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As far as video games go, they don't get more iconic than the beloved 1981 Konami arcade game, Frogger! Known in its day as the arcade game with the most ways to die, Frogger was one of the first arcade games to use two CPUs, and even starred in its own episode of Seinfeld. And, its latest claim to fame is being celebrated as an xMatters release!
It's full speed ahead with new Flow Designer enhancements this release. We're bringing you inbound triggers for event signal handling, a step to create xMatters events, support for hybrid cloud environments, and step management tools that allow enterprises to run a full development cycle for their steps. And that's just scratching the surface: this release also includes additions to our reporting and mobile platform, and a lot of great updates to the xMatters REST API. So, let's hop to it!
Before you dive in to learn about all the improvements, here are some important dates:
- Non-production environment access: Tuesday, July 30
- Production environment access: Tuesday, August 13 (enabled between 10-10:30am Pacific)
Sneak Peeks
As a special bonus we'll also give you a sneak peek at enhancements we're working on for a future release:
- Workflows - an improved web user interface for workflow-related tasks.
- Mobile shift management - edit shift members and escalations from the mobile app.
Jump ahead
In a hurry? Here's an overview of this doc if you want to skip ahead to something awesome:
- Flow Designer
- Mobile
- Integrations & Development
- Reporting
- Data Management
- Other Product Updates
- Early Access Program & Feature Delivery Update
Flow Designer
The initial release of Flow Designer focused on delivering xMatters-triggered workflows across applications in incident management toolchains. We're now expanding our focus to provide new triggers into xMatters and across hybrid cloud environments. The latest enhancements and features included in the Frogger release open up brand new workflows that bridge event and incident management processes.
New triggers (Email & HTTP)
The initial triggers included in Flow Designer allowed you to initiate flows when event activities took place within xMatters - typically used in orchestrating incident management processes. With new triggers we've added in this release, any external system able to send emails or webhooks (HTTP requests) can kick off workflows when something happens outside of xMatters. These triggers can power event management orchestration by giving you complete control over how signals coming into xMatters are interpreted and used to update other systems or create new events in xMatters.
Email Triggers
You can use an email trigger to send a signal into xMatters from any external system capable of sending an email message. When xMatters receives an email from a valid sender (that is, from an email address that's assigned to a single user in xMatters who has access permissions to the flow), it initiates the corresponding flow and makes the signal's information from the email available as outputs.
For example, the message body of the email is assigned to an email.htmlBody output, which you can use as the input value of a property in a later step in your flow, like the summary of a monitoring event.
HTTP Triggers
If your external system can send a web request, you can use an HTTP trigger to accept a signal and start a flow. The HTTP trigger parses the payload from the incoming HTTP request, extracts information from the payload and maps it to outputs, making the signal's data available to later steps in your flow.
Like inbound integrations in the Integration Builder, you must select the authenticating user whose credentials you'd like to use to trigger the flow. If you're selecting a user other than yourself, they need to have a role that includes the 'Rest Web Services User' function to be able to trigger the flow. Flow Designer generates an API Key unique to the selected user and appends it to the trigger URL:
Mapping the outputs
When you create an HTTP trigger, you define its outputs and use a script to extract information from the payload and map it to the outputs. Properties from the request must be mapped to outputs of the trigger for them to be available to steps later in the flow. We've included an example script that you can use as a template and customize to work with your flow:
Create xMatters Event step
We've added a new xMatters Create Event step to the Tools tab of the Flow Designer palette. Instead of immediately creating an event whenever an external system injects information into Flow Designer, you can use this step to create new xMatters events and send new notifications at any point in your flow. This means you can use information from previous steps to populate values like event details and targeted recipients:
For example, you could use an email or HTTP trigger to kick off a flow in xMatters that first opens a service desk ticket and starts a chat room. Then, you could map the ticket number and chat room link to the properties of your form, so they're included in the event notification.
You can also connect additional steps to your flow after the xMatters event step to extend your workflow and pass information about the event to steps further along in the flow - maybe you'd like to post the conference bridge number for the event into the chat room you created in a previous step and update the service desk ticket.
A few important things to note:
- You can select any form in your communication plan to create the event - just make sure that you enable the form for web service.
- To set recipients, use the xMatters target name of the users, groups, or devices you want to target. To target multiple recipients, use a comma between input variables or target names. (Target names that contain commas aren't supported and may result in errors.)
