2024.2 Update Guide

Summary

Keeping your current system updated offers numerous benefits. And, remember: SaaS makes updates easy!

• Get the newest and most advanced STEP software to stay ahead of your competition.

• Harness new capabilities and enhancements to elevate the user experience, boost productivity, enhance efficiency, and address emerging security threats.

• Stay up-to-date with updates for enhanced security, supportability, compatibility with third-party applications, adherence to the latest industry standards, and more.

• Support new business initiatives, opening doors for expanding solution usage and maximizing business value.

• Benefit from improved system performance.

Customer action may be required. Before updating to 2024.2 from an older version, customers should be aware of certain system changes. The list that follows may not be comprehensive; however, along with the full update note-set, it provides a starting point for update evaluation.

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

Details

Kafka Delivery improvement

The Kafka Delivery Method now supports multiple partitions. Messages delivered to Kafka are now distributed on partitions by the Kafka broker, when they previously were posted to the same partition, even when the message key was defined.

Change Package improvements

Change Package functionality now includes updates that make it easier to transfer configuration objects between systems in DTAP (Development, Testing, Acceptance and Production) environments. Now, the Impact Analysis information is displayed prominently, users can split elements out of a Web UI configuration for installation on a specific environment, and users can address issues more efficiently when sealing a change package. For details, refer to the Data Exchange Enhancements and Changes update note.

New Loqate Cloud endpoint

A new Cloud endpoint from the third-party address standardization service, Loqate, replaces the existing endpoint used by STEP’s Loqate Cloud integration.

Previously, network access to the Loqate Cloud endpoint was located at the domain: saas.loqate.com

Access to the new Cloud endpoint is acquired here: api.addressy.com/Cleansing/International/Batch/v1.00/json4.ws

For more information, refer to the Customer, Supplier, and Location MDM Enhancements update note and the Loqate Integration in STEP On-Premises Deployments topic in the Data Integration documentation.

Label changes in Machine Learning Matcher and Matching component model

There are label changes to the Machine Learning Matcher configuration dialog and the Matching component model. No customer action is required. For details, refer to the Customer, Supplier, and Location MDM Enhancements update note and to the Matcher: Machine Learning Matcher and Configuring Matching Component Model topics, both in the Matching, Linking, and Merging documentation.

Updates to the appearance of buttons in Web UI

Modest changes to the appearance of buttons in the Web UI have been made as part of this update. To better align with the standards set forth in Requirements for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, the level of contrast between the buttons and the label text on the buttons has been increased to aid readability. Buttons will now look like this:

The specific changes for this update include changing the button color to hex value #2ba1b1 and increasing the line weight on the button label text. These changes do not apply to the accent-muted color palette, which is already compliant with accessibility contrast requirements.

MIME type handling change when importing assets

A fix has been made where native file extensions for imported assets are now correctly converted and, where appropriate, retained as metadata. Previously, the default MIME type associated with the asset file extension could assign a file extension different than the one expected by the customer and / or convert the asset file incorrectly. For instance, a .csv file would be converted to a .txt file. Now, the asset files are converted correctly, and file extensions associated with imported assets are stored as metadata and can be searched.

Some users have configured a workaround to address this gap by adding the DocumentContent.ExtensionToMimeType.STP=[MIME type] property to the sharedconfig.properties file for each file type that is mis-converted on import. With this fix, the workarounds are no longer needed. The properties will still work as intended, but they can also be removed as the core issue has been corrected.

For more information on MIME types, refer to the MIME Types topic in the System Setup documentation.

New Page Size design mode parameter

This solution is described in the Miscellaneous Bugfixes update note; refer to ISSUE-700822.

STEPXML schema changes from 2024.1 to 2024.2

There are no changes to report.

