The information in this article is the intellectual property of xMatters and is intended only for use with xMatters products by xMatters customers and their employees. Further, this intellectual property is proprietary and must not be reused or resold.
|
Out Run Quarterly Release Details Out Run was released on March 1, 2022. The Out Run release features service-centric automations that make incident management easier for resolvers, improved service visibility from our mobile platform, the ability to get notified in chat apps, a widget for monitoring incident MTTA & MTTR, and a redesigned interface for managing your devices. For all the details, see the Out Run (Feb/Mar 2022) Release Overview. Next Release: Pole Position (Jun/Jul 2022) We've already started working on our next quarterly release, which we've named Pole Position. Follow the Pole Position 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, Out Run, which will be rolling out in the February/March 2022 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 Out Run 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.
February 28-March 4, 2022
Mobile: Android 3.11
A new version of our Android mobile app is now available. We've overhauled the Notification Settings screen to give you greater visibility into the settings available for each notification priority level. You can now have different repeat notification settings for low, medium, and high priority alerts — and you can choose which priority levels can override your device's Do Not Disturb settings.
Out Run Release
The Out Run Release is now available in production environments! For an overview of all the features and enhancements included in the release, see our Out Run Release Overview.
Support notes (week of February 28-March 4)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-45282 | Users and Groups (cosmetic fixes): Adjusted some window and tooltip settings to provide a better user experience for French users. |
| COR-44799 | Post-Incident Report - Impacted Services: Ensured the Run Automation button was visible in the Impacted Services section so users can run automations from the Post-Incident Report. |
February 21-25, 2022
See group escalation status in resolvers list
Previously when you'd notify a group to engage in an incident it could look like no one had responded, when in reality the notification was escalating to secondary on-call responders. To provide incident commanders better clarity on the engagement status of groups they've notified — and to prevent them from unnecessarily renotifying groups to engage — we've added a new 'Escalating' status to the Resolvers section of the Incident Console:
We'll display this status once the notification escalates to the secondary on-call resource, and we'll continue to display it until someone responds, or for five minutes after the last user in the escalation path gets notified. After this we'll mark the group status as 'No Response' and you won't have to worry about spamming the group if you renotify them to engage.
Support notes (week of February 21-25)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-45151 (SUP-24033) |
Company details - regional setting: Fixed an issue that prevented users from adding countries and region settings to their instances. |
| COR-44813 | xMatters REST API - POST /incidents/{incidentId}/notes: Modified permission settings to ensure only valid users could add notes to an incident timeline. |
| COR-44698 | Admin - Company Settings: Fixed an issue that prevented some users from successfully uploading their SAML certificates. |
| COR-44567 (SUP-23688) |
Groups - Shifts: Fixed an error to ensure that new shift members receive on-call reminders. |
| COR-44317 | Flood Control: Fixed an issue where alerts that triggered flood control were being suppressed by other flood control rules. |
February 14-18, 2022
Out Run Release Overview
The Out Run Release Overview is now available! It's your go-to guide to all the great new features and enhancements we've packed into this quarterly release. Out Run is currently live in non-production environments and we'll be toggling features 'on' in production environments on Tuesday, March 1.
xMatters REST API: Attachments
We've added a new endpoint to the xMatters REST API to allow you to programmatically add attachments to your events (alerts) and scenarios:
- POST /attachments – Upload a file to xMatters to use as an attachment with events and scenarios.
We've also updated the GET /events and GET /scenarios endpoints so you can view and download specific attachments:
- GET /events/{eventId}/attachments/{attachmentId} – Returns a single attachment for a specific event so you can view or download it.
- GET /scenarios/{scenarioId}/attachments/{attachmentId} – Returns a single attachment for a specific scenario so you can view or download it.
xMatters REST API: Scheduled messages
You can also now use the xMatters REST API to schedule one-time or recurring messages. Here are the new endpoints for creating and managing your scheduled messages:
- POST /scheduled-messages – Create or modify scheduled messages to be sent at a future date and time.
- GET /scheduled-messages – Returns a list of the scheduled messages in your system.
- GET /scheduled-messages/{scheduledMessageId} – Returns a single scheduled message, identified by its unique identifier.
- DELETE /scheduled-messages/{scheduledMessageId} – Deletes a scheduled message, identified by its unique identifier.