- Properties are based on the form properties, so if you want to include different properties you'll need to add them to the form. To enter the value for a hierarchy property, use an angle bracket ">" between hierarchy levels.
Run steps on xMatters Agents
Great news for those of you who work with toolchains that include on-premise systems that are protected behind a company firewall - you can now use our xMatters Agent to run Flow Designer steps locally in your environments!
As of this release, you can create workflows that combine steps that execute in different run locations - either behind the firewall, or in the cloud. This means your workflow can easily communicate with internally-hosted systems like Jira Server or Splunk and talk to cloud-based systems like Slack or ServiceNow. With the xMatters Agent, your toolchain automation can now span the full range of your hybrid cloud environment.
Run Location
The configuration screen for custom steps now includes a Run Location tab where you can select where you want the step to run. Depending on how the step was defined, it may be configured to run only in the cloud, or only on the xMatters Agent - or, it may give you the option to choose:
Run on xMatters Agent
When you select to run a step on the xMatters Agent, Flow Designer displays a list of existing agents for your company. You can select to run your step on one or more of the agents that you have permission to use:
To give you better visibility into the run location of your steps, we've identified steps that run on the xMatters Agent with a "server" icon on the canvas. If one of the configured agents is currently connected, the icon displays a green dot. If there's a connection issue, Flow Designer displays a red dot to get your attention:
Define available run locations for a step
When you're defining a new custom step, you'll notice a Run Location parameter on the Settings tab where you can specify where you want the step to be able to run - either in the Cloud, on the xMatters Agent, or "Both". This latter option is what gives step users the ability to choose which run location they prefer when they drag the step from the palette and configure it on the canvas.
Step versioning
Availability: EAP and production access on August 13.
We've equipped Flow Designer with a new step versioning system so that enterprises can run a full development cycle for their steps. This system permits multiple versions of a step to coexist, allowing you to control what versions of a step are being used by applying the following lifecycle stages:
- In Development - only available for use by step owners to test their logic.
- Deployed - up-to-date and available to grant sharing options to other users, groups, or roles.
- Deprecated - still available for sharing but scheduled for withdrawal. The planned withdrawal date is displayed as a warning to users on the step configuration screen.
- Withdrawn - no longer available and will cause errors when the step executes.
This allows you to handle common use cases like supporting production and development environments with unique versions of a step concurrently integrating with the appropriate environment.
When you create a new version of a step, it remains linked to the parent step. The latest deployed version of a step becomes the default version in the palette, with other available versions listed beneath it. As shown in the screenshot below, you can click a versioning icon on this parent step to expand a list of all the other available versions:
You can click the information icon for any version of a step to view information about the step owner and any details that have been provided about how this version of the step is different than others:
Change versions
As new versions of a step become available, you can easily switch the version of a step used in a flow by opening the step configuration from the canvas and clicking Change Version. This allows you to choose from a list of all the available versions of the step you have permission to use in the flow:
When you change versions, it's always a good idea to check the step configuration to see if there's any new inputs you need to populate, and check other steps in your flow for configuration errors in case changing the step version removed outputs used by steps further downstream in the flow.
Step sharing
We've added another tool to the step management toolkit that allows you to fine-tune exactly who can work with individual steps. Our new step sharing capabilities allow you to specify which users, groups, or roles (coming soon!) can use or edit a step.
Previously, when you created a step in Flow Designer, that step was available only for use in the communication plan in which it was created. While some of the steps you create may be designed for a single, specific flow that you manage, you might have others that could be useful to other people or teams across your organization. By being able to share steps with other users in your company, you can create a more streamlined flow-building process and provide consistency across flows.
Custom steps are now available across communications plans
With the introduction of step sharing, custom steps are now available globally across communication plans. This means that you can now access any of the steps that you've built - and any steps that have been shared with you - from any of your flows.
Share 'Use' or 'Edit' permissions
By default, when you create a step in Flow Designer you are the owner of that step and it isn't shared with other users. Only step owners can share their steps with other users. To share a step, select Usage Permissions from the step's settings menu on the palette:
If you decide to share a step, you've got control over who can have access to it and how they can use it. As shown in the animated screenshot below, you can either share your step will all users, or you can share it with a selected list of specific users and groups (roles are coming soon). For each option, you can choose to grant Use or Edit permissions for the step:
- Use: Users can include the step in their flows (e.g., configure input values, set up an endpoint).
