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Introduction
We're hard at work on our next quarterly release, Pole Position, which will be rolling out in the Jun/Jul 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 Pole Position 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.
May 9-13, 2022
Automatically create, update, & add comments to work items in Azure Boards
We've just added the following new steps that allow you to take action in Azure Boards as part of your workflow process:
- Add Comment – Add a comment to an existing issue in Azure Boards.
- Create Work Item – Create a new issue in Azure Boards, populating it with information from the alert or any previous steps in the flow.
- Update Work Item – Update an issue as information about the problem or alert changes.
New workflow & trigger for Dynatrace Cloud Automation
We've added a new low-code Dynatrace Cloud Automation workflow that you can install directly from within xMatters:
The workflow sends alerts when xMatters receives a signal from a Dynatrace Cloud Automation sequence, including information about the project, source, stage, and impacted service. When on-call resources respond to the alert notification, they have the option to initiate an incident.
You can also take advantage of the new Dynatrace Cloud Automation Event trigger (available on the Triggers tab of the Flow Designer palette) to build your own custom signal handlers in any new or existing workflow:
Notify service owners to engage from the service map
Let's say you're reviewing the service dependency map and suspect a service is the root cause of an incident. It would be pretty awesome to to engage the owner of that service to investigate without having to navigate back to the Incident Console, right?
You can now Notify to Engage a service owner from the service's info card in the incident service dependencies map — and just like managing resolvers on the Incident Console, you'll also be able to see their engagement status, stop notifying, renotify, and dismiss them.
Move services around on the map
You can now move services around as you're viewing the service dependencies map! This can make it easier to see or edit how your services interrelate (note that they'll return to their default position the next time you open the map):
Find alerts with a conference bridge
Curious which of your alerts had a conference bridge? The Alerts report now includes a Conference Bridge filter that you can use to find all of the alerts with a bridge — and you can even search for alerts with a specific bridge by searching for values in their bridge ID or title:
Early Access: Easier ways to manage your step connections
Availability: Pole Position Quarterly Release
You no longer need to manually draw connections between your steps in Flow Designer! Instead, simply bring a step near the one you want to connect it to — or in between two connected steps — and when you see the blue plus ('+') symbol, release the step and it will automatically connect:
Removing connections
We've also introduced new options to a step's menu to remove step connections:
- Remove Step from Flow – Extract a step from between two other steps and reconnect the flow.
- Delete Connectors – Delete a step's inbound and outbound connectors.
- Delete Inbound or Outbound Connector - Delete only a step's inbound or outbound connector (the animated GIF below shows how each is removed separately).
Support notes (week of May 9-13)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-46803 (SUP-24277) |
Admin - General Settings page: Fixed an issue where the Caller ID Override number would be reset to default after modifying other settings on the page. |
| COR-46734 (SUP-24261) |
Alerts - duplication: Corrected an issue that prevented users from duplicating the alert when the original contains a large number of site recipients. |
| COR-46611 (SUP-24252) |
Alerts report - User Delivery tab: Fixed an issue that caused the list of alerts on the User Delivery tab to load slowly when the Notification Streams filter was applied. |
| COR-45611 (SUP-24190) |
Users - Devices (usability fix): When adding a new SMS or voice device to a user's profile, the country code should now default to the user's location based on their site settings. |
May 2-6, 2022
Microsoft Teams as a device, and more!
The wait is finally over — you can now register your Microsoft Teams instance as an xMatters device! This is perfect for organizations who use Microsoft Teams as their preferred communication and collaboration app.
