Zuora Workflow Release Notes

Support for Workflow access permission management

Workflow Access Permissions is now available in Sandbox and Production (UI only). This feature enables you to manage users’ access to Workflow with four different access permissions: Workflow View access, Workflow Run Access, Workflow Manage Access, and Workflow Manage Global Settings Access. 

It helps your organization to better meet compliance rules that require restrictions on Workflow access.

For more information, see Manage access permissions for Workflow.

Renamed and enhanced the Workflow Group feature

We renamed the Group feature to Category and made the following enhancements to the feature:

• Updated the layout of the tabs on the Workflows page to highlight the Category feature.

• Added a cross icon next to the selected category, making it easier for you to deselect the selected option.

• Added a Category option to the Available Column list. You can choose to display the category information as a column by clicking the eye icon and checking Category in the list.

• The selected category is now persistent during a session. After you have selected a category, the Workflows page will always display the selected category until you make a change or the session is closed.

Enhancements to the import workflow definition and version function

• When importing a new workflow definition to a Zuora tenant, the version it contains will always be in the Inactive status.

• When importing a new workflow version to a Zuora tenant, it will always be in the Inactive status.

This ensures the newly imported workflow doesn't contain setting information that might cause the workflow to be run without initial setup.

Enhancements to the monitoring and notification feature

We have made the following enhancements to Workflow's monitoring and notification feature:

• Updated the error notification email templates. The emails are now titled with error types: Task Exhausted, Failure Threshold, and Rate Limiting. The email body contains useful information including workflow details, cause of the error, impact and identified resolution, etc.

• Added a Concurrency/Rate Limits pane on the dashboard. The pane lists workflows with Concurrency/rate limits issues in the last 24 hours. You can jump to the Workflow Run page through the links on the pane and locate the task that causes the error on the Workflow Run page.

Support for managing workflows with version control and grouping in Production

The Workflow Versioning and Workflow Group features are now available in Production. See the release note posted on September 21, 2021 or Workflow versioning for more information.

Support for viewing the "Created by "and "Updated by" information of workflows

You can now view the “Created by” and “Updated by” information of a workflow definition or a workflow version on the UI. To view this information, you need to first add them to the workflow definition table or the workflow version table by clicking the eye icon and checking “Created by” and “Updated by” in the list. This information will then appear in the table as two new columns.

Support for managing workflows with version control

The Workflow Versioning feature is now available in Sandbox for you to test. It will be available in Production soon. You can manage your workflow definitions with this feature. You can view the existing versions of a workflow definition and set an active version. You can create a new workflow development version by iterating over the active version for updating or testing while the active version and the existing API integration are working properly. This will reduce the time and effort to build another version of the workflow. 

All existing workflows in your tenant and new workflows will be set to version 0.0.1 by default. When you create a new version based on the active version, the definition and settings of the active version are cloned by default. You can also create a new version by using an imported JSON file.

In Data Query, the Version field is available in the workflow table. All version changes will also be tracked and recorded in Audit Trail.

See Workflow versioning for more information.

Support for filtering workflow definitions by group

You can also group the workflow definitions by specifying the Group field of each workflow definition. The Group field can be used as a filter on the Workflow home page to list workflow definitions in the same group. If unspecified, the workflow definition is in the Default group. The Group field only applies at the workflow definition level, which means you cannot add two versions of a workflow definition to different groups. See Configure the settings of a workflow for more information.

Support for auditing workflow changes

We have implemented the integration of Workflow with Audit Trail. You can use Data Query to generate the Audit Trail reports containing changes of the following Workflow objects.

• WorkflowDefinition
• TaskDefinition
• Linkage

The audit trails of these objects are stored in the auditobjectchangeevent table. Auditing Workflow object changes is enabled by default and cannot be disabled.

See the following articles for details:

• For data model, see Table auditobjectchangeevent.
• For how to retrieve Workflow object changes, see Sample Queries of Audit Trail.

Support for encrypting and decrypting files with signature

In the file encryption operation of the File: FileOperations task, you can now add a signature to the file during encryption, and then decrypt the file with the signature. See File: FileOperations for details.