Support notes (week of February 14-18)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-45092 (SUP-24034) |
Users - Devices: Fixed an issue that caused company supervisors to see an error message when they attempted to add new voice or SMS devices to valid accounts in their instance. |
| COR-45050 (SUP-24035) |
Flow Designer - Switch step: Corrected an issue that prevented the Switch step from showing the right property name if it is changed. |
| COR-44864 (SUP-24002) |
xMatters REST API - GET /groups: Improved performance for users with a large number of shifts per group. |
| COR-43778 (SUP-23656) |
Signals report: Fixed an issue to prevented users from seeing the right workflow when clicking links from the Signals report. |
| COR-44834 (SUP-23993) |
xMatters REST API - GET / plans/{planId}/forms/{formId}/scenarios: Fixed an issue to ensure the proper response is returned for plans that cannot contain scenarios. |
February 7-11, 2022
ServiceNow v5.6.0
A new version of the xMatters application for ServiceNow is available from the ServiceNow Store. This latest release includes a new option to 'Check Instance URL'. When selected, the data sync to xMatters will only be attempted if the ServiceNow Instance URL matches the value specified in the integration's Data Sync settings. This enhancement should help prevent inadvertent data syncs and loss of data when you're cloning ServiceNow instances.
For upgrade or installation instructions, feature and update descriptions, and a list of issues addressed in recent releases, see the integration guide.
xMatters REST API: Group and user license quotas
We've added two new endpoints to the xMatters REST API to allow you to programmatically look up your group and user license quotas:
- GET /groups/license-quota – Returns the number of groups currently created for your company and the number of total groups allowed by your plan type.
-
GET /people/license-quota – Returns the type (
fullUsersorstakeholderUsers) and count (total, active, and unused) of user licenses for your company.
We've also updated the POST /people endpoint so you can specify a user's license type:
-
POST /people – Specify whether a user has a
FULL_USERorSTAKEHOLDERlicense type when you create or update them.
Support notes (week of February 7-11)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-44632 | All Alerts report - Message tab: Fixed an issue where temporary absence alerts would not include the entire content of the message on the Message tab. |
| COR-44555 | Incidents - status updates: When an active and engaged incident is rejected, the Time to Acknowledge value is now correctly left blank. |
| COR-44678 | Privileged devices: Fixed an issue where the contact information fields for privileged devices were shown as blank instead of contained redacted values. |
January 31-February 4, 2022
Mobile: iOS 4.14 & Android 3.10
Never miss a high priority alert! (Android)
Android users can now enable xMatters to override their device's system volume settings. This lets the app play a sound for high priority alerts even when Do Not Disturb is enabled or a user has muted their device. You can enable this option and set the volume for high priority alerts from the app's notification settings:
View incident stakeholders (iOS & Android)
Incidents in our mobile apps now include a 'Stakeholders' tab, where you can track who is receiving updates about the incident (other than active incident resolvers, of course):
Search for services (iOS & Android)
You don't need to know which group owns a service to include it as a recipient on messages or as a resolver of incidents. Simply search for the name of the service in the recipients or resolvers list and your results will identify which group you need to contact:
Auto refresh the All Alerts report (or not!)
The All Alerts report now includes an Auto Refresh option. This is useful if you're displaying the report on a screen—such as in a NOC—and you want to see the most recent alerts without having to manually refresh the report. You also might find it helpful to disable this option when you're scrolling through the report to look at older alerts so you're not taken back to the top of the table each time the report refreshes.
Support notes (week of January 31-February 4)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-44670 (SUP-23979) |
Flow Designer: Fixed an issue that caused some steps to incorrectly display invalid configuration warning icons. |
| COR-44600 (SUP-22966) |
All Alerts report - filtering: Corrected an issue that prevented users from properly sorting filtered results. |
| COR-44592 (SUP-23934) |
Web User Interface - Login screen (cosmetic fix): Fixed an issue that prevented logos from resizing properly to the size of the login screen. |
| COR-43457 | Post-Incident Report: Ensured the Post-Incident Report properly saved all user input when switching between the Review and Actions tabs. |
| COR-44557 (SUP-23961) |
Groups - add user to group: Ensured the proper error message is displayed when a supervisor tries to add a user to a group they do not supervise. |
| COR-44502 (SUP-23954) |
Flow Designer - Custom step versions: Fixed an issue that caused the Usage tab to appear when the step version was not in use. |
| COR-44470 (SUP-23935) |
Incidents - Incident Console: Corrected an issue that prevented users from setting the Impact Start and End date as the same day. |
January 24-28, 2022
Automations (Base & Advanced plans)
Availability: Now in non-production; Feb.1 in production
More efficient incident management? Yes, please! Last week we announced Automations, a solution for making incident management easier for commanders and resolvers by reducing the time to diagnose, mitigate, and resolve incidents.
