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--- title: Release Notes for Workload Orchestration description: Release notes for Workload Orchestration. author: sethmanheim ms.author: sethm ms.topic: release-notes ms.date: 08/31/2026 ai-usage: ai-assisted --- # Release notes for workload orchestration This article provides the latest and past release notes for workload orchestration in Azure Arc. It includes new features, improvements, and bug fixes. ## August 2026 release ### New features - **New portal interface**: Workload orchestration now offers a centralized portal experience for a wide range of capabilities, including environment setup, management, and authoring workflows, in the Azure portal: - **Environment creation**: Users can choose to create a [test or proof-of-concept environment](quickstart-azure-portal.md) with minimal configuration and quickly deploy a sample application, or create a [production-scale environment](set-up-workload-orchestration-azure-portal.md) with custom configurations. - **Environment management**: Monitor and manage the lifecycle of all resources in your workload orchestration environment from the Azure portal, such as site hierarchies and targets. - **Template authoring**: Create and manage solution templates, hierarchy configuration templates, and schemas through guided workflows. - **Deployment artifact signature verification**: Workload orchestration can now [verify deployment artifacts](verify-artifact-signatures.md) before they run on edge clusters. This feature adds a two-layer supply chain protection that verifies Helm charts, Kubernetes manifests, and container images by using Azure Key Vault and other trusted services. This verification helps prevent unsigned, modified, or untrusted artifacts from being deployed. ### Improvements in CLI - **Azure CLI Workload Orchestration extension 5.3.1** is now available. Update to the latest version by running: ```azurecli az extension update --name workload-orchestration ``` - **Simplified initialization**: The `az workload-orchestration init` command sets up the workload orchestration environment, including the Azure Arc-enabled cluster, in a single operation. This consolidation further streamlines the CLI onboarding experience by reducing manual setup steps and the risk of configuration errors. ## July 2026 release ### New features - **Schema inlining**: Workload orchestration configuration templates now support [inline schema](solution-without-common-configuration.md#create-the-solution-template) definition within the template file in CLI, in addition to the existing provision of creating the schema resource separately. This feature further simplifies the deployment process. ### Improvements in CLI - **Extension upgrade**: The workload orchestration Kubernetes extension is now upgraded to version 2.1.37 with support for new capabilities. To update to the latest version, run: ```bash az k8s-extension update --resource-group "<resource group name>" --cluster-name "<cluster name>" --cluster-type connectedClusters --name "<extension name>" --release-train dev --version 2.1.37 ``` - **Scalable deletion support**: For Kubernetes extension versions greater than 2.1.34, this release enables reliable and scalable delete operations for targets, resource groups, and subscriptions that have large numbers of active solution instances within their scope. To prevent throttling issues and ensure consistent behavior, older extension versions are now restricted from deleting targets when solutions are still installed on them. - **System namespace restriction**: During target creation, the attribute `--solution-scope` doesn't accept system namespaces such as azure-arc, kube-system, workloadorchestration, and cert-manager. This restriction has been imposed for security enhancement. ## April 2026 release ### New features - **Git-based management of resources**: Workload orchestration now supports a [Git-based workflow](workload-orchestration-multicluster-git.md) for managing resources, enabling you to define and manage schemas, solution templates, and configuration templates from your Git repository at scale. This approach introduces a streamlined authoring and deployment experience with pull request–based validation, automated synchronization to Azure using Deployment Stacks, and configurable resource protection. - **Cluster migration**: Users can now [migrate their targets along with deployed solutions](migrate-cluster.md) to a new Azure Arc-enabled cluster. This feature is especially critical when the existing cluster gets deleted or solution deployments require capacity expansion. ### Improvements in CLI - **Azure CLI Workload Orchestration Extension 5.2.0** is now available with the new capabilities and improvements. Update to the latest version by running: ```bash az extension update --name workload-orchestration ``` - **Simplified CLI experience**: Workload Orchestration now provides a simplified CLI experience that streamlines common workflows by consolidating multi-step operations like cluster setup, hierarchy creation, and solution deployment into fewer commands with reduced manual configuration. This improves usability, reduces the risk of errors, and enables faster onboarding and deployment. - Schema, solution templates, and hierarchy configuration templates now offer additional support for resource management using PUT, PATCH, and DELETE operations. ### Bug fixes - Any new capability tag added to a target is now instantly synced to the cloud, eliminating the occasional **capability mismatch** error while trying to review and deploy a solution having the new capability tag to the target. ## March 2026 release ### New features - **Cluster diagnostics and troubleshooting**: Users can now, using a