🚀 Release 2023-132

Release Date: 23 March 2023

Search

⚡ Improvements

For non-English languages, the letter "x" and the special multiplication symbol "×" (Unicode U+00D7) in the query will be treated interchangeably to specify dimensions. For instance, both the queries “m10x100” and “m10×100” will be treated the same.

Frontend APIs

It is now mandatory to send the correct domain_key in the API request. Sending API requests without domain_key will return a 4xx error response. This applies to:

Note: If there are any incorrect integrations with domain_key for live customers, there will be no impact.

Dashboard

⚡ Improvements

Autosuggest blocklist is now syncing correctly.
Real-Time Customer Segments:
- When the segmentation training starts or ends, the merchandiser receives an email notification with a "Review Algorithm" button and a link to the Discovery Dashboard. We have updated the links so that it always takes the merchandiser to the account that contains the exposed segmentations.
- The "Ready to review" state has been renamed to "Ready to use."

Recommendations and Pathways

⚡ Improvements

Similar Product Widget: We are excited to share that we have upgraded our Similar Products algorithm. This enhanced machine learning-based algorithm enables you to recommend a range of similar products, and these recommendations are based on the product feed data. Visit this article to learn more.

🚀 Release 2023-131

Release Date: 13 March 2023

Search

🚀 New Feature Release - Algorithm Controls

We're happy to announce the launch of our latest feature: Algorithm Controls! This feature enables you to directly control and adjust 4 of our algorithms that power your search experiences. You can configure the algorithms through front-end API calls or Bloomreach's dashboard tool.

Go to Algorithm Customizations > Recall Algorithms to configure algorithms using the new Dashboard tool

⚡ Improvements - Facets

We have removed the Noisy Facet Limits that were earlier defined in our system. Going forward, there will be no limit on the number of facets shown on the dashboard. All the facets marked "facetable" on the Catalog Management UI will now be displayed on the Facet Manager dashboard. Our team has thoroughly tested the system's performance to ensure that it can handle the additional load and meet the needs of a wide range of business use cases.

Dashboard

The following Dashboard release items will not go live in this release as they did not meet our quality standards. These require additional testing and validation.

New Feature Release - Customizable Product Card Attributes & Metrics
Real-Time Customer Segments Improvements

The above items will be part of the next release scheduled for March 23rd, 2023.

Recommendations and Pathways

⚡ Improvements

auth-key validation is working as expected when it is passed in the request header.

🚀 Release 2023-122

Release Date: 22 February 2023

Search

⚡ Improvements

We have optimized the memory utilization for our Front End application.

Dashboard

⚡ Improvements

We have added a new Sync segmentation button in the Real-Time Customer Segments dashboard that syncs the exposed segmentations from Engagement to the Discovery dashboard.

We have updated the Pathways User permissions to include the ability to delete widgets in the dashboard.

🚀 Release 2023-121

Release Date: 8 February 2023

Recommendations and Pathways

🌟 New Feature Release - Recently Viewed Products Widget

We’re happy to announce the launch of our latest feature: Recently Viewed Products Widget! This recommendations widget empowers you to re-target the shoppers who have browsed or searched for specific products on your site but did not make a purchase.

Feature Highlights

User-based personalization: This feature enables you to display personalized product recommendations based on the shopper's purchasing history, browsing behavior, and preferences.
Boost conversions: You can re-engage and convert top-of-the-funnel shoppers by strategically placing personalized Recently Viewed Products Widgets on the Homepage, Add-to-Cart, Order Confirmation, and Product Description pages.

Explore our documentation to learn more about this feature.

⚡ Improvements

Pathways API no longer returns discrepancies in numfound when the “filter” or “filter_facet” parameter is applied to the attributes with the “ * ” value.

Dashboard

⚡ Improvements

We have enhanced the numeric boosting functionality to enable the internal balancing of the number values to be calculated per catalog now instead of only once at the account level. This gives you more granular and distinct boosting control between different catalogs.

Analytics

⚡ Improvements

Insights reports no longer show overlapping headers.

🚀 Release 2023-111

Release Date: 24 January 2023

Dashboard

⚡ Improvements

In Global Category Ranking Rules, Block operation is now working as expected in the left-side product search panel.

🚀 Release 2022-421 (OOB)

Release Date: 7 December 2022

Dashboard

⚡ Improvements

Category Ranking Rules are now displaying correctly in the Search & Merchandising dashboard.
Scheduled Redirect rules are now working as expected.

🚀 Release 2022-412

Release Date: 19 October 2022

In this release, we have added improvements and deployed internal changes to enhance performance.

