11.2 (2023.2) Upgrade Guide

Summary

There are many benefits to keeping your current system upgraded. And, remember that upgrades are made easy with SaaS!

  • Get the latest and greatest to stay ahead of your competition

  • Take advantage of new capabilities and enhancements to improve the user experience and increase both productivity and efficiency

  • Stay current with releases for security, supportability, third-party application versions, latest industry standards, and more

  • Support new business initiatives, which allows for opportunities to expand the use of the solution and increase business value

  • Benefit from improved system performances

Customer action may be required. Before upgrading the platform and its add-on components, there are certain system changes that customers need to be aware of when moving to 11.2 (2023.2) from an earlier version. The list that follows may not be comprehensive; however, along with the full release note set, it provides a starting point for upgrade evaluation.

For on-prem deployed systems, it is always recommended to use the latest released version of SPOT (regardless of the current STEP version in use). If upgrading via the --upgrade command, using the latest SPOT version is required.

Details

Elasticsearch upgrade required prior to taking STEP 11.2 (2023.2)

Versions 8.6.2 and higher are now supported for Elasticsearch.

Important: Customer action is required for on-premise customers using Faceted Search / Elasticsearch. These customers must upgrade to Elasticsearch 8.6.2 prior to upgrading to 11.2 (2023.2). Faceted search will not work in 11.2 (2023.2) with older versions.

For SaaS customers, servers will automatically be upgraded to the newer version.

Refer to the Faceted Search Enhancements release note for other details around this update here.

Empty facets omitted from search results

Facets with only blank values will now be omitted from the search results. Previously, when searching on a list of facets, those with blank values would shift around on the list.

Refer to the Faceted Search Enhancements release note for more information here.

New automatic stopping of long-running JavaScripts

The flexibility that JavaScript affords in STEP can mean that recommended practices are not always practiced (e.g., employing long running scripts), which can lead to diminished performance that is difficult to troubleshoot. To minimize or prevent performance issues caused by problematic business rules, long-running scripts are now detected and automatically stopped (with an appropriate exception written). This is enabled with a 15-minute deadline.

For more details about this change, refer to the General Enhancements and Changes release note here.

TaskList Navigation Handler renamed Workflow Navigation Handler

The ‘TaskList Navigation Handler’ has been renamed to ‘Workflow Navigation Handler.’ Details can be found in the Data Exchange Enhancements and Changes release note here.

Scheduled Data Export to now exclude empty collection files

In Scheduled Data Export, empty collection files will no longer be delivered. If the user is using an empty collection file, as a way to monitor that a background process is running, then they need to handle this differently by using external systems to do the monitoring instead.

Details can be found in the Data Exchange Enhancements and Changes release note here

New option for Kafka to manage the topic offset for Kafka Receiver IIEPs

When enabled via a new 'Use Kafka to Manage Offset' parameter available for Kafka Receiver inbound integration endpoints (IIEPs), the Kafka offset management mechanism is used instead of the STEP-owned one.

When switching from having STEP manage the offset to having Kafka do it, upon invoking the IIEP, all messages that Kafka has available for a given topic will be re-fetched. This can be prevented on the Kafka side via customer action, by manually telling it what the offset should be for the IIEP consumer group. This information and concept is explained in online help.

Refer to the Data Exchange Enhancements and Changes release note for more details on this functionality here.

STEP to PDX integration: JSON option deprecated with 2023.3 release

For STEP to PDX integrations, starting with the STEP 2023.3 release in September 2023, ONLY the new STEPXML outbound integration will be supported and the old JSON outbound integration will no longer be available. Users of PDX, regardless of their STEP version, will be required to set up the new STEPXML outbound integration and disable the old JSON outbound integration by the time 2023.3 is released. Existing customers on the JSON outbound integration must contact their Stibo Systems account or partner manager to discuss migration to the STEPXML outbound integration approach. For more information, refer to the Platform and Software Support Changes release note here.

Support, platform, and system admin information

Baseline desupport information is as follows:

  • In 2023, support for the 10.0 version ended May 1st and support for 10.1 ends December 1st.

  • In 2024, the 10.2 release will be desupported May 1st.

Platform and Software Support information can be found in the 11.2 (2023.2) Platform Support and Software Support section here. And, the latest changes included with this release can be found in Platform and Software Support Changes section of this release note set here.

Online Help / documentation changes

With every release, documentation updates occur. In addition to documentation that was updated as part of 11.2 (2023.2) projects, the following documentation updates that users should be aware of when upgrading to 2023.2 are listed below:

  • For customers who use the Accelerator for Retail solution, a new section has been added to the Data Management Accelerator for Retail enablement documentation that describes how STEP users can control PDX channels for product onboarding via STEP. To review this new documentation, refer to the Controlling the PDX Channel for Product Onboarding topic in the Data Management Accelerator for Retail documentation here.

  • Documentation was updated to remove information about unsupported versions and functionality. For unsupported platform versions, this includes the removal of the release and maintenance patch notes, which are still accessible via the Stibo Systems Service Portal within the Release Information dashboard. Product MDM for Automotive 10.0 release and maintenance patch notes were also removed and can be provided upon request.

  • The Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) documentation has been removed from online help. If you are using this functionality and need a PDF of the PLM documentation, contact Stibo Systems.

Important: Prior to upgrade, customers should be aware of any maintenance patch updates that came out in earlier releases. The projects below were covered in the maintenance patch notes for 11.1, which can be accessed via the 11.1 Release section within the 11.1 Maintenance Patch Notes section of the documentation here.

New features incorporated via 11.1 maintenance patches

Below is a list of new features or important announcements introduced / published within the 11.1 release cycle:

  • Experian email robustness improvement (MP4)

  • Impact to Certain JavaScript Business Rules (MP2 / MP3 / MP4) and in the General Enhancements and Changes release note for 11.2 (here)

  • New asset push and publish support for image transparency (MP2)

  • New JavaScript Barcode Generator (MP2) and in the General Enhancements and Changes release note for 11.2 (here)

  • Updated Loqate Local engine (MP1)

  • New healthchecks identify data inconsistencies for Cassandra (MP1)

  • The Add Dialog in data container sorts the attributes as configured in the Headers parameter (MP1)

  • Keep ended BGP processes (MP1)

  • Proof View in Web UI expanded to include classifications and entities (MP1)