We've added a new 'Incident Automation' trigger to Flow Designer that allows you to run automated processes directly from the Incident Console. For example, with the click of a button you can do things like update a status page, run a health check, and initiate a roll back — the possibilities are nearly endless, especially when you use automations to run custom scripts in your environment.
Initiate flows from pgDash and Sysdig
We've added two new App triggers in Flow Designer. You can use these triggers to initiate flows when xMatters receives signals from pgDash or Sysdig Monitor (click the links below for more information):
Support notes (week of January 24-28)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-44518 | All Alerts report: Fixed an issue that prevented the filters from completely clearing when users click "Reset Filters". |
| COR-44474 | Messaging - Recipients: Corrected an issue where users could select an inactive user's devices as a message recipient even though the inactive user cannot be selected. |
| COR-44466 | Messaging - Search: Fixed an issue where a previously deleted search term is shown in the Search bar when users return to the Messaging page. |
| COR-44397 (SUP-23940) |
Flow Designer: Corrected an issue that caused canvases under the Flow Designer tab to show multiple errors when the actual canvas was error-free. |
| COR-44175 | Users - Devices (Cosmetic fixes): Modified some settings for Devices to ensure a consistent look and feel for users. |
| COR-43376 | Incidents - Incident Status (Usability fix): Fixed an issue where the Update button on the Update Incident Status window was disabled, preventing users from changing the status of an incident from Open to Resolved. |
| COR-43604 | xMatters REST API - GET /events: Corrected an issue so the GET /events parameter accurately returns plan information in the request response. |
| COR-44417 (SUP-23942) |
All Alerts report - filtering: Fixed an issue where the date range set on the Event Traffic widget was not properly displayed in the All Alerts report when users clicked the link. |
| COR-44283 (SUP-23930) |
Users - Roles: Ensured the appropriate error message is displayed to users when trying to remove a role. |
January 17-21, 2022
Out Run quarterly release dates
Buckle up, because the Out Run release is coming up fast! Here are the dates you'll want to watch for:
- Non-production environment access: Tuesday, February 15
- Production environment access: Tuesday, March 1 (enabled between 10:00-10:30 am Pacific)
Also, watch for the complete Out Run feature overview, coming on Tuesday, February 15!
Support notes (week of January 17-21)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-44376 (SUP-23941) |
All Alerts report - exporting: Fixed an issue where the All Alerts page created an empty export file for a specific date range. |
| COR-44369 (SUP-23900) |
Recent Alerts report - Timeline: Corrected an issue that prevented users using languages other than English and French from viewing an alert timeline. |
| COR-44308 | Flow Designer: Fixed an issue that prevented users from saving certain workflows where the xMatters Agent is set as a run location. |
| COR-44306 | Groups - Dynamic Teams: Corrected an issue that prevented new dynamic teams from appearing in the Dynamic Teams list after being saved. |
| COR-44277 (SUP-23920) |
All Alerts report: Fixed an issue that could cause the All Alerts list to show duplicated entries in search results if an authenticating user shared a target name with a deleted user. |
| COR-44255 (SUP-23924) |
Flow Designer: Corrected an issue that prevented users from opening a canvas containing multiple interconnected Merge steps. |
January 10-14, 2022
All Alerts report: First to Respond
The All Alerts report now includes information about who was the first to respond to an alert. This is helpful for checking whether someone has responded to an active alert, and for reporting purposes. You can add a 'First to Respond' column that shows who first responded to each alert, or use the multi-select filter to view alerts that specific people responded to first:
Show fewer service dependencies
By design, our service dependencies map displays a focused view of direct dependencies when you first open it. While you can easily expand the map to view additional upstream and downstream services, what if you want to collapse the map back down again to focus on specific services?
