Past release notes summary

23.1 Features & Improvements

• Secrets Manager - For clients who are using a tool like AWS Secrets Manager, we want to allow them to leverage that for credential entry on database connections instead of entering database credentials directly into Accelerator. This would allow Accelerator to meet clients on their security needs, and offer a better database connection setup experience.
  • Update the user experience when setting up Snowflake Native database connections
  • Integrate Accelerator with AWS Secrets Manager
  • Allow for credential entry via Secrets Manager when setting up a new Snowflake Native database connection, or editing an existing one
• Athena Data Source Connector - Within the Database Connections screen, Accelerator now allows Athena database types as an option when setting up new database connections.

22.3 Features & Improvements

• Campaign Planning Panel
  • This is a new visual and interactive component. The Campaign Planning Panel provides data admins with a list of all the campaigns associated with the Blueprint. It also allows them to see how the campaigns are currently targeting the Blueprint. The benefits of this new component will assist admins drive decision-making by highlighting nodes which are over-delivered or under-delivered to. It can also present the data administrator with a real-time view of how their changes to the Blueprint will impact existing campaigns. This functionality will allow for:
    • View Campaigns Targeting the Blueprint - a data administrator can open the Planning Panel to see a list of all campaigns targeting the Blueprint. As the user makes selections from the list, they can observe how the Blueprint nodes highlight to indicate if they are targeted by the Campaign.
    • Select Campaigns Targeting a Node - in Planning Mode, the data administrator can select campaigns that are targeting a specific node.
    • Selected Campaigns Tab -  The Selected Campaigns tab provides a consolidated view of all of the campaigns that have been selected.
    • Nodes being Targeted by Campaign - Users can now expand this section of the card to display all of the nodes being targeted by a campaign. Because children nodes are implicitly targeted when a parent is targeted, a new icon to indicate if a targeted node has children.
• Updated Personalization for Message Campaigns
  • Campaigns have received a personalization page facelift.  Marketers will now see a more seamless union between recipient data and template preview to provide more flexible content testing using actual campaign recipient data to ensure the content matches expectations before launch. Additionally, support has also been added to allow marketers to scroll through recipients from the associated Audience, as well as directly select recipients, to see content previewed in real-time. This update also includes:
    • Integrated Recipient and Content testing -The ability to see Recipients and Content Previews on the same page. This allows for direct selection of recipients to preview and send test particular recipients in real-time
• Multivariate Campaigns
  • This release is introducing a new Message campaign type specifically for multivariate testing for both the A/B testing experience and the Marketing Campaign process. This new campaign type will offer a more refined experience for marketers to run testing scenarios and allows for future improvements to be made to both Marketing Campaigns and Multivariate Campaigns. Additionally, this update includes new Multivariate Campaign specific analytics pages, and job pages, similar to the ones that the Marketing Campaigns provide already. Some other notable features in this version include:
    • Stand-Alone Multivariate Campaigns - Multivariate Campaigns will now be their own feature allowing for a more optimized test creation experience. Users can create Multivariate Campaigns from existing Marketing Campaign settings for easy split testing
    • Ability to View Multivariate Analytics - Multivariate Campaigns now have their own dedicated analytics pages alongside Marketing Campaigns.  Marketers can see how tests are performing with individual Test ID #'s on the Campaign Analytics page.  Selecting the Test ID # will take users to the Test Overview page, showing individual metrics for that test.

