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Robotron Quarterly Release Details Robotron was released on April 11, 2023. With AI-powered digital operations insight pop ups and incident automations you can share with your teams, our Robotron release lets you harness the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence. For all the details, see the Robotron (Mar/Apr 2023) Release Overview. Next Release: Space Invaders (Jun/Jul 2023) We've already started working on our next quarterly release, which we've named Space Invaders. Follow the Space Invaders Development Highlights & Support Notes page to receive updates throughout the quarter on all the fun and functionality we're working on! |
Introduction
We're hard at work on our next quarterly release, Robotron, which will be rolling out in the Mar/Apr 2023 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 Robotron 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.
April 17-21, 2023
Support site upgrade
Last week we moved our support site (support.xmatters.com) and ticketing process to a new system. While this exciting upgrade means we can provide a you with a better customer experience, we wanted to remind you that you may need to reset your password to support.xmatters.com, update any bookmarks or URLs linking to the site, and re-follow any articles or sections you want to be notified about whenever comments or new articles are posted.
To read about all the details, see Updates and changes to the xMatters Support ticketing system.
Support notes (week of April 17-21)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-71196 (SUP-25317) |
Reports - Notifications report - Export: Fixed an issue that caused some exported report fields to use different date/time values. |
| COR-71133 (SUP-25273) |
Groups - Shift Rotations: Corrected an issue that prevented users from being notified in their specified rotation order. |
| COR-70993 | Users - Roles: Ensured user permission settings granted users proper access to the information they're allowed to see. |
| COR-71066 (SUP-25297) |
Reports - Notifications report: Adjusted some error messages for the Notifications report to be more user-friendly. |
| COR-70933 (SUP-25284) |
Reports - Notifications report - filters: Fixed an issue that resulted in Pagers not appearing in the Device Types filter list. |
| COR-70887 (SUP-25291) |
Incident Console - Resolver notification: Corrected an issue that caused users to see a "Failed" status when they attempt to re-notify a resolver. |
April 10-14, 2023
Upgraded support ticketing system
Just a heads up that we're moving this site (support.xmatters.com) and our ticketing process to a new system tomorrow, April 18 at noon (PST). While this upgrade will allow us to better manage and respond to your requests and provide an even better customer experience, there's a few ways the change may impact you:
- Existing support tickets will be assigned new numbers.
- You'll need to reset your password to support.xmatters.com.
- The URL of our articles will change, so you'll need to update any bookmarks.
- You'll need to re-follow any articles or sections to be notified when comments or new articles are posted.
For all the details, see our article, Updates and changes to the xMatters Support ticketing system.
Group scheduling enhancements
The improvements for scheduling shifts and managing calendars for on-call groups that we gave you a sneak peek of in our Robotron Release overview will soon be available:
- Early Access Program (non-production): April 18, 2023
- Production: May 2, 2023
For a detailed overview of all the updates—including lots of screenshots and animated GIFs—check out our announcement article, A new way to schedule groups.
Robotron Release
The Robotron Release is now available in production environments! For an overview of all the enhancements and features included in the release, see our Robotron Release Overview.
Support notes (week of April 10-14)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-70768 (SUP-25252) |
Alerts report - filtering: Fixed an issue that prevented the table from displaying accurate results when Notified Recipients filter was set. |
| COR-70543 (SUP-25237) |
Shifts: Fixed an issue that caused a gap in coverage for a specific time zone. |
| COR-70679 (SUP-25247) |
Groups - recurring shifts: Fixed an issue where attempting to change a shift's recurrence settings would fail. |
| COR-70447 (SUP-25229) |
Alerts report - searching: Fixed an issue where search results would not include alerts with specific special characters in the subject. |
| COR-70434 (SUP-25202) |
Subscriptions - sharing permissions: Fixed an issue where attempting to subscribe other users would fail. |
| COR-70765 (SUP-25208) |
Device timeframes: Fixed an issue where the default 24x7 timeframe for devices would include a gap for specific time zones. |
| COR-70535 (SUP-25235) |
Historical On-Call report - exporting: Fixed an issue where the Philippine time zone (PHT) was labelled as PST in exported Historical On-Call reports. |
April 3-7, 2023
The robots are among us!
Just a reminder that we'll be enabling the Robotron release in production environments tomorrow, Tuesday, April 11 at 10:00 am Pacific!
Support notes (week of April 3-7)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-70622 (SUP-25254) |
Alerts Report - export (performance improvement): Improved the performance of the export for alerts with a large number of recipients. |
| COR-70447 (SUP-25229) |
Alerts Report - search: Corrected an issue that caused the Alerts report to return an accurate list of alerts with long names only when a partial search term was used. |
| COR-69458 | Alerts Report - alert details: Fixed an issue to ensure that services without owners from appear as recipients in the alert log. |
| COR-70506 (SUP-24921) |
Flow Designer - triggers: Corrected an issue to ensure that Flow triggers are only editable on the canvas. |
March 27-31, 2023
Robotron Release Overview
The Robotron Release Overview is now available! It's your comprehensive guide to all the new features and enhancements we've packed into this release. Robotron is currently live in non-production environments and we'll be toggling features 'on' in production environments on Tuesday, April 11.
