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Q4-2024 BlueConic Release Notes

Welcome to the BlueConic product release notes for Q4-2024! This article includes product updates, new connections, bug fixes, and API & SDK updates released to customers as part of Release 94 (October 2024), along with any other changes made afterward from October to December 2024.

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BlueConic platform status

Visit status.blueconic.com for current status updates for the BlueConic platform. Click the Subscribe to updates button to get platform status notifications by SMS, Slack, or email.

Testing new features

Please note that any newly released features may impact existing configurations and require testing before using the feature.

What's new in BlueConic (October to December 2024)

Android and React Native SDKs updated to new versions

The BlueConic SDK for Android was updated to v5.2.6 and the BlueConic SDK for React Native was updated to v3.2.4 to correct an issue with the SDK removing cookies when initializing.

For the latest updates, review the BlueConic SDK for Android Release Notes and the BlueConic SDK for React Native Release Notes.

October 2024 BlueConic product updates for Release 94

The latest BlueConic product updates in Release 94 (R94) were delivered to your tenant between October 1 and October 11, 2024.

New BlueConic features and enhancements

Connection updates

Other updates and bug fixes

New BlueConic features and enhancements

Real-Time Sync introduced for expanded personalization and composability

To enhance web and mobile personalization capabilities in BlueConic, we're releasing a new Real-Time Sync feature that enables you to populate BlueConic profiles with data from external sources at the moment someone interacts with your brand's digital channels. This removes the need to load all external data into BlueConic in batch before you can take action on it, reducing wait times and providing more flexibility and efficiency.

Real-Time Sync plays an important part in our vision of creating a more modular and composable CDP. In particular, it gives you the opportunity to explore and pursue new composability use cases that require you to retrieve data from a warehouse in real time, such as web content personalization via hyper-personalized Dialogues.

If you use Snowflake as your data warehouse, you can set up real-time data imports through a new real-time import goal in the Snowflake Connection. This goal, part of Real-Time Sync for Snowflake, includes just three steps to configure the data transfer between Snowflake and BlueConic and start retrieving data as users interact with your brand.

For more on how to set up and use this new Snowflake goal, see the new Real-time import goal added to Snowflake Connection.

And to learn more about Real-Time Sync and how composability works in BlueConic, review the article Using Real-Time Sync for dynamic personalization.

Enhancements made to timeline event rollups feature

The timeline event rollups feature, introduced in Release 93 (July 2024), enables you to aggregate timeline data into specific profile properties in BlueConic, as this data is ingested into the CDP. To get started with the feature or learn more about it, check out the Q3-2024 Technical Release Webinar or review the Query Timeline Events section of the Knowledge Base.

In this release, to allow you to fully optimize rollups for your desired use cases, various updates were made to the feature's basic query builder (available via More > Timeline events > Timeline event rollups):

Multi-value text properties supported to unlock use cases

To give you more data flexibility when building rollups, you can now have any timeline event type property or subproperty (with the Text data type) flagged as "multi-value" so that ALL values are rolled up to profiles, rather than just the first value, when the property is added to a condition or mapping. To designate a property in your tenant as multi-value, contact BlueConic Support.

The following out-of-the-box properties are flagged as multi-value by default:

  • Order event type > Tag property
  • Order event type > Product property > Product tag subproperty
  • Order event type > Product property > Product category subproperty
  • Order refund event type > Product property > Product category subproperty
  • Abandoned basket event type > Product property > Product category subproperty

This functionality is especially useful for BlueConic customers calling event types with nested properties and subproperties who want to better target consumers. For example, if a clothing company sells a men's leather belt across three different product categories—"men's products," "belts," and "leather products"—all three product categories can now be rolled up when using the basic query builder, since "product category" is a multi-value property. That data can then be used for top retail use cases such as smarter product recommendations and better content personalization.

Prior to the introduction of multi-value text property support, only data from the first category ("men's products") would have been included in the rollup.

Here are some points to consider when deciding which properties should be designated as multi-value:

  • If you set a timeline event type property or subproperty as multi-value through BlueConic Support, it cannot be undone once the event type is in use by a rollup.
  • If a property or subproperty has multiple values but you do not designate it as multi-value through BlueConic Support, then only the first value is made available when that property is used in a rollup.
  • Changing a property or subproperty to multi-value does not trigger the rollup to run again; a run is only triggered by a rollup configuration change or event update.