single command, generate a comprehensive diagnostic [support bundle](troubleshooting.md) that captures cluster checks, resource snapshots, and container logs pertaining to a Kubernetes cluster of any provider, all packaged into a readable zip file. This enables rapid root-cause analysis, empowering both customers and support teams to resolve installation and runtime issues efficiently. - **Capability mutation**: Users shall now be able to dynamically add and delete capability tags from existing targets and solution templates, making it easier to maintain alignment between deployed solutions and their intended targets. ### Improvements in CLI - **Azure CLI Workload Orchestration Extension 5.1.1** is now available with the new capabilities and improvements. To install it, run: ```bash az extension add --name workload-orchestration ``` To update your existing installation to the latest version, run: ```bash az extension update --name workload-orchestration ``` - The support for parallelized bulk operations for Publish and Deploy is scaled up to 1,000 targets distributed across clusters, along with minimizing failures under throttling conditions. The execution time per target for bulk operations is also significantly reduced. - To help users onboard onto workload orchestration faster, Bash scripts for setting up the environment and workload orchestration resources are added to this [zip folder in GitHub repository](https://github.com/Azure/workload-orchestration/), in addition to the existing PowerShell and Python scripts. The steps to use the scripts are detailed in this [guide](onboarding-scripts.md). ### Bug fixes - In a shared application scenario, uninstalling a dependent app also removes its dependency. However, if the dependency application is already uninstalled, the Workload Orchestration portal is now able to detect this and completes the deletion process without any errors. - The `az workload-orchestration target solution-revision-list` command to list solution revisions for a target now accepts the solution template name instead of solution version ID for the argument `--solution-template-name`. ### Known issues - The action of adding a new capability tag added to a target may occasionally not get instantly synced to the cloud. This might throw a capability mismatch error while trying to review and deploy a solution having the new capability tag to the target. This issue can be fixed by rerunning the target capability addition command. ## February 2026 release ### New features - **Granular monitoring of operations**: The ability to view detailed real‑time progress in the [workload orchestration portal](https://portal.digitaloperations.configmanager.azure.com/#/browse/overview) is extended to **Publish** (including staging and unstaging) and **Uninstall** operations on solutions. This enables viewing completion status of intermediate steps along with timestamps, and the user who initiated the operation. If there is a failure, users can see the exact stage of operations at which it occurred and the associated error message for troubleshooting. - **Support for un-staging solutions**: Users can now unstage a staged solution (excluding shared applications) from a target through Azure CLI, and the progress of the same can be monitored from the workload orchestration portal. ### Improvements in CLI - **Azure CLI Workload Orchestration Extension 5.1.0** is now available with the new capabilities and improvements. To install it, run: ```bash az extension add --name workload-orchestration ``` To update your existing installation to the latest version, run: ```bash az extension update --name workload-orchestration ``` ### Improvements in Portal - **Bulk target validation**: While deploying a solution to multiple targets on portal, users can choose to configure common parameter values for all targets or set custom values for each, and are able to validate the configurations for all targets in a single screen. ### Known issues - In a shared application scenario, uninstalling a dependent app also removes its dependency. However, if the dependency is already uninstalled, the Workload Orchestration portal throws an error as it is unable to find the dependency to remove. - In the Azure CLI command `az workload-orchestration target solution-revision-list`, the argument `--solution-template-name` currently accepts solution-version-id, obtained after running `az workload-orchestration target review`, as its value. ## December 2025 release ### New features - **Bulk deployment across multiple clusters**: Workload orchestration now supports deploying a solution to targets residing across multiple clusters in a single operation. This enhancement delivers greater flexibility and scalability for hybrid and multicloud environments. - **Support for Target/Site level configuration**: Users can now create and set common configurations at any hierarchy level or target without authoring solution templates, by explicitly linking a configuration template to the desired level. Solution templates automatically map to the deployment target. Schemas no longer support the **editableAt** property for application parameters that was earlier used for such mapping. This enforces clearer configuration boundaries and reduces unintended edits. - **Bulk deployment in portal**: Users can now configure, publish, and deploy solutions to multiple targets, a capability previously accessible only through CLI, via the workload orchestration portal interface. Targets can be filtered by name, hierarchy level, capability tags, parent site, etc. and users can choose to configure common parameter values for all targets or set custom values for each. ### Improvements in Portal - The **Configure** tab that enabled operations related to