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Missile Command Quarterly Release Details Missile Command was released on August 17, 2021. The Missile Command release unveiled a new Service Catalog to help you monitor the health of your systems. It also included incident change triggers, browser timeouts that preserve your unsaved changes, as well as a redesigned flow activity panel, canvas usability improvements, and more ways to effectively manage incidents from the mobile app when you're on-the-go. For all the details, see the Missile Command (Jul/Aug 2021) Release Overview. Next Release: Ninja (Oct/Nov 2021) We've already started working on our next quarterly release, which we've named Ninja. Follow the Ninja Development Highlights & Support Notes page so that you receive updates throughout the quarter on all of the fun and functionality we're working on. |
Introduction
We're hard at work on our next quarterly release, Missile Command, which will be rolling out in the July/August 2021 timeframe. Please follow this article and its comments to receive updates throughout the quarter about new features and functionality that we're working on for the Missile Command release.
Customers interested in previewing new features before they're released can opt into our Early Access Program (EAP), which delivers new features into non-production environments as they're rolled off the assembly line.
We'll also use this document to capture highlights of additions and updates to our mobile platforms and the xMatters REST API.
Deployment Details
For more information on how features in this article work, click the online help links embedded in each topic. As with any of our Community articles, you can click any image or animated GIF to see a larger version.
Support Notes
For a list of additional changes made in each deployment that are not covered in the Development Highlights, see the support notes included below each highlight. While most features will be added to production environments as part of our quarterly releases, the support notes typically describe fixes, which can sometimes affect product behavior.
August 23-27, 2021
Support Notes
xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
COR-40862 (SUP-23508) |
Flow Designer - Custom Step Usage Permissions: Fixed an issue that prevented authorized users from changing permission settings on a custom step. |
COR-40852 (SUP-23489) |
Dashboards - Messaging widget: Fixed an issue that was preventing some older forms from being accessible via the Messaging widget. |
COR-40770 (SUP-23490) |
Web user interface - timeouts: Fixed an issue that prevented pages from loading properly when users logged in after a session timeout. |
COR-40787 (SUP-23466) |
xMatters REST API - GET /devices: Improved the performance of the xMatters REST API when retrieving a large number of voice devices and their timeframes. |
COR-40281 | Flow Designer: Fixed an issue that prevented some handling option information from being passed properly to other flow steps. |
August 16-20, 2021
Missile Command Release
The Missile Command Release is now available in production environments! For an overview of all the features and enhancements included in the release (and their availability), see our Missile Command Release Overview.
Missile Command Training Webinars
For a guided tour of the release, including tips and tricks, sign up for one of our free workshops.
Support notes (week of August 16-20)
xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
COR-40661 (SUP-23485) |
Flow Designer - export workflow: Corrected an issue preventing workflows from exporting correctly when a switch step had a missing value for a path. |
COR-40641 |
User profile (usability fix): Fixed an issue where column resizing did not behave as expected. |
COR-40468 |
Flow Designer - step version status: Corrected an issue to truncate long step names and properly display the status of step versions. |
COR-39890 |
Flow Designer - custom icons: Fixed an issue where deleting a custom icon did not remove it as the selected icon for a step. |
COR-40546 (SUP-23433) |
Who's On Call Report - export: Corrected an issue preventing some users from exporting the Who's On Call report. |
COR-40428 |
Conferences report: Updated the host field to indicate if the user was deleted xMatters, rather than displaying a blank field. |
COR-39716 | xM REST API - GET /groups shift: Corrected an issue where users with temporary absences without replacements caused the API to return an error. |
August 9-13, 2021
Mobile: Android 3.5 & iOS 4.9
Do you use the xMatters mobile app to manage incidents when you're on-the-go? If so, be sure to upgrade to the latest version to take advantage of the these great updates for managing resolvers and using the timeline:
- Skip the notification process. Someone already working on an incident? Don't make them stop to acknowledge a notification – instead, directly add them as engaged.
- Record how long resolvers are engaged. For more accurate reporting, dismiss resolvers when they're no longer needed on an incident.
- Reassign the Incident Commander. Need to step away for a bit? Hand off responsibility for an incident to another engaged resolver.