By adding Teams as a device, users won't need to disrupt their workflow to check an email or open xMatters to collaborate. They'll be able to receive xMatters notifications, view incident details, and respond to alerts right in their Teams chat:
Initiate incidents from Teams
But that's not all! This update includes the ability to initiate incidents from within a chat or teams channel. We've also improved the styling of the xMatters Incident tab to make it easier to manage and interact with incidents:
Mobile: Android 3.12
We've now added support for Broadcast groups to our Android app. Broadcast groups are a new type of group used to notify all members at the same time (currently available in our Early Access Program). You can view broadcast group details and their members in your contacts and add them as recipients or resolvers:
Elastic xMatters connector
Combining Elastic's observability capabilities with xMatters' incident response and automation features just got even easier. The new xMatters connector makes for quick set up — just add the connector to the rule that you want to trigger notifications and other actions in xMatters. Then, use the trigger URL from the xMatters workflow installer as the Initiation URL in the connector in Elastic:
Early Access Program: Copy a broadcast group
Availability: Pole Position Quarterly Release
Wish that instead of creating a group from scratch, you could simply copy an existing group to use as the basis of the new group? Well, now you can! The Options menu for broadcast groups includes a Copy Group setting to duplicate the group's people and settings to a new broadcast or on-call group:
Copied groups aren't added as recipients to the same forms and lists as the original group, so you'll need to add your new group as a recipient to any messages or forms that you want to target it.
Support notes (week of May 2-6)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-46700 | Incident Console (usability fix): Improved the layout and positioning of some elements on the Incident Console to prevent section overlaps. |
| COR-46357 | Services - service dependencies map: Fixed an issue where some tooltips were not displayed correctly for automations when viewing a service dependencies map. |
| COR-44676 | Flow Designer (usability fix): Updated Flow Designer to remove extraneous leading and trailing spaces from input fields. |
April 25-29, 2022
Mobile: iOS 4.16
Customize repeat notifications by alert priority
Don't really need multiple reminders about that low priority alert? With the latest release of our iOS app, you can customize different repeat notification settings for your low, medium, and high priority alerts:
Broadcast groups
We've also added support for Broadcast groups — a new type of group used to notify all members at the same time. You can view broadcast group details and their members in your contacts and add them as recipients or resolvers:
Support notes (week of April 25-29)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-46555 | Incident Console - Roles: Fixed an issue that prevented users from assigning roles to resolvers on the Incident Console. |
| COR-46553 (SUP-24242) |
Messaging - Filters: Corrected an issue to ensure users could expand the scenarios sections when the "All" button is selected. |
| COR-46173 | xMatters REST API - POST /scheduled-messages: Ensured that users could not inadvertently modify form layout and schedule messages on disabled or inactive forms. |
| COR-46489 (SUP-24232) |
Incidents - incident initiation: Fixed an issue that caused users to see a "Could not find incident" error message after successfully initiating an incident. |
| COR-46374 (SUP-24229) |
Alerts report - exporting: Fixed an issue that caused some message content to be excluded from the exported report. |
| COR-46371 (SUP-24193) |
Users - Devices: Fixed an issue that prevented Canadian companies from adding a toll-free number as a device. |
April 18-22, 2022
Workflows for Everbridge Signal & Cherwell
We've just released new Everbridge Signal and Cherwell workflows that you can install directly from within xMatters. These workflows include a pre-built flow that creates an alert when xMatters receives a signal from the external system. When on-call resources respond to the alert notification, they have the option to initiate an incident in xMatters.
For Cherwell, users can also respond with a comment to add a note to the originating incident in Cherwell — or even resolve it with a click (or tap) of a button.
Resizable Activity panel
We've made it waaaay easier to see all of the relevant information that's available to help you troubleshoot your flows: you can now optimize the Activity panel for your screen width or personal preference!
Hover your cursor at the top of the panel to display drag handles that you can use to increase or decrease the size of the panel. Likewise, you can drag the borders between individual columns of the panel to view more — or less — of the information for individual requests and their steps.
Support notes (week of April 18-22)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-46419 (SUP-24221) |
Alerts report - exporting: Fixed an issue that caused custom property values to be excluded from the exported report. |
| COR-46368 (SUP-24192) |
Alerts report (performance enhancement): Improved overall performance of the Alerts report when scrolling through a large list of alerts. |
| COR-46319 | Incidents - Post Incident Report: Fixed an issue that prevented users from downloading a Post Incident Report when the incident's status was changed from Resolved to Rejected. |
| COR-46277 | Alerts report - filters: Corrected an issue that prevented Custom Properties from displaying in the user's preferred language. |
| COR-46366 (SUP-24191) |
Messaging: Fixed an issue where the Send Message button remained disabled after valid information was entered into the messaging form. |
| COR-46172 (SUP-24164) |
Scheduled messages - recurrence: Corrected an issue that prevented users from modifying recurring scheduled message information after the initial scheduled message time had passed. |
| COR-46276 (SUP-24185) |
Alerts report - long-running alerts: Improved the behavior of the Alerts report when displaying data for alerts that remain open for multiple days. |
April 11-15 2022
Call a flow to run
Callable flows, which we announced in the Out Run release, are now available! This feature allows you to reuse the same sequence of steps in multiple flows in your workflow — making your flows simpler to maintain and more readable.
