New Features:

• Released a new plugin, @contentstack/apps-cli

Enhancements:

• Added createBackupDir config option for the export plugin
• Improved error handling and logging
• Rewritten Entries and Stack modules to TypeScript
• Added integration and unit tests for various modules

Fixes:

• Resolved a bug with importing marketplace apps
• Resolved issue --import-webhook-status flag not working for import command
• Resolved issue for contentstack-cli-tsgen where global field types were not generated correctly when type is multiple

Hot Fixes:

• Added a new documentation for Apps CLI plugin
• Updated the Install the CLI content

We're excited to announce the release of the new contentstack-apps-cli plugin, now available in Contentstack CLI. The plugin lets you seamlessly perform CRUD operations on your apps in Developer Hub and install/uninstall them in your organization or stack as needed.

All you need is a Contentstack account and CLI version 1.7.11 or above and run the following command to install the plugin:

csdx plugins:install @contentstack/apps-cli

Follow our step-by-step guide to install and use the Contentstack Apps CLI plugin.

We're excited to announce the release of the new Image OCR app, which empowers you to extract text, color codes, and its percentages from assets (JPEG, JPG, PNG, and TIFF image formats) and save them in the asset metadata. It uses advanced AI algorithms to accurately recognize text from images and convert them into editable content.

This Asset Sidebar Widget app assists content managers in automated processing, text recognition, and intelligent searching of color palettes with the exact percentages and helps save time by eliminating the need for manual data extraction.

For more information, refer to the Image OCR App Installation Guide..

Post August 8, 2023, there is an added query parameter in the Get Webhook Executions request.

We’ve added a new query param, only_events, which when set to "true," will exclusively provide events devoid of request_details in the response. Conversely, setting "only_events" to "false" will include request_details in the response.

We're happy to announce the latest update to the Contentstack AI Assistant, driven by user feedback. This release includes a blend of new features to boost usability, augment the customization process, and refine the user experience. Here is a detailed look at what’s new in the app.

New to the AI Assistant App?

The Contentstack AI Assistant is available at no extra cost for our customers. If you'd like to join our Early Access Program, all you need to do is sign up by filling out this form. After agreeing to some additional terms, we'll send you a link so you can install the app.

New Features

Multi-AI Support

In this release we are adding support for Microsoft Azure OpenAI ChatGPT. This means that organizations that are using Azure-based services will now be able to integrate seamlessly with our AI Assistant, offering more flexibility and choices. Simply navigate to the AI Assistant Configuration options in the app Marketplace, and update the configuration with your Azure credentials.

Custom Icon Upload

We've enhanced customization by allowing users to upload their custom icons directly from the "upload icon" overlay menu. This ensures that it is easy to add new icons so the UI aligns more with your brand identity, providing a more tailored experience for your users.

Enhanced Icon Visibility

With the increased font size of the icons, users can now have a clearer and more comfortable view of the available options, enhancing the overall user experience.

Improved Message Prompt Interaction

Clicking outside the toolbar will no longer auto-accept the message prompt, ensuring that users have full control and intentionality when selecting options. This minimizes the chances of inadvertent selections, ensuring accuracy in your interactions.

Bug Fixes

• We've addressed an issue where entering a significant amount of text in the title field of custom actions would cause display or functionality issues.
• We've resolved an edge case where sending responses to Rich Text Editors would occasionally get garbled.

Thank you for your continued support and trust in AI Assistant. We're committed to enhancing and improving our platform, and we appreciate your feedback that drives these updates.

We are thrilled to announce the latest release of the YouTube app, which enables content managers to fetch, display, and manage their video content directly within Contentstack entries. It also allows users to select multiple videos from their YouTube account and add them to a Custom Field or JSON Rich Text Editor fields in Contentstack.

Additionally, we’re introducing Multiple Channel Support, which now allows users to filter videos based on specific channels, making it easier to manage and view products relevant to each channel.

For more information, please refer to the YouTube App Installation Guide..

We're excited to announce that the JSON Rich Text Editor now fully supports right-to-left (RTL) content creation. This update makes adding or writing information from right to left simple and quick.

You can enable RTL support in your JSON RTE by changing the entry language or keyboard to RTL scripts.

This enhancement significantly improves the overall experience for content managers who work with RTL languages, making content management and editing more intuitive and user-friendly.

For more information, read our documentation on Right-to-Left Content Writing within the JSON RTE.

We have made some exciting enhancements to the app’s user interface and accessibility capabilities to give you a better experience. Here’s a rundown of what’s new:

Updated field icons: We have updated icons for some of the fields—Group, Modular Blocks, Extensions, and Global Fields—to make them more relevant and representative of the fields’ purpose.

Pagination on content type list: Navigate through content types faster with paginated results (instead of infinite scroll previously).

Accessibility improvements: The order of interactive elements that can be navigated using the “Tab” key now follows the visual flow of the page (left to right; top to bottom). We also added tab-navigation support for many interactive items, including items on the entry list page, apps’ main left and top navigation, content type builder, and on the entry editor screen.

Expand/collapse child fields easily: The expand/collapse icon on the parent field will now help you expand/collapse all children fields (instead of expanding/collapsing the parent field itself previously).

Other minor enhancements:

• Tooltips have been optimized to improve the readability of the text within.
  

  

• The checkbox column on list pages is now fixed, so it is always accessible on the left, even when you scroll horizontally to the right.
  

  

• The outline section on the entry editor screen now has a white background color.
  

Other bug fixes.

We are delighted to announce the new Password Protection feature for your environments in the Contentstack Launch projects.

The Password Protection feature allows you to restrict your environments in Contentstack Launch with a username and password, thereby giving you the facility to control user access to your non-production environments like development and staging.

Read more about Password Protection feature.

We’re excited to share what we’ve been up to this summer, but first off, have you heard the news? Contentstack's Headless CMS has been recognized as a leader for 2023 by IDC MarketScape. This recognition is based on a rigorous evaluation of product and service offerings from headless CMS vendors in the space. This achievement further highlights our commitment to our users and customers in providing top-notch solutions and products.

Now back to our summer highlights: In this blog, we’ll dive into what we accomplished in Q2. Learn about our new ChatGPT features for our Contentstack AI Assistant, productivity enhancements via our Marketplace, refined automation workflows for Automation Hub, as well as Contentstack’s availability on Microsoft Azure EU. We pride ourselves on continuously innovating our products so that anyone using the platform can reap the benefits right away with maximum efficiency. Read more to find out what to expect from us in the coming quarter. Chalo!

Enhancements:

• Restructured the Webhook, Label, Custom Role, Content Type, Global Field and Extension Module in the Import plugin
• Restructured the Webhook, Label, Custom Role, Content Type, Global Field and Extension Module in the Export plugin
• Added support for management token in Seed command
• Added support for management token in Bootstrap command
• Added support for basic auth and OAuth in bulk publish for unpublish, publish, publish-revert, publish-configure and stacks:publish-clear-logs command
• Added support for basic auth and OAuth in bulk publish for entries:update and entries:publish, unpublish, publish, publish-only-unpublished, publish-non-localised-fields and publish-modified command

Bug Fixes:

• Resolved issue for when 2FA is used, a message code is displayed in place of text
• Resolved issue in Marketplace Apps, extension_uid refers to an extension that does not exist
• Fixed issue for GitHub tags and release not working as expected in tsgen and Content Type plugins

Documentation Updates:

• Updated the Import Content using the Seed Command documentation content for management token support
• Updated the Bootstrap Starter Apps documentation content for management token support
• Updated the Bulk Publish and Unpublish Content documentation content for basic and OAuth support

We are thrilled to announce the latest release of the Bulk Operations app! The app enables content managers to streamline their work and perform bulk operations to content with just a few clicks.