- Quickly get up to speed. Search, filter, and sort the timeline to get a handle on its resolution activities.
- Contribute to postmortem analyses. Manually add your own notes to the timeline about how the incident is progressing.
Support notes (week of August 9-13)
xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
COR-40378 (SUP-23452) |
Flow Designer - HTTP Trigger: Fixed an issue that disabled the authentication type selector when the Authentication field was set to "Allow All Methods". |
COR-38536 (SUP-23111) |
Users - adding licenses: Corrected an issue that prevented users from adding additional licenses to their accounts. |
COR-39920 | Workflows - Create Alert step: Fixed an issue so that the Create Alert step properly logs comments submitted by users of the mobile app. |
August 2-6, 2021
Service Catalog
Ready to take your service reliability and incident management processes to the next level? Our Service Catalog is now available in EAP and non-production environments (for customers with xMatters Incident Management):
By defining your organization's services and their owners, you can easily identify when services are impacted by an incident and engage the groups responsible for them:
For more information about the Service Catalog and related incident management enhancements, see the Missile Command Release Overview.
xMatters REST API: Incidents
Create or modify an incident
You can now programmatically initiate and update incidents using the xMatters REST API. Our new POST /incidents endpoint lets you specify the incident's summary, description, severity, and status. The authenticating user that created the incident is assigned as the Incident Commander.
Get incidents
The GET /incidents endpoint lets you retrieve a list of the incidents in your xMatters instance. You can use query parameters to search for incidents based on keywords in the summary and description fields, or by incident identifier; for example:
GET /incidents?search=database
GET /incidents?search=customer+portal&fields=DESCRIPTION
You can also use the endpoint to search for an incident by specifying its request identifier:
GET /incidents?requestId=92eb2567-38d0-40e5-8fbd-fa1f9e1454bd
Get a specific incident
To return a single incident, you can specify the incident's unique identifier or incident number:
GET /incidents/ab1d6091-7d58-41e2-af72-49c69b3d9b65
GET /incidents/INC-145
Add a timeline note
You can use POST /incidents/{incidentID)/timeline-entries
to add a note to the timeline of an existing incident. The authenticating user who posts the note is recorded as the author of the note.
xMatters REST API: External conference bridges
Customers using third-party conference providers can now configure external conference bridges and add them to messaging forms using the xMatters REST API. We've added the following new endpoints for managing your external conference bridge configurations:
-
GET /conference-bridges
– returns all external conference bridge configurations in your system. -
GET /conference-bridges/{bridgeId}
– returns a specific conference bridge configuration. -
POST /conference-bridges
– creates or modifies the configuration for an external conference bridge. -
DELETE /conference-bridges/{bridgeId}
– deletes an external conference bridge from the system, and from any form or scenario where it's used.
xMatters REST API: Get a form in a plan (the quicker way)
We've just made a small (but handy!) update for retrieving a specific form in a communication plan. Instead of using the nested path /plans/{planId}/forms/{formId}
to identify the form, you can now instead use the alias forms/{formId}
.
So, while you can still get the recipients for a specific form in a plan like this...GET /plans/{planId}/forms/{formId}/recipients
... you can now alternatively use the simplified path:GET /forms/{formId}/recipients
That's much less of a mouthful! For more information, see Get a form in a plan.
Support notes (week of August 2-6)
xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
COR-40334 (SUP-23432) |
Signals report - suppressions: Fixed an issue that prevented users from seeing the Suppression report after clicking the suppression icon. |
COR-40239 (SUP-23417) |
Workflows - manage recordings: Corrected an issue that was preventing downloaded voice recordings from uploading properly. |
COR-40236 (SUP-23417) |
Messaging - scenarios: Fixed an issue where scenario managers were prevented from removing all recipients from a scenario. |
COR-40095 | Workflows - flow trigger forms: Corrected an issue where it was not possible to select a flow trigger form used in a messaging form after the messaging form was deleted. |
COR-40296 | Users - Welcome Message: Fixed the Preview Message link on the Send Welcome Message window so users can preview messages before sending them. |
COR-40226 (SUP-23423) |
EPIC data synchronization: Fixed an issue that was preventing the EPIC client from working properly on some Windows installations. (Download the latest version of the EPIC client here.) |
July 26-30, 2021
The Missile Command Release Overview is now available! It's your comprehensive guide to all the great new features and enhancements we've packed into this quarterly release. Missile Command is currently live in non-production environments and we'll be toggling the features 'on' in production environments on Tuesday, August 17.