22.2 Features & Improvements

• Apple iOS 15 Adjusted Opens Reporting
  • Surface Adjusted Opens - Anywhere a Total Open Rate is displayed, we’ve added an Adjusted Open rate as well.
  • Add Adjusted Opens Metric to Multivariate Tests - Previously, campaign admins could select from Click Rate or Open Rate to determine the winner of their multivariate test. Now, they can also choose an Adjusted Open rate to determine the winner.
• Ability to Filter External Campaign SFTP and Cloud Storage Destination Files
  • Column Customization - When a user selects an SFTP or cloud storage destination, they now have access to a column customization tab. Within this tab, users can customize their audience by renaming columns, removing or adding columns, and reordering columns. Users can also see a live preview of any changes they make in the table preview section beneath the column editor.
• Campaign Interactions from Blueprints
  • Associated Campaigns Modal - Users can now view an associated campaign modal to see how their Blueprint is being used by different campaigns. This modal displays a list of campaigns that target the Blueprint, along with the destination or sending channel, the count of targeted nodes, the count of recorded nodes, and the schedule. If the user has access to both marketing and external campaigns, then the list is split between external and marketing campaigns. Users can also click on the campaign name to open the campaign overview page in a new web browser tab.
  • “Campaigns Using this Node” Modal - On each Blueprint node, we have replaced the trashcan with an ellipsis button. This ellipsis now contains 2 action items: view campaigns and delete. The view campaign action will open the campaigns using the node modal, where the user can view a list of campaigns using that specific node. Included in the list is the destination or sending channel, indication if the node is being targeted, indication if the node is being recorded, and the schedule. If the user has access to both marketing and external campaigns, then the list is split between external and marketing campaigns. Users can click on the campaign name to open the campaign overview page in a new web browser tab.
  • Ability to Create Campaigns from Blueprint - Users can now create a campaign directly from the Blueprint edit page. Users can select the type of campaign they want to send, name the campaign, and select the nodes on the Blueprint they wish to target. When users click “Create Campaign”, the campaign settings page will open in a new browser tab.
  • Blueprint Static Split - Users can now toggle between percentage and static splits. Percentage splits are the same splits that already existed (an audience split by percentage), while static splits allow users to enter a static number to split their audience.

22.1 Features & Improvements

• Improved Template Preview Workflows
  • Previously, Template Authors could only preview their template if they had saved all of their changes, and previewing their template would navigate them to a new page. Template Authors now have the ability to preview unsaved changes on their template in a modal and easily navigate back to the edit page.
  • Previously, Template Authors could only send tests with templates that were saved. Template Authors now have the ability to send tests with their transient templates from the preview modal.
  • Template Authors now have the ability to download their sample audience data or sample context data.
  • Template Authors now have the ability to upload their sample audience data or sample context data.
• Context Data API
  • Context APIs have been added as a new section under Engage. Data Admins have the ability to create a new context API, preview the result of the API, and preview sample recipient data input to see how different sample recipients affect the API response. Once a Context API has been created, a Data Admin can return and edit it as needed.
  • Template Authors will be able to use a specified amount of mapped Context APIs within their template. Once they’ve mapped their Context API to their template, they will be able to select Freemarker from the Personalization Helper to easily reference the data field within their template.
  • Template Authors will be able to use one unmapped Context APIs within their template and write Freemarker to reference the data field within their template.
  • Template Authors will be able to preview the results of their Context API directly from the Template Preview modal. They will be able to edit their Sample Recipient Info to verify the API is rendering correctly for different recipients.

21.4 Features & Improvements

• Audience Recording Updates
  • Audience Recording is now a stand alone feature. The new audience recording page can be found as a System Admin under the Admin navigation panel. Any Campaigns with existing Audience Recordings, will have those recordings migrated to the new page. To use an Audience Recording, simply select it from a drop down on the External or Marketing Campaigns.
  • Audience Recording now supports advanced data types, such as structured data
  • Users are able to specify a default Audience Recording that will be selected for all their new Marketing and External Campaigns
  • Redshift Native is now available as a database connection. This allows Redshift connections to be used for Audience Recording
  • Microfocus Vertica is now available as a database connection.

21.3 Features & Improvements

• Global Data Variables and Data Variable Types - MessageGears redesigned the Launch Variables feature and replaced them with Data Variables. Data variables will function very similarly to the legacy launch variables but added several options to help both the data and campaign admins.
  • Users can now set types for data variables to restrict the input on the Campaign screen. The types include: String, Numeric, Boolean, and Fixed List. Fixed lists will allow a data admin to set a predefined list of options for the campaign admin to choose from instead of manually typing in a value. Each of these data variable types will include optional validation that can be set up, for example the user can set a minimum and maximum number for the numeric types
  • Users can now set and associate Global Data Variables. These variables are managed outside of the audience screens and are associated with audiences when you want to use them. This allows for much easier control over the definition of the data variables.
• Auto Column Detection - We introduced new column parsing functionality that will attempt to automatically detect the outputs of audiences or blueprints to improve the overall user experience in the application and reduce the amount of free form typing a user has to perform to set up functions such as blueprint columns or audience recording.
• Updated Blueprint UX - Based on customer feedback the target group creation process has been improved to help reduce the overhead in the creation flow. Additionally, target group labels are now at the segment level allowing for more flexible use within each node. Some other notable functions:
  • Users can now duplicate a node and all its segments
  • Blueprints now have a redo button

