Changes to URLs within the web user interface

Question

I've noticed some changes in the structure of the URLs displayed in the address bar of my browser when accessing the xMatters web user interface. How will these changes affect my ability to access or link to specific pages within xMatters?

Environment

All versions of xMatters

Answer

Good eye!

Yes, we've been making some changes to the URLs within the web user interface. This is partly to make them a little more understandable and easy to navigate, but we're also updating them to use a better format for directing SAML/SSO to the right place.

The good news is that these changes should have absolutely no impact on existing navigation and links. If you're using an existing link (with the previous URL schema), you'll still automatically land on the same page. The only way you'll even know anything is changed is by comparing the link with your browser's address bar. 

For example, imagine that you had bookmarked a link to the Communication Center using a URL like this:

https://example.xmatters.com/xmatters/app.do#DashboardPlace:home

If you click your bookmark now, the address in your browser would look like this:

https://example.xmatters.com/xmatters/ui/dashboard/home

It's just a neater, simpler URL that doesn't contain a lot of extraneous characters that could potentially interfere with resolving the link via a SAML application. This change also doesn't act as a redirect — the page or resource still resides at the same place — so it won't cause any security issues. We just making it easier for your browser to get there.

As an added benefit, this now allows us to fully enable deep-linking in SSO environments. Now when you click a link in an email like, for example, https://example.xmatters.com/xmatters/ui/incidents/197896 to open a specific incident and you're not signed into xMatters, you'll be directed to the SSO login screen. After signing in, you'll be taken right to the incident. (We'd had some reports before about some SSO configurations displaying an error message when attempting to open a deep link — this should clear that up.)

If you happened to spend a lot of time examining the URLs before (we won't judge, seriously), you may notice some other changes, too:

• /app.do changing to /ui (or otherwise dropping the .do suffix)
• # changing to / (this will be especially helpful for SAML updates)
• Place suffix on some pages becoming unnecessary (though some pages, especially on the Admin tab, may still use it temporarily)
• : changing to / for consistency (though again, some pages may still use : temporarily)

Happy linking!