To do this, we've added new granular controls to each service so you can hide its upstream or downstream services. Simply hover over a service to access these controls (they appear as circles that contain the minus ("-") symbol). You can hover over a control to preview which parts of the map will be hidden when you click, represented as dashed lines:
Support notes (week of January 10-14)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-43736 | Incident Console - impacted services: Fixed an issue where services recently created on a group's Overview page were not immediately available to add to an incident from the Impacted Services menu on the Incident Console. |
| COR-43704 | Groups - Observers: Corrected an issue that caused users to see an error on the Groups Overview tab after editing Observers then viewing shift information. |
| COR-43708 | User upload: Fixed an issue that caused some user upload jobs to become stuck in Pending state. |
| COR-43815 | Services - dependencies map: Improved the layout and positioning of services on the dependencies map when working with a large number of services. |
January 3-7, 2022
What's on tap for 2022?
The last of our seasonal code freezes is complete and now we're ready to start cranking up our release process again! Be sure to follow this article for information about the timing of the Out Run release. And if you're curious about what we have planned for this year — or, at least the first quarter or so — check out our recent blog post: What to Expect from xMatters in 2022.
Mobile: iOS 4.13 & Android 3.9
The latest versions of the xMatters mobile app include some great new features we think you'll find helpful.
Never miss a high priority alert! (iOS)
Our iOS app now supports Critical Alerts, which means you'll have the option to play a sound and display xMatters alerts on the lock screen even if Do Not Disturb is on, or your device is muted. You can turn on Critical Alerts for high priority alerts in the app's notification settings:
View impacted services & engage their owners (iOS & Android)
The Overview screen for an incident now includes the Impacted Services section, where you can view which services are reported as affected by the incident. Tap a service to view more details about it, such as its description, owner, whether it's reported in any other active incidents, and to 'notify to engage' the group that owns it:
View the xMatters instance your message was sent from (Android & iOS)
If you're logged into more than one account on the app, messages will display the name of the xMatters instance they were sent from. This is helpful if, for example, you're testing things in your non-production environment and you don't want to confuse messages with those from your production account.
Support notes (week of January 3-7)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-43910 | Flow Designer - Activity Panel: Fixed an issue that was causing errors when clicking the "Reset Filter" button on the Activity Panel. |
| COR-43902 | Flow Designer - Activity Panel (usability fix): Ensured the Activity Panel opens properly when accessed from steps on the canvas. |
| COR-43890 (SUP-23890) |
Users - Change Phone PIN: Fixed an issue that prevented users from successfully using their phone PIN after changing it. |
| COR-43770 | Incidents List - Impacted Services: Fixed an issue that prevented the Incidents List from properly filtering and displaying Incidents by Impacted Service. |
| COR-43747 | Flow Designer - Run Location: Corrected an issue that caused an error to appear when users clicked the Run Location tab for a step. |
| COR-43558 | Inbox - Device History: Fixed an error that prevented users from viewing Device History if the notification included deleted device types. |
| COR-43441 | Notifications - redirect links: Corrected an issue that prevented the response window redirect link from taking users to the linked page. |
| COR-43444 (SUP-23886) |
All Alerts report - filters: Fixed an issue where attempting to clear a search filter displayed an error message. |
December 13-17, 2021
New workflows for Freshdesk & SolarWinds
We've added five additional low-code workflows for the following products (click the name of a workflow below for more info):
- Freshdesk
- SolarWinds AppOptics
- SolarWinds Loggly
- SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
- SolarWinds Papertrail
Instead of having to download and import a .zip file, you can install these workflows directly from within xMatters — just select the workflow from the list of available templates and click 'Install':
These workflows include pre-built flows that create an alert when xMatters receives a signal from the external system. When on-call resources respond to the notification, they can choose to initiate an incident. You then have the option to use Flow Designer's powerful visual interface to further customize or enhance the workflow's functionality to meet your organization's specific needs.
Activity panel updates
To make it even easier to monitor and troubleshoot your flows, we've just added several great new enhancements to the Flow Designer's Activity panel:
- Exportable logs: You can now export an Activity log to a .txt file to share it with others or view it in your preferred text editor.
- More organized filters: The 'Flow Trigger' filter now groups Initiate Incident and Create Alert activity triggers so you can find them more easily and select or clear them all at the same time.
- Palette and step access: To filter activity to just flows that include a particular step, click 'View Activity' from the step's options menu in the palette or in the step's header.