UX enhanced for mapping of timeline event rollups

To ensure that you have the most optimal experience when mapping timeline event rollups, updates were made to the profile property selector field (under Mappings). In that field, if you type the name of an existing property that is incompatible, that property is now shown in the list of auto-completions as a disabled option; also, to provide more transparency, it is listed with the specific reason it cannot be selected.

R94_rollup_incompatible.png

A property can be incompatible for one of three reasons:

  • It is in use by another rollup.
  • It has an incompatible data type.
  • It has an incompatible data sensitivity.

For instance, if the timeline event property for your mapping uses the Decimal data type, the system will NOT allow you to select a profile property with a Number data type. This makes the property selection process clearer and more efficient.

Lastly, the list of auto-completions no longer includes an option to create a new profile property from your entered text. This avoids any errors associated with creating a property with an existing property name.

Condition operators relabeled

To improve clarity when designating conditions for your timeline event rollup, two text-condition operators were relabeled:

  • "Contains any (exact match)" is now labeled "Equals."
  • "Does not contain any (exact match)" is now labeled "Does not equal."

These labels are easier to read, more straightforward, and better convey an exact match (rather than a partial match). There is no change in functionality, as both options are still case insensitive.

As part of this relabeling, an information (i) icon now appears when you select either of these operators, allowing you to access a tooltip with more explanation and examples.

R94_rollups_tooltip.jpg

System performance optimized

To improve system performance and make batch processing in large rollups more efficient:

  • Updates were added to enable greater throughput processing.
  • Data operations were optimized, and it is now best practice to add a relative date condition to your rollup (based on timeline event date) so the system only retrieves necessary data—i.e., only events that meet that condition.

UI enhanced on object pages

To ensure a cleaner UI, the following updates were made to individual pages for Connections, timeline event rollups, and all other objects in BlueConic:

  • The On/Off toggle at the top was enlarged and moved directly left of the Save button for better visibility.
  • The object type name (e.g., "Listeners") was removed from the title bar to reduce clutter and leave more room for longer names. The icon for the object type remains, such as the plug for Connections and the target for Objectives.

Before:

R94_rollups_UI_before.jpg

After:

R94_rollups_UI_after.jpg

Updates made for quicker, more informed segment building

To provide more clarity and real-time feedback when building segments and enhance the user experience overall for segmentation, a variety of updates were made to Segment condition pages:

  • A new "View profile counts" setting was added that enables you to load property values with or without their profile counts. You can turn this setting on or off at any time to switch between a detailed view with profile counts and a streamlined view with only values, depending on what suits your workflow best.
    • When this setting is enabled (the default), both property values and their associated profile counts are displayed, giving you detailed insights into how many profiles match each value. This allows you to make informed decisions based on the size of each segment.
    • When this setting is disabled, only property values are displayed, which speeds up the data retrieval process. This allows you to quickly create and adjust your segmentation logic without waiting for count data to load. (If you're working with large datasets or require faster loading times, you might choose to uncheck this setting.)

R94_ux_segments_2.jpg

  • For large tenants with vast amounts of data, you can now configure a segment without having to wait until values and counts are loaded. (The loading icons that display no longer block the configuration of the segment.)
  • The OR-block counts on the left (i.e., the filters separated by the OR condition) and the segment profile count at the top right are now loaded after two seconds of inactivity to improve system performance.
  • When you select a property with a large number of values, those values now load progressively in blocks of 40. The first 40 values are shown immediately, and another 40 appear each time you scroll down to the end of that block.
  • To alert you that no more than 1,000 values can be loaded on the page, a message now appears when you scroll down to the 1,000th value: "Limit of 1000 values reached."

R94_1000_limit.jpg

Additional UI updates

  • If you return to the list of values after your segment condition has already been configured, those configured values are now loaded immediately before the other values (and before all profile counts).
  • The "Filter by another value" option was relabeled "Add value" for better readability; it was also moved to the top of the list of values, preventing it from being moved down as more values load.
  • The "Select all…" option now displays at the very top of the list of values (with no horizontal line separating it). It is loaded before the other values but remains disabled (and does not show an exact count) until loading is complete.
    • Note: If there is a large number of values, this option is labeled "Select first XX values"—listing the current number of values after each block of 40 is loaded.
  • The "Search value" field now remains visible at all times and can be used to search even before all values are loaded.
  • For properties that use graphs (e.g., bar charts, line charts), a skeleton loader now displays while the graph is loading. You can still configure the conditions during this loading time.

