement Risk Assessment Campaign - This data feed is used to create Engagement Risk Assessments from the Third Party Campaign based on the scoping.

Deprecated:

  1. Zero Day Vulnerability Assessments Creation

  2. Location Based Risk Assessments Creation

Third Party Resilience Assessment

New Fields

  1. DFM Key - Text

  2. Third Party Campaign (Generated Third Party Resilience Assessments) - Related Record

Third Party ESG Assessment

New Fields

  1. DFM Key - Text

  2. Third Party Campaign (Generated Third Party ESG Assessments) - Related Record

Engagement Risk Assessments

New Fields

  1. Method of Collection - Values List

  2. DFM Key - Text

  3. Third Party Campaign (Generated Engagement Risk Assessments) - Related Record

Products and Services

New Fields

  1. Third Party Campaign (Scoped Product and Services) - Related Record
Solution Third Party Risk Management - Third Party Campaign application is added to solution.
Workspace Third Party Management updated to Third Party Risk Management
Dashboard Third Party Management updated to Third Party Risk Management

What's fixed - Platform

  • 2024.11: The attached document contains a list of issues that are fixed in this release: Fixed Issues

  • 2024.11.01: The attached document contains a list of issues that are fixed in this release: Fixed Issues

  • 2024.11.02: The attached document contains a list of issues that are fixed in this release: Fixed Issues

Note: The list of Known Issues is available from the Archer Community (on the article page, on the upper right corner, select the file from the File drop-down): Known Issues

Platform Help Sites for 2024.11

Languages

Languages:

  • Archer Platform is available in these supported languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, and simplified Chinese

  • Release Notes are available in English only.

Important: The content in this document is believed to be accurate at the time of publication. This content may change at any time without notice.