21.4.0 - Fredhopper Access Server Release Notes

Introduction 

These release notes provide an overview of the resolved issues and improvements
of the most recent release of the FAS 21.4 line.

FAS 21.4 supports Oracle Java 8 VMs. For detailed setup instructions please refer to Install Java instructions.

Version: 21.4.0

Release Date: Dec 15, 2021

FAS 21.4 is a major release. The Query and Data APIs in this version are backwards compatible with versions FAS 7.5.x, 8.x.y., 19.x.y, 20.x.y., and 21.x.y. The Configuration API is backwards compatible with FAS 8.x.y, 19.x.y, 20.x.y, and 21.x.y.

The main highlight of this release is the new look and feel of the Merchandising Studio.

Improvements & Resolved Issues

Merchandising Studio & Preview Pages

[New] In this release the look and feel of the Merchandising Studio has been modernised for a better user experience. We are keeping the majority of the layout and overall workflow the same so that the learning curve for users of the previous versions is minimal.

Additionally, the following improvements are introduced:

[Improved] Now the user has the option to activate/deactivate trigger-based entities from the overview page with a single click. This will speed up the workflow as the user does not have to open each individual item to activate or deactivate it.

[Improved] We are introducing the option of bulk activation/deactivation of trigger-based entities from the Overview page. The merchandiser can now select multiple entities all at once and apply activation or deactivation on all of them from the main toolbar menu (the selection must be of items in the same state, i.e. all in active or inactive state).

[Improved] The order of modifications can now be changed with drag&drop from within the Modifications edit page instead of up/down buttons.

[Improved] The overall UX in the Visual Merchandising window - better visibility of product attributes, better visualisation of drag and drop actions, etc.

[New] Rules can be open in new tabs.

[New] Copy of Ranking Attributes, within the same scope, is introduced from the Edit Page.

[New] Names of Result Modifications are shown on the Preview Pages.

[Improved] Facet formatting of fixed values has improved UX with usage examples.

[Fixed] Empty recycle bin is working correctly for unpublished synonyms.

[Fixed] Deletion of a published scope is now allowed.

Merchandising

[New] Default selection criteria evaluates custom triggers. Having time criteria in the fh_location is not optimal in all cases. Passing time criteria by a custom parameter and base default selection on it enhances
the usage of Scheduled Product Availability. It can be applied to other custom trigger types as well.

[New] Support for the date format used for custom date triggers for parsing date attributes. This allows the creation of rules with a filter using a date attribute and a custom date trigger for value, removing the necessity for customers to use two different custom triggers. Hence, the adoption of Scheduled Product Availability is simplified for customers with existing date triggers.

[New] Keyword triggers in entities in scopes without a locale trigger are now supported.

[Fixed] Facet priority on published environments.

[Fixed] Duplication of display fields on the published environment.

Search and Navigation

[New] [Beta] Until now, when searching for secondary (variant) attributes (a.k.a relational search), we returned the single best matching variant. With this release, we introduce a "best matched" field - a new type of field in Display fields, which has similar characteristics to the "all-variants" field, but provides only the best-matched values for the current relational search, which might be more than one.

[Fixed] Relational search for the cases in which the variant with the best-matched value for an attribute would be superseded by a variant with no value for this attribute. The fix is behind a feature switch in this release.

Indexing

[Improved] Handle universes checks upon indexing start more gracefully.