With this release, we’re introducing two new features:

• Bulk Operations on Entries: Contentstack allows users to perform actions such as publish, unpublish, and delete on multiple entries. This is particularly beneficial when managing a large amount of content, hence saving time and effort.
• Bulk Operations on Assets: Contentstack allows users to perform actions such as upload, publish, unpublish, and delete on multiple assets at once. This enhances productivity, optimizes workflows, and improves the quality of asset management by providing a centralized and efficient approach to handling multiple assets simultaneously.

To learn more about how to use the Bulk Operations app, please refer to the Bulk Operations App Installation Guide.

We are pleased to announce the latest enhancements of Automation Hub, designed specifically with the aim of optimizing your operational processes and driving more efficiencies within your organization.

Proactive Data Fetching for Contentstack Trigger

Designed to preemptively pull relevant data based on the Content Type when setting up a trigger, this feature gives you the ability to automatically prefetch data in the Contentstack Trigger when setting up an automation. Previously, you’d need to open another window, do something to trigger the event, and then allow Automation Hub to capture the payload.

If there is still the need to update the payload information, you can trigger the event manually and then click “retest” to re-capture the data.

We believe this feature will make the automation set up process easier and more intuitive.

Learn more about Contentstack Trigger.

Example Data Structure templates for Contentstack Actions

To facilitate a more intuitive construction of your JSON object, the Contentstack Action now has the ability to procure an example data structure corresponding to your Entry data, premised on the Entry’s Content Type schema. This functionality should significantly improve the ease of use of some actions, like Entry Update.

You must still manually configure the entry data for JSON Rich Text Editor, Custom, and Experience Container fields. This feature is now available for Create Entry and Update Entry actions.

Learn more about Contentstack Action.

New Actions in Utility Connector

The Utility action connector now includes new actions:

1. Continue Automation If: Designed to provide greater control over your automation process, this action can be used as an Action Step within Condition and Repeat Paths. The automation will only execute subsequent steps if the defined conditions are met, thereby ensuring accuracy and reducing unnecessary processing.
2. Continue Repeat If: This action is specifically designed to be used within a Repeat Path. It facilitates a smarter control flow by only executing the steps if the conditions are met. If conditions are not met, users have the flexibility to select an exit behavior that either exits the current Repeat Path iteration or exits the Repeat Path entirely, while ensuring steps outside the Repeat Path continue to execute.

Learn more about the Utility connector.

New Connector: Azure ChatGPT

The ChatGPT Connector is now available for customers who want to remain in the Microsoft Azure ecosystem. This new feature allows users to authenticate to their Azure account and utilize ChatGPT deployments hosted on the Azure Cloud. This connector currently supports “Chat” and “Prompt” action types.

Learn more about the Azure ChatGPT connector.

Other changes:

1. HTTP Action Connector Updates:In order to give you more granular control over your operations, the HTTP action connector now has the ability to throw an error when status codes range between 4xx - 5xx. This is sometimes required when trying to create a Conditional Path based on an error response. Furthermore, a feature to disable SSL verification has been added for increased flexibility in configuration.
2. Email Notification Settings: We’ve updated our email notifications settings to allow users to schedule email errors on an immediate, daily or weekly basis. This helps ensure that critical information reaches the right users at the right time.
3. Additional Prompt Text in ChatGPT Connector: The ChatGPT Connector has been upgraded to allow the sending of additional prompt text, providing more context to generate relevant chat responses. This feature further enhances your conversational AI capabilities.
4. Validation for Connected Apps: You can validate connected apps on the Connected Apps page for ChatGPT and Netlify connectors.

We’re excited to announce the release of the new Ace Editor app, now available in our Marketplace. This app provides a user-friendly interface for editing and manipulating code within the Contentstack Custom field, and supports HTML, CSS, & JavaScript languages, syntax highlighting, auto-completion and code formatting.

The Ace Editor app allows developers to conveniently write and edit code snippets, templates, and scripts directly within Contentstack, enhancing productivity and streamlining development workflows.

For more information, refer to the Ace Editor App Installation Guide.

We're excited to announce the release of the new Calendar app, now available in our Marketplace. This app enables content managers to view their tasks, scheduled entries, and releases in an intuitive Calendar interface.

This Full Page UI Location app allows users to easily view scheduled events by the Month, Timeline, Week and display additional details. It provides greater visibility for assigned Workflow tasks, publishing entries, and deploying releases all in one place, helping increase productivity and efficiency for content managers.

Once installed, the Calendar app appears in your stack's left navigation panel, providing easy and direct access.

For more information, refer to the Calendar App Installation Guide.

Enhancements:

• Restructured the Assets, and Locale Module in the Import plugin
• Restructured the Assets, and Locale Module in the Export plugin
• High-level restructuring of the Import plugin
• High-level restructuring of the Export plugin
• Added support for basic auth and OAuth in bulk publish assets:publish command
• Added support for basic auth and OAuth in bulk publish assets:unpublish command
• Added support for basic auth and OAuth in bulk publish cross-publish command

Bug Fixes:

• Resolved issue while a user is not logged in while using the Branches plugin
• Resolved issue while running seed command
• Fixed fetching org list while logged in with OAuth
• Resolved the issue of stack export for branch-enabled stack

Documentation Updates:

• Updated working Node.js version in all CLI documentations
• Updated the Bulk Publish and Unpublish Content new commands documentation for assets:publish, assets:unpublish and the old commands documentation for cross-publish to support basic and OAuth support.

Post July 12, 2023, you will be able to omit the color and background-color attributes while copying content from vendors (Google Document, Microsoft Document) and pasting it into HTML and JSON Rich Text Editors by executing the Add stack settings API request.

You can pass the sys_rte_skip_format_on_paste key within the stack_variables section in the request body as follows:

• "sys_rte_skip_format_on_paste":"GD:color": Skips the color attribute, and GD indicates the external vendor Google Document’s prefix.
• "sys_rte_skip_format_on_paste":"GD:background-color": Skips the background-color attribute, and GD indicates the external vendor Google Document’s prefix.
• "sys_rte_skip_format_on_paste":"MW:color": Skips the color attribute, and MW indicates the external vendor Microsoft Word’s prefix.

While executing the API request, add the color or background-color attributes only if you want to retain the source formatting.

Note: We are currently supporting four attributes (GD:font-size, GD:color, GD:background-color, and MW:color) for this key. This is applicable for both HTML and JSON Rich Text Editors.

Here’s a sample of the Request Body:

{
   "stack_settings":{
      "stack_variables":{
         "enforce_unique_urls":true,
         "sys_rte_allowed_tags":"style,figure,script",
         "sys_rte_skip_format_on_paste":"GD:font-size", "GD:color", "GD:background-color", "MW:color"
      },
      "rte":{
         "cs_only_breakline":true
      }
   }
}

The digital landscape is rapidly evolving, and businesses must adapt to stay ahead. One key aspect of this composable transformation is the shift toward cloud-based infrastructure. Companies are leveraging platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure to develop applications, store data, and provide a range of online services. In this blog post , we'll explore how to harness the potential of AWS Marketplace and the expansion of Microsoft Azure EU while simplifying integration using a composable Digital Experience Platform (DXP) like Contentstack.

We're delighted to announce the latest update to the Contentstack AI Assistant, featuring an exciting new feature that enables organizations to create custom stored actions. We've expanded the capabilities of our AI Assistant to offer an even more tailored content creation experience for your unique organizational needs.