- Edit: Users can include the step in their flows and modify it in the palette (i.e., globally change its settings, add inputs and outputs, and edit the logic/script).
Let's get organized
Now that you have access to all the custom steps you own and any steps that have been shared with you, the Custom tab in the Flow Designer palette might be getting a little bit crowded. To help you stay organized and quickly locate the custom step you're looking for, we've added new tabs to filter your steps:
- Owned: The customs steps you created.
- Shared With Me: Any steps that other users created and have allowed you to use or edit.
- All: All custom steps that are available to you.
Copy a step
Availability: EAP and production access on August 13.
Is there an existing step that you'd love to customize or extend? Maybe you're using one of our built-in ServiceNow steps and you'd like to add additional inputs to better match your company's ServiceNow configuration. Or, perhaps someone in your organization is a hotshot coder and they've written a custom step that you could use for your team's processes, with some minor tweaks.
We've added new copy options to the settings menus for built-in and custom steps, so you can copy an existing step to use as a template or starting point (for steps with versions, you'll have the option to choose which version you want to copy):
When you copy a built-in or custom step, Flow Designer creates a new custom step named "Copy of Original Step Name" with the original step's definition and logic, including its:
- Script
- Inputs and outputs
- Allowable endpoints
- Description
- Icon
Since you're the owner of this new step, go ahead and modify it to your heart's content! Once you're ready, drag it onto the canvas and configure it in your flows.
New built-in steps
Flow Designer includes built-in steps for many of the common tools used in incident management workflows, and we're adding new steps all the time. In this release, we added the following new steps to the Apps tab in the Flow Designer palette:
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Zendesk Add Comment - automatically add an internal note or public reply to an existing ticket. |
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Jira Cloud Add Comment - add a comment to an existing issue in Jira Cloud. |
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Saleforce Service Cloud Create Case - automatically create a new case in Salesforce Service Cloud. |
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Salesforce Service Cloud Update Case - automatically update the information in an existing incident. |
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Salesforce Service Cloud Add Case Comment - automatically add a comment to a case, internally or as a published comment visible to the customer. |
Other steps coming soon:
- BMC Remedy ITSM
- Jira Server
Flows for built-in integrations
It's now easier to incorporate built-in integrations into your incident resolution workflows using Flow Designer. Once you've created a configuration, a Flows tab appears that displays the triggers for your integration and a link to the Flow Designer canvas:
Click the name of your integration's Flow Designer canvas ("AutoShare webhook" in this BigPanda example) to jump into Flow Designer and build flows (like adding new response options, connecting to other apps, or even creating new xMatters events based on flow activities) that enrich the information injected by this integration.
You'll notice that we've added some safeguards along the way so that you can't break the functionality of the built-in integration. For example, you can't modify or delete the built-in responses of the configuration (although you can create new ones):
Usability Enhancements
One of the main goals of Flow Designer, with its codeless drag-and-drop functionality, is to make it easy for anyone to set up an integrated toolchain. This means usability is the central theme for every new feature or enhancement we add - but also for making the things we already have in place even better. Here are a few of the usability improvements we've added to existing Flow Designer features.
Refresh Activity panel
Debugging flows just got a little more convenient! The Activity panel now includes a handy Refresh button that you can use to check for any updates in your flow's activity:
Built-in step help
Need help configuring one of our built-in steps? We've got your back! Just click the "?" symbol at the top right of the step configuration screen for detailed instructions:
Improved drag & drop precision
We've made it way easier to drag and drop properties exactly where you want them on Flow Designer step input configuration screens. A vertical blue cursor clearly indicates where the property you're adding will be inserted, and you can now add properties anywhere in the input field - at the front, end, or in-between any other properties or text:
Slack endpoint authentication
When you configure a Slack endpoint for a step in Flow Designer or an outbound integration, selecting the Slack authentication method for your endpoint lets you initiate OAuth2 authentication and allow access to your Slack team using the credentials you enter.
Some of our customers were unable to use this process to connect xMatters to Slack because their Slack workspace allows only certified apps to have access. We're happy to report this is no longer an issue because we've successfully completed the certification process for our Slack endpoint!
Import & export flows
Availability: EAP and production access on August 13.
This final Flow Designer enhancement is short and sweet, but it's one that we think many of you will be very excited about: flows are now included when you export and import communication plans! This is great news, because it means that you can now easily transfer that complex workflow to your production environment or create a copy of a flow to share with someone else to use as the starting point for a new workflow.