21.2 Features & Improvements

• Visual Segmentation - Numerous features have been added to the Blueprint UI. Users are now able to change the structure of their Blueprints through the ability to move and shift nodes seamlessly in the UI. We have also added undo functionality to allow users to undo any unintended changes they may have added to their Blueprint.
• FastCache - Users are now able to leverage FastCache to improve their Blueprint feedback. FastCache is an optional feature that allows users to create cached data sets of their Starting Population which drastically improves the feedback given to users when editing Blueprints since they no longer have to go through the full data extraction process. The FastCache data will be updated seamlessly whenever Accelerator touches the data through daily use such as counts and campaign launches so that Blueprint users are confident they are always using relevant data.
• Parallel Campaign Extraction - Accelerator campaigns can now leverage parallel extraction. This is an Admin setting that allows administrators to set a thread limit in Accelerator. The thread limit will be used to speed up the extraction time via leveraging the number of threads set in the the system configuration, leading to drastically improved campaign launch times.

21.1 Features & Improvements

• SMS Content - SMS content management is now available in Accelerator. Once SMS codes are provisioned through MessageGears, Users are able to create and edit SMS content in the Template section of Accelerator. SMS is also included on Send test and Preview.
• Transactional SMS Campaigns - Users are now able to include SMS as a channel included in Transactional Campaigns in Accelerator.

20.4 Features & Improvements

• Engage UI Update - The Engage UI is now updated to provide more information to the Users.
  • Overview Tab - The Overview page is updated to include information about the state of the Engage Data Feed including: general information about the size, refresh schedule, hits and miss, Hit/Miss reporting by either an aggregate or by Vendor view, trending information about the size of the data.
  • Example - The Example tab is updated to allow users to make test calls to the promoted Engage data set. After data has been promoted, users can use the Example UI to generate a sample API call by providing a vendor and up to 20 IDs they expect in the data set. Accelerator will show what the sample API call will look like and make the call to show the response using the provided information.
• Engage History Reporting - A new tab is now included in Engage, the History tab. This tab will show the user the historical updates to their data set for both Replaces and Refreshes including information about: which version is currently live, which version has refreshes done to it, the status of the replaces/refreshes, any error or informational messages about the job, and what query was run for a given execution.
• External Campaign Interval Scheduling - Users are now able to set External Campaign schedules to run on interval cadences for either hours or minutes (minimum 15 minutes).
• Ability to Disable Asset Locking - A system admin can now disable all locks in the Accelerator instance in the System Configuration Admin screen. This will remove all locks currently in place and prevent any new ones from being added. Should the locks be re-enabled the locks will not be added back to the assets until they are rescheduled.
• Ability to select Channels on Transactional Campaigns - Users are now able to select which channels can be used on a Transactional Campaign. If a template has multiple channels, on the Transactional Campaign the user can choose which channels will be promoted.

20.3.1 Features & Improvements

• Audience Recording - Users are now able to record their Audiences when performing a campaign launch for both External and Marketing campaigns. This feature allows users to select a target destination table in BigQuery or Snowflake. Accelerator will then write the mapped audience's columns to that table during campaign launch. This provides insights into the exact state of the recipients of a given campaign at the time of launch which opens up a world of possibilities with the recorded data.
• Native Snowflake Integration - Accelerator now supports native Snowflake connections. This connection will utilize native pieces of Snowflake to allow for optimal extraction times when executing Snowflake queries.
• External Campaign UI Enhancements - Accelerator now has a new and improved External Campaign UI to account for growing functionality in the feature. This includes a new Overview screen that allows users to get a quick understanding of what is occurring within that campaign.

20.3 Features & Improvements

• Multi-Product Accelerator Navigation - With MessageGears' roll out of the stand alone products Segment, Message, and Engage, Accelerator now has an updated navigation to better support the products. Accelerator will use the enabled products from the customer's license to dynamically update the Navigation with the appropriate products. Additionally, the side navigation bar has been updated to more modern user experience standards.
• Dynamic Vendor Integration (Airship Tagging Support) - Accelerator now supports additional functionality within the External Campaign Destinations. By utilizing a data driven UI, MessageGears has eliminated the need to update Accelerator every time MessageGears integrates with a new vendor. This new approach allows Accelerator to continue to support new vendors, such as the Airship Tagging solution, without causing interruptions for clients. This UI now supports new, destination specific, functions such as:
  • Field Mappings - Map expected outputs from the audience to inputs for the vendor. Each list of mappings is specific to the destination.
  • Vendor Obfuscation - This is an admin level item for Google and Facebook that allows encryption for that particular destination.
  • Facebook App IDs - A list of app IDs for your Facebook Destinations.
  • Airship 'Extras' - Extra decorators you'd like to specify for Airship.
• BEE Plugin V3 - Accelerator now uses the BEE Plugin V3 to have access to the latest BEE features
• Segment + Message Integration - Users are now able to use their Blueprints in their Marketing Campaigns. Just like with External Campaigns, users are able to select and filter a Blueprint to allow for highly targeted campaign sends. Additionally, users can choose Blueprints for their Template Personalization to allow the use of any Blueprint Labels in their content personalization.