New to the AI Assistant App?

The Contentstack AI Assistant is available at no extra cost for our customers. If you'd like to join our Early Access Program, all you need to do is sign up by filling out this form. After agreeing to some additional terms, we'll send you a link so you can install the app.

Configure Custom Actions

Now you can configure custom actions specifically for your organization. Navigate to Marketplace -> Manage Apps -> AI Assistant and configure the app for your Stack.

Here you can create new actions, name them, add an icon, and create a custom prompt, enabling your team to further streamline and personalize your content creation process.

Default Icons

To facilitate ease of use and aesthetic consistency, we've created a selection of icons you can use for your custom actions. These icons will blend seamlessly with the existing interface actions, maintaining a clean and consistent user interface.

Download this file containing several SVG icons, and upload them to your asset folder. We recommend creating an “icons” folder to keep them together. Then, when adding your custom actions, you can use the newly-added matching icons.

Example Actions & Export/Import Functionality

To help you get started, we've included starter actions and icons you can import.

Additionally, we've added the ability to export and import sets of custom actions. This feature is handy for users supporting multiple stacks as it allows for the easy transfer of actions from one stack to another.

To use the starter actions, upload the SVG icons to your assets and import the sample action pack. Then, add the icons of your choice and save. Next, use the “Import” button and upload this JSON configuration file.

Our default starter actions are specialized for Contentstack, so you’ll need to customize them for your organization, using our examples as idea starters.

You're now all set to use your new custom actions!

Include Variables

This release allows you to include data from the field directly in your prompts. By adding {{field_data}} to the prompt, any copy currently in the field will be included at that point when being sent to the AI service. If you do not include {{field_data}} at some point in the prompt, it will be automatically included at the end.

In addition, you can include the currently selected locale name by adding {{current_locale}} to your prompt. This feature brings a greater level of customization and context-aware content creation.

More features

• Clicking on the “Stop Generating” button allows you to cancel a request while the AI is still processing.
  

• Re-phrase this text is now “Optimize text for SEO.”

• “Shorten this text” now shortens by 50% instead of 25%.
• “SEO tags” and “User Persona Tags” have been rewritten to be more consistent.
• Several of the built-in actions now have specialized icons.

Enhancements:

• Added OAuth support in Branches compare and merge.
• Added Analytics support in Branches.
• Added Unit testcases in Auth.
• Added support for existing merge summary to execute the merge.
• Added Stack API key support in Export to CSV.
• Added Branches and Pagination support in Tsgen.
• Added utility plugin, converted HTTP API calls to SDK calls, migrated Oclif changes, and deprecated stack & token-alias flags in contentstack-cli-content-type.

Bug Fixes:

• Resolved recursive backup folders created in Import.
• Handled error while importing the global field having referenced content type.
• Resolved org-name flag which is not working in Export to CSV.
• Resolved Import error for a specific content type.
• Fixed CLI dependency & vulnerability in contentstack-cli-content-type.

Documentation Updates:

• Added Branches support in Export to CSV.
• Added Branches support in Tsgen.

We are thrilled to announce the latest release of the Akeneo app! This tool enables content managers to fetch, view, and manage Akeneo products and categories within Contentstack entries. With the latest enhancements, users can now enjoy even more functionality and convenience.

In this release, we’re introducing two new features:

• Channel Support: You can now filter products based on specific channels, making it easier to manage and view products relevant to each channel.
• Locale Support: Display your products in multiple languages with the new locale support feature, ensuring a localized experience for your users.

These additions empower content managers to add products and categories seamlessly, reorder products using drag-and-drop functionality, apply filters, and more.

For more information, please refer to the Akeneo App Installation Guide.

We are elated to unveil the ensuing advancements implemented in Launch during the preceding month:

• Customers can now show custom 404 pages for NextJS and Gatsby projects.
• Cache optimization has yielded significant results, with Launch now efficiently caching over 88% of requests to Contentstack.com, a substantial increase from our previous architecture! Try Launch today and tell us your success story!
• The Environments Settings page underwent a remarkable UX transformation:
  

Read more about Contentstack Launch.

Enjoy hassle-free browsing with Pagination, a new feature for our core CMS platform that enables users to organize large content lists into easily navigable pages. Now, instead of scrolling through long lists, you can effortlessly flip through a set number of rows per page, bringing efficiency to tasks like managing a large library of articles or products.

We’re happy to announce some exciting new updates for Automation Hub. Here’s a roundup of what’s new:

Mark a Project as Favorite

We’re introducing the ability to mark any project as a favorite. This feature can be used to display your favorite projects at the top on the projects page, making it easy to navigate through your most frequently used projects.

Learn more about Mark a Project as Favorite.

New Actions in Contentstack Connector

The Contentstack action connector now includes new actions:

1. Get All Entries: This action fetches up to 100 entries of a particular content type within a stack. Additional query parameters can be added to help search for entries with particular attributes, such as entries between certain dates, or entries that do not have a particular field filled out, etc.
2. Get All Content Types: This action fetches the details of all the content types in a stack
3. Delete an Entry: This action deletes a specific entry.

Learn more about the Contentstack Action connector.

New Connector: Utility

This new connector, which will be home to a number of future useful actions, now features a Wait action which lets you put your automation on hold for a short time before any following steps run. The Wait action can be used to throttle your automation in order to meet API rate limit requirements.

Learn more about the Utility Connector.

Other changes:

1. You can now select recommended values from the output of a previous step in the Contentstack connector. For example: The Get All Entries field used to select Content Type recommends content_type.uuid, a value configured in the previous automation step.
2. With the Email Notification settings, you can send email notifications to Automation Creators, Org Admins/Owners And any other users accessing Automation Hub and their respective Projects.

We are excited to announce that a new Europe datacenter for Azure is now available. The primary region for Azure EU will be US-East-1 (N. Virginia), with EU Central 1 (Frankfurt) serving as a backup region.

This means that Contentstack customers can choose from a wider variety of regions by different providers for their Contentstack account data storage. Learn more about different regions in Contentstack.

You can access the app and the API endpoints by adding the prefix "azure-eu-" to the default URLs.

• Login URL: https://azure-eu-app.contentstack.com/#!/login
• API Base URL: https://azure-eu-api.contentstack.com/

The data storage for Azure EU is entirely remote and separated from other supported regions in Contentstack.

Read more about Regions.

Enhancements:

• Unit test cases for OAuth
• Branches support in Export to CSV and Migrate RTE
• Basic Auth and OAuth support in Migrate RTE
• OAuth page styling
• Config examples for Import and Export

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed vulnerabilities
• Resolved stack clone issue
• Improved error details in log file
• Handled errors when importing individual modules

Documentation Updates:

• Added REACT_APP_CONTENTSTACK_REGION in Bootstrap Starter Apps
• Updated Migrate RTE to include Branches support, management token support, auth token support, and OAuth support
• Updated Nested Reference Publishing in Bulk Publish and Unpublish

We are excited to announce the availability of Contentstack Launch for the AWS Europe data center. This means that Launch customers can choose between multiple regions for hosting their websites.

Contentstack Launch is now available in the following regions:

• AWS NA (Existing): https://app.contentstack.com/#!/launch
• AWS EU (New Addition): https://eu-app.contentstack.com/#!/launch

Read more about Regions.

Explore the power of AI in content operations in our latest Contentstack Pulse blog post, featuring the new ChatGPT Connector for Contentstack's Automation Hub. Discover how the integration empowers developers and business users to automate tasks, quicken workflows and craft engaging digital experiences. The post provides a deep dive into six exciting use cases. Dive into the full blog post here.