🚀 Release 2022-411

Release Date: 13 October 2022

In this release, we have added improvements and deployed internal changes to enhance performance.

🚀 Release 2022-332

Release Date: 28 September 2022

In this release, we have added improvements and deployed internal changes to enhance performance.

Search

Improvements

Ranking Diagnostics no longer shows matches on certain static fields (like Categories) that have been configured as non-searchable.

Analytics

Improvements

Products Clicked From This Query report under the Access Performance section now shows a consistent result set after selecting a custom date range. The "Product page views" column with incorrect data has been removed.

🚀 Release 2022-331

Release Date: 14 September 2022

In this release, we have added improvements and deployed internal changes to enhance performance.

Dashboard

Improvements

Product ID search in Ranking Diagnostics now returns results for all the PIDs with spaces in their values.
The Help section now correctly displays links to the Discovery documentation and Support portal.

Analytics

Improvements

Category Page Diagnostic graph data is now correctly populating in Top Categories reports.

🚀 Release 2022-323

Release Date: 6 September 2022

In this release, we have added improvements and deployed internal changes to enhance performance.

Search

Improvements

The inches symbol used in facet value aliases is returned correctly under the Facet Values in the Search API call.

🚀 Release 2022-322-1 (OOB)

Release Date: 25 August 2022

In this release, we have added improvements and deployed internal changes to enhance performance.

Dashboard

Improvements

Changing a Global facet's Display Name now correctly shows the updated name instead of showing "currentValue".

🚀 Release 2022-322

Release Date: 22 August 2022

In this release, we have added improvements and deployed internal changes to enhance performance.

SEO

🚩 Known Issue

Products(PIDs) with Add to Recall enabled at the Global level appear under the External Changes tab.

This issue will be fixed in an upcoming release.

🚀 Release 2022-321

Release Date: 3 August 2022

In this release, we have added improvements and deployed internal changes to enhance performance.

Search

Improvements

The Search API call no longer returns an incorrect 5xx error response after modifying a facet rule.

🚀 Release 2022-312

Release Date: 20 July 2022
In this release, we have added improvements and deployed internal changes to enhance performance.

Search

Improvements

The meta section of the Frontend API response will now reflect the Dashboard changes made to a theme's indexability.

🚀 Release 2022-311

Release Date: 6 July 2022

In this release, we have added improvements and deployed internal changes to enhance performance.

Search

🌟 New Feature Release - Semantic Search in French and German

We are excited to launch Semantic Search in French and German. This feature enables you to leverage our French and German semantic understanding signals into the highest revenue drivers, specifically Search Ranking and Search Recall.

Feature Highlights

Search Ranking: Improve ranking for torso/tail queries in French/German by understanding user intent from the product type. This provides much more accurate and relevant results compared to traditional keyword searches, ultimately improving your conversions and revenue.
Search Recall: Reduce null results with smart query relaxation, which allows us to show similar products when we can’t find an exact match. For example, if a customer searches for Brand A armchair and that product doesn’t exist, we can show Brand B armchairs that are very similar instead of taking the customer to a null results page. This creates a better experience for the user and should lead to higher conversions.

Enablement: All new and existing customers with French or German catalogs will have this enabled by default.

Explore our documentation to learn more about this feature.

🚀 Release 2022-232

Release Date: 22 June 2022

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs, added improvements, and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Analytics

🌟 New Feature Release - Pixel Monitor Phase II

Pixel Monitor now offers the following new capabilities:

Site-level monitoring: Multisite customers can now monitor pixel integration at the individual site level. Pixel monitor will be no longer accessible at the account and site group level.
Pixel monitor is now available for Relevance by Segment and Content Search features.

These enhancements will be automatically rolled out for existing Discovery customers. No additional implementation is required.

Explore the documentation here:

Search

Improvements

SKU level dynamic facets would not work with the SKU values containing the character "|".
For non-English catalogs, query relaxation would return a broken-up version of the query.
Searching for "Delia" returned no results because the brand name was being stemmed as the Italian stopword "del".

These bugs have been fixed.

🚀 Release 2022-231

Release Date: 9 June 2022

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs, added improvements, and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Dashboard

🌟 New Feature Release - Add to Recall

Bloomreach Discovery is introducing a new merchandising operation called Add to Recall. This feature will allow you to add a product to any query recall.
You can decide the product's placement or let the algorithm rank it.

In the case of Global/Account level or Multi-Query Boost to Top/Slot rules, the products will not be force added to the recall of all queries now. You can specifically toggle Recall ON to add the product to the recall of influenced queries. Explore the documentation here.

