We're hard at work on our next quarterly release, Yars' Revenge, which will be rolling out in the Dec 2024/Jan 2025 time frame.
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 Yars' Revenge release. We'll also use this document to capture highlights of additions and updates to our mobile platforms and the xMatters REST API.
For a list of changes made in each deployment that aren't 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.
Release schedule
Here are the dates we're expecting the release to be available:
-
Non-production environment access: Tuesday, December 10, 2024
- Production environment access: Tuesday, January 14, 2025
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.
January 13-17, 2025
Instances are abuzz with Yars' Revenge!
The Yars' Revenge release is now available in production environments. For an overview of everything that's new, our Release Overview has all the details, including specific availability timing for features where applicable.
Next up: Zaxxon!
HTTP triggers on the Triggers page
To help you more easily track down or check in on a specific trigger, we introduced our new Triggers page to provide a comprehensive overview of triggers in your system. Initially, this page was only scheduled to display scheduled triggers, but it provides information about all your HTTP triggers, too!
Support notes (week of Jan 13 - 17)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
|---|---|
| COR-114883 (SUP-28324) |
Flow Designer - endpoints: Fixed an issue that prevented users from successfully adding an endpoint using OAuth2 for Cherwell. |
| COR-114242 | Messaging - recipient count: Ensured the notified recipient count displays an accurate number when a service is set as the targeted recipient. |
|
COR-114238 |
Reporting - Alert Views: Corrected an issue that prevented users from seeing descriptions in matching search results. |
| COR-113498 |
Post-Incident Report - contributors: Fixed an issue where the Post-Incident Report would return an error when attempting to modify the list of contributors. |
| COR-113964 |
Services - searching (usability fix): Fixed an issue with case sensitivity when searching for services. |
January 6-10, 2025
Internal status pages in non-production/EAP instances (Advanced)
To help ensure teams stay updated about service status, disruptions, or recent activity, you can now create Status Pages in xMatters. This feature allows you to create and configure status pages where teams can view information about their organization’s services from a centralized location. Use status pages to provide a single source of truth for stakeholders about related services, system status, and any active issues with up-to-the-minute updates.
Live Call Routing updates now in non-production and early access
Live Call Routing in xMatters gives users the ability to quickly connect to teams without the need for complicated call trees, conference bridges, message forms, or logging in. To help callers better understand their options without having to rename or create new groups, you can now customize the message (by voice recording or text-to-speech) for each assigned digit in your Live Call Routing configuration.
Additionally, to further help speed up connections, we've streamlined the message that users hear for configurations that only include a single digit.
Support notes (week of Jan 6 - 10)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
|---|---|
| COR-11416 (SUP-28864) |
Admin - Live Call Routing: Fixed an issue where Live Call Routing would sometimes escalate to the next user in the order instead of their voice device. |
| COR-113796 (SUP-28814) |
Groups - Shared Calendars: Fixed an issue that caused users to see an error when accessing a shared calendar link. |
|
COR-114181 |
Messaging - Scenarios: Corrected an issue to ensure users see accurate information in the side panel when switching between scenarios. |
December 30, 2024 - January 3, 2025
Automatic incident updates for chat channels
To help keep resolvers in the loop when collaborating on an incident, you can now choose to automatically send specific incident updates directly to chat channels (such as Teams and Slack) in non-production and EAP instances. When creating the channel for an incident, simply indicate which updates you want xMatters to send.
By configuring automated updates, incident commanders or scribes don't need to manually update teams about status changes, timeline notes, task progression, and so on. That means they can focus on more critical duties while being confident that everyone working to resolve the incident always knows exactly what's going on.
Look for this feature in production instances with the Yars' Revenge release on January 14!
December 16-20, 2024
Additional details in the Signals Report
To help you more efficiently pinpoint potential issues and troubleshoot when multiple signals are received from a single source, we’ve added the Request ID to the Signals Report as the first column in the table. Additionally, you can now also search for entries by Request ID.
We’ve also updated the timestamp information on the Signals report to make it easier to see when a signal came in. This tweak provides you with up-to-the-millisecond information so you can locate the exact signal you’re looking for.
