Zuora Release 2023.07.R2

Customizable prefix for product catalog objects' natural keys

In Zuora Release 2023.06.R2, several fields were added as natural keys for the Product, Product Rate Plan, and Product Rate Plan Charge objects. In this release, you can customize the prefix of these natural keys when new products, product rate plans, and product rate plan charges are created.

The default prefixes for these natural keys are listed as follows. To customize them, click your username at the top right and then navigate to  Billing > Define Numbering and SKU Formats.

• PC- (for product number)
• PRP- (for product rate plan number)
• PRPC- (for product rate plan charge number)

Enhancements to automatic flow of cancelling subscriptions and refunding end customers available in Production environments

We enhanced the automatic flow of cancelling subscriptions and refunding end customers. The enhancements have been available in Sandbox environments since 2023.06.R2, and is now available in Production environments.

For more information, see Cancel subscriptions and refund end customers automatically.

UI support for adding, updating, and removing Delivery Pricing charges in subscriptions during order creation

Previously, you could only add, update or remove the Delivery Pricing charges in subscriptions through the following order actions in the Create an order API operation. You can now add, update or remove such charges during order creation through the UI.

• Create Subscription
• Add Product
• Update Product
• Remove Product

For the Create Subscription, Add Product, and Update Product order actions: When adding or updating the Delivery Pricing charges, you can click the charge name link in the Products and Charges area to expand the Rate plan charge details table and change more attributes of the Delivery Pricing charges, for example, the Delivery Schedule fields that were previously defined from Products.

For the Remove Product order action: You can remove the Delivery Pricing charges from subscriptions before future-dated removals.

Support of specifying sequence set ID for order line item

We have enhanced the Orders Line Items feature to support specifying the sequence set ID for an order line item through the Orders API. You can now specify a sequence set ID for an order line item instead of using the sequence set ID assigned to the account.

Annual List Price feature generally available

The Annual List Price feature is now generally available for all customers.

This feature introduces the following list price bases:

• Year
• Specific Months

To enable the list price bases on your product catalog, select the Year and Specific Months check boxes in the Customize List Price Base section through the Zuora UI. 

For more information about this feature, see Annual List Price.

Reseller Account feature generally available

The Reseller Account feature is now generally available to all customers. If you want to access this feature, submit a request at Zuora Global Support.

With this feature, you can flag an account as a partner account by specifying the partnerAccount field on the Account object. This feature is designed specifically for businesses that have distributors or resellers, or operate in B2B model with a large number of subscriptions through concurrent API requests.

If an account is flagged as a partner account, the calculation of account metrics is performed asynchronously during operations such as subscription creation, order changes, invoice generation, and payments. This means that the calculation of metrics is delayed for partner accounts.

For more information, see Reseller Account.

New billing rule for Flexible Billing Attributes feature

We have introduced a new billing rule called Copy billing attributes from accounts to billing documents when no attributes are specified on subscriptions. With this billing rule, you can decide whether to assign account-level billing attributes to billing documents when no attributes are specified on subscriptions. 

This billing rule is available only if you have the Flexible Billing Attributes feature enabled. The default value is Yes for the billing rule.

If draft billing documents that have specific billing attributes exist, you cannot change this billing rule from Yes to No. To proceed, cancel or post the draft billing documents first.

Invoice Schedule and Invoice Schedule Item objects available in data sources

With the Billing Schedule feature, you can now utilize the following new data sources for reporting and data source exports:

• Invoice Schedule
• Invoice Schedule Item

Additionally, you can join the Invoice Schedule and Invoice Schedule Item objects with other data sources, including:

• Order
• Subscription
• Invoice
• Invoice Item
• Credit Memo
• Credit Memo Item

This enhanced functionality facilitates more comprehensive data analysis and reporting.

Billing Schedule and Annual List Price features compatible with bill run optimization for large accounts

The Billing Schedule and Annual List Price features are now compatible with the feature of bill run optimization for large accounts.

If you have customers with a significant number of subscriptions, you might request to enable the RBE optimization for large accounts permission on your tenant. This feature allows you to utilize the Billing Schedule and Annual List Price functionalities in conjunction with this feature. For more information, see Bill runs for accounts with many subscriptions.