🚧
This feature is supported for Search Ranking rules, Category Ranking rules, Global Ranking configurations, Multi-Query, and Account level rules. Add to Recall is not supported for Recommendations and Pathways in this release.

🚩 Known Issue

Using the Left-hand side panel for blocking a PID is not working in the Dashboard.
At the widget customization level, when a PID is added from the Left side search panel or included in a Global ranking rule with Add to Recall toggle enabled, the count displayed under the Changes tab will be incorrect. This is just a UI issue. There is no impact on the functionality or on the API response.

These issues will be fixed in the upcoming releases.

Search

These bug fixes won't go live in this release. They will be part of a future release.

SKU level dynamic facets would not work with the SKU values containing the character "|".
For non-English catalogs, query relaxation would return a broken-up version of the query.
Searching for "Delia" returned no results because the brand name was being stemmed as the Italian stopword "del".

Analytics

🐛 Bug fixes

Bug: Insights Explore Bar would not return data for a number of queries.

Fix: This issue has been fixed.

🚀 Release 2022-222

Release Date: 25 May 2022

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs, added improvements, and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

🚀 Release 2022-221

Release Date: 11 May 2022

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs, added improvements, and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Dashboard

🐛 Bug fixes

Bug: Terminated accounts still appeared in the Dashboard dropdown selection.
Fix: Terminated accounts have been removed from the dropdown.
Bug: Thematic pages were not displaying added products in preview and API response.
Fix: This bug has been fixed.

🚀 Release 2022-212

Release Date: 28 Apr 2022

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs, added improvements, and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Dashboard

🐛 Bug fixes

Bug: The Dashboard displayed an error when the user created two sets of audiences with the same dimensions but different conditions.

Fix: This bug has been fixed.

🚀 Release 2022-211

Release Date: 13 April 2022

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs, added improvements, and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Dashboard

🐛 Bug fixes

Bug: Using the "Clear operations" option for removing bulk operations caused a discrepancy between the Dashboard and Frontend response.

Fix: This bug has been fixed.

🚀 Release 2022-133

Release Date: 30 March 2022

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs, added improvements, and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Dashboard

🐛 Bug fixes

Bug: The products displayed on the site did not sync with the ranking rules when a disabled ranking rule was renamed.
Fix: This bug has been fixed. We have added a check to validate the status (enabled or disabled) of the rule before sending the update message to the frontend.
Bug: IAM User Management admins faced issues when resetting a user's password. New users faced issues when resetting their passwords for the first time via password reset mail.
Fix: This bug has been fixed.
Bug: For customers using SSO Login, users with IAM admin access could not find the users under the User Management tab.
Fix: This bug has been fixed.

🌟 Improvements

In Site search Facets and Categories Facets, the label for Blacklisted facets is now "Always Hide Facets" instead of "Blacklisted".

🚩 Known Issue

Using the "Clear operations" option for removing bulk operations is causing a discrepancy between the Dashboard and Frontend response.

Instead of using the "Clear operations" option, we recommend that you use Un-boost, Un-bury, Unlock or Restore option provided under the + menu in the top right corner of the product cards.

This bug will be fixed by our team in an upcoming release. In case you face any issues while removing bulk operations, please contact the Bloomreach Support team.

Analytics

🐛 Bug fixes

Bug: The Category collections data was not loading.
Fix: This bug has been fixed.

Release 2022-132

Release Date: 16 March 2022

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs, added improvements, and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Search

Bug Fix

Bug: Product suggestions were disabled in the configurations but product suggestions would still show up in the Autosuggest v2 API response.

Fix: This bug has been fixed.

Dashboard

Known Issues

IAM User Management admins will face issues when resetting a user's password. New users will face issues when resetting their passwords for the first time via password reset mail.

Please get in touch with Bloomreach Support if you'd like to request a password reset.
For customers using SSO Login, users with IAM admin access may not be able to find the users under the User Management tab.

Please get in touch with Bloomreach Support if you want to update users.

Note: Both these issues will be fixed in an upcoming release.

Release 2022-131

Release Date: 2 March 2021

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs, added improvements, and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Search

Improvement

Prior to this release, stop words would be dropped from both the left hand side (LHS) and right hand side (RHS) of a synonym. This made it impossible to add synonyms for phrases that had stop words in them (e.g., "souffleur de feuilles" => "souffleur").

On English catalogs, we keep stop words on both sides. However, in feed processing we generate tokens after dropping the stop words due to which in some cases the synonym with a stop word in the RHS wouldn't get applied (e.g., "stripe" => "black and white"). No match would be found since the synonym has a stop word but processed feed data would not.
- With this release, we have unified the behavior for both English and non-English catalogs. We will not remove stop words from the LHS but only from the RHS of the synonym. This will solve both the issues listed above. In non-English catalogs, it will honor a synonym with a stop word on the LHS and for English catalogs, it will honor synonyms with a stop word in the RHS.