Note: We're putting the final touches on the Service Catalog and it'll be available in non-prod on Tuesday, August 10.
Support notes (week of July 26-30)
xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
COR-40163 (SUP-23388) |
Groups - Roster tab: Fixed an issue where devices were not listed alphabetically in the list of group members. |
COR-40078 | Users - search filters: Fixed an issue that prevented users from searching for names using special characters. |
COR-40114 | Flow Designer - custom HTTP triggers: Users should no longer be able to edit authentication options for custom HTTP triggers on the canvas. |
COR-38862 | Post Incident Report (usability enhancement): Adding a link in the editor on the Post Incident Report that does not include a protocol should now automatically prepend it with http://. |
COR-40112 | Dynamic Teams: Fixed an issue where the Dynamic Teams page was not loading properly for some users. |
COR-39812 | Flow Designer - email initiation (performance enhancement): Improved the performance of email-initiated flows in instances with a large number of email devices. |
COR-40033 | User profile - Schedule tab: Reduced loading times of the Schedule tab for users belonging to very large teams. |
July 19-23, 2021
Double-click steps in the palette
Power users will appreciate this latest usability enhancement to speed up the process for modifying a step – you can now simply double-click a step in the palette to edit its definition! Plus, if you don't have edit permissions, we've added some helpful hints too.
Support notes (week of July 19-23)
xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
COR-39940 | Flow Designer - step configuration: Fixed an issue where properties were not displaying correctly when configuring step inputs. |
COR-39719 | Incidents list: Fixed an issue where the Incidents list would not scroll properly for some users. |
COR-39278 | Incident Console - stakeholder updates: Incident stakeholder updates should now be set to the time zone of the user composing the message. |
COR-39256 | Incident Console - resolvers: Fixed an issue where contact cards were not visible for resolvers with assigned roles. |
COR-39931 | User profile - Schedule tab: Fixed an issue that was preventing the Schedule tab from loading for users with a particular shift configuration. |
COR-39769 | User profile - Groups: Groups should no longer still appear on the Groups tab in user profiles after being deleted. |
COR-39501 | Flow Designer - email integration: Fixed an issue where deleting a Flow Designer canvas would not properly release any included email trigger IDs. |
July 12-16, 2021
Missile Command Quarterly Release
The quarterly release is coming up quick! Here are the dates to mark on your calendar:
- Non-production environment access: Tuesday, July 27
- Production environment access: Tuesday, August 17 (enabled between 10:00-10:30 am Pacific)
Watch for the complete Missile Command feature overview, coming on Tuesday, July 27!
Find a step in the palette
Got a step on your canvas you'd like to edit, create a new version of, or use in a flow... but then you can't seem to find it in the palette? Or maybe you're unsure what to look for because the version you're using was withdrawn, or the step was renamed on the canvas or in the palette?