In a nutshell, you can use a Callable Trigger to build the reusable sequence of steps, and then add the trigger's associated Callable Flow step to any of the flows in your workflow. When that step runs, it calls the trigger to run and pass information from the calling flow to the trigger and its connected steps.
More convenient step development: isolated breaking changes allowed
When you edit the design of a custom step or trigger, we'll warn you that some changes aren't allowed if the step is currently used in a flow. But what if the step is in development, and you're the only one using it as you test it out? It would be far more convenient to be able to make breaking changes than to create new versions of the step when you want to modify it. To address this, you can now make breaking changes to a step or trigger when it's used only on your current canvas.
Support notes (week of April 11-15)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-46106 (SUP-24152) |
Flow Designer - Create Alert step: Corrected an issue that was preventing valid users from successfully executing flows that included a Create Alert step. |
| COR-45617 | Adding users - Custom user properties: Fixed a validation error that allowed users to leave a required field blank when creating a user. |
April 4-8, 2022
Broadcast Groups (Early Access Program)
Attention everyone! Broadcast groups are now available in the Early Access Program!
Broadcast groups are new type of group specifically for creating a list of members you want to notify simultaneously (such as to take a poll or make an important announcement). Since you don't need all the extra features and functionality of on-call groups, broadcast groups have a simplified interface with just the settings and controls you need to create and manage this type of group effectively.
To take a tour of the new interface for Broadcast groups, see Introducing Broadcast Groups.
Export all the alerts!
We've added a new option to the Alerts report that allows you to Export as CSV when you're attempting to export more than 100,000 alerts at a time. Previously, the export would time out if the file was too large for an XLSX spreadsheet. Now, instead of leaving you hanging, we'll let you know when your report is too large so you can reduce its size, or export it as a CSV instead:
Exported alert includes notified groups in delivery details
The Delivery Details tab of the export for a single alert now includes a 'Notified Groups' column (to align with what's shown in the web user interface). You can use the data in this column to see whether a user was notified as part of a group or if they received a direct notification.
Support notes (week of April 4-8)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-46038 (SUP-24163) |
All Alerts report - filtering (usability enhancements): Updated the logic and behavior of the date and time filters to provide a better user experience and ensure returned results match expectations. |
| COR-46021 | Flow Designer - Custom Step: Fixed an issue that prevented users from successfully saving canvas changes from the Delete Custom Step window. |
| COR-45884 (SUP-24122) |
Flow Designer - Settings tab: Corrected an issue where the Settings tab for outbound integration steps did not show proper information. |
|
COR-45758 |
Groups - Shifts: Fixed an issue that caused users to see an error when a shift is modified and moves from the unscheduled tab to the scheduled tab. |
| COR-45792 (SUP-24095) |
User Profile - Schedule: Improved performance on the Schedule tab when viewing users who belong to a large number of groups. |
| COR-45947 (SUP-24143) |
Create Alert step - Response options: Corrected an issue that prevented users from editing Responses and deleting a response option from the list. |
| COR-43418 | Users - Phone login ID: Updated the Phone Login ID fields to prevent Firefox users from inadvertently entering characters other than digits. |
March 28-April 1, 2022
Support notes
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-45822 | Users - Supervised Users (performance enhancement): Improved the loading time of the Supervised Users page. |
| COR-45556 | Flow Designer: Fixed an issue that prevented supervisors with the appropriate permissions from creating new versions of custom steps. |
| COR-45896 (SUP-24136) |
Alerts report: Corrected an issue that prevented the Alerts report from promptly displaying results when users applied search filters. |
|
COR-45780 |
Users - Subscriptions: Fixed an issue that prevented subscriptions from promptly displaying when the status was changed between Owned, Shared, and Managed. |
March 21-25, 2022
Create dynamic teams based on user roles
If you've ever thought it could be useful to notify all the users in your system with a particular role—say, all Incident Managers—then you'll be happy to know we've added Role Name as one of the search criteria fields for dynamic teams:
That means you can easily create a specific role-based dynamic team in seconds so it's available to add as an alert recipient. You don't need to keep a list or maintain a group with the users in your system who have the role—with 'dynamic' teams, xMatters checks the database each time you send an alert to determine who currently fits the team's criteria and should get notified.