Support notes (week of March 27-31)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-70316 (SUP-25214) |
Groups - Members: Fixed an issue that prevented the Members tab from displaying properly in other languages. |
| COR-70178 | Post-Incident Report (usability fix): Corrected an issue that caused columns to change size when sort order is changed. |
| COR-68633 (SUP-25114) |
Users - User Login (Android): Fixed an issue that prevented some Android users from logging in to their xMatters instance. |
| COR-70221 | Users - User Performance Report: Corrected an issue that prevented users from successfully sorting the Alerts column. |
| COR-68185 | Alerts report - export: Fixed an issue that prevented the First to Respond column from being included in the export file. |
| COR-66888 | Messaging: Corrected an issue that prevented users with valid permissions from seeing alerts. |
March 20-24, 2023
The Robotron Release Overview will be available tomorrow!
Watch this space for the Robotron Release Overview, coming tomorrow, March 28 at 10am Pacific!
Support notes (week of March 20-24)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-70161 (SUP-25203) |
Messaging (usability fix): The scroll bar should now correctly be displayed when viewing all available forms on the Messaging tab. |
| COR-70068 (SUP-25193) |
User profile - devices: Fixed an issue where attempting to add a voice device on a user's profile page would result in an error. |
| COR-69817 | Incidents - Notify to Engage: Fixed an error that could occur when searching for resolvers. |
March 13-17, 2023
Incident performance charts
Want to find out if any of your resolvers are getting slammed by incidents and could use some help before burnout sets in? Are MTTA and MTTR trending down over time like you were aiming for? The Incidents tab of the Group Performance and User Performance reports include the following graphs to help you track trends and spot opportunities for operational improvements in your incident response:
- Incidents – The number of incidents the resolver engaged in.
- Mean Time to Resolve – The mean time from when an incident was detected until it was resolved.
- Mean Time to Acknowledge – The mean time from when the incident resolution process began until the resolver engaged.
Get details for an external incident associated with a Moogsoft incident
You can now use our new Moogsoft Get External Incident step to get the details about an external incident associated with an incident in Moogsoft. For example, you could use the outputs of this step to add a Freshservice ticket, share to Teams, or post to an xMatters incident.
Get the details of a Dynatrace problem
Want to get the details about a specific problem in Dynatrace so you can add them to a Jira ticket, share them to Slack, or post them to an xMatters incident? You can easily do this by adding the new Dynatrace Get Problem Details step to your flow and providing the ID of the problem you're interested in.
Support notes (week of March 13-17)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-69935 | Flow Designer - Activity Panel: Improved performance when searching for a specific request ID in the activity panel. |
| COR-67472 (SUP-25007) |
Users - Import Users: Fixed an issue that caused file processing errors when the phone number field contained special characters before the number. |
| COR-69905 (SUP-25186) |
Incidents - Export: Corrected an issue that prevented the export from properly generating a file after date filters are modified then cleared. |
| COR-69818 (SUP-25172) |
Flow Designer: Fixed an issue that prevented the Merge and Switch steps from working as expected. |
| COR-69740 | Flow Designer - Create Alert step: Updated an upstream reference in the Create Alert step added for the Notify to Engage trigger. |
| COR-69795 | Incidents - Incident Console: Fixed an issue that caused an automation to run when a resolver role was changed. |
| COR-69490 (SUP-25136) |
Flow Designer - Initiate Incident: Corrected an issue that created duplicate incidents when the Create Incident button was clicked multiple times. |
March 6-10, 2023
New default Alerts view
Based on customer feedback, we've updated the Alerts report with an 'All Alerts' view. As the new default view for the report, this view displays all alerts within the past 30 days (excluding system alerts):
If you'd rather not see suspended or terminated alerts, you can select the 'Active Alerts' view instead. Or, to view alerts that meet other specific criteria, you can create your own custom alert views.