If you are starting Contentstack with Ruby On Rails as your preferred framework, this starter will get you up and running in no time. You can import the resources, make configuration changes, and boom, you are ready to go. Once you set it up, you can use it as a playgroup to try out Contentstack or tweak the structure to create your own site.

The starter uses GraphQL queries to fetch content from Contentstack. Refer to our detailed guide on how to use this starter or dig into the code to get started.

We’re happy to announce some exciting new updates for Automation Hub in the month of May!

Clone an Automation

We’re introducing the ability to clone an existing automation inside of the same project, which will include all configurations made within the trigger and the related actions (including authorizations and other options). This feature can be used to backup automations, to create duplicates in order to fast-track a similar automation, or to have a stable automation version while making changes or updates to an existing automation.

Learn more about Clone an Automation.

Branch Support in Contentstack Connector

Contentstack Action and Trigger events now include branch support, so you can specify which branch should be used as part of the trigger, or which branch should be involved as part of an action.

Learn more about the Contentstack Action and Trigger.

New Connector: Airtable

This new connector enables you to create/update/delete/fetch records in Airtable. You can authenticate with your Airtable login information and use the different actions to perform operations in a table as part of an automation.

Learn more about the Airtable Connector.

New Connector: Launch Connector and Launch Trigger

The Launch Connector allows you to deploy your Contentstack-powered websites using Contentstack Launch.

Learn more about the Launch Connector.

The Launch Trigger allows you to create deployment and environment-based triggers such as create/update/delete/start/fail/complete for all projects created in Contentstack Launch.

Learn more about the Launch Trigger.

New Connector: Aprimo

This new connector allows you to automate fetching and updating asset details stored in Aprimo, such as title, ID, Name, Description, etc. This is a great way to keep Aprimo metadata in sync with your Contentstack information automatically.

Learn more about the Aprimo Connector.

New modifier for the Transform connector: truncate

A new modifier has been added to the Transform Connector to shorten a long string during an automation.

• truncate: This modifier allows you to reduce the length of a string to a specific number of characters, and also supports allowing or disallowing word breaks, and choosing the truncate ending string, such as an ellipses (...).

Learn more about the new Transform modifier in our documentation.

Other changes:

1. Array Filters in trigger conditions allow you to filter your trigger output based on the array value fetched from a previous step.
2. With the Get User Information action, you can fetch details of a user; based on the user ID.
3. With the quick select screen, you can select a new Action, Conditional Path, or Repeat Path quickly and easily.
4. You can now add a new action step between two configured automation steps, allowing you to more easily make changes to your automation process.
5. The ChatGPT Connector allows you to select GPT-4 as a model. GPT 4 is an enhanced version of GPT-3.5 with advanced functionalities.

We're thrilled to share the newest improvements to Contentstack's AI Assistant, a tool we've developed in partnership with OpenAI's ChatGPT. Based on feedback from our Early Access Program participants, we've made several updates that keep us focused on our mission: making creating content faster, simpler, and more tailored to your brand.

Don’t have the AI Assistant app yet?

The Contentstack AI Assistant is available at no extra cost for our customers. If you’d like to join our Early Access Program, you can fill out this form to sign up. After agreeing to some additional terms, we'll send you a link to install the app.

Update for the latest features

If you're already using the app, update it to get the latest features. Here’s how: Go to Marketplace, select manage your installed apps, click on AI Assistant, and click the update icon.

New Features

JSON Rich Text Editor Integration

To further enhance its functionality, the AI Assistant can now operate within the JSON Rich Text Editor. This means when you type into ChatGPT inside the JSON editor, the AI Assistant will turn JSON data into HTML text and use it to prompt a response from ChatGPT.

To maintain the formatting and structure of your content, the AI Assistant now asks ChatGPT to retain the HTML tags in its response. When it keeps the formatting (in specific prompts, it will not be maintained), the HTML in ChatGPT's response is converted back into JSON values, preserving the design of the original content.

ChatGPT Version Selection

You now have the choice between ChatGPT-3.5 Turbo and the more advanced (but slower) ChatGPT-4 in the app configuration screen. This gives you the flexibility to choose the model that best suits your needs, as long as your account has ChatGPT-4 API access enabled.

These updates are now live for those signed up for Contentstack's Early Access technology program. We appreciate all feedback as it helps us continuously improve our product to better serve your needs. Stay tuned for more as we continue to build more AI and automation capabilities into the Contentstack platform.

We’re excited to introduce a new “actions” shortcut for all items on list pages of entries, assets, and content models. Users can access these quick actions by hovering over any item on the list page, and then clicking the vertical ellipsis icon under the Actions column.

This gives users a quick and easy way to perform common actions such as edit, copy, publish, export, and more in just a few clicks.

Beginning May 25, 2023, we will gradually roll out our Nested References Publishing feature to all customers based on their respective plans.

This feature will introduce a few changes to the Content Management API (CMA) requests. Listed below are a few changes that are introduced in the APIs of the Bulk Operations section.

Additional “api_version” Key in the Headers

If Nested References Publishing is part of your plan, you will be able to publish nested references up to five levels deep, along with all parent entries simultaneously.

Affected endpoints

• Publish entries and assets in bulk: https://api.contentstack.io/v3/bulk/publish
• Unpublish entries and assets in bulk: https://api.contentstack.io/v3/bulk/unpublish
• Get publish queue: https://api.contentstack.io/v3/publish-queue
• Cancel Scheduled Action: https://api.contentstack.io/v3/publish-queue/{publish_queue_uid}/unschedule

New key in the Headers of the request

• api_version(required): Enter the API version as 3.2 to enable Nested References Publishing.

Additional “summary” Key in the Get publish queue Response

If Nested References Publishing is included in your plan, you will notice an additional key called, summary, in the response body of the Get publish queue request when fetching details for a specific job. The summary key provides an overview of the status of all items within a bulk job.

To include job details, set the include_job_details parameter to true.

Affected Endpoint

• Get publish queue: https://api.contentstack.io/v3/publish-queue

For instance, here is an example of how the "summary" key appears in the response:

"summary": {
           "top_level_items": 2,
            "total_processed": 392,
            "success": 189,
            "unsuccess": 0,
            "approvals": 7,
            "skip": 196
        }

The status indicators are explained as follows:

• top_level_items: Number of parent items selected for publish/unpublish
• total_processed: Number of items processed within the bulk job
• success: Number of items that have been successfully published in the bulk job
• unsuccess: Number of items that were not published due to errors in the bulk job
• approvals: Number of items that require approval before they can be published
• skip: Number of items that were skipped because they were already published in the specified environments and locales

Additional Detailed Error Messages for Publish Queue Items

Within a job, if there are items that fail, you will receive details of the reasons for the failure within the publish_details key of the Get publish queue request’s response body.

Affected Endpoint

• Get publish queue: https://api.contentstack.io/v3/publish-queue

Format of the publish_details key:

"publish_details": {
        "status": "failed",
       "message": "message",
        "error": "error_message"
},

The details are explained as follows:

• status: Status of an item within a job
• message: Reason for failure as shown in the app
• error: Detailed message for failure

Additional Resource: You can see the detailed publish status of each nested reference item (child entries sent for publishing with the parent entry) in the Status column of the Publish Queue. Refer to our documentation about monitoring the status of your bulk jobs in the publish queue.