configuration and publishing of solutions and targets, has now been split into **Configure hierarchy** and **Configure solutions**, which offers clear segregation between hierarchy and targets, and solutions. - Users can now filter and group targets by their parent site, in addition to existing parameters, in the **Monitor**, **Configure hierarchy** and **Deploy** tabs of portal. - Acceleration in portal loading time for capability matching, configuration templates linkage, and few other scenarios. ### Improvements in CLI - **Azure CLI Workload Orchestration Extension 5.0.0** is now available with new capabilities and improvements. To install it, run: ```bash az extension add --name workload-orchestration ``` To update your existing installation to the latest version, run: ```bash az extension update --name workload-orchestration ``` - The time taken for target and solution template creation has been significantly reduced, resulting in faster response time and enhanced CLI experience. - Users can now view the schema validation rules while configuring solution parameters for a target or a Site. ## October 2025 release ### New features - The status of solutions and targets shown to users in the workload orchestration portal, related to completion of configuration, publishing and deployment, are standardized across all screens. The distinct number of statuses are reduced for simplification and enhanced readability. Users can click on the status of any item to open a context pane showing details of all operations performed on it so far, along with timestamp and name of user who performed the action. ## September 2025 release ### New features - [Bulk configuration and review](bulk-deployment.md): You can set configurations for multiple targets and review all at once through CLI, with the flexibility of applying the same configuration to all or individual configurations per target. Upon command execution, the output lists the completion status for each target, along with detailed error logs for troubleshooting. - [Workload Orchestration SDK](workload-orchestration-sdk.md): The Azure Workload Orchestration SDK is now available in 4 languages - Python, Java, JavaScript and Golang, enabling developers to automate tasks programmatically. Key capabilities include: - Creation and management of context, targets, schema and solution templates - Configuration, publishing and deployment of solutions - Support for asynchronous operations and automatic retries - Comprehensive logging for enhanced observability ### Improvements in CLI - The Azure CLI Workload Orchestration extension has been updated to version **4.0.0**, introducing bulk capabilities for review and configuration tasks, along with additional flexibility for bulk publishing operations. It also utilizes the latest API version 2025-08-01. To update to the latest version of extension, simply run: ```bash az extension update --name workload-orchestration ``` - The existing bulk publish CLI functionality is upgraded to allow users to bypass the review step and achieve configuration and publishing of a solution to multiple targets in a single command. The list of targets can include a mix of those that have been already reviewed and those for which they intend to bypass the review process. ### Bug fixes - Updated the Workload Orchestration portal to appropriately mask site details from users having access to child targets but not the respective parent site. - Improved configuration status accuracy across portal views. ## August 2025 release ### New features - **Granular visibility of deployment operations**: Users can now view detailed real‑time progress in the workload orchestration portal while deploying solutions. This includes intermediate steps along with timestamps, and the user who initiated the deployment. In case of a failure, users can see the exact stage of operations at which it occurred and the associated error message for troubleshooting. - **Event Log for improved monitoring**: A new **Event Log** tab under the **Monitor** pane in the portal provides a chronological view of all user‑initiated actions across solutions and targets. Users can filter or group the view based on relevant fields, and further drill down into details of individual executions within an operation. This feature acts as an audit trail and improves transparency in shared environments. ### Improvements in workload orchestration portal - Eliminated delays between the live status of a user-initiated action displayed on portal and its corresponding notifications, presenting a more accurate and consistent view of operations. - The portal now has improved accessibility. For details, see [Microsoft accessibility conformance reports](https://www.microsoft.com/accessibility/conformance-reports). ### Improvements in CLI - **Azure CLI Workload Orchestration Extension 3.0.0** is now available with new capabilities and improvements. To install it, run: `az extension add --name workload-orchestration` To update your existing installation to the latest version, run: `az extension update --name workload-orchestration` - The extension now provides more robust capabilities for context and solution management, specifically the ability to set and view current context, view all solution instances and revisions within a target, and display parameter values configured for all previous versions of a configuration template - CLI persistently stores information related to the current context used, allowing automatic fallback to default context in a new session and enhanced context ID validation. - Improved user experience for context creation and management through enhanced output readability and more actionable error messages. ### Bug fixes Resolved an issue related to the timestamp not