Filter incidents by source
The Incidents list now includes a 'Source' filter that you can use to look up which workflow the Initiate Incident step that created the incident belongs to. This is handy if you're testing a workflow and want to identify the incidents created by your tests, or if you want to look up incidents triggered through specific monitoring workflows.
xMatters REST API: New GET /incidents query parameters
We've added two new query parameters to the GET /incidents endpoint that you can use to retrieve incidents that meet the following criteria:
- Incidents with specific impacted services – Include the
impactedServicesquery parameter to find incidents that include any of the specified services as impacted services. You can identify services by their target name or unique identifier. For example:GET /incidents?impactedServices=API,47eb2567-38d0-40e5-8fbd-fa1f9e1454fd - Incidents where a specific group is a resolver – Include the
resolver.groupquery parameter to find incidents with a specified group as a resolver, regardless of incident status. For example:GET /incidents?resolver.group=Database%20Admins
Support notes (week of March 6-10)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-69685 (SUP-25154) |
Alerts Report - filtering: Fixed an issue to ensure the Alerts report table displays accurate results when filters are applied. |
| COR-68833 | Incidents list: Corrected an issue that prevented the search bar from clearing invalid information when users clicked the Start Over link. |
February 27-March 3, 2023
Robotron Quarterly Release
The Robotrons are coming! Here are the release dates you'll want to add to your calendar:
- Non-production environment access: Tuesday, March 28, 2023
- Production environment access: Tuesday, April 11, 2023
Keep an eye out for the complete Robotron feature release overview, coming on Tuesday, March 28.
Support notes (week of February 27-March 3)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-68952 | Admin - Custom User Properties: Adjusted property parameters to allow the minimum and maximum settings to use the same value. |
| COR-69490 (SUP-25144) |
Flows - Merge step: Fixed an issue that prevented users from successfully merging the response properties of two valid triggers. |
| COR-67127 (SUP-25169) |
Workflows - Activity Stream: Corrected an issue that prevented users from seeing alert details in the activity stream. |
| COR-68820 (SUP-25118) |
Workflows - Message preview: Fixed an issue that caused users to see incorrect translations for supported languages when previewing messages. |
February 20-24, 2023
Incident Insights: View details about suggested resolvers
Want to know more about the suggested resolvers in your Insights before you notify them to engage? The name of a suggested resolver is now a link you can click to view the info card for a user or who's currently on call for a group.
Do you have our new number?
Just a heads up that the Caller ID number xMatters uses to send alerts to voice devices recently changed. If you've configured xMatters to override the do-not-disturb setting on your voice device, you'll want to update it for the new number.
Support notes (week of February 20-24)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-68789 | Incidents page (user experience enhancements): Improved the layout, positioning and responsiveness of some page elements on the Incidents list. |
February 13-17, 2023
Incident Automation trigger updates
When configuring an incident automation trigger in Flow Designer, you need to specify which flow trigger form you want to use with the trigger. This previously meant you would have to go back to the workflows tab to create a new form if you hadn't already created one. Now, when adding the trigger to your canvas, you have the option to select a form or instantly create a new form as part of the setup process.
New Relic workflow updates
We've updated our New Relic workflow and trigger to work seamlessly with the latest New Relic features and workflows. If you already use a customized New Relic trigger or workflow, it should continue to function without interruption. However, if you want to take advantage of new New Relic functionality in your existing workflow, see the "Update an existing workflows section" in our online help.
Support notes (week of February 13-17)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-68540 | Groups - shift names: Fixed an issue that prevented users from seeing valid shift name changes unless they refreshed the page. |
| COR-68199 (SUP-25046) |
Alerts report - messages: Corrected an issue that prevented messages from formatting properly when viewed from the Message tab of the Alerts report. |
| COR-68425 (SUP-25097) |
Groups (performance enhancements): Improved loading times and responsiveness when loading a group with a large number of members. |
| COR-68213 (SUP-25077) |
Sites - geocoding: Corrected an issue that prevented users from successfully geocoding addresses for their sites. |
February 6-10, 2023
Mobile: iOS 4.21
The latest version of our iOS app includes the following updates:
- You can now 'Show more' of an alert's details to view priority, source, and other critical information at a glance.
- Pinch-to-zoom plays more nicely with your alerts and response options.
- Biometric login now requires you set up a screen lock for your device.
Redesigned Voice Recordings screen
Our newly redesigned Voice Recordings screen not only looks fantastic—it also improves the usability of managing and creating custom recordings for specific languages, locations, and situations (for example, “Fire”, “Flood”, “Email server down”, “... in Building Seven”). You can also add custom recordings to override provided system recordings for things such as numbers, months, days of the week, etc.
Add response options anywhere in your email messages
Availability: Now in production
The Responses property for including response options anywhere in the body of email messages is now available in production environments! Read the full details about this enhancement here.
Support notes (week of February 6-10)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-62965 | Users - Supervised Users: Fixed an issue where a specific pop-up dialog box confirmation couldn't be dismissed. |
| COR-68270 (SUP-25073) |
Groups - shifts: Corrected an issue that prevented recipients from receiving incident resolver notifications when part of both broadcast and on-call groups. |
| COR-68157 (SUP-25072) |
Messaging - Combo box property: Improved the layout and positioning of some user interface elements when navigating the list of combo box properties. |
January 30-February 3, 2023
Moogsoft Incidents workflow
Our new, two-way Moogsoft Incidents workflow brings a tighter integration between incidents in Moogsoft and xMatters! You can use this workflow to initiate incidents and notify on-call resolvers in response to signals from Moogsoft, and then update the Moogsoft incident as resolution progresses in xMatters.