Updated Validations for Existing Parameters

Affected Endpoints

• Publish entries and assets in bulk: https://api.contentstack.io/v3/bulk/publish
• Unpublish entries and assets in bulk: https://api.contentstack.io/v3/bulk/unpublish
• Get publish queue: https://api.contentstack.io/v3/publish-queue
• Cancel Scheduled Action: https://api.contentstack.io/v3/publish-queue/{publish_queue_uid}/unschedule

We have added new validations for a few of the parameters in the following requests:

• Publish entries and assets in bulk and Unpublish entries and assets in bulk:
  • scheduled_at: When scheduling bulk publish/unpublish events, the scheduled time must be a future date/time.
  • entry_version: When scheduling bulk publish/unpublish events, it is mandatory to include entry versions for the items you intend to send for publishing/unpublishing.

    Note: After this release, it is mandatory to include entry versions when scheduling a bulk publish/unpublish event. Without specifying the version, your bulk event will not be processed, and an error will be returned.

• Get publish queue:
  • Date Query: The format for the date query must be valid.
  • Sort Query: Sorting is supported only for the created_at and updated_at keys.
• Cancel Scheduled Action:

  When attempting to execute the request for a job that has already been processed, an error message will be displayed with the following content:

  {
      "error_message": "Failed to unschedule the job.",
      "error_code": 141,
      "errors": {
         "uid": [
             "The job has already been processed."
          ]
      }
  }
  

  Note: You cannot cancel individual items within a scheduled publish job. You can only cancel the whole publish job.

The new Brightcove app allows content managers to fetch, view, and manage videos within your Contentstack entries. It enables users to select multiple videos from your Brightcove account and add them to the Custom Field or JSON Rich Text Editor fields in Contentstack.

This helps content managers stream videos, enable easy access to video content across multiple platforms, and organize video assets efficiently.

To learn more about how to use the Brightcove app, refer to the Brightcove App Installation Guide.

We’re excited to announce the release of the new Trados app, now available in our Marketplace. The app allows you to translate your Releases content and provide localized versions into multiple languages. The Trados app Dashboard Widget creates projects for language translations and displays the translation status of your projects. This enables a smooth translation process and aids content managers in managing and streamlining their translation projects while providing correct and consistent translations of information in all languages.

For more information, refer to the Trados Board App Installation Guide.

We are excited to announce the general availability of Contentstack Launch, a headless hosting solution that allows CMS customers to deploy and host front-end sites and middleware applications in the framework of their choice. With Launch, Contentstack provides enterprises with the first fully composable, fully automated, digital experience stack from front-end to back-end.

Launch makes it easy to connect stacks to code and deploy your starter stacks and front-end apps within minutes.

Some highlights for the release include:

• Quickstart guides using NextJS and Gatsby to kickstart your Launch projects.
• The GitHub and File Upload approaches to create projects in Launch.
• Detailed guides for all the features of Launch.
• How-to guides for Launch.
• CLI support for Launch.

We’re thrilled to be able to offer Contentstack Launch to all of our customers and look forward to seeing all the ways in which it will be used to host and deploy projects.

Learn more about Contentstack Launch.

If you have any questions or need more information, please contact our Customer Support team.

Contentstack is excited to announce an enhancement to our Live Preview feature: Locale-based Live Preview. With this upgrade, you can now view your content in a locale-based preview environment.

Setting up Locale-based Live Preview is easy. Just define a preview environment when setting up Live Preview for your stack, and all your locale-based content will appear in the Live Preview panel at the base URLs specified for each locale under the set preview environment. Switching between locales is effortless, making it a breeze to preview content for different languages.

For more information on how to use Locale-based Live Preview, check out our Live Preview documentation.

New Feature:

• Added support for Include Metadata in asset, entry, and query class
• Added support for Azure-EU region

Enhancement:

• General code and API document improvements
• Breaking changes - PublishTyp Enums are updated to all CAPS

Bug Fixes:

• Dependency Version released in release build type
• #30 Fixed EntryModel publish_details parsing issue

We're excited to introduce the latest Marketplace app, Bulk Operations, which enables content managers to streamline their work and perform operations to content in bulk with just a few clicks.

With the Bulk Operations app, content managers can easily identify and replace content across many entries, then publish them all at once, making it simple to fix spelling mistakes, update outdated material, or make changes across large volumes of content, all in one go.

To learn more about how to use the Bulk Operations app to increase productivity for your team, refer to the Bulk Operations App Installation Guide.

Are you a developer looking for the latest data on Contentstack’s front-end hosting solution? Then look no further. Contentstack Launch has officially entered its first quarter since announcing our product, which is now in general availability, and we’ve earned a wealth of knowledge and cultivated relationships along the way. 

In this blog post, we’ll take an in-depth look at our successes over Q1, provide insights into how it all came to be and what users can expect from us moving forward. We pride ourselves on continuously innovating our products so that anyone using the platform can benefit right away with maximum efficiency. Let’s explore together!

We’re excited to announce the release of the new Workflow Board app, now available in our marketplace. This app enables content managers to view their workflows in a Kanban format, displaying workflow stages and tasks in an intuitive, easy-to-use interface.

In your Contentstack environment, this Full Page UI Location app allows users to easily drag and drop tasks from one stage to another, search for workflows and entries, and sort them using various filters. This provides greater visibility into the status of workflows, aiding in work planning, time estimation, and increasing productivity and efficiency.

Once installed, the Workflow Board app appears in the left navigation panel of your stack, providing you easy access.

For more information, refer to the Workflow Board App Installation Guide.

Welcome to Contentstack Pulse, your go-to source for the latest news on platform enhancements, roadmap updates and answers to frequently asked questions. Our mission is to keep you up-to-date on all the exciting developments at Contentstack and with our platform. Each month, we'll share the latest platform news to help you streamline your user experience. And every quarter, we'll offer a recap of everything that's happened, so you never miss a beat. Whether you're an existing customer or just curious to learn more about what we do, Contentstack Pulse has got you covered. Click here to learn more!

We’re happy to announce some exciting new updates for Automation Hub in the month of April!

Repeat Paths

Repeat Paths allows users to loop over a set of instructions based on specific criteria like a date range or a numerical input, enabling them to automate repetitive tasks for large and complex data sets.

Learn more about Repeat Paths.

New Connector: Code Block

This new connector enables users to input limited JavaScript into their automation steps, allowing them to perform various functions, like clean up text or check between different field values. Ultimately, it provides greater flexibility and customization for users to automate complex workflows that were previously difficult to achieve without coding.

Learn more about the Code Block connector in our documentation.

New action in Data Store connector: Append Data

Previously, the Data Store connector could Set and Get Data on different levels (i.e. Automation, Organization, and Execution Levels) but it could not append the data in an array or create a new collection of objects. This option is now available with the Append Data action.

Learn more about the new Data Store action in our documentation.

Project Delete

With Project Delete, users are now able to delete a project, its automations, and any of its connected apps in an organization.

Other improvements

• Project Search allows users to search all projects within an organization.
• The Constructor connector now allows you to select the Index Section present in the Constructor Dashboard and send an Email to a specific person in the event the index update fails.

The new ‘Release Preview’ app allows you to see the upcoming content releases in a calendar format, preview web pages before a scheduled release, compare with existing content, and view release details that are added to a release with their specific titles, content types, and versions within your environment. It helps content editors get better control and visibility over future releases. This Full Page UI Location app, once installed, appears on the left navigation panel of your stack.

For more information, refer to the Release Preview App Installation Guide.

