We’re excited to announce a significant improvement to how we roll out new features and upgrades to our Fredhopper Product Discovery solutions in 2025. This change aligns with industry best practices and is designed to ensure you benefit from the latest advancements and enhancements seamlessly.
What’s Changing?
From later this year, all feature updates and upgrades will be scheduled and managed directly by the Crownpeak Operations team at regular intervals, as is standard with SaaS products.
Streamlined Rollout Process: Updates will be automated over time, reducing rollout times and getting you valuable advancements and updates as they are launched, without having to wait.
Expert Supervision: Initial rollouts will be carefully monitored to ensure a smooth transition. Quick rollbacks will be available in the rare situation that an issue arises and will be addressed promptly with streamlined rollback procedures.
Details on the new rollout process, including pre-production testing and reporting, will be communicated in the coming weeks.
As we are sure you will have lots of questions, please refer to this article: <Fredhopper Automated Version Updates - Frequently Asked Questions>
Should you still have questions not answered in the FAQ, you can submit a ticket via the Crownpeak Support portal using the subject header “FHR Upgrade Changes.”
Why Change?
Historically, customers needed to request upgrades, which sometimes led to using outdated and unsupported versions. This could create challenges, such as:
- - Missed opportunities to leverage new features, functionality, and improvements.
- - Exposure to security risks and reduced performance.
- - Delays in troubleshooting issues due to version disparities.
By adopting this new approach, all customers will stay current with:
- The Latest Features: Enjoy enhanced functionality, usability improvements, and bug fixes.
- Tech Stack Modernization: Benefit from robust security updates, improved scalability, and faster performance.
- Faster Issue Resolution: With all customers on the latest version, our support team can immediately address and resolve issues without requiring an upgrade first.
This transition ensures your website runs on a modern, secure, and high-performing infrastructure, while enabling you to deliver a superior experience to your users and shoppers.
The Benefits To You
In the initial rollout, you can expect:
- Fredhopper Upgrades Using Java 21, offering: Up to 15% improved performance for Queries, Merchandising Studio, and Indexation. Essential security enhancements.
- New Merchandising Studio Features: Block Facet Values. Save & Publish with warnings (e.g., pinned facet values or products not in the data feed). Redirect validation to prevent critical user errors. Linked Fredhopper & Advanced Recommendations dashboards.
- Preview Page Enhancements: Dropdown for easy locale management. Published preview displays for applied result modifications. Faster load times.
- Improved Search Debugging: Detailed query test pages showing token weights and search passes.
- Planned Performance Improvements: A move to Graviton ARM processors in Q1, offering up to a 20% performance boost across Queries, Indexation, and Dashboards.
For a full list of features and fixes please see the FHR Release notes section here.
What Do You Need to Do?
Review the Process: Familiarize yourself with the new rollout process outlined in the rollout process document, this will be shared in March 2025.
Got a question? Check the FAQ here. Any remaining questions please submit a ticket through the Crownpeak Support portal using the subject header “FHR Upgrade Changes.”
What’s Next?
We are committed to a smooth transition and will keep you informed at every stage.
Upcoming updates and additional enhancements are outlined in our External Facing Roadmap.
We’re thrilled about these improvements, and we know they will improve the value you gain from using Crownpeak.
Thank You,
The Crownpeak Product Team
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