Zuora Release 2022.08.R4
Welcome to the release notes for Zuora Release 2022.08.R4. This article is a consolidated page of all release notes for the following Zuora products:
For the latest release notes of Zuora Revenue, see Zuora Revenue release notes.
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Release schedule
For release schedule details, see this release notification.
For the planned schedule of upcoming Zuora releases, see Zuora Release Management in Zuora Community.
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Zuora Billing
Attachments
Antivirus scanning available when uploading attachments
Zuora now provides antivirus scanning of attachments on accounts, subscriptions, invoices, credit memos, or debit memos to protect you from uploading and downloading infected files. Antivirus scanning scans all the supported file types listed in Attachments. If a virus is found during the file being uploaded, a file quarantine and rejection process is initiated.
Orders and Subscriptions
New feature to support fulfillment and return of order line items
The Fulfillment and Return feature is now available for order line items. You can manage the entire order line item lifecycle for businesses through order line item categories and fulfillment, as follows:
- Order line items of both sales and return categories can be created to track product sales and return. Billing documents can be generated based on the order line items accordingly, including invoices, negative invoices, and credit memos.
- Fulfillments can be created and attached to an order line item to track the shipment or return status. Billing can now be triggered based on the fulfillment state, and billing documents can be generated based on the fulfillments accordingly. In addition, fulfillment items can be created and attached to a fulfillment to keep track of all the assets in your system.
For more information about the Fulfillment and Return feature, see the following resources
- Overview of Order Line Items
- State transitions for an order, order line item, and fulfillment
- Orders object model
- Order Line Item object fields and Data Query
- Fulfillment object fields and Data Query
- Fulfillment Item object fields and Data Query
- Order Line Item data source
- Fulfillment data source
- Fulfillment Item data source
Support for listing pending orders by subscription number
Previously, if you performed the "List orders by subscription number" operation through API, all orders except the pending orders related to a subscription were returned.
An API operation called "List pending orders by subscription number" is now available. You can use this operation to list all pending orders related to the subscription.
Usage and Rating
General availability of Advanced Consumption Billing
Advanced Consumption Billing is now available to empower your consumption-based subscription business. It brings the following key capabilities.
Prepaid with Drawdown
Prepaid with Drawdown enables your customers to pay upfront to receive a number of consumable units and then consume against that prepaid balance with the possibility of topping up more units or being charged for any overage. Additionally, the details of prepayment and drawdown can be presented on invoices.
The following key use cases are introduced since the Early Adopters release:
- Top up one-time or recurring charge anytime.
- Remove prepaid charges, and cancel or shrink prepaid subscriptions anytime. The customers will be credited back based on the credit option selected for the prepayment charges. Any usage drawdowns after the effective date will be reversed automatically.
- Create subscriptions that contain a partial period as the first validity period and one or more full subsequent periods.
- Allow early renewal of prepaid subscriptions by introducing the Term Start Day option for the Billing Day option.
- Support for setting threshold notification on prepaid balances by using Custom Events.
Unbilled Usage
Unbilled Usage enables you to access the usages and due amounts in near real time before charges are billed. You can view the usages and up-to-date amounts due for a subscription in the Unbilled Usage section on the subscription details page.
The following key use cases are introduced with Unbilled Usage:
- Unbilled amounts will be immediately re-calculated after order actions have updated prices or usage quantity.
- Unbilled usage and amounts will be re-calculated based on your billing target date upon on-demand invoicing.
- Unbilled usage data available through Data Sources & Data Query.
- Support for setting threshold notification on unbilled usage by using Custom Events.
Note that Advanced Consumption Billing is a paid feature. But you can purchase Unbilled Usage and Prepaid with Drawdown separately. Contact Zuora Global Support for assistance.
For more information, see Advanced Consumption Billing.
Invoicing and Tax
REST API enhancements to creation of standalone invoices
When creating standalone invoices through the REST API, you can now use the useSingleTransaction
field in the request body of the “Create standalone invoices” operation to decide whether to handle a batch request with a single transaction.
If you do not specify any value for this field, the value defaults to true
, indicating that a batch request will be handled with a single transaction. If the field is set to false
, a failure in the batch request will not cause the whole request to fail, so you have to retry the whole batch request.