Whatever the reason, you can now quickly and easily find any step in the palette – just hover over the step on the canvas, click the new options menu, and select Find Step in Palette to highlight it in the palette:
If a step is no longer available in the palette because it's deprecated or withdrawn, you can locate a new version of the step, or open the step definition to view the deprecated version's settings:
New App triggers
We've added another seven new App triggers in Flow Designer you can use to build your own custom signal handlers in xMatters:
- Graylog Alerts
- Instana Incidents
- Lightstep Metric Alerts
- Lightstep Stream Alerts
- Logz.io Alerts
- OverOps Alerts
- PRTG Alarms
Support notes (week of July 12-16)
xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
COR-39357 (SUP-23290) |
Recent Events report - Log tab: Corrected an issue where commas in subscription form names caused parsing issues on the Log tab. |
COR-39751 (SUP-23354) |
User profile - API keys: Fixed an issue that prevented users from opening the Manage API Keys dialog box. |
COR-39722 (SUP-23345) |
Web user interface - Forgot password link: Corrected an issue that prevented users from resetting their passwords when they clicked the "Forgot password" link. |
COR-39703 (SUP-23282) |
Flow Designer - step setup: Fixed an issue where spaces between fields on the setup tab were replaced by non-breaking spaces, causing the flow to break. |
COR-39595 (SUP-23333) |
Flow Designer: Corrected an issue that prevented users from opening the flow canvas. |
COR-39526 (SUP-23327) |
Users page - Devices: Fixed an issue that prevented users from saving changes to a voice device. |
COR-38921 (SUP-23285) |
Users profile - Schedule (performance enhancement): Improved the performance when loading more shifts on the Schedule tab of the User profile. |
July 5-9, 2021
Add Microsoft Teams meeting collaboration channels from the Incident Console
You can now add Microsoft Teams meetings to an incident from the Incident Console. This is useful for workflows that don't automatically create Teams meetings when initiating incidents (such as the default xMatters Incident Management workflow).
You have the option to Create new meeting or Add meeting URL of an existing meeting:
Mobile incident management: Incident timeline
Want to stay informed on how incidents are progressing even when you're on the go? The latest versions of the xMatters app for iOS and Android include a new Timeline tab for incidents – tap this tab to see a real-time record of all the incident resolution activities:
Mobile incident management: Participants
The latest version of the xMatters app for Android also includes a new Participants tab, which you can use to get a clear view of everyone who's involved, their engagement status, and their role in resolving the incident:
Support notes (week of July 5-9)
xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
COR-39283 | Workflows - creating from templates: Fixed an issue where users could not save the Flow Designer canvas after creating a new workflow from a template. |
COR-39275 | Incident initiation (translations): Updated some missing French translations on the Initiate Incident dialog. |
COR-39386 | xMatters REST API - POST /people: Fixed an issue where attempting to add roles to a user would return a 403 error. |
COR-39457 (SUP-23315) |
Workflows - importing: Fixed an issue where users would encounter an error message when attempting to import a workflow that included a merge step. |
COR-38930 | xMatters REST API - plan properties: Updated the REST API to ensure it returns the correct error code (400) is returned when a request includes null as a property value. |
COR-39368 | Flow Designer - step configuration: Added some missing values to the breadcrumbs in some step configuration windows. |
COR-39358 (SUP-23302) |
Users page - searching: Fixed an issue where some filters on the Users page were not searching for special characters correctly. |
COR-39255 (SUP-23309) |
Incident Console - Add Resolvers: Fixed an issue where the Add Resolvers button on the Incident Console would not display engage options if the incident description was exceptionally long. |
COR-38861 | Flow Designer - Merge steps: Fixed an issue a Merge steps on the canvas would be flagged as having an invalid configuration if it followed a Create Alert step. |
COR-35194 | Groups - Calendar view: Fixed an issue where the pop-up window was not displaying properly for Wednesday shifts within a 24x7 group. |
June 28-July 2, 2021
New Slack endpoint & updated Flow Designer steps
Our new Slack endpoint is now available! It gives you access to some new tricks, including the ability to interact with private channels, pins, and user groups in Slack. We've also released new versions of our built-in Slack steps that use the new endpoint and support creating and working with private channels in Slack.
Support notes (week of June 28-July 2)
xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
COR-39253 | Incident Console: Fixed an issue that prevented users from changing certain editable fields when the incident was in Resolved status. |
COR-38895 | Flow Designer - Merge Step: Corrected an issue that prevented values from properly passing through the Merge step on to downstream steps. |
COR-38837 | All Events report: Fixed an issue that resulted in the UUID of an incident appearing in the All Events report rather than the incident identifier. |
June 21-25, 2021
xMatters REST API: Create & modify forms
Ever wished you could programmatically modify or create a new form using the xMatters REST API? Well, we've added a new POST /plans/{planId}/form endpoint to let you do just that! You can create either a messaging form or flow trigger form, set its description, and specify whether it's enabled for mobile, the web UI, or for API use.
