Events and Notifications Release Notes

Multiple access to notification histories 

Both standard and custom event based notification histories are now exposed through Data Query, Data Source Exports, and AQuA API to facilitate reporting. Common use cases include:

• Report on all emails that have failed to be sent, by event, customer name, or date
• Report on all failed callouts, by event, consumer URL, or date

With this enhancement, notification histories can be accessed through the following approaches:

• Querying one of the following tables through Data Query:
  • notificationhistorycallout
  • notificationhistoryemail

      See Available tables for Data Query for more information.

• Creating a data source export for the following data sources through Zuora Reporting:
  • Notification History - Callout
  • Notification History - Email

      See Data source availability for a list of all supported data sources.

• Querying through AQuA API, where the query statement is based against the following tables:
  • CalloutHistory
  • EmailHistory

  See the following articles for more information:

  • AQuA Post query
  • Data sources and objects for Export ZOQL

General availability of Custom Events 

The Custom Events feature is now generally available to all Zuora customers. You can build your own custom events and create notifications triggered by these events. 
Previously, you had to submit a request at Zuora Global Support to enable this feature.

See Custom events for more information.

Upcoming Renewal email notifications can be sent up to 180 days prior to renewal date 

Zuora can now send email notifications for the Upcoming Renewal event as early as 180 days before your customer’s subscription renewal date. In line with this enhancement, when you configure a notification for the Upcoming Renewal event, the value range for the How Many Days Before field is updated to 1 - 180. Previously, this range was 1 - 90.

Unified API experience for email templates

Zuora has introduced a new API operation named Create or update email templates. This operation allows you to create or update multiple email templates in one call, for either standard or custom events. 

To provide you a unified API experience for email templates, Zuora has also enhanced the following API operations to support email templates for both standard and custom events:

• Create an email template
• List email templates
• Update an email template
• Retrieve an email template
• Delete an email template 

Previously, these API operations only supported email templates for custom events.

See the API Reference for more information.

External SMTP servers now support OAuth 2.0 authentication 

Zuora now supports using OAuth 2.0 credentials to authenticate your own SMTP servers. To use OAuth 2.0 scheme, you must configure the following fields when configuring an external SMTP server in Zuora:

• Select OAuth 2.0 for the Authentication field.
• Enter the email address of the sender in the SMTP User Name field. 
• Select an OAuth 2.0 provider from the OAuth 2.0 Provider dropdown list. Zuora will obtain an access token from the selected OAuth 2.0 provider. See Add an OAuth 2.0 Provider for more information about how to create an OAuth 2.0 provider.

See Configure an SMTP server for email notifications for more information.

Maximum number of custom event triggers increased to 1000

Previously, by default, Zuora only allowed for a maximum of 20 custom event triggers to be created. If you wanted to increase this limit, you had to contact Zuora Global Support.

To optimize your experience and support your diverse use cases, Zuora has increased the maximum number of custom event triggers to 1000.

See Custom events for more information about event triggers.

Callout notifications for custom events now support BillToId and SoldToId fields on Account

Callout notifications for custom events now support the BillToId and SoldToId fields on the Account object. It allows you to send callout notifications based on the change of the BillToId or SoldToId fields on an account.

Callout notifications for custom events now support OAuth 2.0

Callout notifications for custom events now support OAuth 2.0. You can create callouts for custom events using an OAuth2.0 credential stored in your Zuora tenant. 

See OAuth 2.0 authentication for callouts for more information.

Support for Preemptive Basic Authentication for all callout notifications

You can now enable Preemptive Basic Authentication when configuring callout notifications through the Zuora UI and API. If Preemptive Basic Authentication is enabled for a callout notification, Zuora includes authentication credentials in the first request to the callout receiver.

This feature is supported for all callout notifications. Previously, the feature was only supported for callout notifications for Custom Events, and was unavailable in the Zuora UI.

For more information, see Configure Callout Notifications.

General availability of support for OAuth 2.0 for standard notifications

The support for OAuth2.0 for standard notifications is now generally available to all Zuora customers. You can now easily use OAuth 2.0 as the callout authentication method to secure your web service calls.

Previously, you had to submit a request at Zuora Global Support to enable this feature.

Note that notifications for Custom events do not support OAuth 2.0.

See Configure callout notifications for more information.

Callout history result updated

With the Confirm success by parsing response content callout option enabled, we now display FAIL(ConfirmSuccessFromContentFailed) as the callout history result instead of FAIL(Response)  when the target system has not responded with success in the response body. You can click FAIL(ConfirmSuccessFromContentFailed) to view callout failure details.

Resolved: some domain names not accepted by the Access Token EndPoint field 

Previously, when you entered a URL in the Access Token EndPoint field on the New OAuth 2.0 Provider page to configure the callout authentication, you might get an error of URL validation failure if the URL contained some special domain names, for example, .cloud.  This issue has been resolved as the Zuora system now supports a wider list of domains as the OAuth 2.0 token endpoints for callouts.

Resolved: nextPage not returned correctly by "Get callout notification histories"

Previously, the nextPage value was not correctly returned when you made a Get callout notification histories call. This issue has been resolved.

Resolved: preview email not routed from the configured external SMTP server

Previously, when you clicked send preview in the Preview Email Template popup window, the preview email was not routed from the external SMTP server that you had configured for email notifications. This issue has been resolved.

Custom events distinguishable in Zuora UI

You can now easily distinguish custom events from standard events in Zuora UI as we append (custom event) to the event name of every custom event.

• When you create a new email template or add a new notification, you must select the event that triggers the email or notification from the Related Event pick list. You can now easily identify a custom event or a standard event in the list as the event name of every custom event is appended (custom event).
• When you edit an email template or a notification for a custom event, the Related Event field now displays the custom event name appended (custom event).
• When you access the notifications list view, the event name is now displayed in the newly added Related Event column next to the Name column. You can easily recognize the custom events as their names include  (custom event) at the end.

Additional callout headers available for custom event notifications

Zuora system now adds the following fields to the callout header for custom event notifications. You can leverage these header fields to trace a callout notification.

• Zuora-Request-Id
• X-Amzn-Trace-Id
• Zuora-Notification-Id

See Callout Header for more information.

Resolved: notification email displayed incorrectly in Email History

Previously, when you clicked the Email History tab on the Notification History page and then clicked the subject link in the Subject column, the notification email was not displayed correctly. This issue has been resolved.

Resolved: custom events and notifications not copied in Zuora Central Sandbox

Previously, custom events and notifications were not copied into Zuora Central Sandbox. This issue has been resolved.