Support for custom fields on Invoice Schedule and Invoice Schedule Items objects 

When managing invoice schedules through the REST API, you can now specify and view customer fields on the Invoice Schedule and Invoice Schedule Item objects.

To get started, create custom fields for these objects through the Zuora UI. After the custom fields are created, you can include them for both objects when creating an invoice schedule.

For a summary of REST API updates specific to this enhancement, see the "API updates for the Billing Schedule feature" section in 2023 API Changelog (July 18, 2023) and REST API Reference.

REST API support for deleting error bill runs 

You can now use the Delete a bill run operation to delete bill runs in either Canceled or Error status. Previously, it was not possible to delete bill runs in Error status. 

Deleting bill runs in Error status through the Zuora UI is temporarily unsupported.

Enhancements to maximum length limit on invoice number in standalone invoices

We have extended the maximum length for customized invoice numbers in standalone invoices to 32 characters. Compared to the previous maximum length of 16 characters, the new limit provides more flexibility and allows for longer and more descriptive invoice numbers.

For a summary of REST API updates specific to this enhancement, see the "Other API updates" section in 2023 API Changelog (July 18, 2023) and REST API Reference.

Exclude invoice PDF generation for specific billing documents 

Previously, the feature Enable the billing document generation generates a PDF after every invoice creation. You can now stop invoice PDF regeneration after posting an invoice. This configurable setting enables you to skip the creation of new invoice PDF files, giving you the ability to adjust payment and credit memo details during invoicing. This feature works exclusively with HTML template-based PDFs.

We are actively soliciting feedback from a small set of early adopters before releasing it to all customers. To join this early adopter program, submit a request at Zuora Global Support.

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Automatic creation of stored credential profiles

The requirement for stored credential transactions from Visa was first announced 5 years ago, followed by other card brands. During this period, we have received guidance from our partners and customers that this functionality should be standardized and automated. Therefore, for better compliance with the mandates from the card brands, we are rolling out the following changes to how we handle the stored credential transactions for Credit Card, Debit Card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay payment methods:

• For payment methods newly created through UI, API operations, or Payment Pages, the stored credential profiles of the recurring type will be automatically created and activated during the creation of the payment methods. If the Verify new payment method setting is enabled on the gateway instance configuration page, the network transaction ID (NTI) will be added when creating the payment method. The implementation of a consent agreement checkbox is no longer required. 
• For existing payment methods that do not have an active stored credential profile, we have created and activated stored credential profiles of the recurring type and stored the NTI that is returned from the gateway when performing payment grandfathering. The gateway uses an interim NTI to do payment grandfathering. In the case that the gateway no longer supports interim NTI values, the grandfathering period is over on the gateway end, so the payment grandfathering will likely fail and we will not be able to retrieve the NTI. To stay in compliance with the Stored Credential regulation, we must use the NTI that is retrieved from a successful authorization or payment on subsequent requests. If the grandfathering method does not work, the end-users must be brought back on-session to re-add their payment method details so that we can retrieve and store the NTI.
• On the CIT/MIT Configuration page in Payments settings, the CIT/MIT Enable section is deprecated.
• On the payment method creation page, the End user consent agreement received checkbox is deprecated.

This automatic enablement is based on the assumption that you have a process in place to capture the agreement elsewhere from your customers.

No action is required from Zuora’s new or existing customers. If you currently use the Z.setAgreement parameter in Payment Pages, that inclusion will be treated as an override of the default behavior so there will not be an impact on your implementation.

For Payment Pages implemented through Direct POST to perform CITs within Zuora, you still need to implement a way for customers to give consent for their payment credentials to be stored on file, and then configure your Payment Pages to set the Direct POST fields for stored credentials.

For more information, see Overview of support for stored credential transactions.

Enhancement in Stored Credential Profile data source

We have improved the Stored Credential Profile data source to support exporting more information about stored credential profiles. If the new Stored Credential Profile Data object is selected in the Stored Credential Profile data source, you can export the following fields: 

• Network Transaction Id
• Gateway Type
• Gateway Version

For more information, see Stored Credential Profile data source.