Introducing a new app—Interstack Reference—that solves a complex problem for developers. It allows developers to add references to content types of other stacks within the same organization, without leaving the current stack. This opens up new possibilities for developers by ensuring availability of content across the entire enterprise, and saves a lot of time for content managers by reducing manual maintenance of managing duplicate data.

Read the installation guide to learn more and use the app.

Introducing Full Page UI location—a new addition to our artillery of App Framework UI locations. In fact, this one is amongst the most versatile UI locations, as it allows developers to create custom apps that function as separate, independent pages or modules (unlike other UI locations that are restricted to and are part of other modules).

Once a new app is created, it will appear on the main left navigation bar of the Contentstack app, making it easy to access again.

Note: For more information on this UI location, refer to the Full Page Location documentation.

We’ve added support for another UI location—Field Modifier—to our App Framework.

Using this type of UI location, developers can create apps that let them add custom functionalities to the entry fields, allowing content managers to do a lot more with their content.

While the possibilities are endless, some common use cases include adding AI capabilities to text fields, adding conversion capabilities to number fields, and so on.

You can use Field Modifier for various fields (such as Title, URL, Single Line Textbox, Multi-Line Textbox, HTML-based Rich Text Editor, JSON Rich Text Editor, Markdown, Select, Number, Boolean, Date, File, Reference, and Custom fields).

Note: For more information on this UI location, refer to the Field Modifier Location documentation.

We’re happy to announce some exciting new capabilities for content editors to customize their view of Entries or Assets.

Freeze columns:

Users can now freeze up to two columns on the Entries list page (not yet available on the Assets list page), it easier to pin the data you want to the left, while scrolling over to view the rest of the columns.

Remove column (up to two columns):

With this update, it is now possible for users to remove any column from the view (including the Title field). Note that at least two columns must be visible.

View options moved to ‘Table Settings’:

All settings that allow you to customize your Entries and Assets view, like “Change table view” and “Add or remove columns”, have been moved to “Table Settings”, found by accessing the gear icon at the top-right of the table view.

We're excited to announce an improved user experience for Live Preview in Server Side Rendered (SSR) websites. With this enhancement, you can now view entry changes for your SSR websites in real-time (with enhanced JavaScript support) even for delayed scripts on your website.

Note: This update does not have any impact on the fundamental working or mechanism of Live Preview.

For more information on SSR, refer to Set up Live Preview for Your Website documentation.

We’re happy to announce some exciting new updates for Automation Hub in the month of March!

This new connector brings the power of artificial intelligence to Automation Hub. With this connector, users can use ChatGPT's features, including extracting metadata or keywords from text, optimizing search engine ranking, and producing article or text summaries. Integrating ChatGPT opens up fresh opportunities and enhances your content's overall quality.

The ChatGPT connector currently has two action types: Chat and Prompt.

• Chat: This action uses the gpt-3.5-turbo model to interact with ChatGPT.
• Prompt: This allows you to use previous models, such as text-davinci-003, text-curie-001, or others in ChatGPT’s API.

Learn more about the ChatGPT connector in our documentation.

New modifiers have been added to the Transform connector to format or change text during automation.

• Replace: This modifier allows you to replace the first occurrence of a character/word/string.
• ReplaceAll: This modifier will replace all instances of a character/word/string.
• Trim: This modifier will trim spaces from before and after a string

Learn more about the new Transform modifiers in our documentation

Other changes:

• With the Data Store connector, you can store the data at the execution level, i.e., the data for an individual execution can be stored and fetched easily. This is useful when working with the Conditional Path. Read more here.
• Email by Automation Hub connector now allows you to send up to 10,000 emails monthly in an organization.

Enhancements:

• Improved SDK usage in CLI through common SDK instance
• Improved developer experience with PNPM
• Improved command class and utilities class management SDK instance utilities
• OCLIF core V2 upgrade in CLI and its plugins

Vulnerability Fixes:

• Vulnerability fixes for CLI - Tslib, Axios, dotenv package upgrade

Bug Fixes:

• Resolved - CLI Import: Custom name for a master language does not get imported
• Resolved - CLI Import: Too many open files

Documentation Updates:

• Updated CLI commands for the following Sample Apps documentations:

• Build a Java Web Application Using GraphQL API and Spring Boot

• Build a Multilingual Website using Gatsby and Contentstack
• Build a website using Next.js and Contentstack
• Build a Marketing App Using Contentstack and React JS
• Build a Single Page E-Commerce App Using Contentstack and Angular
• Build an E-commerce Website Using Contentstack and commercetools

We are excited to announce the latest update to our JSON RTE Comments feature. You can now include comments for selected text within JSON RTEs, making it easier than ever to collaborate and discuss content with your team. To add a comment to a text, highlight it and click the "Add Comment" icon.

In the Discussion tab, you will find all the JSON RTE comments as well as entry comments.

Learn more about JSON RTE Comments through our documentation.

We are delighted to inform you about the release of our newest version of the Markdown editor. This upgrade introduces more HTML and Markdown syntaxes, providing you with a broader array of choices to enhance your content. Whether you need to incorporate headings, tables, or comments, the improved Markdown editor makes it effortless and easy for you to achieve your goals.

Learn more about the Markdown editor through our documentation.

We’re happy to announce some exciting new updates for Automation Hub in the month of February!

Project Sharing

Project Sharing, the organization owner, organization admins, and the respective project owner can now invite various users to individual projects, facilitating collaboration.

Previously, only owners/admins had the ability to access and modify all projects within Automation Hub. However, with the Project Sharing feature, members can also participate as contributors in the specific project(s) they were invited to by the owner and admins of the organization.

Learn more about Project Sharing.

Contentstack now lets you add Comments to content blocks and images within JSON RTEs. This feature lets you collaborate and efficiently initiate discussions around the content.

You can view all JSON RTE comments under the Discussion tab along with entry comments.

Refer to our documentation on JSON RTE Comments for more information.

Features/Enhancements:

• Upgraded OCLIF Core version to 1.21
• Handled GitHub rate limit exceeded issue(429) for seed command on repeated seeding of GitHub repositories
• Replaced HTTP calls with SDK calls for export-to-csv, seed, export, and import plugins
• Introduced standard utility to create CMA object and imported this utility-based CMA object to perform CMA operations from import, export, export-to-csv commands

Vulnerability Fixes:

• Upgrade sinon from 11.1.2 to 15.0.1
• Upgrade tslib from 1.14.1 to 2.4.1
• Upgrade fs from 0.0.1-security to 0.0.2
• Upgrade json5 vulnerability
• Vulnerability fixes for @contentstack/cli-cm-regex-validate repository

Bug Fixes:

• Datasync does not update the entry payload if the referred assets are deleted and the entry is published again
• Resolved the marketplace app’s configuration issues for the constructor.io app
• Resolved CodeQL issues in the datasync-filesystem-SDK repository

Documentation Updates:

• Introduced Contentstack-cli-tsgen plugin documentation

We have added some powerful enhancements to our search to make it more intuitive for you. Here’s a glance at what’s new:

1. Adding support for stemming and word forms

   This means that if you, for example, search for “like”, it will fetch results that contain “likes”, “liked”, “liking”, and other words that share the same root. This helps you find what you are looking for, even when you don’t feed in the exact query.

2. Making search accent insensitive

   You can now search content without using diacritics (or accents) and still find what you are looking for. So, for example, the search query “cafe” will fetch results that contain “cafe” and “café”.

3. Ignoring stop words for more relevancy

   Our search algorithm now automatically ignores stop words (common articles, pronouns and prepositions such as “a”, “the”, “are”, “and” etc.) from your query to boost search relevancy.