Metrics available for assessing the performance of a workflow run

After a workflow run is completed, you can now view the following metrics of the tasks in this workflow in a line chart:

• Run speed of the selected task
• Concurrency if it is configured for the selected task

To view these metrics, navigate to the Run History page and then click the workflow number or name to open it on the Execution Summary page. To view the metrics of a task, click the task. To view the metrics of the whole workflow, click the start task.

See Monitor and troubleshoot a workflow for details.

Support for creating a payment run with an input file

In the Payment: PaymentRun task, you can now create a payment run by selecting a CSV or JSON file containing the records of accounts and billing documents that will be collected and processed by a payment run. 

You can select a CSV or JSON file with the following headers. accountId is required and others are optional.

• accountId (required)
• amount
• comment
• documentId
• documentType
• paymentGatewayId
• paymentMethodId

See Payment: PaymentRun for more information.

Enhancement to notifications on failed tasks

When configuring email notifications on failed tasks for a specific workflow, you can now configure the error response that will be filtered out from notifications. You can enter one or multiple strings or regulation expressions to define the filtered-out error response. For the filtered-out error response, alert emails will not be sent to the distribution list specified in the workflow settings.

See Enable alert notifications for workflow failures for more information.

Query mode options available for “Retrieve: Data Query”

When creating or updating a “Retrieve: Data Query” task, you can now select to run the query in either of the following modes for your task:

• Live - Run data queries against Zuora live transactional database.
• Unlimited - Run data queries against an optimized and replicated database designed for high volume extraction use cases.

See Retrieve: Data Query for more information.

A new API operation available for updating a workflow’s definition

A new “Update a workflow definition by ID” operation is now available for updating the definition for a specific workflow. Previously, you can only update the settings of a workflow such as a workflow name and scheduled trigger through Zuora UI. You are now able to do this through Zuora REST API. 

See the API Reference for details about this operation.

Support for creating/updating a Callout task with templates

You can now quickly create/update a “Notification: Callout” task by selecting a template for callouts configured against Zuora APIs. You can select a template from the newly introduced Select Callout to Zuora API dropdown list, and then API type, URL endpoint, available merge fields/arrays, authentication, and API validation options are preloaded. 

See Notifications: Callout for more information.

Workflow threshold alert

We have released an alert mechanism for the workflow that reaches Zuora workflow limits. If a workflow is excessively executed nearing Zuora workflow limits, this workflow will be paused and deactivated. An email notification will be sent to all active users of your Workflow tenant in the last 30 days by default. You can overwrite this configuration to send it to a specific distribution group or users. See Enable alert notifications for details.

The thresholds for different scenarios are listed below:

• Workflow failure percentage reaches 95%.
• Total Workflow tasks reach 1 million in the past hour.

Support of Liquid expressions in Upload SFTP/FTP task

We now support Liquid expressions in the Folder Location field of the “Upload: SFTP/FTP” task. See Using Liquid expressions in Workflow and Upload: FTP and SFTP for details about how to use Liquid expressions in the task.

Cleanup of tasks pending on approval

To ensure the efficiency and performance of the workflow runs, the automatic cleanup process for dated workflows is provided in Workflow. We now have released an enhancement to the cleanup policy for the tasks pending on approval. If the task is not approved/rejected in 90 days, it will be marked as failed to approve/disapprove and the workflow will enter into the cleanup process.

A new API operation available for rerunning a workflow task

A new Rerun a task by ID operation is now available for rerunning a task. A common use case could be to use Data Query to return all tasks with the failed status, iterate through the task failures, and rerun the tasks programmatically.

Here is a Curl example. In this example, 5 is the ID of the task to be rerun.

curl -X GET -H "Authorization: Bearer 6d151216ef504f65b8ff6e9e9e8356d3" -H "Content-Type: application/json" "https://rest.zuora.com/workflows/task/5/rerun"

See the API Reference for details about this operation.

Support for generating PDF files through File: FileOperations task 

You can now convert the binary data content that is externally generated to a PDF file through the "File: FileOperations" task by selecting PDF Creation as the action type. For example, you can enter the Base 64 string for a signed invoice and generate a PDF file for it.