New REST API operations available for Payment Method Updater

The following REST API operations are now available for the Payment Method Updater (PMU) services except for American Express (AMEX):

• List Payment Method Updater instances for retrieving details of all PMU instances on your tenant
• Create a Payment Method Updater batch asynchronously

Previously, you could only retrieve the information of PMU instances and create a PMU batch manually through the Zuora UI.

For more information about Zuora PMU services, see Payment Method Updater.

Enhancements to GoCardless Verified Mandates and Instant Bank Pay payment flow

We have supported GoCardless Verified Mandates and Instant Bank Pay payment flow for SEPA Direct Debits since February 2023. You can implement a Payment Page 2.0 to support processing payments through the payment flow. The following enhancements to this feature are now available.

Support for passing indicator of variable-amount recurring payments on Moneris

We have enhanced the Moneris payment gateway integration to support passing the indicator of recurring payments with variable amounts. A new setting called Enable Variable Amount Indicator is now available on the Moneris gateway configuration page. To process variable-amount recurring transactions for MasterCard payments, this setting must be selected. Zuora will populate V  in the payment_indicator field and pass it to the gateway on payments where the card network is MasterCard. Otherwise, the standard recurring payment indicator R will be populated and sent to the gateway.

For more information, see Set up and configure a Moneris payment gateway instance.

Enhancement in implementation of Apple Pay checkout through Java SDK integration

Before adding Apple Pay to your checkout flow by integrating with Zuora's JavaScript SDK, your domains that will show the Apple Pay button must be registered with Apple. We have improved the process for assisting you to register your domains. You can now download the domain-verification file from the Zuora Knowledge Center article without waiting for Zuora to process your request and generate the file for you.

For more information, see Set up Apple Pay through the JavaScript SDK approach.

Support for disabling Stripe Radar risk assessments on payment transactions

For Stripe v2 payment gateway integrations, a new setting called Disable Stripe Radar risk assessments on payment transactions is now available on the configuration page of the gateway instance. This setting is not selected by default, which means if Stripe Radar is enabled for your account in Stripe, all recurring Credit Card and Credit Card Reference transactions sent to Stripe from Zuora will be assessed for fraudulent activity by Stripe Radar. If this setting is selected, Stripe Radar risk assessments will be skipped on recurring transactions. This setting does not apply to one-time payments initiated through the hosted payment pages.

For more information about this setting, see Set up and configure a Stripe payment gateway instance.

Enhancements in Citi Gateway Reconciliation events

We have improved Citi Gateway Reconciliation to support refund rejection events for ACH transactions. For a refund rejection event, if the source of the refund is payment, Zuora updates the refund gateway state to FailedToSettle and reverses the refund amount on the payment by creating an external payment. The external payment status is set to Processed, and its gateway state is set to NotSubmitted. The status of the rejected refund is set to Processed. If the source of the refund is CreditMemo, Zuora does not create any external payment but still sets the statuses as previously described.

To enable this feature, submit a ticket to Zuora Global Support.

Enhancements in Chase Gateway Reconciliation events

We have improved Chase Gateway Reconciliation to support refund settlement events. For more information, see Overview of Chase Orbital payment gateway integration.

Support for deleting OAuth tokens for payment gateways

On the Gateway Authentication setting page, you can now delete gateway OAuth tokens that are not associated with any gateway instances.

For more information, see Payment Gateway Authentication.

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Support for specifying number values for communication profiles

You can now specify number values for existing or new communication profiles through the Zuora UI or the API. The values can be in any format and not limited to CP-xxxxxxxx, which is the default number format assigned by Zuora.

Specifying the profile numbers with meaningful values helps you manage and identify communication profiles more efficiently. For example, use the region ID in your system as the number of communication profiles for different regions.

To edit the number values of existing communication profiles, take one of the following approaches:

• In the UI, edit an existing communication profile and update the number value in the Profile Number field.
• Use the Modify a communication profile Settings API operation and update the number value in the number field.

To specify the number values when creating new communication profiles, take one of the following approaches:

• In the UI, create a new communication profile and specify the number value in the Profile Number field. For more information, see Create a communication profile.
• Use the Create a new communication profile Settings API operation and specify the number value in the number field.

If you do not specify the number during the creation, Zuora will assign a unique number for the communication profile in the format of CP-xxxxxxxx.