R94_segment_skeleton.jpg

AI Workbench 2.0 introduced with Jupyter upgrade

To provide significant security and usability improvements—such as real-time collaboration features and a step-through debugger—several important updates were made to enhance AI Workbench:

  • Upgrade to support Jupyter Notebook 7
  • Upgrade from Python 3.9 to Python 3.11
  • Updates to supported Python library packages

Existing AI Workbench notebooks that have run in the 2024 calendar year will function as they did before but with an improved notebook user interface and enhanced security and usability. Python developers will benefit from better error highlighting and enhanced code navigation features.

Understanding Jupyter Notebook 7 improvements

Jupyter Notebook 7 brings the following enhancements for Python developers:

  • Simplified and more intuitive user interface
  • Improved support for keyboard navigation and screen readers
  • New menu options for editing, viewing, and running Python code in AI Workbench notebooks
  • Additional Markdown rendering options available in the Markdown menu, including better rendering of tables, code blocks, and LaTeX

Updating AI Workbench notebooks

This release of AI Workbench may require changes to your notebook code to upgrade the Python library packages called in your notebooks, if the notebook in question has not been run in the 2024 calendar year. Review the article Updating AI Workbench notebooks for details on code library dependencies and steps you may need to take, particularly these sections:

Segment-based Group exports added to REST API and Python API

You can now use the BlueConic REST API v2 and Python API to export group data to third-party systems based on specific BlueConic segment definitions. When a segment is evaluated and profiles are returned, the matching group data is included in separate sections of the API response, similar to how Segments are handled. This allows you to access both profile and associated group information efficiently.

In the REST API, this is achieved using the expand filter. The following options were added as part of this release:

  • Use profiles.profile.groups to include all group information associated with profiles.
  • Use profiles.profile.matchingGroups to include only the groups that match the segment criteria.

In the Python API, this functionality is provided through two new parameters: groups and matching_groups.

This enhancement removes the dependency on private APIs or external platforms (e.g., Salesforce Marketing Cloud) to configure this type of filtering. It improves platform flexibility and efficiency, allowing you to manage your group data more effectively for precise targeting. Additionally, it helps you execute highly personalized use cases based on users' group affiliations.

Note: This Groups API export functionality is now available through export goals in the SFTP Connection, as outlined in this entry below.

Seeing a sample API response

In this example, group data is returned in separate sections (matchingGroups and groups), allowing for a clear and organized representation of the data.

{
  "id": "41ebc321-b02b-4e8a-a368-82995c81fb18",
  "creationDate": "2023-03-27T10:36:11.990Z",
  "privacyLegislation": "GDPR",
  "consentedObjectives": ["objective1"],
  "refusedObjectives": ["objective2"],
  "properties": [
    {"id": "all_companies", "values": ["company_A", "company_B"]},
    {"id": "favorite_company", "values": ["company_B"]},
    {"id": "visitclicks", "values": ["1"]}
  ],
  "segments": [{"id": "bdd64355-2d45-411b-a5ea-0bcf87318f35", "name": "Export test segment"}],
  "matchingGroups": [
    {"profilePropertyId": "all_companies", "groupIds": ["company_A"]},
    {"profilePropertyId": "favorite_company", "groupIds": ["company_B"]}
  ],
  "groups": [
    {
      "id": "company_A",
      "groupTypeId": "company",
      "creationDate": "2023-03-27T10:36:11.990Z",
      "lastModifiedDate": "2024-01-10T12:52:44.816Z",
      "properties": [
        {"id": "city", "values": ["Nijmegen"]},
        {"id": "employees", "values": ["50"]}
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "company_B",
      "groupTypeId": "company",
      "creationDate": "2023-03-27T10:36:11.990Z",
      "lastModifiedDate": "2024-01-10T12:52:44.816Z",
      "properties": [
        {"id": "city", "values": ["Boston"]},
        {"id": "employees", "values": ["100"]}
      ]
    }
  ]
}

BlueConic cookies marked as Secure

With a commitment to data security and privacy, we always look for ways—big or small—to provide additional protection for customers and ensure smoother integrations with other systems. With this release, we flagged these client-side JavaScript cookies as Secure to better protect your users' data while they're on your HTTPS website:

  • BCSessionID
  • BCRefusedObjectives
  • BCRevision_ext_
  • BCTempID

In particular, this update allows you to avoid any blockers that might occur from having cookies not yet flagged as Secure, especially when you integrate with a CMS that has security requirements for the SessionID cookie.