Support, platform, and system admin information

Below is a table outlining the end-of-life schedule for the STEP updates shown: 

Update	Update Available to Customers	EOL for systems not enrolled in continuous updates	EOL for systems enrolled in continuous updates
10.2	June 8, 2021	May 1, 2024	N/A
10.3	December 8, 2021	November 1, 2024	N/A
11.0	June 8, 2022	June 8, 2025	N/A
11.1	November 30, 2022	November 30, 2025	N/A
11.2	June 7, 2023	March 7, 2026	N/A
2023.3	September 27, 2023	September 30, 2024	N/A
2023.4	December 13, 2023	June 13, 2026	N/A
2024.1	March 27, 2024	March 31, 2025	September 30, 2024
2024.2	June 12, 2024	September 30, 2026	December 31, 2024

Refer to the updated STEP Update and End-of-Life Information topic in the System Update and Patch Notes section for more information about quarterly update target dates and support end dates for future updates. Additional Platform and Software Support information can be found in the Platform and Software Support Changes topic in the 2024.2 updates notes.

Customers should update as soon as possible to the latest version of the Stibo Systems Enterprise Platform (STEP). Contact Stibo Systems Support if you have questions and/or to receive help and guidance on how to update to a supported version.

Software errors reported for the versions shown above may be rejected after the listed effective dates. Application support issues in progress for the updates being desupported will be closed on the desupport date. It is not possible to extend the support services for desupported versions.

2024.3: New on-premises deployment architecture

One of Stibo Systems' strategic focuses is on delivering a superior SaaS service, which leads to changes in our overall architecture to introduce more and more containerized microservices. These changes cannot be deployed on-premises or in a private cloud without changes to the deployment architecture. As first published in the 2023.3 update notes, to allow on-premises customers to continue to update STEP, starting with the 2024.3 update (and not for STEP 2024.2, as originally communicated), these customers need to change the way that Stibo Systems' software is deployed on-premises so it is aligned with how Stibo Systems' deploys in SaaS. Updates to 2024.3 and subsequent updates will require a new deployment architecture where the current application server architecture is replaced by a containerized architecture—just as in SaaS. This in turn requires extra hardware due to an overhead in running the SaaS architecture on-premises. Application operations like starting and stopping the application will be similar in complexity to today—but different.

While the new architecture will be available with the 2024.3 update, on-premises customers are encouraged to update to 2024.4, when available and if possible, since it is supported for a longer time period (24 months) than the 12 months that 2024.3 is supported. Refer to the STEP Update and End-of-Life Information topic for more information about update target dates and support end dates for various versions of STEP.

The database deployment architecture will be exactly the same, so database administration along with backup / restore will remain the same. Any deployment of InDesign and Elasticsearch will also remain the same. Only the application server architecture is changed. On-premises and private cloud customers will receive more detailed documentation separately.

This notification is also included in its entirety in the Platform and Software Support Changes update note.

Online help / documentation changes

With every update, documentation updates occur. In addition to online help that is updated as part of the projects listed in this update note set, users should be aware of the following documentation updates when updating to 2024.2:

• Workbench images in documentation are being updated to show the restyled UI (from the 2024.1 update). This is an ongoing project that will continue over the next several updates.

• The STEP Update and End-of-Life Information has been updated to include 2024.2 information.

• The Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Data Management topics and the ESG Solution Enablement section have been renamed and reworked to use 'Sustainability Data Management' terminology to better reflect industry terms more familiar to customers. Refer to the Sustainability Data Management Solution Enablement section of the documentation to read the updated material.

• Documentation was updated to remove information about unsupported versions. For unsupported platform versions, this includes the removal of the update and maintenance patch notes, which are still accessible via the Stibo Systems Service Portal on the Update Information dashboard. Product MDM for Automotive 10.2 update and maintenance patch notes were also removed and can be provided upon request.

• Videos for 2024.2 have been incorporated into the update notes and online help. If these videos, or any other videos in the documentation, do not play as expected, they are also accessible within the Communities. Most videos are also available in the Stibo Systems Service Portal.

• The new Understanding the ECLASS Advanced Filtering XML Schema topic gives detailed explanation of the XML Schema Definition (XSD) file used for defining filters in the ECLASS Advanced filtering mechanism.