Dashboard

Improvement

The Facet Rule Editor now includes a value option for the "category" attribute. You may now set the default sort algorithm for category facet values.

Release 2022-122

Release Date: 16 February 2021

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Search

Bug fix

Bug: Merged Facets with facet values containing special characters would return 0 results when applied as a filter.

Fix: Facets with values containing special characters can now be merged, and will return the correct number of results when applied as a filter.

Dashboard

Bug fix

Bug: Removed rules would not be synced.
- Fix: There is now a check in place to verify if a rule has been deleted before it can be updated. If you attempt to update a deleted rule, an error message will appear with an option to save the rule as a new rule. In case of a status update, you will be informed that the rule has been deleted and the page will refresh.
Bug: Ranking Diagnostics could match on non-searchable fields.
- Fix: Ranking Diagnostics now respects the searchability configuration of static fields like category crumbs, product id, and a few others. If these fields are configured to be non-searchable, they will not be displayed in the "Other Searchable Fields" section.
Bug: For Thematic Pages, extra data such as "\t" or "\r" would be appended to the header (h1) then stored in the database.
- Fix: Extra data before and after the header text will now be trimmed. There are now also checks that trim any extra spaces and tabs present in the header text

Analytics

Bug fix

Bug: When making changes to the Product Grid from Opportunities, the save button would not stop spinning.
- Fix: This bug has been fixed.
Bug: For multisite accounts, Opportunities would sometimes display the wrong title for category pages on the Diagnose screen.
- Fix: This bug has been fixed.

Release 2022-121

Release Date: 2 February 2021

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs, added a new feature and improvements, and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Recommendations and Pathways

Feature release

Contextual Merchandising

Contextual Merchandising allows for dynamic recall or ranking of Recommendations based on the attribute values of the product being viewed.
Contextual Merchandising rules can be added in the Dashboard for some widget types.

Read the external documentation to learn more about this feature.

Release 2022-111

Release Date: 20 January 2021

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs, added improvements, and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Search

Bug Fix

Bug: The efq parameter would not work with merged facet values for Search and Pathways.
Fix: This bug has been fixed.

Dashboard

Bug Fix

Bug: Synonym sync statuses would keep changing when the page was refreshed.
Fix: The cause of this issue has been identified and fixed.
Bug: SOLR calls would fail if a product was slotted at position -1.
Fix: A check has been added to disallow products from being slotted at position -1.
Bug: Some bugs would cause an error to be displayed when saving edits to an existing widget on the production Dashboard.
Fix: These bugs have been fixed.
Bug: Filtering the list of Thematic pages by index status would have no effect and no pages would be filtered.
Fix: Filtering by index status now applies the filter properly.

Analytics

Bug Fix

Bug: For the "No search result keywords" report, the downloaded data would not match the report in the Dashboard.
Fix: This bug has been fixed and downloaded data now matches the report in the Dashboard.

Release 2021-412-1 (OOB)

Release Date: 17 November 2021

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs, added improvements, and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Dashboard

Bug Fix

Bug: Incorrect site data was being shown on the account level for categories.
Fix: The default site's data will be shown on the account level

Release 2021-412

Release Date: 27 October 2021

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs, added improvements, and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Dashboard

Bug Fix

Bug: The Synonyms page would sometimes list duplicate users in the Users column, where the duplicate username would be surrounded by double quotes. Duplicate users could also appear in the Filter menu.

Fix: Duplicate users will no longer be present in the Users column or Filter menu.

Bug: The "Last synced at" section in the sync status tooltip would sometimes display "Invalid Date" instead of a timestamp.

Fix: This bug has been fixed.

Improvement

The Synonyms UI has been improved:

Improved messaging for Add/Edit Synonyms for multi-sites
Improved messaging for deletion of User Modified Synonyms
Added a tooltip with supported format hint for one-way and two-way Synonyms in the Add Synonyms modal

Release 2021-411

Release Date: 18 October 2021

In this release, we have added improvements and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Dashboard

Improvement

Bloomreach’s Thesaurus feature is now called Synonyms and has been given several UX and performance enhancements. For more details on these enhancements, read the Synonyms documentation.

Visibility into Bloomreach Generated Synonyms
User Created/Modified Synonyms and Bloomreach Generated Synonyms are now separated into different tabs for easier management
Added bulk operations support
Added sort and filter
Simplified interface

During Auth0 outage, the Dashboard would not load for logged in users.

