Accelerator 24.2.1 Release Notes

Update to Athena support

As of 24.2.1, Accelerator now supports Athena v3.  This will require an update to the .jar files used in the environment - 18 files in total.  These new driver files are provided directly from Amazon, and should be updated with assistance from the Customer Support team.  The new files should be placed in the same location that the previous .jar files were located before.  Support staff will be able to provide assistance to ensure environments using Athena and upgrading to 24.2.1 have the necessary changes in place to support v3.

Initiatives Released

Blueprint Folders and Permissions

Use Case

Expanding on the 24.1.2 release, where the new folder view redesign was introduced, we’ve ported over that functionality to blueprints. We’ve not only added folder view functionality to blueprints, but we’ve also given a much needed facelift to the overall experience. Previously, teams were not able to leverage the already available permissions groups to dictate security rulesets on what users could and could not do for blueprints. With the release of 24.2.1, we’re also adding the full permission group feature set to blueprints, allowing administration staff to better control user access on a blueprint by blueprint basis.

Goals

• Introduce the permissions feature set to blueprints, allowing administration staff to control user group access or edit abilities.
• Introduce the folder tree view to blueprints, allowing marketers to organize blueprints as they see fit.
• Make various quality of life improvements to the folder view, allowing for easier navigation.

Capabilities

Blueprints now support folder tree view

Folder view is now available from the blueprint list page. This new page will feature the same design update previously implemented for external campaigns, which contained multiple quality of life improvements with easier navigation from the original folder views. Users can now create folders & sub folders, as well as see overview information in the right hand side for the selected folder or blueprint. Select a folder, then the create button to start making blueprints inside the necessary folder. Blueprints can also be drag and dropped to sort as needed.

Blueprints now support permissions

Permissions can now be accessed for each blueprint via the overflow menu on both the list view page and folder view page. These rulesets follow the same implementation as other areas of Accelerator, and use permission groups to allow you to customize each Blueprint’s rules. Groups can be given the Read, Update, Execute, or Delete rules per blueprint and folder.

• Read controls the user groups ability to see the Blueprint in the list/folder views, or navigate to the blueprint from other areas of Accelerator.
• Update controls the user groups ability to save changes on a Blueprint.
• Execute controls the user groups ability to run previews on the Blueprint.
• Delete controls the user groups ability to delete a Blueprint.

S3 Bucket Improvements

Use Case

When sending an External Campaign to AWS S3 destinations, users may be faced with having to communicate with their data team to figure out the exact bucket name they need to send to. We wanted to eliminate this need by making this a simple selection via a dropdown.

Goals

• Give the Campaign Admin the ability to choose S3 buckets from a pre-filtered list of available buckets

Capabilities

Manage Bucket Exclusions in Accelerator Admin

Because an S3 account can have many buckets with various uses, we wanted to help reduce the risk of the Campaign Admin selecting the wrong bucket by providing the option to exclude buckets from the available selectable buckets in the campaign. The list will be populated with all available buckets for the S3 account, and any selected buckets will not be available to send external campaigns to.  In order to use this feature, the s3:ListAllMyBuckets permission must be applied to the IAM user that is configured for the external destination.

Select Bucket on External Campaigns

Once bucket exclusions have been enabled in Accelerator Admin, the Campaign Admin will be able to choose from the filtered list of buckets when creating their External Campaign to an S3 destination.

External Campaign Analytics Enhancements

Use Case

External Campaign Analytics don’t provide all the pertinent details of what a user would want to know about any given job. We wanted to enhance this by providing the recipient data extraction time and giving the user the ability to click on a file name to be taken directly to that file’s location. Facebook Custom Audience jobs will now include a status of the job coming directly from Facebook, to help users make informed decisions about launching campaigns based on the state of the Facebook list.

Goals

• Add recipient data extraction time to analytics.
• Enrich the name of the file with access to the exact location, given the user has permissions to view the file in the given location.
• Add Facebook list status to Facebook Custom Audience jobs.

Capabilities

Enriched Analytics

Users can now find more information about their job in External Campaign analytics. The extraction time is part of the Start Date column. Users can click on the name of successful jobs to view the file in the destination. Facebook Custom Audience jobs have an information icon that provides the list status on hover.

Improved UI - SMS Content, Marketing, and Multivariate List Pages

Use Case

The fresh look that has been making it’s way through Accelerator pages is now available in the Marketing list, Multivariate list, and SMS content creation pages. These new page redesigns also provide numerous quality of life and performance improvements.

Goals

• Update the pages to match same visual style and functionality that other list pages provide.
• Make various quality of life improvements to the folder view, allowing for easier navigation.

Capabilities

Multivariate campaign list redesign

SMS content

In addition to the new design, the rendered SMS preview now notifies you if the fully rendered message exceeds the maximum character limit. 

General Changes

• Added 'Is Today' as a date operator for blueprint nodes.
• Added CampaignName as a useable Template personalization token.
• Added support for Multi-Statement SQL for Redshift and Snowflake.
  • Note:  This does not currently include TEMP table support.
• Altered the 'Cancel' button on the Multivariate Test details page to increase visibility.
• Added the ability for Subject line field to be expandable on the Template email content page.
• Added clearer styling for required field validation error on the Template email content page.