Post January 13, 2023, when updating the content of your JSON Rich Text Editor, you do NOT need to pass the "dirty":true attribute within the request body.

Previously, when updating the content within the JSON Rich Text Editor, you had to pass the "dirty":true attribute within the request body to accommodate the changes introduced.

With this improvement, if the user doesn't supply the "dirty" attribute, the API takes care of this on its own. However, even if the user passes the dirty attribute, the entry is not affected.

The January release of Automation Hub is a game-changer. With a host of new features and improvements, this release will make it easier than ever to create and manage automated workflow processes to streamline your integrations and workflows.

What's new in this release:

1. New actionable step outline tool

   This new outline will display the automation flow of steps, and a user can easily jump into any step and edit it just by clicking on the step within the step outline tool. The outline is a visual display of the full automation process and logic. This feature is designed to make it easy to build and maintain complex automations with ease.

   

   In addition, the step outline now features a search capability that, as you’re typing a query, will automatically filter results to display the search term.

   

2. Each step is displayed in a new, easy-to-read vertical display

   Next, after clicking on a step in the step outline, we have a step wizard on the right side of the page. This vertical step display provides easy visualization of the automation step setup. You can quickly view steps and related data and see previous steps and their configurations as needed. This feature makes it easy to understand how your automations are configured and how they fit together.

   

3. Introducing a powerful new feature: Conditional Paths

   A powerful new feature called Conditional Paths allows for if/else statement support. This enables you to create more complex business processes and logic. This feature allows you to create a multi-filtered query to target specific information. It supports OR and AND operators and has several different conditional checks like "matches," "is empty," and more. Each conditional path can have multiple statements to produce robust automations. This feature allows you to build automations that handle much more complex business processes.

   Learn more about Conditional Paths.

   

4. Basic Information page provides an automation overview

   Finally, we've added a Basic Information page for each automation. This page will display an intro to the automaton, including the title, description, when it was created, and by whom. In the future, this page will incorporate additional information, such as the number of times the automation has run and if there have been errors, etc. This feature was designed to give you a quick overview of your automations and their history, making it easy to understand how they are being used and how they can be improved.

   

In summary, the January release of Automation Hub is packed with new features that make it easier than ever to create and manage automated processes. As always, please let us know if you have any questions or need help with this new functionality.

We have made some refreshing new visual updates to the entry editor experience, so content managers can work faster and with ease. Here is a rundown of what’s new:

1. Prominent field blocks: The earlier formless editor gets a form-like design, with each field now more prominently displayed for better visual convenience for content managers.
2. Smarter nested fields: Fields like “Group”, “Global”, and “Modular Blocks” — that can hold nested fields — now have color-coded icons and an easy way to collapse all child items. The nested fields also have color-coded icons so you can visually distinguish one from the other.
3. Flexible custom fields: Custom fields are enclosed in accordions, so you can expand/collapse them as required.

This is the first of many new updates planned for making entry editor much more efficient and elegant. so, stay tuned updates.

We are excited to announce the general availability of Automation Hub, an integrated automation and streamlining tool for the Contentstack Content Experience Platform.

As we transition out of our Early Access phase, customers who were previously beta testing Automation Hub will be moved to our Explorer Plan, which offers up to 200 executions at no cost each month. Since Contentstack does not count additional usage for multi-step automations or charge extra for premium connectors, 200 executions is a generous allotment that can be used in production to help with critical but lower-frequency business tasks. Also, paid plans are available for those interested in additional usage of this valuable streamlining tool.

Some highlights for the release include:

1. The new JSON RTE Formatter connector streamlines the output of JSON RTE fields to work more efficiently with third-party integrations.
2. Improved connector actions enable additional functionality.
3. New actions to several connectors, such as publishing assets and unpublishing entries in the Contentstack connector, updating or deleting entries from an Algolia index, and more!
4. Custom options for various triggers enable additional use cases.
5. More complex options are available for the Contentstack entry trigger, such as adding referenced or custom query parameters.

We’re thrilled to be able to offer Automation Hub to all of our customers and look forward to seeing all of the creative ways in which it will be used to streamline and automate business processes.

If you have any questions or need more information, please contact our Customer Support team.

We are happy to announce some exciting new updates available for Automation Hub! What's new in this release:

1. Introducing the RTE Formatter connector

   We’ve created a new Automation Hub connector, the RTE Formatter, to help with the complex nested nature of the JSON output that may need to be supported by some external systems to create automations or integrations.

   The RTE Formatter currently has two action types, “Format JSON RTE Content to HTML” and “Format JSON RTE Content to Text.”

   Learn more about RTE Formatter through our documentation.

   

2. New actions for the Algolia connector

   Previously, the Algolia connector could index content but could not delete an entry or do partial updates. These options are now available with the "Delete Entries" and the "Update Entries" actions.

   Learn more about the new Algolia actions.

   

3. The Scheduler connector now generates mock data

   Using triggers involves raising the trigger event first, thus triggering further automation steps to capture the payload. It is unreasonable to wait hours, days, or weeks for a scheduled trigger to happen.

   So, we've now added mock data to the Scheduler connector. Instead of waiting for the event to happen, testing the trigger will display default data, which can be saved and used in later steps.

   

4. Other improvements:
   • The Algolia connector will now appropriately index items that contain quotes or other special characters.
   • We’ve fixed an issue related to the filename format with the Amazon S3 connector.

We are glad to introduce some cool new capabilities to the entry list page, making it easier to filter and find your favorite entries. Here’s a peek at what’s new:

1. Filter for table column headers: Select columns and apply filters to display only what you want.
   
   
2. Column resizing: All columns can now be resized so you can accommodate just the data that you want.
   
   
3. Column shuffling: You can drag and move columns in the column selector to customize your table view.
   
   
4. Add/remove columns: There are now no restrictions on which columns you can hide or display on the entry list page, giving you complete control of your view.
   
   

Features/Enhancements:

• Introduced a new flag (--yes) for asserting boolean migration flags in the clone command
• Logical code improvements in import and export modules

Fixes:

• Resolved - New app names are not updated and are shown in console success messages
• Resolved - Prompt showing to select branch even if target/source branch already provided
• Resolved - Unable to create private apps on EU region stacks while importing data.
• Resolved - Stack-clone: Failed to create entries in ‘undefined’ language error
• Resolved - CLI script breaks while importing labels
• Resolved - Backspace option not available in case of new stack flow in import step of clone
• Resolved - Stack-clone: Cannot set properties of undefined (setting ‘dirty’)
• Security and Vulnerability fixes

Contenstack introduces .NET and Java Management SDKs to help you manage your content. Integrate your .NET or Java applications with Contentstack to create, update, delete, and fetch data using these SDKs.

Refer to our documentation on .NET and Java Management SDK for more information.

Features/Enhancements:

• Marketplace apps import/export/clone support
• Existing roles & custom roles export/import/clone support
• Vue & Stencil apps support in bootstrap command
• Introduced a ‘branch’ option in stack-clone command
• Create Live Preview settings while creating starter apps using CLI bootstrap command
• Utility to clone the stack data with different master locale

Fixes:

• Resolved - Clone/import/export not working for stacks having Marketplace Apps 
• Resolved - Entries having image preset data are not getting created while import using CLI import command 
• Resolved - CLI and bulk publish utility gives error while cross publishing assets
• Resolved - Regex Validation CLI plugin throws error while running csdx cm:stacks:validate-regex
• Security and Vulnerability fixes

Documentation Updates:

• Export Content using the CLI
• Import Content using the CLI
• Cloning a Stack
• Bootstrap Starter Apps

The JSON Rich Text Editor now supports Markdown syntax for formatting content. You can add headings, inline characters, or lists, as well as more complex formatting, like images, URLs, or code blocks using the Markdown Syntax.

