Zuora Release 2023.02.R1

Draft orders available for early adopters

While creating an order, you can save your order and its configurations as a draft order for further editing. During the order creation, you can save your order as a draft order, at least after specifying an account that owns the order.

Note that if you have added an order line item to an order, you cannot save the order to a draft order.

You can identify a draft order from its Draft status on the Orders page. You can also identify the draft order from the order number's suffix "Draft Order" on the order details page, for example, O-00000948: Draft Order.

You can perform the following tasks after draft order creation:

• Preview the draft order
• Update the draft order and save it as an updated draft order
• Activate the draft order to a pending order or a completed order
• Cancel the draft order
• Delete the draft order

Canceling draft orders archives the draft orders in Cancelled status but does not delete them. You can still view the orders in Cancelled status on the Orders page and decide whether to delete them later. 

You can also retrieve information about draft orders by Draft status in the following methods:

• Filter draft orders on the Orders page
• Export draft orders through the Order data source
• Report on draft orders through the Order data source
• Query the Order object through Data Query

Enhancement to Billing Settings

We moved the following Orders relevant settings from the Default Subscription Settings section to the Default Order Settings section in Billing Settings > Define Default Subscription and Order Settings:

• Enable Order UI
• Auto-Renew by order
• Enable Order for CPQ

For more information, see Define default subscription and order settings.

Catch-Up Bill Run generally available

The Catch-Up Bill Run feature is now generally available to all Zuora customers. This feature is a lightweight billing operation designed for the data migration billing process. 

After setting the newly introduced Enable catch-up bill run? bill rule to Yes, you can create regular bill runs and catch-up bill runs on the Bill Run Creation page through the Zuora UI. The catch-up bill run can be used only for the data migration billing process. It is best practice not to use catch-up bill runs for the regular billing process. 

For more information about this feature, see Catch-Up Bill Run.

Customer Hierarchy generally available

The Customer Hierarchy feature is now generally available to all Zuora customers. With this feature, you can manage customers that have parent-child accounts or multiple enterprise divisions. 

To enable the feature, set the newly introduced Enable Customer Hierarchy? billing rule to Yes.

New REST API operations for managing bill runs

The following new REST API operations for bill runs are now available:

• Create a bill run
• Post a bill run
• Cancel a bill run
• Retrieve a bill run
• Delete a bill run

You can now use these API operations to create, post, cancel, pause, resume, retrieve, and delete bill runs. You can also create a bill run for one or multiple subscriptions.

Support for specifying names for invoice schedule items through Zuora UI

With the Billing Schedule feature, you can now specify a name for each invoice schedule item when creating an invoice schedule through the Zuora UI. For example, you can name the milestone in your professional service project. 

The name of an invoice schedule item can contain at most 100 characters. You can also update the name when the invoice schedule item is in Pending status.

Update to Direct Avalara setup page via Zuora UI

You no longer need to enter your Avalara username or password ​​when setting up connection to Avalara via Zuora UI.

This change applies to the Production environment.

Deprecation of the logging function for tax apps

On March 12, 2023, we will deprecate the logging function for tax apps from production tenants. This change will go live in sandbox tenants on February 12, 2023. After this change, the logging information will not be displayed on the Tax Connector details page.

The alternative solution to obtain logging data is to use System Health. For more information about how to use System Health to track the logging information, see Tax dashboard.

Additionally, you can still use the CURL requests to test your configurations.

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Support for defining transnational level SEC codes for Citi ACH transactions

SEC (Standard Entry Class) codes, which are defined and maintained by NACHA, describe the authorization methods of ACH transactions. For ACH payment transactions through the Citi payment gateway integration, you can now define and manage SEC codes with API operations.

A new paymentOption field is introduced to contain the rules for processing a payment. The payment option applied to a payment can either derive from a related payment schedule or payment schedule item, or can be specified when creating the payment. Currently, only Gateway Options fields are supported in paymentOption. You can specify the SEC code processing rule in paymentOption through the following API operations:

• Create a payment
• Create a payment schedule
• Create multiple payment schedules at once
• Add payment schedule items to a custom payment schedule
• Update a payment schedule
• Update a payment schedule item

Zuora will not validate the transactional level SEC code information you specified and will directly send it to the gateway.

If the transactional level SEC code information is specified, you can retrieve it through Data Source Export, Data Query, or the response of the related API operations.

To enable the paymentOption field, submit a request at  Zuora Global Support.

General availability of HPM Smart Bot Attacking Prevention

The HPM Smart Bot Attacking Prevention feature is now generally available to all Zuora customers. This feature is an opt-in security measure that is automatically adjusted based on the continuous monitoring of attack patterns. You can now enable this feature on the configuration page of your hosted payment page. Previously, you had to submit a request at Zuora Global Support to enable it.

With this feature enabled, Zuora dynamically enables and configures reCAPTCHA Enterprise Interactive Test (Checkbox) version when attacks are identified. When Zuora finds the bot attack is over, the reCAPTCHA security settings are restored to the latest status and values that you configured.

For more information, see Security Measures for Payment Pages 2.0

Updates on supported browsers for Payment Pages 2.0

Microsoft ended its support for Internet Explorer 11 on 15 June 2022. Hence, we no longer maintain our support for Microsoft Internet Explorer for Payment Pages 2.0. We now support Microsoft Edge for Payment Pages 2.0.