URL links for change records
When viewing a change record, it’s important to access the listed information quickly. We’ve updated the Details section of change records to display any added URLs as links—no more copying & pasting!
Creating your first on-call group
To help customers better understand how to work with and manage on-call groups in xMatters, we've created an in-depth on-call groups walkthrough. In this video, we explain how to set up your very first on-call group, and answer some of the most frequently asked questions we get about creating on-call groups in xMatters, including how to create escalation timelines, what rotations are, and how to craft 24/7 coverage shift schedules.
Support notes (week of Dec 16 - 20)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
|---|---|
| COR-113399 (SUP-28728) |
Admin - User Upload: Fixed an issue to ensure that changes made in the user upload file to inactive users do not affect the user's status during subsequent file uploads. |
| COR-113235 (SUP-28814) |
Groups - Shifts: Corrected an issue that caused some shifts to display only the first 100 members. |
|
COR-112908 |
xMatters REST API - GET /devices: Ensured that the response returned the correct results when offset/limit parameters are specified. |
December 9-13, 2024
Yars' Revenge release overview
On Tuesday, December 10, the latest features from our Yars' Revenge release touched down in non-production instances! These updates include internal status pages, automatic incident updates to chat channels, Inbox enhancements, a redesigned user schedule—and lots more. If you're wondering what else is new, our Yars' Revenge Release Overview is your complete guide to everything that's included.
Refreshed user schedule for EAP
Our refreshed user schedule is now available in EAP & non-production instances. This exciting enhancement introduces color-coded shifts and a new On-Call widget that displays how long you're currently on call for, or how much time there is until your next shift.
Support notes (week of Dec 9 - 13)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
|---|---|
| COR-112966 |
Signals report - Suppressed signals: Fixed an issue that caused users to see an empty table when viewing the Suppression report. |
| COR-112765 |
Services - Service owners: To match existing functionality, dynamic groups can no longer be selected as service owners when creating or editing services. |
| COR-113230 (SUP-28769) |
Groups - Shifts: Fixed an issue where attempting to add a user to a specific shift configuration resulted in a unique constraint violation error. |
December 2-6, 2024
Yars' Revenge non-production release
Features from our latest release will be available in non-production and Early Access Program (EAP) environments tomorrow (December 10), from around 10am Pacific! We'll be covering everything that's new in our Yars' Revenge Release Overview, so make sure to watch this space.
Support notes (week of Dec 2 - 6)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
|---|---|
| COR-111945 (SUP-28591) |
Groups - Shifts: Fixed an issue that was causing the Groups page to timeout when attempting to view a group with a very large number of shifts. |
| COR-111069 (SUP-28408) |
Flow Designer - Automation trigger: Corrected an issue where the Incident Console incorrectly indicated a failure for automations that ran successfully in Flow Designer. |
| COR-111944 | Workflows - Messaging Forms: Fixed an issue that prevented deleted services from being automatically removed from the Recipients section of a messaging form. |
| COR-111832 (SUP-28567) |
xMatters REST API - OAuth: Ensured that OAuth verification worked with hostname aliases. |
November 25-29, 2024
Thanksgiving code freeze
Last week was one of our annual code freezes, meaning there were no deployments or updates to xMatters. This assures customers that there won't be any system changes during one of the busiest weeks of the year — especially for retail customers!
But if you're looking for something new to distract you from your Cyber Monday shopping, why not check out these recent additions to the xMatters REST API docs?
Incidents – GET /incidents
The GET /incidents endpoint has two new parameters: from and to that allow you to retrieve incidents from your instance for a specific timeframe. As with other endpoints, you can use these parameters separately or together to bring back exactly the range of incident data you’re looking for.
Services – all pages
Service Tiers and Service Types are now available through the xMatters REST API. You can now query how many services of a specific tier or type are in your system using the GET /services endpoint. Also, when creating new services or updating existing services, you can set the serviceTier and serviceType as part of your request.
November 18-22, 2024
Slack channels for playbooks
We're excited to announce that you can now add Slack channels for playbooks in production environments!