Sneak peek: Workflows
Communication plans, integrations, the Integration Directory, Flow Designer... xMatters has all the tools you need to build out your incident and event management toolchains, they're just a little bit hard to find in the web user interface. And, what's a communication plan anyway?
We hear you, and we're in the early stages of redesigning the Developer tab in the web user interface to make it easier for you to find what you need to build your workflows. We're starting by getting rid of the "communication plan" terminology and renaming the Developer tab Workflows. As Flow Designer proves, you don't need to be a developer to build a complex workflow!
This new design consolidates all the components for building workflows into a central location, provides more at-a-glance insight into the current state of your workflows, and creates a more streamlined experience for setting up packaged, custom, and built-in workflows:
Mobile
Is there an app for that? These days, we're used to having the information we need right at our fingertips and we're expected to be available anywhere, anytime. The xMatters mobile app has become invaluable for our customer base to keep on top of their incident and event management workflows, and every release we look for new ways to enhance our mobile platform with tools and functionality to support the digital transformation of your business processes.
Event flood control
Availability: Now on iOS and later this year on Android.
In this release, we extend visibility into our intelligent event management processes to our mobile platform. With the addition of information about suppression, you now have insight into when event floods occur in your system, even when you're on-the-go.
View event suppressions
Our event flood control feature compares incoming event requests to recent events and suppresses correlated requests that occur in too close succession to one another. When suppression occurs for an event, the Recent Events screen in the mobile app now displays the suppression icon (circled in the screenshot below on the left) and a count of the number of event requests that have been suppressed under this parent event. For events where suppression has occurred, you'll also see a new "Suppression" section when you drill-through to the Event report (shown on the right below):
From here, tap Suppression to view a list of all the individual suppressed event requests. You can tap on any suppression to view its details, such as the targeted recipients, the event flood control rule that triggered suppression, the event priority, initiator, message content, and any event properties and their values:
On-call reminders support temporary absences
We're happy to announce that on-call reminders now support temporary absences! This means that if you've used our mobile app to sign up for push or email reminders for your upcoming shifts, you'll also now be sent reminders for shifts where you're a temporary replacement for another user. For more information about setting up on-call reminders, see Reminders for your next on-call shift.
Mobile-only user roles
Some of our customers prefer to contact their users exclusively using push messages on the xMatters mobile app. Whether they have internal policies or just agree with us that our mobile apps are the absolute best way to stay connected, they don't want their users to be able to add other device types to their accounts. To solve this issue, we've made it possible to create a role in xMatters for your mobile users that limits them to the mobile app and prevents them from adding other device types. For help setting this up, contact xMatters Support.
Forgot password workflow
Availability: Early August on iOS and by early September for Android.
The xMatters mobile app is a popular way for our customers to receive notifications and stay connected when they're in the wild... until they can't remember their password, that is! Users out in the field or away from a computer should have the ability to reset their own passwords from the mobile app, so they can regain access their xMatters accounts without requiring assistance from a supervisor or administrator.
In this release, we've added a new Forget Password workflow to our mobile platform that allows users to easily reset their own password from their mobile device:
More convenient login
Availability: Early August on iOS and by early September on Android.
When you log into the iOS mobile app, instead of having to type in your entire hostname, all you need to do is type in the name of your company (e.g., "Acme-Corp") - we'll append the rest of the address:
Android 9.0 (Pie) compatibility
Did someone say "pie"? Don't mind if I do! You can have your cake , er... pie and eat it too because the xMatters mobile app is now compatible with the latest Android 9 (Pie) operating system. This version of Android requires secure HTTPS protocols for all network requests, so stay tuned for more information on how you can make the most of these latest security protocols when using the xMatters app.
Android tapjacking protection
What the heck is tapjacking? In a nutshell, it's when a program intercepts and inspects your touch interactions - or in other words, it hijacks what you're tapping on your phone. The good news is that tapjacking is easily prevented with the appropriate settings on your Android device.
As part of our security policy, we disable app interaction in xMatters when we detect there's another app using the screen overlay feature on your Android device. This prevents other apps from trying to read your input data without you knowing. The xMatters app will warn you when this occurs, and display a message to let you know that you should disable the screen overlay setting for other apps before using xMatters:
Sneak peek: Manage shifts
An increasing number of our customers are adopting the mobile app to manage their incident and event management activities on a day-to-day basis. Although you still can't quite do everything on the app that you can do in the xMatters web user interface, we're continuously adding functionality to our mobile platform for the most common activities users may need to perform while mobile.