20.2 Features & Improvements

• Blueprints - Blueprint is the MessageGears visual segment builder that allows users to define segments for their audience based on set criteria or different processes. Users are able to reference the audience attribute data to define segments, create segments based on random splits, and even filter out or merge together target groups in order to dissociate or associate different segments together. Users are also able to create label keys and values that will enrich the recipient data by being added to the recipient data at launch time when the Blueprint is used. The core of the experience is done through a single UI page where users start with a root node that is the starting population generated from the query populating the Blueprint.
• Integrate Blueprints with External Campaigns - The new Blueprint feature is integrated with External Campaigns. Users are able to determine which segments to include or exclude from their External Campaign launch. The blueprints are selected just like an audience would be and the UI will update to allow the users the ability to refine the included segments by checking/unchecking individual nodes on the Blueprint.
• Engage Incremental Refresh - Users are now able to set an individual refresh schedule for the Real Time Context Data in Engage. The two ways to use the refresh feature are manually selecting refresh or setting a refresh cadence, similar to the full replace cadence schedule. In order to use this feature users must use a specific date token comparison in their SQL that Accelerator will use to only grab records that are either new or updated to push to your Engage data set. By doing this, Accelerator drastically reduces the load on the database and allows for quicker updates to the data set. More information on how to use the date token and what it means is included in the help text section of Real Time Context Data.
• External Campaign Scheduling - Users are now able to set once per day recurring External Campaign Schedules.
• Big Query Native API Integration - Accelerator added a new database connection, BigQuery API. This allows Accelerator to access data via the native BigQuery API functions to drastically improve the speed and efficiency of the BigQuery queries. In order to fully leverage this feature Accelerator will need higher database permissions. More info: Setting Up a Native BigQuery Connection.

20.1 Features & Improvements

• Engage:  Real-Time Context Data - Added a new feature that allows users to select and update data to be referenced via MovableInk. Users can create a query, set an update cadence, and publish the data. This enables users to create a real-time source of reference data to be used to generate content for their consumers. In order to get access to Engage, the customer must have a feed provisioned by MessageGears.
• Message:  SPA Audiences and Context Data - Audiences and Context Data have been rebuilt to provide a better user experience. All Audience pages and Context Data now have modern user interfaces and improved workflows to help enable marketers to more easily create their recipient lists. Note any Drag and Drop Audiences created prior to this release will have to be recreated.
• Message:  Drag and Drop Launch Variables - Drag and Drop Audiences now have support for Launch Variables.

19.3 Features & Improvements

• New Transactional Campaign UI - The Transactional Campaign UI has been modernized to improve user workflows and provide a better campaign management experience. This includes brand new Transactional Campaign list page and overview page. Additionally, we have added permissions similar to Audience Permissions to the Transactional Campaign list page for easier management by the appropriate users.
• Cross Channel Transactional Campaigns -  Accelerator users are now able to promote Cross Channel Templates in order to use their push content as part of a Transactional Campaign. The Transactional Campaign UI has been updated to include push specific content as part of all the transactional workflows.
• Reply-To Name Support - Users are now able to supply a Reply-To Name as part of their sending profile and/or template headers in order to create a more personable email header. If the Reply-To Name is used then a Reply-To Address must be supplied.

19.2 Features & Improvements

• Local Seedlists - Accelerator now supports the ability to create and manage seedlists locally on the Accelerator instance. Accelerator Admins are able to create a seedlist under the System Configuration section of Accelerator. Campaign Managers can then use this seedlist as part of their campaign workflow. The campaign screen was expanded to included the ability to associate multiple seedlists, whether local or vendor provided, to a campaign to increase the flexibility of seedlist testing within Accelerator.
• Return Path Seedlist Support - Accelerator now supports Return Path as a seedlist vendor in addition to 250ok. Similar to 250ok, once the Return Path configuration is set up then the option will become available to use during campaign set up and launch.