Note: As a fallback, the cookies BCSessionID and BCRefusedObjectives are unsecure on HTTP websites.

Mobile SDK release recap

Since last quarter, several fixes have been made to the BlueConic SDKs, as outlined in the Q3-2024 BlueConic Release Notes. These are the most current versions (as of October 18, 2024):

For the latest updates, review the articles the BlueConic SDK for Android Release Notes, the BlueConic SDK for iOS Release Notes, and the BlueConic SDK for React Native Release Notes.

Using BlueConic and not yet adopted our SDKs?

Get started in minutes with our Android and iOS SDKs or React Native SDK to start capturing relevant data to orchestrate resonant experiences that deliver a higher return on data across all your customer touchpoints.

Use case articles added to Knowledge Base

To help you better understand and implement your CDP use cases, the following articles were added to the BlueConic Knowledge Base covering different use case topics:

Connection updates

Real-time import goal added to Snowflake Connection

As part of the rollout for Real-Time Sync for Snowflake, a new real-time import goal is now available in the Snowflake Connection, allowing you to retrieve data in real time from Snowflake and facilitate dynamic personalization and decisioning in BlueConic.

This new goal, labeled "Import data into BlueConic - Real time," consists of three steps (which are outlined in the Creating real-time import goals section of our Snowflake Connection article).

R94_Snowflake_real_time_screen.jpg

Upon saving the goal, Snowflake data is imported automatically into BlueConic in real time. The profile will continue to house the properties and the continually updated property values put into place by this connection goal so you can use them in segmentation, decisioning, and personalization. You can also push this data to other marketing systems based on customer engagement.

Defining channels

Through a new "Channels" setting on the connection's Set up and run page, you can select specific channels on which you want the Snowflake real-time import to be active. This allows you to control where and how real-time data is utilized within your interactions.

R94_Snowflake_channels.jpg

Group properties now exportable as profile properties in SFTP Connection

The ability to export group properties as profile properties to third-party systems—like Adobe Marketo Engage, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and Databricks—was added to the SFTP Connection. By extending API support, you can now export data stored in groups when exporting profiles, which improves integrations with marketing automation platforms and other systems and enhances your ability to manage complex data relationships.

Target region setting added to Amazon Ads Connection

To enable you to create and manage custom audiences in Amazon Ads directly from BlueConic, a new "Target region" setting was added to the Amazon Ads Connection (on the Set up and run page) to select the region where your Amazon Ads account operates. Two options are available for selection: Europe (EU) and North America (NA).

Additionally, within the export goal itself, a new step was included for selecting the country of origin for your exported custom audiences to comply with the privacy policies of Amazon Ads. You have the option of selecting the country of origin by using the dropdown menu or by selecting the BlueConic profile property where this information is stored.

Iterable Connection now available for European customers

The Iterable Connection, which was previously available just to U.S.-based customers, is now available to customers in Europe, as the connection recently integrated with Iterable's European data center. This allows a wider range of BlueConic customers to adopt the connection to enable their customer engagement use cases.

With this update, a new "Project location" dropdown was added to the connection's Set up and run page (under Authentication) to select your region: United States (US) or Europe (EU). Selecting the Europe (EU) option provides the necessary access for European customers to import and export data between Iterable and BlueConic.

R94_Iterable_EU.jpg

Other updates and bug fixes

Features/UI

  • If you build a segment using base segments (rather than profile properties), any inverse segment you create from it now works as expected and shows the correct number of profiles. With this fix, you can continue to use inverse segments to track lifecycle stages. 
  • When building a segment using a profile property with the Text data type, selecting the "has a value" operator now works as expected with all values properly displayed. 
  • When building a segment using a profile property with the Decimal data type, the graph now loads successfully once you set a range of values.
  • When you manually refresh a timeline event rollup (from the right sidebar), a new event no longer gets added to the activity stream on the platform homepage. 
  • Profiles that share a unique identifier used for a merge rule will now merge, as expected, if they are within the same domain group. 
  • When defining completion criteria for a lifecycle, you can again access tooltips for the checkboxes "Select lifecycle completion event" and "Allow profiles to reenter the lifecycle." 
  • An issue was fixed on the Privacy page that disabled "Europe (GDPR)" from the list of legislation zones and prevented you from checking it.
  • The Journey Recorder feature, which had limited customer adoption, was removed from the BlueConic Simulator to provide a simpler UI. 
  • The "Don't show on Segments tab" setting is now unchecked by default for three read-only, system-created profile properties so you can use those properties immediately to build segments:
    • Creation date
    • Last modified date
    • System has property
  • To ensure consistent property values for both profiles and groups, you can no longer manually alter the value for the Creation date property or create additional values. If you currently have multiple dates for that property, you will only be able to export the first listed date moving forward. 
  • On the Profiles page, you can enter an extremely long value (i.e., more than 500 characters) in the "On unique identifier" search field without UI issues occurring. 
  • When creating a Send Email to Visitor Dialogue, apostrophes and quotation marks added to the email subject line now display as expected.
  • When viewing an item from a table in BlueConic, such as a profile from the Profiles page, clicking the left or right arrow key on your keyboard opens the item that appears directly before or after it in that table.
  • When sorting by Type on the Profile Properties page, properties with the Group ID type are now sorted correctly.