We've identified one of those activities as making quick changes to a shift occurrence. We're currently in the process of adding functionality to the mobile app that allows you to tap a shift on the schedule to edit the members and escalations of that shift occurrence:
Integrations & Development
Continuing to build features and enhancements for Flow Designer was the major focus of our work on our integration platform this release. As you'll see below though, this didn't stop us from also doing a ton of work on the xMatters REST API!
xMatters REST API
We continually enhance our xMatters REST API calls to replace existing SOAP and older REST methods. These calls not only support customer integration needs, they're also the foundation for data access by our mobile clients, the web user interface, and other key xMatters services.
xMatters REST API enhancements
In recent releases, we've provided greater API access to communication plans. For Frogger, we're building on that with a large list of complementary endpoints for managing your plans, as well as some nice additions that make it easier to manage groups and access user device information.
New endpoints
Create and manage communication plans
Previously, you could use the xMatters REST API to get communication plans. With the following new endpoints, you can now create, modify, and delete them as well:
- POST /plan - Create a communication plan.
- POST /plans/{planId} - Modify the properties of an existing communication plan.
- DELETE /plans/{planId} - Delete a communication plan.
Get a communication plan form
Communication plan forms define the information contained in messages, how messages are presented to recipients on different devices, and which response options are available. While the xMatters REST API includes an endpoint for looking up all of the forms in a communication plan, you can't look up a specific form. Actually, now you can...
- GET /plans/{planId}/forms/{formId} - Returns a specific form in a communication plan. You can embed the response options available for the form, and include any pre-defined recipients.
Get form sections
If you're wanting to know more about a particular communication plan form - like which properties it includes - then you'll be interested in the following endpoint to look up information about the sections in your form layout:
- GET /forms/{formId}/sections - Returns information about the sections in your form layout.
We're building out this endpoint over time, and currently it returns information for the Recipients and Custom sections of your form layout. Since the custom section is how you add communication plan properties to a form, the information returned in the custom section object includes a list of all the properties used on your form.
Communication plan endpoints
Communication plan endpoints provide a simple way to define the base URL and authentication credentials to use when making HTTP requests to an application from a transformation script in the Integration Builder - or from a step in Flow Designer. By configuring endpoints separately, you can quickly modify all references to an endpoint across a communication plan rather than editing each instance of the target URL in your scripts.
Previously you had to create and manage endpoints via the xMatters web user interface, but now you can also take these actions programmatically using the following new endpoints in the xMatters REST API:
- GET /plans/{planId}/endpoints - Returns a list of endpoints configured for the specified communication plan or built-in integration.
- POST /plans/{planID}/endpoints - Creates or modifies an endpoint for a communication plan.
- DELETE /plans/{planId}/endpoint/{endpointId} - Deletes a communication plan endpoint.
Delete an integration
We've added an endpoint that you can use to programmatically delete integrations:
- DELETE /plans/{planId}/integrations/{integrationId} - Deletes an integration associated with a communication plan
Get subscribers
Need an easy way to find out who's subscribed to a particular subscription? Then you'll be a fan of this new xMatters REST API endpoint that allows you to programmatically look up all the subscribers for a single subscription:
- GET /subscriptions/{subscriptionId}/subscribers - returns a list of all users who subscribe to a subscription.
Add a member to a shift
We've added a new endpoint to the xMatters REST API that allows you to add a member to a shift:
- POST /groups/{groupID}/shifts/{shiftID}/members - adds a member (group, person, or device) to a shift.
You can use this endpoint to specify where to insert the member into the escalation timeline, and whether the member rotates according to the shift rotation rules. If you don't specify a position to insert the member, it's added to the end of the escalation timeline; and, if the group allows duplicates you can add a member to a shift more than once.
Get devices
Have you ever wished there was an easy way to look up all of the devices in your system? You can use the following endpoint to do just that (if you have the appropriate permissions, of course):
- GET /devices - returns all of the devices in your system, with the option to include the timeframes during which the devices are scheduled to receive notifications.
Updated endpoints
Get all groups for a site
Interested in looking up which groups are associated with a specific site? The GET /groups endpoint now includes a ?sites query parameter that you can use to retrieve a list of all the groups for a specified site. For example: GET /groups?sites=(siteId)
Group observers
Now when you use the xMatters REST API to retrieve information about groups using the Get a group or Get groups endpoints, you have the option to include information about group observers.
