Zuora Revenue 37.004.00.00 Release Notes

Timestamp included in Creation Date in Workbench

Previously, on the Contract Modification tab of the Revenue Contract Detail page, the Creation Date column only displayed the date when the contract modification occurs.

From this release, the Creation Date column is extended to include the timestamp to indicate the exact time when the contract modification occurs.

Enable Totals applicable for count column in reports

Previously, after the Enable Totals switch is toggled to Yes for a report layout, a line named Total is added at the bottom of a report to display the sum of the amount column and the quantity column.

From this release, the Enable Totals switch is also applicable to the count column. When it is toggled to Yes, the sum of values in the count column will also be displayed on the Total line.

New contract modification rules

In some business scenarios, the CV Eligible flag of the SO line might be switched from Y to N or N to Y. If the revenue contract is in prospective allocation when the change happens, the data validation process will stop switching the CV Eligible flag from Y to N. Besides, the CV Eligible flag change also triggers the accounting entry changes. The flag change happens to the transaction data so the reason for the accounting entry changes is usually not properly identified.

From this release, two predefined contract modification rules are added to support the changes to the CV Eligible flag of existing lines.

• Existing Line Changed allocation to In-Eligible
  The CV Eligible flag is changed from Y to N. The available treatment is Retrospective.
• Existing Line Changed allocation to Eligible
  The CV Eligible flag is changed from N to Y. The available treatments are Retrospective and Prospective.

On the Contract Modification configuration UI, you can choose the appropriate treatment for each rule when you are setting them up. When the change happens and triggers the contract modification rule, it will be picked up by the Contract Modification Report. For more information, see Predefined contract modification rules.

RORD processing optimization

To enhance the performance of the data collection process, a new profile called RORD_ENABLED is introduced to indicate whether there will be the need of processing RORD transactions in Zuora Revenue. This profile is set to N for the customers who do no use the RORD functionality at all.

For existing customers, this profile is initially set to Y, and the Zuora Revenue Support team will review the customer's transaction data and change the profile value as appropriate. If there are RORD and/or CM-RO transaction lines in the system, the profile will be set to Y; otherwise, it will be set to N. For new customers, it needs to be decided whether to enable this profile during the implementation phase based on whether RORD transactions will be uploaded and processed in Zuora Revenue. If you want to change the value of this profile, please contact Zuora Revenue Support. If the profile is set to N by mistake, the system will throw an exception when RORD lines are collected in Zuora Revenue.

For more information about RORD processing in Zuora Revenue, see RORD and CM-RO accounting entries.

Smarter summarization based on transaction volume

Previously, when you run the RevPro3.0 Reporting Summarize Current Period program, you need to specify whether to run this program based on all data or based on the incremental data by using the Full Build parameter. When the program is run based on incremental data, the system first deletes the recently updated revenue contracts and then re-summarize the same. In a large volume scenario with a lot of revenue contracts being updated, if you choose to run the program based on incremental data, the deletion step might cause the performance issue. Then, you have to manually terminate the program and run it again based on all data.

From this release, an algorithm is implemented for this program to achieve the best performance. With this enhancement, the system can automatically determine the best level of summarization based on the current transaction volume, the total volume, and historical performance. The Full Build parameter is removed from the RevPro3.0 Reporting Summarize Current Period program. A profile called SUMMARIZATION_LEVEL is introduced with the following valid values:

• Auto
  This is the default value of this profile. The default value allows the system to automatically determine the summarization level.
• Force Full Build
  When the profile is set to this value, the summarization program always run based on the full build.
• Force Incremental 
  When the profile is set to this value, the summarization program always run based on the incremental build.

For more information, see Reporting summarization.

Support for standalone cost lines

Previously in Zuora Revenue, cost lines must be associated with sales order lines. If the corresponding sales order line does not exist in the system, the cost line will be stopped in the stage. It is not possible to generally associate a cost line with a revenue contract without associating it with any lines of the revenue contract.

From this release, the cost line can be collected even if it is not associated with any sales order line. The system will create a dummy SO line with a prefix that is specified by the profile. The revenue release and revenue timing is based on the performance obligation configuration.

Event processing improvement

To improve the performance of event processing, both technical changes and design changes are delivered in this release. From the end-user perspective, the system has the following behavior changes:

• Previously, if an event had an invalid input value (for example, 200 for release percent), this event would be ignored for the corresponding RC. Other events would still be processed for the same revenue contract. From this release, if an event has an invalid input value, all the events will be skipped for the corresponding RC.
• Previously, if an exception occurred when the RevPro3.0 Event Process program was running, the entire program would fail. From this release, the program will fail only for the RC that is impacted by the exception and it can keep running to process other revenue contracts.
• Previously during event release, all the unposted allocation entries would be deleted for the entire RC. From this release, only the allocation entries of the POB with event associated will be deleted during event processing.

Aligned role privilege between Billing Multi-entity and Revenue organization

This enhancement is applicable only if you have Billing - Revenue Integration enabled.

Zuora Billing allows that one tenant can have multiple entities, while Zuora Revenue allows for multiple organizations. However, previously, the role privilege in the Billing entity was not consistent with that in Zuora Revenue organization. Now, the role privileges for users across the two systems are aligned. The user who has access to a particular Billing entity can only access the Revenue organization that is mapped to that Billing entity. Access to any other Zuora Revenue organizations for this user is no longer allowed. 

For more information about how to map entities to organizations, see Map Billing entities to Revenue organizations.

Data integrity check introduced in Revenue Sync

This enhancement is applicable only if you have Billing - Revenue Integration enabled.

When you schedule Revenue Sync jobs, Billing - Revenue Integration now does an internal data integrity check to ensure that all applicable data in Billing are picked up and synced to Revenue. Previously, when you ran Revenue Sync jobs to fetch incremental Billing data, some records might get missed out because of the missing related object ID fields.

Revenue Sync usability enhancement

This enhancement is applicable only if you have Billing - Revenue Integration enabled.

To mitigate the risk of missing data when you work with both ad-hoc and scheduled Revenue Sync jobs, the following UI enhancements are now available on the Revenue Sync page:

• The timezone information is displayed.
• The start date for the Last Updated Date Range field is now available for editing.
• For the Last Updated Date Range field, the date range is restricted to a time frame of 1 year. If the date range of the job is more than a year, you have to run multiple times within the one-year date range.
• The Type column is added to the Revenue Data Sync History table. This column indicates the type of the Revenue Sync job, and the value can be Adhoc or Scheduler.

Remediate CSV injection software attack (37.004.02.00 or later)

To remediate the security risk from CSV injection during the file upload in Zuora Revenue, any cell in the uploaded file cannot begin with the following special characters:

• Equal sign (=)
• Plus (+)
• At (@)

The ENABLE_CSV_DATA_SANITIZATION profile is introduced to specify how to handle the file that has these special characters as a starting character in any cell. Valid values for this profile include the following:

• BLOCK: The file will be blocked if any cell begins with the above special characters. 
• SANITIZE: The above special characters will be removed if any cell begins with them. Then, the file can be processed by the system.
• RAW: The file can flow into the system as it is even if there is a potential security risk.