Release Notes / Version 9.7.2.3 / October 06, 2023

Highlights

Release Information

Znode 9.7.2.3 includes the enhancement related to the PowerBI Security and Recommendation Engine Performance

Breaking Changes

Please refer to the Breaking Changes Document for more information.

Enhancements

[ZPD-27283/ZLMC-5095] - PowerBI Security Enhancement

Administration

Enhancements have been made by replacing the Username and Password with the Client's Secret Key which gives additional security with respect to the PowerBI credentials. There is also a setting available in the webconfig file through which this enhancement can be enabled.

The "IsGeneratePowerBIReportUsingSecureSecretValue" credentials flag in the Web config of Znode.Engine.Admin. If the value of this flag is ‘TRUE’, Znode will load the report using a secure secret value using the service principle. If set to ‘FALSE’, the Admin gets an option to enter the Username and Password which when entered is saved into the database in an encrypted format. While fetching the report these crededntials will be decrypted by the system and will use accordingly which eventually ensures the security of the user credentials.

Important Points: 

• The Secure secret key approach if selected using the Flag will require a PowerBI premium capacity account.
• After taking this patch, Power BI credentials need to be updated again because they have been encoded.

  
  

[ZPD-27323/ZLMC-5098] - Recommendation Engine Performance Enhancement

Administration/Shopper Experience

Enhancements have been made to the Recommendation Engine eliminating some job failures that were occurring. Performance enhancements were also made for generating recommendation data.

• The very first execution(full data generation considering all available orders) will take time based on the size of the data available for processing. The generate button in the Admin Console will trigger the full data generation process.
• If the process is scheduled using the scheduler, the application will check for the last processed order ID, if any execution was performed earlier then the application will consider only the orders that were placed after the last execution and if no execution was done earlier then all orders will be considered for processing.
• In the case of full process execution, all the old process log entries based on the portals (irrespective of status) along with the data will be deleted after process completion.

Important Points: 

• Turning the recommendations feature on for the webstore may affect the site performance as the recommendations are fetched from the database and will be a fresh API call each time (Caching is not implemented).
• numbersParallel execution (i.e. 2 or more number of the store’s recommendation generation scheduled job at the same time) takes longer to complete than sequential execution.
• The recommendation process may take longer to execute if there are a large number of line items available for processing.
• No functional changes have been made.