Copyable trigger configuration payloads
We've made it easier to configure the source systems for App triggers that require a specific payload. You can now copy the configuration payload directly from the trigger's configuration screen in Flow Designer:
Support notes (week of March 21-25)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-45795 | Flow Designer - Messages: Fixed an issue that caused form variables to appear in code format when dropped onto the message canvas. |
| COR-45783 (SUP-24133) |
Messaging - group recipients (usability fix): Corrected an issue that caused overlapping text after selecting the Count Separately option. |
| COR-45676 | Users - Add User: Adjusted the search fields to ensure only items that match user entered text are displayed in the list of options. |
|
COR-45600 |
Flow Designer: Fixed an issue to ensure upstream step name changes are accurately displayed in downstream steps. |
March 14-18, 2022
Export incidents in bulk
Wish you could export the Incidents list to a spreadsheet file for your reporting purposes? Maybe you want to share incident data with your stakeholders, or calculate cumulative metrics for subsets of incidents, such as the mean time to respond to 'Critical' incidents — whatever the reason, you'll be happy to know we've added an Export button to the Incidents list:
Don't forget that you can use the available filters and columns selector to refine the list to just the timeframe and data you're interested in before you export. This will save you from having to do a lot of clean up or manipulation to the downloaded .xlsx file before you share or analyze it.
Support notes (week of March 14-18)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-45619 | Groups - Dynamic Teams: Corrected an issue that caused users to see a deprecated page when selecting an observer role for a dynamic team. |
| COR-45373 | Flow Designer (usability enhancements): Fixed some minor issues in Flow Designer that resulted in improved usability. |
| COR-45554 | Groups - Calendar (usability enhancements): Improved the behavior of the user content card when navigating the calendar. |
|
COR-45595 (SUP-24080) |
Incidents: Corrected an issue that prevented users with the appropriate roles and permissions from editing the summary or description of an incident. |
| COR-43995 | xMatters mobile app - Microsoft Teams: Fixed an issue that prevented users from opening the Incidents Tab from Microsoft Teams on either Android or iOS mobile devices. |
| COR-45590 (SUP-24078) |
Incidents - Timeline: Corrected an issue to ensure timeline entries display properly after the sort order is changed. |
| COR-45545 (SUP-24073) |
Alerts report - User Delivery Summary: Fixed an issue that prevented users from seeing details when they click a link in the User Delivery Summary. |
March 7-11, 2022
Improved navigation of the service dependencies map
The service dependencies map now includes a mini-map! If you've used Flow Designer before, then you may already be familiar with how the mini-map works:
- Zoom in or out by clicking the plus (+) and minus (-) icons below the map.
- Click and drag the mini-map box so it highlights the area you want to show on-screen.
- Use the 'Auto Layout' button to optimize how the current map is displayed.
ServiceNow San Diego certification
If you're using the latest and greatest version of ServiceNow, then you'll be happy to hear that Version 5.6 of the xMatters application for ServiceNow is certified with Paris, Quebec, Rome and now San Diego!
For more information about getting integrated with ServiceNow, see our integration guide.
Support notes (week of March 7-11)
| xMatters Internal Reference No. | Summary |
| COR-45519 | Flow Designer: Fixed an issue preventing users from saving a flow after making changes to steps. |
| COR-45515 (SUP-24063) |
Reports - User Delivery tab: Ensured the User Delivery tab displays alerts in the expected sort order. |
| COR-45467 (SUP-24072) |
Groups - shifts: Corrected an issue preventing the search bar from displaying the drop-down list of search matches. |
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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