The new vSphere 8.0 release brings significant improvements to the Plug-in Administration view, Integrated Solution Installer for the vSphere Client, new capabilities, enhanced features and bug fixes.
Note: Local plug-ins are deprecated and, although still functional, VMware plans to discontinue their support with the next major release.
What's new for vSphere Client extensibility and remote plug-ins:
vSphere Client Plug-ins Administration View Overhaul - the page offers a much more sophisticated view of the plug-ins and their topology, making it easy to verify which vCenter Server a particular plug-in is registered with, and which plug-in servers are in use
Integrated Solution Installer for the vSphere Client - partners now have the ability to integrate their solutions with the Solution Installer in the vSphere Client
Navigating Actions Defined in the Remote plug-in Manifest File - developers are now able to define navigating actions along with the modal menu actions in the plug-in manifest file. This will enable users to use the action to navigate to a view defined by the plug-in
Newly Promoted Core Client Views for Remote plug-in Navigation - the list of views to which a remote plug-in can navigate with the navigateToClientView() JavaScript API has been extended
Sharing Modal Dialogs Between Remote plug-ins - remote plug-ins can create more distributed content sharing. Modals defined by one remote plug-in can be reused by a different remote plug-in
Refreshing Remote plug-in Related Items - remote plug-ins can refresh their related items by using the new JavaScript API – refreshPluginItemsState()
Support for Italian Localization - the vSphere Client SDK now allows localization of plug-ins in the Italian language
Support Dynamic Object Cards - in addition to dynamic monitor, configure and action extensions, remote plug-in developers are able to define dynamic cards
Support for Additional Plug-in Servers for Dynamic Extensions - developers can now specify a server endpoint for dynamic extension queries. Formerly, the manifest server was required to handle all dynamic extension queries
Remote Plug-in Sample updates
New library versions: Clarity Design System 3.0.0 and Angular 9.0.0.
The sample demonstrates the use of dynamic cards
Resolved issues:
Open a modal with a recursive object - The htmlClientSdk.modal.open() method throws an error when a configuration object with recursive references is passed. A new flag sanitizeData was introduced indicating whether the passed modal configuration data should be serialized/deserialized, or not. The default value of the flag is true (i.e., do serialization), which is the previous behavior. Set the flag to false if you pass objects containing recursive references
Modified the Remote Plug-in Sample to use a more secure trust strategy - previous versions of the sample used a "trust-all" strategy, which was insecure. This version correctly verifies server thumbprints
Plug-in manifest conversion tool is modified to support both light and dark themes - the tool is modified to generate two sprite sheets, one for the light theme and one for the dark theme. The sprite sheets now contain placeholder icons which should be replaced by the plug-in developers with real icons
Fixed a number of layout issues with the plug-in modal dialogs - fixed the layout of the modal dialogs opened through the vSphere Client SDK JavaScript APIs to eliminate issues previously reported
Navigating Actions Defined in the Remote plug-in Manifest File- developers are now able to define navigating actions along with the modal menu actions in the plug-in manifest file. This will enable users to use the action to navigate to a view defined by the plug-in
Can you please elaborate this feature with an example/use case?
Please point me to the code snippet in sample if it is part of sdk sample.
The new feature allows plugins to define an action that will navigate to another view. Before that, the only allowed actions were the modal actions, where an action opens a modal dialog. Now, you can have an action that navigates to another one of your views.
The remote plugin sample does not demonstrate this.
There are different scenarios. The idea is that you can have an action "Configure VM backup" which will redirect to the VM's configure view of your plugin where users will be able to configure the VM's backup options.
