What have we planned for 3rd quarter 2023?

The Zowe community finished another round of planning and as such we can share with you, our stakeholders the results of what we plan in upcoming month.
The last planning for the year 2023 is going to happen between October 25th and October 27th. If you want to give us any feedback around our plans join us on Zoom, the information about the meeting will be shared on Slack, social media and via zowe-user mailing list.
What are the key areas and who is working on them?
The list of the areas below doesn’t try to cover all the work that is planned for the next quarter and instead focus on the larger scale topics that are worked on by multiple squads.

Installation and Configuration
This area is remaining the focus also for this quarter being one of the key topics last one already. With more and more users installing Zowe we are learning more about how to do this process in the simplest way possible and the presented work focuses on the improvements to the whole experience.
- Improve server-side installation documentation based on user feedback (Docs squad)
- Completion and validation of certificate configuration documentation (Docs squad)
- Education & Certification (Onboarding)—Together with Interskill working on improving the course to install and configure Zowe
- ZEN (Web UI) — UI tool to simplify configuration of the Zowe.
- Embedded JavaScript Enhancements (zOS) — Removes the need for Node.js during the installation procedure
- Configuration Management Semantic Checks (zOS) — Provides more valuable information when debugging Zowe configuration
Security
The focus in the Security area is to improve Zowe posture with respect to the Open Secure Software Foundation and their Best Practices Badge.
- Open SSF Best Practices Badge (CLI)
- CII Badge standards (Docs)
- Zowe CLI authentication mechanisms (Docs)
- Golden CII Badge (Explorer)
- HTTP Authentication Refactoring and Client Cert Support (zOS)
Version 3
- Spring Cloud Gateway as the default Gateway (API Mediation Layer)
- Prepare Zowe Explorer extenders for upcoming v3 breaking changes and new features with v3 pre-releases and documentation (Explorer)
Technical Improvements
In this are we outline key initiatives to stay current with respect to the used technology and improve the overall engineering practices.
- Keytar replacement (CLI)
- Keytar shim in VSC removal in Aug release (Explorers)
- Marist Mainframe — Verify z/OS 2.5 and 3.1 (Systems Squad)
- Angular / Webpack upgrades (Web UI)
Where do I find more details?
Every squad prepared and shared the more detailed plans in the Community repository. Every plan contains the information about current quarter as well as plans for longer time frame under roadmap sections. The links are here:
- API ML Squad
- CLI Squad
- Documentation Squad
- Explorer Squad
- Intellij Squad
- Onboarding Squad
- Systems Squad
- Web UI Squad
- zOS Squad
When is it going to be released?
There are three planned releases within this quarter. Two within the active major version and one in maintenance version.

Version 2 Active
2.11
- Generally Available 2023/09/11
- System Demo 2023/09/18
2.12
- GA 2023/10/23
- System Demo 2023/10/30
Version 1 Maintenance
1.28.5
- GA 2023/10/02