In xMatters, the Group Observers setting controls which roles can notify a group and view its details. By default, all new groups are "Observed by All", but you have the option to grant access only to specific roles (for example, you could provide Supervisors - but not other roles like Standard Users - the ability to contact an Executives group).
To return group observer information in your results, include the ?embed=observers query parameter in your request. If observedByAll=true is returned, then you know all the roles in your company have access to the group. If observedByAll=false is returned, then specific roles have been selected as observers for the group and the return includes a list of these roles.
Last login
You can programmatically look up the last time a user logged into xMatters. We've updated the Get a person and Get people endpoints to automatically return lastLogin with a user's details.
GET /events exact match search
It's now possible to search for events based on an exact match of a unique property. To do this, use the GET /events endpoint and the new PropertyValueOperator query parameter, in conjunction with the propertyName and propertyValue parameters. For example, here's how you'd search for events with the property 'videoGame' that exactly matched the value "frogger": GET /events?propertyName=videoGame&propertyValue=frogger&propertyValueOperator=EQUALS
For more information about how to use the PropertyValueOperator query parameter, see our online documentation.
Data imports
In the past, you'd need to install and run a separate application to synchronize user, group, and site data between xMatters and an external system using the EPIC client - this is no longer the case. You can now use the following endpoint to upload an EPIC ZipSync file directly via the xMatters REST API:
- POST /uploads/epic-V1 - uploads an epic_zipsync.zip file.
What's next?
Over the next quarter you can expect to see new REST web services that provide more ways to access or manage information about communication plans, like integration activity logs and form layouts. For event management, we'll be exposing more data related to event filtering and suppressions. We're also building new endpoints to help manage dynamic teams, as well as improving some of our existing endpoints.
You can learn more about the xMatters REST API in our online help.
xMatters Agent
The xMatters Agent is a service you can install on a local system to process workflow logic behind your company firewall. This allows systems behind your firewall to trigger and enrich events in xMatters and enables integrations to communicate with systems that cannot be accessed externally. In this quarterly release, we made it possible to run flows on xMatters Agents, and we've also given you better visibility into the xMatters Agents in your system.
Better visibility for developers
As a developer, you need visibility into the xMatters Agents in your system. Previously, if you weren't a registered user of an agent, you couldn't see whether a packaged or built-in integration was configured to run on that agent. Now, if you have the Developer role in xMatters and you have access permissions to an integration, you'll be able to see which agents it runs on, and whether you're a registered user of those agents.
If you're not a registered user, xMatters displays a read-only view of an integration's configuration screen (and script editor, if applicable), so you'll be able to see the information you need but (obviously!) won't be able to edit what you haven't been granted access to:
Integration Directory
The Integration Directory streamlines the work required to integrate your tools with pre-built integrations that are easy to find, configure, and manage. The main enhancement to the Integration Directory this release includes updates to our existing ServiceNow packaged integration.
New and updated integrations
ServiceNow 5.3
The latest version of the xMatters application for ServiceNow is available from the ServiceNow Store. This latest release includes the following updates:
- Refined data synchronization scripts to improve performance.
- Values from xMattersConfig script include moved into system properties. If you've customized this script include in the past, there are a few extra steps you'll need to follow as part of the upgrade process.
For upgrade or installation instructions, feature and update descriptions, and a list of issues addressed in recent releases, see the integration guide here.
Reporting
Whether you're dealing with a customer-facing incident, digital service downtime, or unmanaged responses to critical issues, the reporting capabilities of xMatters provide insights and visibility across your business. In this release, we add some enhancements to the All Events report.
All Events report: User delivery improvements
The User Delivery tab of the All Events report is your window into how users were notified for past events, providing you with access to more of your xMatters data to support root cause analyses, address compliance requirements, and other important processes.
More user delivery information
We've added additional information to the User Delivery tab to give you greater insight into how users were notified for an event, and how they responded. You'll see the following new fields on the User Delivery report:
- Group Notified: The group or groups to which the user belongs that received the notification (or 'Direct Notification' if they were notified directly and not as part of a group).
- Response: The most recent response option selected by the user, and date and time the response was sent.
- Devices: The device types notified, in order of their notification.