New change intelligence workflow & trigger for Split
We've added a new low-code Split workflow to create change records so you can monitor the impact of Split features when they're toggled on or off. You can then build automations to update stakeholders, or send messages based on feature flag changes.
You can also take advantage of the new Split Alerts trigger (available on the Triggers tab of the Flow Designer palette) to build your own custom signal handlers in any new or existing workflow:
View incident performance by severity and impacted services
Want to get more granular with your incident performance metrics? We've added new Severity and Impacted Services filters to the Incidents tab of the User Performance and Group Performance reports:
You can use these new filters to analyze user or group performance for incidents:
- With specific severity levels (for example, only critical and high severity incidents).
- That impacted a particular service or services.
Filter incidents by resolvers
Notice any concerning metrics in your incident performance reports? Want to understand the details of the underlying incidents so you can help users or groups improve their performance?
To assist with this, the Incidents list now includes a Resolvers filter that makes it easy to look up the incidents where particular resolvers are engaged—or were previously engaged—as resolvers:
Support notes (week of January 3-February 3)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-68093 (SUP-25069) |
Alerts report - searching alert views: Fixed an issue where all starred views were included in the results when searching the list of alert views. |
| COR-68082 | xMatters REST API - POST /services: Corrected an issue that prevented services from being properly created when the ownedBy field was included in the request. |
| COR-68005 (SUP-25049) |
Custom steps - usage permissions: Fixed an issue that prevented successfully saved usage permissions from persisting when the canvas is closed and re-opened. |
| COR-67953 (SUP-25038) |
Workflows - form layout: Corrected an issue that prevented the Save button from enabling after users add a valid recipient to the form. |
January 23-27, 2023
Slack support for services & more
We've just released the following great updates to the xMatters app for Slack that you can now use in your incident resolution processes:
- You can now use the find, invite, and on-call commands to search for services, invite the owner of a service to a channel, or look up who's on call for a service.
- Results of the find command now specify if the result is a service, on-call group, or broadcast group.
- We've upgraded the details for groups to include the services a group owns, an easier-to-read escalation schedule for on-call groups, and a members list for broadcast groups.
- You can link directly from a service or group to xMatters if you want to see a service or group in more detail.
- The Initiate an Incident recipient field now organizes recipients by type, including services.
Support notes (week of January 23-27)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-67593 (SUP-25008) |
Incidents - incident initiation: Fixed an issue that was preventing new incidents from being created due to a collision with an existing incident ID. |
| COR-66882 (SUP-24968) |
Login - resetting password: Corrected an issue that prevented users from successfully resetting their passwords after being locked out of their accounts. |
| COR-67268 (SUP-24987) |
Flow Designer - xMatters Agent: Fixed an issue that prevented steps from successfully executing when authenticating through the xMatters Agent. |
January 16-20, 2023
Redesigned Workflow Templates directory
You may notice the Workflow Templates directory looks waaaaaay more spiffy this week! With its new design, we've organized workflows into sections so it's clearer what's available:
- Basic Workflows – Quickly get started triggering alerts and initiating incidents, or build your own custom workflow from scratch.
- Workflows for Your Tools – Use one of our low-code workflow templates to easily integrate with a third-party tool.
We've also added handy filters that you can use to browse the available workflows by their type (for example, Change Intelligence, Monitoring, Major Incident Management, etc.).
Add response options anywhere in your email messages
Availability: Early Access Program
Want to make the response options for your email notifications more visible? With this latest enhancement, you can add response options anywhere in your emails and style how they look.
In the message editor, drag the new Responses property into the body of your email message. When you send the message, this property is replaced with the response options from your form. If you'd like, you can then use the editor's code view to style how the responses look using your own custom CSS.
Support notes (week of January 16-20)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-67384 | Incident Console - export : Fixed an issue that prevented incidents for French users from exporting correctly. |
| COR-66793 | Post-Incident Report - export: Corrected an issue that caused users to see an error message instead of a successfully exported report. |
| COR-67545 (SUP-25019) |
Flow Designer - Combo box properties: Fixed an issue that prevented proper processing of single combo box values. |
| COR-67215 | Groups - On-Call groups: Corrected an issue that caused the "+" icon to disappear from view when multiple shifts with long names were added for an on-call group member. |
| COR-67296 | Groups - Broadcast groups (usability fixes): Improved the layout and user experience when working with Broadcast groups. |
| COR-67334 | Incidents list (usability fixes): Improved the layout and user experience when working with Broadcast groups. |
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.
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Highlights and support notes added for week of January 23-27, 2023.
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