For more information about Microsoft’s lifecycle policy for Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge, see Lifecycle FAQs by Microsoft. For more information about the supported browsers by Zuora, see Supported browsers.

Support for GoCardless Instant Bank Pay and Verified Mandates payment flow

Instant Bank Pay and Verified Mandates are services provided by GoCardless to verify bank accounts quickly in the payment flow and to collect one-time bank transfer payments that are instantly authorized. In Zuora, the GoCardless gateway integration has been enhanced to support these services with SEPA Direct Debit in the payment flow. You can implement a Payment Page 2.0 to support processing payments through the Instant Bank Pay and Verified Mandates payment flow. You can also select to store bank account details in your implementation to enable future SEPA Direct Debits with the GoCardless gateway integration.

For more information, see the following articles:

• Overview of GoCardless gateway integration
• Implement Payment Pages 2.0 to support one-time payment flows

Enhancement in passing shopperEmail to Adyen for Apple Pay and Google Pay payment transactions

We have improved the logic for populating the shopperEmail field in the Apple Pay or Google Pay payment request to Adyen. Previously, we supported using the gatewayOptions field in the Create a payment method or Create a payment API operation to pass shopperEmail to Adyen. As an improvement, if shopperEmail is not provided through these API operations, the shopperEmail field in the payment request is set to the BillTo personal email if it is available. If the BillTo personal email is not specified, the shopperEmail field is set to the BillTo work email.

For more information, see Gateway Options fields supported by Adyen Integration v2.0.

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Support for filtering job status in the "List all custom object bulk jobs" API operation

A new query parameter called "status" is now available for the "List all custom object bulk jobs" API operation. If you specify this parameter when retrieving custom object bulk jobs through REST API, only jobs with the specific status are returned.

For example, you can get all failed custom object bulk jobs with the following request:

GET https://rest.zuora.com/objects/jobs?status=failed

For more information, see List all custom object bulk jobs.

Instance ID configuration based on process type

Earlier, the process types such as Billing, Subscription, and Payment were captured as plain instance IDs. From now on, the IDs will display a character prefix that defines the process type followed by the customer account number. Here are a few examples.

• For payments: Payment Number - Customer Account - Payment Total (amount + currency)
  P-00000202 - Acme Corp - $4202.94

• For Invoices: Invoice Number - Customer Account - Invoice Total (amount + currency
  INV00000185 - Acme Corp - $4202.94

• For Subscriptions: Subscription Number - Customer Account - CMRR  (amount + currency)
  A-S0000045 - Acme Corp - $4202.94

When you click the IDs, they open in a new window for a detailed review.

Common variant highlights in process maps

Previously, understanding the most common variant process within the 100% variant view involved extra observation. To solve this, Zuora now highlights the most common variant path in dark blue for Billing, Collect, and Revenue process types. With these insights in place, you can determine the process or application that impacts your business.

ProcessAI - New Menu

On the home page, you can now view the ProcessAI option in the Marketplace section. With this, you will now have greater accessibility to enhance your desktop experience.

ProcessAI name change

Our process names are now modified to provide more context to the functionality and adapt to organizational complacency. 

On the home page of ProcessAI, you can see the following changes:

• Process Exploration as ProcessAI
• Scenario as Process
• Data Source as Source
• Auto-Subscription Extractor as Subscription Data
• Auto-Payment Extractor as Payment Data
• Auto-Billing-Invoice Extractor as Invoice Data
• Process Exploration breadcrumb as Process Discovery

New System Health dashboard available  

We have now released the following dashboard:

For the initial few days, only three months of data are available.

Support for report name validation

Report names must be unique now. When you are creating a new report or editing the name of an existing report by using a name that already exists, you will get an error message, saying "A report with that name already exists. Report names need to be unique. Please update the report name and save again."

Unless otherwise renamed by you, the name of newly created reports will default to "Untitled Report - YYYYMMDD HH:MM:SSZ", where YYYYMMDD HH:MM:SSZ corresponds to the date and time (in UTC) that the report was saved.

Support for code coloring in Data Query SQL Editor

The Zuora Data Query SQL Editor now supports highlighting SQL syntax for all entered text. You can read and write SQL code by visually identifying different parts of code with color.

Email and callout notifications available for the Notifications System Health dashboard

The following new events are now available for the Notifications System Health dashboard:

• Notification Callout Failures
• Notification Callout Performance
• Notification Email Failures
• Notification Email Performance

You can send callout or email notifications based on evaluation parameters of the Notifications System Health dashboard events. These parameters include evaluation frequency, triggering threshold, threshold type, and time range.

For example, you can define notifications as follows:

• If more than 50 percent of email notifications fail over the last 60 minutes, an email notification is sent.
• If the 90th percentile response time of callout notifications over the last 60 minutes is greater than or equal to 10000 milliseconds, an email notification is sent.

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

No copying of OAuth 2.0 provider configurations during Central Sandbox or Developer Sandbox refreshes

From this release, OAuth 2.0 providers will not be copied from Production to Sandbox environments during Central Sandbox or Developer Sandbox refreshes. You can now manage OAuth 2.0 providers independently across Production and Sandbox environments without worrying about OAuth 2.0 provider configurations being overwritten.

For more information about different environments in Zuora and OAuth 2.0 Provider, see Zuora testing environments and Add an OAuth 2.0 provider.

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