REST API enhancements for memo queries and document property management
The following API operations have been enhanced to support querying memos and managing document properties by either object ID or number:
- List credit memos
- List debit memos
- Create document properties
- List all properties of a billing document
Previously, you could only query memo information and manage billing documents in the aforementioned operations by object ID.
Credit Memo Bill To Contact object available in Credit Taxation Item data source
When using the Credit Taxation Item data source to export data, you can now select the joined Credit Memo Bill To Contact object to export bill-to contact information about the corresponding credit memo.
As specifying bill-to contact information is supported at the subscription level, the contact information is also displayed on billing documents accordingly. Therefore, this data source change is introduced for reporting purposes.
Note that this change is available only if you have both Flexible Billing and Invoice Settlement enabled.
Object schema tree available in HTML templates
When configuring HTML templates, you can now click the Show Object Schema icon in the lower left of the online HTML template editor to expand the data schema tree to explore what objects and fields are available. The object schema tree frees you from remembering the names of all supported objects and fields.
Data Table component supports N:1 objects in HTML templates
When configuring HTML templates, you can now use the Data Table component to build a table for N:1 objects including Subscription, Rate Plan Charge, and so on.
Previously, these objects were not available in the drop-down box of the Data Table component.
Format and ConvertTz functions available in HTML templates
When configuring HTML templates, you can now use the following functions to customize data:
Format
function: You can use this function to format the values of date and date time fields with pattern letters.
For example, if an invoice date is 2012-01-01, you can use{{Invoice.DueDate|Format(dd-MMM-yy)}}
to format the date to “01-Jan-2022”.ConvertTz
function: You can use this function to convert the values of datetime fields from the tenant default timezone to a specified timezone.
For example, if the timezone in the tenant profile is America/Los_Angeles (Pacific Daylight Time), you can use{{Invoice.CreatedDate|ConvertTz(IST)|Format(dd MM yyyy HH:mm:ss a z)}}
to format the value of a datetime field to "27 May 2022 05:58:59 AM IST".
Zuora Collect
Payments
Support for processing transactions through merchant-specific endpoints of CardConnect
A new setting called Enable Merchant-specific Endpoint is now available on the gateway setting page for the CardConnect gateway integration. By selecting this setting and specifying an endpoint that CardConnect has provided to you, you can utilize CardConnect's account-specific endpoints for payment processing. Note that this setting takes effect only if CardConnect has provisioned an endpoint specifically for your merchant account.
For more information, see CardConnect Gateway.
Support for exporting information about billing documents related to payment schedules through Data Source Export
The Payment Schedule and Payment Schedule Item data sources are now linked with the Invoice and Debit Memo data sources. This update enables you to export information about the billing document associated with a payment schedule or payment schedule item through Data Source Export.
REST API enhancements to support object number
The following API operations have been enhanced to support specifying credit memos, invoices, or payments by using either the ID or the number of the credit memos, invoices, or payments:
Zuora Central Platform
Workflow
Support for bulk updating category and priority for workflows
You can now update the category and priority of workflows in bulk on the Workflows tab. Previously, you could only update the category and priority of workflows one at a time on the setting page of each workflow.
To update the category and priority settings for one or more workflows, select the workflows to be updated, and then click the Set Category or Set Priority button that appears on the upper right of the Workflows tab.
Note that when updating the category, you can also choose to create a new category.
Support for displaying links to queued workflow runs
The notifications that pop up when workflow runs are successfully queued now display links to the queued workflow runs. You can view details of the queued workflow runs by directly clicking the links.
Events and Notifications
Enhancement on email templates for Order Action Processed standard event
To remove the redundancy, Zuora has enhanced the email templates for the Order Action Processed standard event.
Previously, when configuring the email templates for the Order Action Processed standard event, if you selected Bill To Contact or Bill To Contact of Invoice Owner from the To Email list, the email recipients were the invoice owners.
Starting from this release, if you select Bill To Contact from the To Email list, the email recipients will be the subscription owners.
Note that for the existing email templates with Bill To Contact selected from the To Email list, the email recipients, which remain unchanged, are the invoice owners.
REST API
For a summary of REST API updates and documentation updates in the Zuora API Reference, see 2022 API Changelog.
SOAP API
Current WSDL version: 125
For information about how to check your version and download the latest version. see Zuora WSDL.
SOAP API change history
For a summary of updates made to the SOAP API in recent Zuora releases, see Zuora SOAP API Version History.