being displayed correctly for few portal notifications. ## July 2025 release ### Improvements - Performance improvements: This release introduces advanced caching mechanisms designed to boost performance through acceleration of long-running operations, particularly for: - Creation and review of solution templates and targets - Publishing and deployment of workflows - Reliability and enhanced user experience: The improved caching logic increases reliability for deployments in environments with complex hierarchies or significant numbers of targets. This release ensures smoother progress and fewer interruptions when managing resources during periods of high activity or when working with large configurations. ### Bug fixes - Resolved an issue that enabled deletion of previously deployed versions of solutions. - Boosted reliability of solution template creation process by fixing race condition that was leading to occasional random failures. ## June 2025 GA release Workload orchestration is now generally available (GA) in Azure Arc. This release includes all the features and improvements that were previously in preview, along with additional enhancements. To migrate your existing workload orchestration target resources to the GA version, refer to the [workload orchestration GitHub repository](https://github.com/Azure/workload-orchestration). ### New features - End-to-end support for Tanzu environment: Enable users to onboard and manage solution deployments across Tanzu-based Kubernetes clusters. - [Bulk-publish to multiple targets via CLI:](bulk-deployment.md#perform-bulk-publishing) Enables users to publish an application to multiple targets within the same cluster. External validation and staging (if enabled) are automatically triggered as part of the process. ### Improvements in workload orchestration portal - Improved error messaging: Users now receive clearer guidance when required context is missing, making it easier to resolve issues. - Updated column name in the Solution subtab of the Configure tab: "Lines Published To" is now labeled as "Targets Published To." - Enhanced filter logic: Filtering now supports hierarchies beyond two levels, providing better support for complex configurations. - Refined rollback experience: The rollback flow now displays only solutions with matching instance names, improving clarity and usability. - Breadcrumb navigation is now available on all details screens, providing improved navigation throughout the portal. - Configure flows are now fully responsive, ensuring a seamless experience across devices. - Enhanced retry logic for solution reviews: Users can now more easily retry reviewing solutions after a failure. - Additional accessibility improvements have been implemented to further enhance the user experience. ### Improvements in CLI - Added the `--context-id` parameter to the `target create` command, enabling users to specify the full ARM ID for precise targeting. - Updated arguments across multiple commands for improved clarity and consistency. See the table below for a summary of these changes: |Command|Old arguments|New argument| |---|---|---| |`az workload-orchestration target review`|`--solution-name`, `--solution-version`|`--solution-template-version-id`| |`az workload-orchestration target publish`|`--review-id`, `--solution-name`, `--solution-version`|`--solution-version-id`| |`az workload-orchestration target install`|`--solution-name`, `--solution-version`|`--solution-version-id`| |`az workload-orchestration target uninstall`|`--solution-name`|`--solution-template-id`| |`az workload-orchestration target remove-revision`|`--solution-name`|`--solution-template-id`| ### Extension updates - Cloud extension **workload-orchestration 1.1.8**: Now available and officially part of the Azure CLI extension index. To install it, simply run: ```bash az extension add —name workload-orchestration ``` - Arc extension **Microsoft.workloadorchestration 2.1.2**: Delivers new capabilities along with critical bug fixes. ### Bug fixes - Fixed issue with bulk deployment where the CLI response only listed one target in the `DeployedTargets` array, even when multiple targets were successfully deployed. The CLI now correctly lists all deployed targets. ## June 2025 preview release ### New features - **Four-level hierarchy support**: You can now create a hierarchy of up to four levels, which allows you to organize your resources such as region, city, factory, and line. - [Predeployment staging:](how-to-stage.md) Staging is introduced as a predeployment step to allow container images to be downloaded and synced to edge devices in advance, ensuring reliable deployments within limited maintenance windows. - [Bulk deployment:](bulk-deployment.md) You can now deploy a solution to multiple targets within the same Kubernetes cluster. - **Diagnostic of K8 errors**: Diagnostic logs are now available for workload orchestration, which allows you to diagnose edge-related errors including container issues and telemetry logs. ### Improvements - Instance name: You can add the instance name in the configuring flow. - Grouping by version: When configuring shared applications in the portal, choose the instance from the dropdown, which is now grouped by solution version. ## May 2025 release ### Improvements - IT users can set configurations from file via CLI. ```powershell az workload-orchestration configuration set ` --resource-group $rg ` --solution-template-name $solutionName ` --target-name $targetName ` --file <filepath> ``` - IT users can download configuration files for a particular solution template and target via CLI. ```powershell az workload-orchestration configuration download ` --resource-group $rg ` --solution-template-name $solutionName ` --target-name $targetName ```