Auth0 outages should not impact already logged in users for 24 hours.

Release 2021-333

Release Date: 29 September 2021

In this release, we have added improvements and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Improvement

Dashboard

Some sections of the Dashboard have been updated with the new Bloomreach logo.
Navigation now prioritizes the loading performance of the current application, and other applications/pages will not be loaded until navigating to that application. This should improve the overall loading experience for navigating between Discovery applications/pages, especially DevStudio, Insights, and User Management.

Analytics

The Null Search Results report shows the query keywords for which no results are returned on the site. However, sometimes users may apply filters that can result in zero results returned via API. The current Null Search Results report does not show the filter information for such keywords.

The Null Search Results report now filters out the keywords that resulted in zero search results due to the application of filters.

DevStudio

Improved the performance of feed status page load.
Fixed an incorrectly displayed feed status indexing failure message, where an in-progress feed indexing job would show as a failure in the UI whenever there was a simultaneous in progress feed processor job.

Pathways and Recommendations

The Pathways and Recommendations filter parameter allows users to filter products based on attributes, but it does not return all facet values of the attribute field on which the filter is applied, unlike the filter parameter for native Search APIs.

A new parameter filter_facet is available for Pathways (only for Search and Category Widgets APIs), which does display the other values of the attribute field after a filter is applied. You can read more about filter_facet here.

Release 2021-331

Release Date: 1 September 2021

In this release, we have added improvements and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Dashboard

Improvements

The Testing tab was taking very long to load. The loading time is now greatly reduced.

Release 2021-322

Release Date: 23 August 2021

In this release, we have added a new feature and improvements and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Dashboard

New Feature

Category Facet Inheritance

The Category Facet Inheritance feature expands BloomReach's merchandising capabilities by allowing rules that are set on parent categories to cascade down to child categories in a category tree structure.
This feature expedites Category merchandising at scale in an efficient manner as the child categories can inherit Facet rules from the parent categories, instead of manually curating Facets for each category node at a time.
Finer grain control for Inheritance Settings at each Category node to address advanced Category Merchandising use case.
Please head to our external documentation to learn more about this feature.
This feature will be made available to customers in a phased manner. If you are interested in this feature, please reach out to your DXM and make a request.

Improvement

UI/UX improvements on Ranking Diagnostics:

Added PID in the product card.
Now shows 4 products per row (to keep it consistent with Visual Editor and Preview) instead of 3.

Release 2021-321-1 (OOB)

Release Date: 11 Aug 2021

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Improvements

Dashboard

Due to incorrect regex patterns, PIDs containing -t- and -f- were converted to T and F respectively, and slotting operations for those PIDs were not respected.

This issue has been fixed. Any slotting operations on PIDs containing -t- and -f- are now respected.

Release 2021-232-1 (OOB)

Release Date: 30 June 2021

The OOB releases contain critical issues that are added to the product outside the regular release cycle and are made available independently.

Improvement

Dashboard

Dynamic facet support is now extended to SKU attributes.

Release 2021-232

Release Date: 23 June 2021

In this release, we have fixed critical bugs and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Improvements

Dashboard

The "Homepage overview" link under Insights > Library > Overview was missing.

Fix: The "Homepage overview" link is visible again.

Some users experienced missing links in the Dashboard, even if they had been granted the correct permissions.

Fix: Users can access these links in the Dashboard according to the permissions granted.

Release 2021-231

Release Date: 10 June 2021

We are constantly making improvements to brX Discovery. In this release, we have fixed critical bugs and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Improvements

Search

When FQ was applied on a renamed facet or facet value, some facet values would either return 0 results or show a different facet value after applying FQ on the facet.

Fix: Facet values that return 0 results are not part of the facet. Facet values will now show the appropriate count after applying FQ on a renamed facet.

Analytics

Fixed an issue with downloading reports.

Release 2021-212

Release Date: 28 Apr 2021

We are constantly making improvements to brX Discovery. In this release, we have fixed critical bugs and deployed internal changes to improve performance.

Improvements

Search

When a facet was renamed and configured to “Always Hide” from Dashboard, the frontend response would still show the renamed facet.

A temporary fix has been deployed that will use the original facet value along with the aliased facet value to boost/bury.

Dashboard

When editing an audience, dimensions that were already used for that audience could be selected again from the dropdown menu.

Dimensions that have already been used can no longer be selected when adding a new dimension to an audience.

Analytics

The report, "Daily Site Search Vs Non Site Search Performance", could show negative values in the "Non Site Search Visits" column.

The calculation for non-site search visits has been fixed, using the formula: non-site search visits = total visits - site search visits.