Three new events available for System Health

You can now configure email or callout notifications based on the following System Health events:

• Custom Object Records High Usage: This event is triggered if the number of custom object records of a specific custom object definition exceeds 80% and is below 99% of the maximum record limit.
• Custom Object Records Max Usage: This event is triggered if the number of custom object records of a specific custom object definition equals or exceeds 99% of the maximum record limit.
• Workflow Task Failures: This event is triggered if the number of failed workflow tasks of a specific workflow run within a specified time range exceeds the threshold.

Zuora evaluates the Custom Object Records High Usage and Custom Object Records Max Usage events on a daily basis.

For example, suppose that you have created five custom object definitions in your tenant. Two of them have reached 85% of the maximum record limit, and one of them has reached 99% of the maximum record limit. With active notifications based on the above events in your tenant, you will receive two email notifications about "Custom object records high usage" and one email notification about "Custom object records max usage" every day.

For more information about the maximum limit of custom object records, see Zuora Editions.

Replacement of HPM-related System Health events

Starting from this release, the following HPM-related System Health events are deprecated:

• HPM Card Attack
• HPM Page Attack

The new HPM Attack event is the replacement for the deprecated ones. This event is triggered when the HPM Threat Detection System Health dashboard detects a threat caused by attacks on hosted payment pages. You can customize the evaluation frequency of the event by configuring the Interval event parameter.

For more information, see Standard events for Zuora Central Platform.

Zuora AI help

AI help brings enhanced in-tenant troubleshooting, including a ChatGPT-integrated chatbot to help you find solutions quickly. Click the Help icon and type your question to see several related help articles and support tickets.

To converse with the new ChatGPT integrated chatbot, click the ZUORA AI button. Additionally, you may create a support ticket if you still need help finding the solution.

For more information, see Zuora AI help.

Enhance reporting experience with Command Center’s Entitlements Dashboard

Command Center now offers the Entitlements dashboard to overview active subscription and entitlements data. Additionally, it displays the individual subscription plan purchased and classifies the usage of product entitlement volume by Billing, Revenue, and Payments. Admins can use this information to track purchases, monitor usage, and ensure agreement compliance.

Migrate your existing user accounts from individual tenants to OneID

With Zuora OneID, you can continue to use your existing tenant-level user account along with the same role and permission access. Local user accounts from each Zuora tenant can be preserved by migrating and mapping them to the Global user account in OneID. OneID activation post-migration lets you view tenant access without adding them to groups or assigning them through the MyApps page.

Export a global report of users along with their roles and access levels across Zuora tenants

Previously, OneID allowed separate tenant logins to generate user management reports for auditing. Across Zuora tenants, it’s now possible to export a report of users, roles, and access levels. Admins can utilize the feature that permits creating, downloading, and deleting user management reports.

Audit Trail to track OneID events

OneID has introduced the Audit Trial feature to keep track and log various user management activities such as provisioning/de-provisioning, user profile modifications, user login/logout events, and system configuration changes for an organization. Every event that is recorded contains data such as the user who initiated the action, the date and time, and the affected field or data, among other things.

Manage user tenant access in OneID

Previously, bulk user provisioning was feasible only for users who shared the same access type and level. With OneID's enhancement, provisioning management for all user levels is possible. Users can be assigned tenant access directly, without being added to groups, by turning off the Group Enabled option. 

Training Center available in UI

We have launched a Training Center in the Zuora UI. You can now click the Training Center menu item in the left navigation tree to explore learning and training resources from across Zuora. 

Enhancement to standard field names of custom objects in your Snowflake warehouse

The standard field names of custom objects are now consistent between your Zuora tenant and your Snowflake warehouse. The enhancement applies to the following standard fields of custom objects:

• CREATEDBYID
• UPDATEDBYID
• CREATEDDATE
• UPDATEDDATE

This enhancement applies only to Custom Objects, but not Zuora Standard Objects.

The following table lists the field names in your Snowflake warehouse before and after this release:

For more information, see Custom Objects and Zuora Secure Data Share for Snowflake.

System Health Public API available

New APIs are provided to collect high-level system health insights for API integration, bill run, and electronic payments. For more information, see the System Health section in Zuora API Reference.

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