You can click on the device icons to view more detailed device delivery information, including the time xMatters attempted to notify each device, and whether the notification was delivered successfully:
New filter criteria for delivery status and response
We've added two new filters to the User Delivery tab: Delivery Status and Response. You can use these filters to narrow down your event data based on a notification's delivery results or a user's response choice, by selecting one or more of the possible results or responses:
All Events report: Usability improvements
As usual, whatever area of the product we're currently working on gives us an opportunity to look for ways that we can make it even better. While we were working on the All Events report, we beefed up its search capabilities and added some cool new shortcuts to subsets of user delivery information you might be interested in.
Improved search experience
It's easier to find the data you're looking for when searching the All Events report (and Conferences report, too!). We've improved the search behavior so that now when you enter at least two characters the report displays an enhanced menu that:
- Lets you scroll through all available options when there are too many to display at once.
- Tells you how many results are available and offers to show all entries when there are "No results".
- Offers to filter based on whether it "contains" or "equals" the entered text.
Hyperlinks to user delivery
Who doesn't love a good shortcut? Especially if it's one that takes you to the exact subset of event data that you want to see - like a list of the users who didn't respond that you need to follow up with. We've tricked out the All Events report with new hyperlinks to the User Delivery tab, where the data for the event is filtered and sorted according to the shortcut you chose on the report.
Here's what all these new links look like (in blue text):
In this example, if you click the "Escalate" response choice, you're taken to the User Delivery tab, where the search filter is pre-populated to return all the users who selected that response choice:
Data Management
A critical step to managing data in any system is being able to successfully get your data into the system, which may or may not be an easy task. Over the last couple of quarterly releases, we completely redesigned how user data is uploaded into xMatters, with a goal of making your data management as pain-free as possible. We do some follow-up work this release, with additional updates to our user upload job status notifications.
Job status notification updates
The User Upload job status alerts we introduced in Enduro received some additional love this release. We've added new permissions that you can use to delegate performing user upload jobs to other roles in your company, and we've expanded the list of roles that can subscribe to user upload notifications to include group, person, and subscription supervisors (previously, only full access and standard users could subscribe). We've also updated the formatting of the user upload email notifications and included a link that takes you directly to that specific user upload job.
Other Product Updates
As usual, we've come to the end and are left with those few extra enhancements that we managed to sneak in but don't quite fit into one of the other sections of the overview - but we think you'll still find them useful!
Deactivating inefficient voice devices
In the Enduro release, we introduced behavior into xMatters On-Demand to deactivate "inefficient" SMS devices - that is, any SMS device that xMatters is consistently and repeatedly unable to contact. We've expanded this behavior to include voice devices so that if xMatters On-Demand is unable to successfully contact a user's SMS or voice device 100 times in the same week, it'll be deactivated.
For more information, and for instructions on how to reactivate a device or look up the invalid devices in your system, see Automatic deactivation of inefficient devices in our online help
Shift scheduling improvements
We've added new error handling to our shift scheduling screen to help users have greater success when creating a shift series. Now when you're about to create a "bad" shift series - that's one where you've made the first occurrence of the shift too long and it's scheduled to repeat before it has ended - we'll warn you that this may cause unexpected notification and on-call reminder behavior:
SMS best practices
Are you still using SMS? You know that the xMatters mobile app is a much better alternative... right? OK, now that we've got that out of the way... during this release we announced changes to the way xMatters handles longer SMS notifications. If you missed the announcement, or haven't read the handy list of SMS tips we've put together, be sure to check out our xMatters and SMS Best Practices.
Early Access Program & feature delivery update
The goal of our current delivery model for xMatters On-Demand is to balance feature delivery with customer change management processes. This means providing visibility into upcoming changes for customers that want it, while allowing other customers to have a more standard non-production environment that matches production.
If you aren't familiar with the current model, we release features only visible to admins/developers at a faster pace than the quarterly release process. These features should not impact end users until a customer provisions them into their communication plan. Customers can opt their non-production environments into the Early Access Program to see features and functionality enhancements that impact end users before they're released on a quarterly basis. All customer non-production environments are updated two weeks prior to official quarterly production release to allow for testing and training on new features.
We regularly reevaluate and improve our deployment processes to ensure they reflect industry best practices and customer feedback. For more information about our deployment process, see our On-Demand Deployment Process and Early Access article. We'll update that document whenever we make a change, and let you know about the change through other appropriate channels.
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The Frogger Release is now available in all production environments.