Support notes (week of June 21-25)
xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
COR-39282 | Flow Designer - libraries: Corrected an issue that prevented users from saving valid script libraries. |
COR-39143 (SUP-23275) |
Users page: Fixed an issue that was causing some users to encounter an error message when attempting to view the Users page. |
COR-39131 | Dashboards - Incidents by Severity: Corrected a caching issue that caused the Incidents list to display a different number of incidents than the dashboard widget. |
COR-39101 | Reports - All Events report: Fixed an issue where clicking and dragging the vertical scroll bar selected items on the page. |
COR-39147 | Create Alert step and All Events report: Corrected an issue where an email message configured in the Create Alert step displayed placeholder information instead of property values on the All Events report. |
COR-39129 | Flow Designer - custom triggers: Fixed an issue that prevented users from deleting custom triggers. |
COR-38835 | Flow Designer - switch step: Corrected an issue that prevented properties of upstream steps from appearing in the outputs menu of a switch step. |
COR-37753 | Post-Incident Report - Actions list: Fixed an issue that caused the Actions list to refresh when attempting to search. |
COR-36290 | Flow Designer - merge step: Corrected an issue that prevented multiple responses from successfully mapping to a single merge step. |
June 14-18, 2021
xMatters REST API: Incidents
As mentioned in our last release overview, we've started adding endpoints to the xMatters REST API that let you get information about incidents and add notes to them programmatically. We're starting with the following key behaviors and we'll continue to build on them over coming releases:
Get incidents
The GET /incidents endpoint lets you retrieve a list of the incidents in your xMatters instance. You can use query parameters to search for incidents based on keywords in their summary, description, or incident identifier, and you can embed details about the incident commander. For example:
- GET /incidents?search=customer+portal&fields=DESCRIPTION
- GET /incidents?search=INC-146&fields=INCIDENT_IDENTIFIER
- GET /incidents?search=database?embed=commander
You can also search for an incident by specifying its request ID:
- GET /incidents?requestId=92eb2567-38d0-40e5-8fbd-fa1f9e1454bd
Get an incident
To return a single incident, specify the incident's unique identifier or incident number:
- GET /incidents/ab1d6091-7d58-41e2-af72-49c69b3d9b65
- GET /incidents/INC-145
Add a timeline note
You can use the POST /incidents endpoint to add a note to the timeline of an existing incident. The authenticating user who posts the note is documented as the author, and they can specify which incident to add the note to using the Incident ID:
- POST /incidents/{incidentID)/note
xMatters REST API: Get scenarios
Get all the scenarios! Until now, you could use the xMatters REST API to return the scenarios for a form in a communication plan, but what if you wanted to easily get all of the scenarios in your system?
You can now use our new GET /scenarios endpoint to retrieve all the scenarios in your instance. You can search for scenarios that contain keywords, as well as those which are enabled for the xMatters mobile app or the web user interface. For example:
- GET /scenarios?search=Vancouver
- GET /scenarios?enabledFor=MOBILE
xMatters REST API: Various updates to existing endpoints
We've also made some minor updates and clarifications to a few other endpoints:
- GET /plans - Filter by enabled or disabled workflows.
- GET /forms - Filter by the type of workflow the form belongs to (custom, built-in, or reserved xMatters system workflows).
- GET /subscriptions - Clarified which operators accept single or multiple values.
- GET /people - Sort people by username, target name, status, web login, last login, site, or roles — and in ascending or descending order. Also, filter by when a user was created.
