Release 2023.025 hit staging sites Thursday, December 14th and will hit public and Enterprise sites in 2024.
External Search
We’re excited to announce the launch of a new feature in our Vanilla community forums software: External Search. This feature allows you to replace Vanilla’s built-in search functionality with a third-party service, such as Coveo, Google, SearchUnify, and more.
To set up External Search, go to your dashboard settings, find and click on “External Search” from the left hand sidebar, enter the search query of your third-party search service, replace the query with %s and click “Save”. That’s it!
Please note that enabling External Search will replace Vanilla’s search functionality entirely. Ensure that your third-party search service can pull in all results from Vanilla.
If you’re looking to pull results from a third-party service into Vanilla without replacing the search functionality entirely, consider using our Federated Search feature.
Once External Search is enabled, you can manually navigate to the search page by appending your community URL with /search. However, regular end users will be automatically redirected to the external third-party search page.
Read more:
https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/1542-external-search
Analytics Improvements
We’ve also got several improvements to our analytics product in this release:
Tracking of Search Result Interactions
We’ve added UTM parameters to our search page and quick search results. This allows Analytics to track user interactions with search results more effectively.
For each search result on the search page, UTM parameters are appended to the URL. These parameters include:
• UTM Source: community-search
• UTM Medium: organic-search
• UTM Term: [the query or terms input by the user]
Additional Options for X-Axis in Bar Charts
To enhance the comparison of results, we’ve updated our bar chart configuration. Users can now define the x-axis of their bar charts to be any of the group by options currently available. This is particularly useful when you want to see total posts or pageviews per category or per team member.
Updated Chart Hover Info for Pie Graphs
We’ve improved the hover functionality on our pie graphs to include the date. This provides users with more context when analyzing data.
Email Digest Improvements
Configurable Meta Data for Email Digest
In response to feedback from our beta testers, we’ve increased the control you have over the meta data for the email digest. You can now adjust the existing meta data in the email digest tab on the left-hand side of your dashboard settings. The options include:
• Include featured images
• Author (current default)
• View count (current default)
• Comment count (current default)
• Score count (new for this iteration of email digest)
Configurable Title, Intro, Footer & Logo for Email Digest
We’ve added the ability to edit the title/subject line, footer, and logo for the email digest independently of the rest of your email settings. This allows you to match your company’s branding and tone, add a friendly intro or promo, and include a special footer with promos, calls to action, or survey links.
If you do not input a logo, it will default to your email digest settings. If you do not input a footer, a footer will not appear. If you’ve already configured your digest and want to retain the footer from your regular email notifications setting, you will need to copy and paste it.
You can choose to include the community name from the branding & SEO settings section of the dashboard under appearance, or you can test your own title completely. Please note that the title and subject line are the same thing and only allow a single line of plain text. The intro and footer support rich text.
Bug Fixes & Improvements
• VNLA-5390: Fixed breadcrumbs for discussion threads layouts
• VNLA-5405: Added queue health alerting
• VNLA-5432: Addressed security concerns in comment system
• VNLA-5433: Added translation for the new email settings page
• VNLA-5434: Improved Salesforce Federated Search Pagination
• VNLA-5223: Replaced SendGrid SMTP usage with SendGrid API
• VNLA-5248: Removed Old Event Code & Feature Flag
• VNLA-4066: Implemented pausing of working jobs for sites on congested app servers
• VNLA-2405: Fixed missing Move Modal Redirect Checkbox
• VNLA-4315: Resolved issue where Rich2-Copy/Pasted Bold Text displays as Inline Code With a Gray Background
• VNLA-4353: Addressed inability to Create SF Case if Member not a Contact in SF
• VNLA-4541: Fixed Categories followed missing from list in new page
• VNLA-4598: Resolved duplication of QnA events in Keen API
• VNLA-4721: Addressed issue where moved top level KB article remains in old KB
• VNLA-5014: Fixed Category page stripping out UTM parameters
• VNLA-5375: Resolved Guest error when clicking "I'm Interested" on events
• VNLA-5429: Fixed "Something has gone wrong" errors on pie graphs
• VNLA-5430: Addressed Knowledge Porter Runner not syncing
• VNLA-5431: Fixed inaccurate post counts in Site totals widget
• VNLA-5439: Resolved missing Article, Knowledge Base & Discussion Names in Analytics Charts
• VNLA-5443: Fixed KB Recommended Articles pulling from different subcommunities
• VNLA-5445: Addressed issue with Custom Layouts being set everywhere after latest release
• VNLA-5466: Resolved issue with parentheses in category URLs and custom category layouts
Continued Work on upcoming customizable thread pages
• VNLA-5305: Created Idea Status Box Asset
• VNLA-5315: Created Question Layout Type
• VNLA-5322: Added routing for tabbed comment list for Q&A