Support notes (week of December 13-17)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-43542 (SUP-23839) |
All Alerts report: Fixed an issue that caused users to have different permissions for the Recent Alerts and All Alerts views. |
| COR-43524 | Groups - group description (cosmetic fix): Modified some display settings so long group descriptions are truncated. |
| COR-43507 | Users - Supervisors: Fixed an issue to ensure only users with the appropriate permissions appear in the Supervisors drop-down menu. |
| COR-43293 | All Alerts report (cosmetic fix): Adjusted the position and layout of some elements so they appear properly when the language is set to French. |
| COR-43238 | All Alerts report - Response Highlights: Fixed an issue that prevented the group name from being displayed in the Response Highlight section. |
| COR-43522 (SUP-23849) |
All Alerts report (performance enhancement): Improved system performance when searching for users. |
| COR-43501 (SUP-23829) |
Workflows - Incident Initiation: Fixed an issue where the Incident Resolution workflow would not create incidents if the Recipients property was hidden on the Trigger an Incident form. |
| COR-43502 (SUP-23854) |
Notifications - export: Fixed an issue where the exported notification report incorrectly displayed the Subscription Name in the Subscription Domain field. |
December 6-10, 2021
Filter alerts by custom properties
You can now filter the All Alerts report by the values of custom properties. This is helpful for finding alerts based on specific criteria, such as a particular location, business unit, service, external ID, or external group:
Support notes (week of December 6-10)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-43394 (SUP-23828) |
Users - Roles: Fixed an issue that caused roles already assigned to a user to appear in the menu as available roles. |
| COR-43304 (SUP-23836) |
Users - Create Phone Login: Corrected an issue that prevented users from closing the Create Phone Login window. |
| COR-40896 | Incidents - Incident details: Fixed an issue that prevented the Incident details page from loading when users resumed a timed-out session. |
| COR-43396 (SUP-23832) |
Admin menu (usability fix): Removed the deprecated Company Quotas page from the Admin menu. |
November 29-December 3, 2021
Initiate flows from SolarWinds
We've added four new App triggers in Flow Designer. You can use these triggers to initiate flows when xMatters receives signals from the following SolarWinds products (click a link for more information):
- SolarWinds AppOptics Alerts
- SolarWinds Loggly Alerts
- SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Alerts
- SolarWinds Papertrail Alerts
Automatically acknowledge or close incidents in New Relic
We've added a New Relic 'Acknowledge or Close Incident' step to Flow Designer. Include this step in your flows to automatically acknowledge or close New Relic incidents as part of your workflow process:
Automatically add a comment in BigPanda
We've also added a BigPanda 'Add Comment' step that you can use to automatically add comments to your incidents in BigPanda as part of your flows:
Look up users by email, target name, web login, or custom property value
We've enhanced our Find User step to allow you to look up users by more than just the value of a custom user property — you can now also find users based on their email address, target name, or web login:
View all flow activity
We've added a new All Dates option to the timeframe selector in the Flow Designer Activity panel and made it the default setting. This is really handy because it means you won't have to fiddle with the date and time pickers when you want to see flow activity from more than 12 hours ago!
Additional Ninja features now available
The following features from our Ninja Release are now available in production environments:
Archive Slack Channels
Flow Designer makes it incredibly easy to create Slack channels as part of your automated processes, but who cleans them all up later? With our new Slack 'Archive Channel' step you don't need to worry about old channels cluttering up your workspace — you can automatically archive them as part of your flows:
User Profile: Redesigned change login & password
You can now change your password and phone PIN while editing your user profile. We've updated the labeling and added tooltips to make it clearer that your 'Phone Login ID' is used to dial into xMatters to retrieve alerts, while your 'Web / App Login ID' is used for the web user interface and the xMatters mobile app:
You can also access the new screens to change your web/app password or phone PIN from the More Actions menu on your user profile:
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
11 commentsArticle is closed for comments.
Highlights and support notes added for week of December 6-10, 2021
Updates include:
Highlights and support notes added for week of January 3-7, 2022
Updates include:
Highlights and support notes added for week of January 10-14, 2022
Updates include:
Highlights and support notes added for week of January 17-21, 2022
Updates include:
Highlights and support notes added for week of January 24-28, 2022
Updates include:
Comment for highlights & support notes:
Highlights and support notes added for week of January 31-February 4, 2022
Updates include:
Highlights and support notes added for week of February 7-11, 2022
Updates include:
Highlights and support notes added for week of February 14-18, 2022
Updates include:
Highlights and support notes added for week of February 21-25, 2022
Updates include:
Highlights and support notes added for week of February 28-March 4, 2022
Updates include:
We've started working on our next quarterly release, which we've code-named Pole Position.
Follow the Pole Position Development Highlights & Support Notes page to receive updates throughout the quarter on all the fun and functionality we're working on!