19.1 Features & Improvements

• Audience List Page UI Updates - The audience list page got an updated UI to improve the user experience with the page and provide minor performance optimizations.
• Audience Level Permissions - Audiences now support permissions. The creator of the audience is able to modify the permissions on an audience from the Audience list page. The user is able to set and manage permissions for every group that he or she is a part of. Once permissions are set, any member of the applied groups can manage the audience’s permissions.
• Template Overview UI Updates - The Template Overview page has been overhauled to provide a better user experience. In the new interface, Cross-channel users are able to have email only, push only, or cross-channel templates to allow for flexibility in the implementation of their content creation. The page also now includes more information about the template itself all such as the campaign associations, all easily located in one screen.

18.4 Features & Improvements

• Mobile Push Channel Support - Support for a new channel has been added to the MessageGears platform. Enabling this functionality for your instance enables changes in a variety of areas in the Accelerator application:
  • Template Overview - Users are now able to create and manage push notifications for both iOS and Android alongside their email content.
  • Audiences - Audiences have been updated to include push specific content.
  • Marketing Campaigns - Users can now target based on channels within their Marketing Campaigns. They have the ability to send to all channels, pick a specific channel, or use their internal data to use a recipient preference if they would like to send via a recipients preferred channel.
  • Analytics - The analytics page has been updated to incorporate cross channel statistics, as well as provide users the ability to view metrics for a specific channel.
• Campaign Orchestrations - Campaign Orchestrations allow for users to visually see their customer journey as they flow through a series of touch points scheduled by the user. Campaign Orchestrations are being released with cross channel features allowing users to determine which channel they want to use to communicate with their customers at each step in the journey.

18.2 Features & Improvements

• New Drag and Drop HTML Editor -  The email content creation experience has been redesigned in 18.2 to be easier than ever. In the new interface, users can drag and drop content blocks into their email to quickly change the layout of their email and add elements like text, images, video, dynamic content and more.
• New HTML Source Editor - Accompanying the new Drag and Drop HTML Editor is a new HTML Source Editor. The text highlighting and navigation is improved and the Find/Replace dialog now accepts regular expressions and enables you to search within a selection rather than the whole document.
• New Personalization Testing Interface - We've also consolidated the Personalization Testing experience. In previous versions of Accelerator, you had to go to different screens to manage your sample recipients, sample context data and perform your personalization tests. In 18.2, you can now manage this all on one screen. Once you've selected a sample recipient data source, you can edit all of the sample recipients inline directly in the table. You can do the same thing for the context data.

• Then, you can see how the sample recipient email will look in the Personalization Testing section that is below. You can tweak the values displayed in the preview email without having to edit your sample data.

• Minimize the Navigation Bar - There are times where you need all the screen real estate that you can get. Accelerator now gives you the opportunity to minimize the navigation area on the left side of the screen. Once you've minimized it, hovering over it shows you the full menu structure.

18.1 Features & Improvements

• New Analytics Suite for Marketing Campaigns -  Accelerator 18.1 includes a new analytics suite for Marketing Campaigns and Jobs. Marketers can see how their campaigns perform over weeks and months. They can see that while they send on a Tuesday, they have engagement spikes on Saturday or Sunday. Also, for an individual send, marketers will have the ability to see down to a 15 minute window how their job is performing. They can see the deliveries start to be accepted by their top 10 ISPs and their open metrics begin to grow as the mailing is sending. Also, Analytics has been moved to its own menu item, but it is still accessible from the Marketing Campaign Overview screen.
• Separately Schedule Data Extraction from Send Time - Sometimes, it is important for a send to begin exactly at a certain time. In these cases, marketers can now schedule when the data is pulled from the database separate from the time that the job launches. Under the Campaign Schedule > Advanced Options, look for the "Recipient Extraction Schedule."
• SAML 2.0 Support - Many enterprise organizations use a Single Sign On (SSO) technology to centralize application access and permissions. Accelerator now supports SAML 2.0 access which means that SSO providers (such as Okta) can be used to access Accelerator without needing an additional password.  Additional information on setting up Accelerator to use SSO can be found here.
• Audience support for Stateful Web Services - In addition to pulling from databases and files, some customers need to integrate Accelerator with a stateful web service. API Audiences now have the ability to let the web service know if it is doing a count, preview or send. 
• Accelerator API updates - the beta version of the Accelerator APIs has been updated to have support for a health check API and support separately scheduling data extraction from send time (referenced above). You can learn more about the new APIs in our documentation.
• Pause/Resume/Cancel - As part of the new Job Report, we've added the ability to cancel a job that is in the extraction phase (when Accelerator is pulling the data from your Marketing Database). This can be located in the dropdown in the upper-right of the report.