Support notes (week of Nov 18 - 22)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
|---|---|
| COR-111684 (SUP-28581) |
Groups - externally owned: Corrected an issue where users were unable to update non-locked fields of an externally owned group. |
| COR-111515 (SUP-28550) |
Incidents - incident properties: Fixed an issue to ensure that changes to incident properties are accurately displayed. |
| COR-111448 (SUP-28545) |
Admin - Live Call Routing: Corrected an issue that prevented live call routing configurations from escalating calls through all available on-call members. |
November 11-15, 2024
xMatters REST API updates
This week, we'd like to highlight some recent additions to the list of available xMatters REST API endpoints and methods.
Dynamic Groups
To match recent changes we've made to the web user interface, the REST API now handles dynamic teams as dynamic groups. All dynamic team functionality has moved to the groups endpoint, meaning you can build dynamic groups exactly as you build any other group type: just set the groupType to DYNAMIC, and build out the criteria as required. Also, searching the groups endpoint now returns all group types (on-call, broadcast, and dynamic) and the recipientType when adding a dynamic group as a recipient is simply GROUP.
We've made sure that any existing dynamic teams in your instance will continue to function, but all future requests should use the groups endpoint as the dynamic-teams endpoint is now deprecated.
Form sections
We're continuing to build out the forms endpoint to let you better create and manage form items via the REST API. You can now search for, create, and modify form sections such as Conference Bridges, Recipients, Sender Overrides, and more. This even includes individual parameters such as lenient combo boxes on custom form sections, voicemail options in the Handling section, and response counts in the Recipients section.
Also new to the forms endpoint is an endpoint that lets you overwrite the existing list of default form recipients, and another so you can overwrite the existing list of users and roles who have permission to send forms in your instance.
Support notes (week of Nov 11 - 15)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
|---|---|
| COR-111004 | Workflows - webhook template: When creating a workflow using the webhook template, the Description field should now display and enforce the correct character count limit. |
| COR-111368 (SUP-28529) |
xMatters REST API - user delivery: Improved performance when retrieving user delivery information programmatically via the REST API. |
| COR-111006 (SUP-28462) |
Flow Designer (performance improvement): Fixed an issue where flows would not open if they contained a large number of input parameters. |
November 4-8, 2024
Slack channels for playbooks
In addition to our recently added Microsoft Teams channels and meetings for playbooks, customers with EAP and non-production instances can add Slack channels as playbook collaboration channels. This feature allows you to create a new channel or add a URL link to an existing channel, and configure the name and description, so resolvers can easily identify and immediately access the channel.
Support notes (week of Nov 4 - 8)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
|---|---|
| COR-110738 (SUP-28381) |
Groups - Shifts: Fixed an issue to ensure occurrence start and end times are accurately displayed in the side panel after an edit is made. |
| COR-102170 |
Dashboards (usability fix): Fixed an issue where the dashboard would not load navigating away from a widget with unsaved changes. |
| COR-110532 (SUP-28390) |
Messaging Forms - Site Recipients: Fixed an issue that caused notifications to fail if the form contained a large number of site recipients. |
| COR-108209 (SUP-28172) |
Messaging - Scenarios: Corrected an issue that prevented users with appropriate permissions from seeing all of the applicable sections for a scenario. |
October 28-November 1, 2024
Redesigned Recent Alerts widget
We've updated our popular Recent Alerts widget so you can better monitor the statuses of system alerts from your xMatters dashboard. Enhancements include more streamlined rows ensuring each alert fits, a new message preview and detail view side panel, and an updated default interaction which allows you to view the message preview and details without navigating away from the dashboard.
This feature is currently available in Early Access Program (EAP) instances.
Support notes (week of Oct 28 - Nov 1)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
|---|---|
| COR-110117 (SUP-28367) |
Messaging Forms - Custom section (usability fix): Adjusted the messaging for missing voice translations to apply more broadly for a better user experience. |
| COR-102172 |
Dashboard - Send Message widget: Ensured users see valid form information in the side panel if the scenario used to create the Send Message widget was deleted. |
| COR-109519 |
Messaging Forms - Response Overrides: Fixed an issue that caused changes to the Response Overrides section to be saved to the main form instead of to a new scenario. |
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 xMatters Deployment Process & Early Access article.
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Highlights and support notes added for week of October 28 - November 1, 2024.
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