Connections

  • Improvements were made to the way the SFTP Connection exports and downloads large files, resulting in better run times. Additionally, error reporting was enhanced to provide more details, enabling faster troubleshooting of configuration issues. 
  • Updates were made to the LinkedIn Connection that resolved access token expiration error messages from occurring. 
  • A fix was made to the Amazon Web Services (S3), Snowflake, and Braze connections that prevents unwanted authentication errors from being thrown. 
  • The Klaviyo Connection was updated to the latest API version, resolving incorrect export goal errors from being thrown. 
  • Cleanup now works successfully in the Adestra Connection when multiple goals are enabled or when a single goal has two or more lists selected. 
  • The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connection no longer has version 2.24.0 incompatibility errors that were causing batch import goal matching issues. 
  • Optimizations were made to the Shopify Connection to handle large data imports more efficiently and avoid bulk operation timeouts. Additionally, the retry mechanism in the Shopify Connection was adjusted, resolving internal server errors. Both of these enhancements ensure smoother synchronization between both systems, even when substantial data volumes are involved. 
  • Error reporting was improved in the Snowflake Connection, now capturing and communicating IP-related authentication failures. Run logs accurately reflect IP blocking events, enhancing visibility and enabling faster troubleshooting of connection issues. 
  • An optimization was made to the Kafka Connection and its memory management, ensuring more efficient and stable connection runs, particularly for long-running or resource-intensive operations. 
  • An issue was resolved in the Webhook Connection where inverted section tags in Mustache templates weren't functioning correctly. This fix ensures proper conditional rendering based on property values, particularly benefiting scenarios involving identifier fields without a value set yet. Users can now reliably implement fallback logic in their request configurations, improving data handling flexibility and accuracy. 
  • A data collection issue in the Product Collector (SFTP) Connection was resolved that impacted Single Page Application (SPA) environments. Now, multiple product views are executed and logged correctly, ensuring accurate tracking of product view events for SPA environments. 
  • The Sailthru Connection can now handle empty values in matching criteria, preventing unintended merges caused by hashing empty strings. This refinement improves data integrity by only hashing non-empty values, resulting in more accurate profile matching and reduced risk of erroneous data management. 

REST API

  • A fix was made to segment refinements to ensure they always work as an implicit AND (instead of an implicit OR) over the base segment and thus return the correct results.
  • Group refinements will return correct results with either uppercase or lowercase query values.
  • When calling /profiles/{profileid}, a profile.segments expand option was added that, when used, returns both the segment name and ID. (If this option isn't used, only the ID is returned.) This update is now reflected in the Get one profile section of the REST API v2 documentation site. 
  • The Recommendations section of the REST API v2 documentation site was enhanced to include clearer specifications and examples of the filter options that are supported.
  • compositionStrategy is no longer included in the Profile Properties section of the REST API v2 documentation site.
  • The REST API v2 documentation site was updated to ensure that example API calls are formatted properly.

Python API

  • In the Python API, "replaces" and "replacedBy" properties were added to the Profile domain object when requested as an include option (in a similar manner to Segments and Objectives). This allows you to analyze profile merges through AI Workbench without having to call the REST API directly.
  • For domain objects in the Python API—specifically connections, dialogues, listeners, profile properties, segments, lifecycles, content stores, and timeline event types—the following properties are now available:
    • Description
    • Creation date
    • Last modified date
    • Username of the creator
    • Username of the last modified user
    • Labels of the object
    • Status (only for domain objects that have a status toggle)

 

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