Support notes (week of June 14-18)
xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
COR-38919 (SUP-23251) |
Flow Designer - HTTP triggers: Fixed an issue that caused the web user interface to show the original authentication settings for an HTTP trigger instead of the current settings. |
COR-38834 (SUP-23228) |
Terminating events: Corrected an issue where events targeting a group with a holiday shift would occasionally fail to terminate properly. |
COR-38929 (SUP-23256) |
Dynamic teams - user links in preview: Clicking a user link when previewing a dynamic team will now properly redirect to the user's profile page. |
COR-38830 | Flow Designer - custom steps: Corrected an issue that caused some screens of the custom step edit window remove the scroll bar or displaying fields incorrectly. |
COR-38762 | xMatters REST API - POST /scenarios: Fixed an issue where submitting a proper request to create a scenario could result in a 500 error. |
June 7-11, 2021
Support notes (week of June 7-11)
xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
COR-38616 | Incidents - Incident Console: Users should now be able to set the Acknowledged time to be the same as the Resolved time. |
COR-36741 | Workflows - forms (usability fix): Switched the order of the Create and Cancel buttons to maintain consistency with the rest of the user interface. |
COR-38773 (SUP-23236) |
All Events report -searching: Fixed an error that prevented the search from returning results when a user's name begins with a single initial. |
COR-38737 (SUP-23266) |
Users page (usability fix): Improved overall performance of the Users page, particularly when searching a large number of users. |
COR-37656 | Workflows - forms (cosmetic fix): Fixed the layout of some form elements to ensure items aligned properly. |
COR-37092 | Workflows - forms: Added missing French translations for some elements. |
May 31-June 4, 2021
All Events Report - Request ID
The All Events report now includes the Request ID on the Overview tab for an event. If an event isn't what you expected and you need to troubleshoot it, click the associated Request ID link to go to the Signals report and take a closer look at what was included in the payload of the signal that triggered the event:
New installable workflows
We've just added a whopping twenty more installable workflows! Instead of having to download and import a .zip file, you can install these workflows directly from within xMatters. They include a pre-built flow that creates an event when xMatters receives a signal from the external system. When on-call resources respond to the event notification, they have the option to initiate an incident. Click the name of a workflow below for more info:
- AppDynamics
- AWS CloudWatch
- BigPanda
- Elastic
- Grafana
- Honeycomb
- Icinga
- Moogsoft
- Nagios Core
- Nagios XI
- New Relic
- Panopta
- Pingdom Server Monitor (formerly Scout)
- Prometheus
- Sentry
- Site24x7
- Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring (formerly SignalFx)
- Sumo Logic
- ThousandEyes
- Zabbix
Support notes (week of May 31-June 4)
xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
COR-38656 (SUP-23188) |
Workflows - property names: Corrected an issue that prevented users from saving some valid property names. |
COR-38628 (SUP-23145) |
Android and iOS mobile app - notifications: Fixed an issue that caused mobile app notifications to display UTC time instead of the user's specific time zone. |
COR-38657 (SUP-23212) |
Messaging - scenario recipients: Improved performance when searching for recipients to add to a scenario. |
COR-38571 (SUP-23205) |
User Profile (performance improvement): Adjusted the user profile page to properly indicate if a user has never logged in. |
COR-38567 (SUP-23208) |
Users - Supervisors list: Fixed an issue where attempting to remove a user's original supervisor from the list would also remove their other supervisors. |
About the early access delivery process
Customers can choose to opt their non-production environments into an Early Access Program (EAP) to see new functionality before it's released. If you're considering signing up for the early access program, there are a couple of important things to know:
- Enrollment in EAP can be turned on any time through a support request.
- Exiting EAP can only be done on quarterly boundaries (you cannot opt in and out between quarterly releases).
For full details, refer to the official On-Demand Deployment Process & Early Access article.
Comments
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Support notes added for week of June 7-11, 2021.
Highlights and support notes added for week of June 14-18, 2021:
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Highlights and support notes added for week of June 21-25 2021:
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Highlights and support notes added for week of June 28-July 2, 2021:
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Highlights and support notes added for week of July 5-9, 2021:
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Highlights and support notes added for week of July 12-16, 2021:
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Highlights and support notes added for week of July 19-23, 2021:
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Also, we've extended the non-production/EAP evaluation period of the Missile Command release to 3 weeks, for a production release date of Tuesday, August 17. Keep an eye out tomorrow for the full feature overview!
Highlights and support notes added for week of July 26-30, 2021:
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Highlights and support notes added for week of August 2-6, 2021:
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Highlights and support notes added for week of August 9-13, 2021:
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Highlights and support notes added for week of August 16-20, 2021:
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Support notes added for week of August 23-27, 2021.
We've started working on our next quarterly release, which we've code-named Ninja.
Follow the Ninja Development Highlights & Support Notes page to receive updates throughout the quarter on all the fun and functionality we're working on!