See File: FileOperations for more information.

Support for activating/deactivating a workflow

You are now able to activate or deactivate a workflow through the action menu or buttons on the Workflows tab and the active/inactive status is displayed in the table view of Workflows. In the table, the inactive workflows are displayed behind the active workflows.

If a workflow is in the inactive status, the workflow is stopped and the queued items are removed. It cannot be executed by any means. It does not count against your license limits.

See Workflow User Interface for more information.

New security options available for a workflow

We have introduced a new Security section under Settings for a workflow, including the following security options:

• Encrypt Files - If this option is selected, all files in this workflow are stored with client-side encryption. 
• Secure Error Messages - If this option is selected, the original messages of the unhandled errors are invisible for information security reasons.

See Configure the settings of a workflow for details.

Support for exporting compressed or uncompressed files

When building a "Retrieve: Export" task that exports files, a new Zipped checkbox is now available on the Conditions tab for you to export the compressed or uncompressed files. 

Enhancement to Execute Workflow task

Previously, when importing a workflow with the Execute Workflow task, you would need to import the target workflow first, and then get the ID of that workflow and update “workflow_id” with the ID when importing the workflow. We have now enhanced the "Execute: Workflow" task by searching and matching on both workflow ID and workflow name, and you will be able to import a workflow and use it in the "Execute: Workflow" task without needing to update the workflow ID.

Usability improvement in adding PEM certificate file and private key

Help text is provided to guide users on adding certificate data when setting up Mutual TLS Authentication in "Notifications: Callout" task. Certificate data must contain the content of a PEM file having the private key appended. 

Email notification enhancement

Workflow provides system notifications, including alerts. By default, the notifications are sent to the active users of your Workflow tenant in the last month. We have now enhanced the global notification setting by allowing you to remove this default setting and instead identify one or more email addresses for receiving notifications.

See Enable email notifications upon workflow failures in “Workflow best practices” for more information.

Workflow data available via Data Query

You can now use Data Query to report on workflow definitions and runs. The following new tables are available in Data Query:

• workflow - Each row represents a workflow definition or a workflow run.
• workflow_task - Each row represents a task that is part of a workflow definition or a workflow run.
• workflow_api_call - Each row represents an API call made during a workflow run.
• workflow_linkage - Each row represents a connection between two tasks in a workflow definition.
• workflow_task_usage - Each row represents your entity's usage of Workflow over a single day.

For more information, including sample SQL queries, see Use Data Query to report on Workflow.

A new workflow task Billing: ReverseInvoice

If Invoice Settlement is enabled in your tenant, a new Billing: ReverseInvoice task is available for correcting a posted invoice and re-billing. This task simplifies the invoice reversal process by automatically completing multiple operations in a single task, including generating a credit memo, applying the credit memo to the incorrect voice, resetting the charge through date, and flagging the incorrect invoice as reversed.

See Billing: ReverseInvoice for more information.

Trial Version of Zuora Workflow

• All users with access to Zuora Sandbox environment will be provisioned a trial of Zuora Workflow.

• Each trial includes 50,000 tasks per year.

• The trial will not impact customers currently using Zuora Workflow in the Sandbox environment.

Enhancements

• Updated Workflow Authentication
  All previously configured permissions for Zuora Workflow must be updated by tenant administrators in Zuora Sandbox and Production environments.
  To learn about how to update your authentication, see Authentication for Standard Users.

Limitation of Zuora Workflow in Sandbox Environment

• Data from an executed workflow will only be stored for 14 days.
  Effective immediately, all data stored from executed workflows older than 14 days in Zuora Sandbox environment will be purged from the Zuora Workflow database. The removal of data older than 14 days will be an automatic process that requires no configuration.

New Features

A new tab called Overview has been added to the landing page of Workflow as the default tab. It contains a dashboard that shows the most important information about your workflows and tasks, including failed tasks, failed workflows, and workflows of different priorities in the queue. The dashboard will improve user experience and help customers get to the key information faster.

The layout of tabs on the landing page has also been adjusted slightly.

To learn more about the new user interface elements, see Workflow User Interface.