Contentstack now lets you use the “venus-components” to open a modal within apps and extensions to display additional information, collect additional inputs from users, or draw attention to a specific feature (or features) on a page, etc. You can use "cbModal" to launch a new modal using the Contentstack’s Venus Modal Component.

Note: For a comprehensive collection of Contentstack’s UI components that you can use to build UI Extensions and Contentstack-based applications, please refer to the Contentstack Venus Component Library and the App SDK documentation.

For more information, refer to our documentation on Modal Support for Apps/Extensions.

Features/Enhancements:

• Major general access (GA) release for Contentstack Command-line Interface (CLI)
• Command respecification and restructuring for achieving command standardization

Fixes:

• Vulnerability fixes
• Minor bug fixes
• Added backward compatibility for old commands and their flags

Documentation Updates:

• Install the CLI
• Configure Regions in the CLI - New Commands | Old Commands
• CLI Authentication - New Commands | Old Commands
• Export Content using the CLI - New Commands | Old Commands
• Import Content using the CLI - New Commands | Old Commands
• Cloning a Stack - New Commands | Old Commands
• Bulk Publish and Unpublish Content - New Commands | Old Commands
• Export Content to .CSV File - New Commands | Old Commands
• Import Content using the Seed Command - New Commands | Old Commands
• Migrate Content from HTML RTE to JSON RTE - New Commands | Old Commands
• Migrate your Content using the CLI Migration Command - New Commands | Old Commands
• Bootstrap Starter Apps
• CLI FAQs

We are launching the Contenstack command-line interface (CLI) version 1.0.3. Along with overall improvements to, and bug fixes on the product, and introduces command respecification and restructuring for achieving command standardization.

With this release, we have:

- Resolved vulnerabilities and fixed minor bugs

- Added backward compatibility for old commands and their flags

Note: All other features and plugins remain as is.

For more information, refer to our documentation on the Contentstack command-line interface (CLI).

Upcoming Roadmap Items:

- Core CLI scripts stability (Import, Export, and Clone)

- Branches support on CLI

Search Bar Enhancements

Introducing the following UI enhancements for the search bar:

- An interactive search icon is enabled as soon as you type something.

- Option for Saved Searches.

- In the Saved Searches option, only five searches are shown. Click View All to see other saved searches.

- Reordered sections in the search bar popup.

- Recent Searches displays the searched texts instead of the whole query.

- Use the Clear All button to delete all recent searches.

- In the Recently Used Fields section, you will see only the top five most recent searches.

View Complete Entry Title in the Popup Modal

While hovering over an entry name in the reference field pop-up, you can now see the full title.

Alphabetical Sorting of Reference Field Entries

Content types within reference field entries modal are now alphabetized.

Post this release, i.e., August 4, 2022, you will be allowed to skip the font size attribute while pasting content from a vendor (Google Document) while executing the Add stack settings API request. You can pass the "sys_rte_skip_format_on_paste" key within the stack_variables section in the request body.

While copying content from an external app (e.g., Google Drive) into the HTML RTE field (using the Add stack settings API requests), the font-size attribute helps you copy content along with the font size used in the source.

If you wish to ignore the font size of the source and use the default or user-defined font size, you can skip this attribute while executing the API request.

To skip the font-size attribute, you can use the "sys_rte_skip_format_on_paste":"GD:font-size" key. Here, GD indicates the external app’s prefix (Google Document), while font-size signifies the attribute to skip.

Note: We are currently only supporting one attribute (GD:font-size) for this key. This is only applicable for the HTML Rich Text Editor.

Here’s a sample of the Request Body:

{
   "stack_settings":{
      "stack_variables":{
         "enforce_unique_urls":true,
         "sys_rte_allowed_tags":"style,figure,script",
         "sys_rte_skip_format_on_paste":"GD:font-size"
      },
      "rte":{
         "cs_only_breakline":true
      }
   }
}

While copying content from an external app (e.g., Google Drive) into the HTML RTE field (using the Add stack settings API requests), the font-size attribute helps you copy content along with the font size used in the source.

If you wish to ignore the font size of the source and use the default or user-defined font size, you can skip this attribute while executing the API request.

To skip the font-size attribute, you can use the "sys_rte_skip_format_on_paste":"GD:font-size" key. Here, GD indicates the external app’s prefix (Google Document), while font-size signifies the attribute to skip.

Note: We currently support only one attribute (GD:font-size) for this key. This is only applicable for the HTML Rich Text Editor. For more information, refer to the API Change Log for this update.

Here’s a sample of the Request Body:

{
   "stack_settings":{
      "stack_variables":{
         "enforce_unique_urls":true,
         "sys_rte_allowed_tags":"style,figure,script",
         "sys_rte_skip_format_on_paste":"GD:font-size"
      },
      "rte":{
         "cs_only_breakline":true
      }
   }
}

The Mission Control dashboard is a plan-based feature that helps you monitor the overall health of your organization. Additionally, you can use it to identify and track issues in your organization, helping you minimize the impact of the issues on customers.

Refer to our documentation on Mission Control for more information.

Introducing Product Analytics

Organization Analytics is now called Product Analytics under Organization Settings. With this release, the dashboard gets enhanced UX and new capabilities to explore your organization’s usage.

In case you are unable to access the Product Analytics dashboard, please contact our support team.

Refer to our documentation on Product Analytics for more information.

Post this release, i.e., July 26, 2022, we will stop supporting the ability to add multiple content deployment servers while setting up a specific publishing environment in Contentstack. We recommend that you instead make use of Webhooks to trigger deployment to multiple web servers whenever you publish content to an environment.

Once this product update goes live, all Content Management API (CMA) requests related to environments will no longer return the deploy_content and servers keys in the response. Here's a sample of an updated response body that returns environment data when you run the Get all environments API request:

{
    "environments": [{
            "urls": [{
                "url": "http://localhost.com",
                "locale": "en-us"
            }],
            "name": "local",
            "uid": "blta1212be1fcfdfad2",
            "created_by": "blt12e12121d12d1f81212a1b2f",
            "updated_by": "blt12e12121d12d1f81212a1b2f",
            "created_at": "2017-06-13T12:28:59.488Z",
            "updated_at": "2018-11-01T13:25:00.349Z",
            "ACL": [

            ],
            "_version": 2
        },
        {
            "urls": [{
                "url": "/staging",
                "locale": "en-us"
            }],
            "name": "staging",
            "uid": "bltf66ca6a66d66cecf",
            "created_by": "blt6565a6b056fc5bc6",
            "updated_by": "blt6565a6b056fc5bc6",
            "created_at": "2019-05-03T08:11:12.583Z",
            "updated_at": "2019-05-03T08:11:12.583Z",
            "ACL": [

            ],
            "_version": 1
        },
        {
            "urls": [{
                "url": "/production",
                "locale": "en-us"
            }],
            "name": "production",
            "uid": "bltfd8888c8bd8cb8cb",
            "created_by": "blt22e22222d22d2f22222a2b2f",
            "updated_by": "blt22e22222d22d2f22222a2b2f",
            "created_at": "2018-08-09T13:39:37.117Z",
            "updated_at": "2018-08-09T13:39:37.117Z",
            "ACL": [

            ],
            "_version": 1
        }
    ]
}

Please consider these missing parameters to avoid breaking changes in your application.

Post July 26, 2022, we will stop supporting the ability to add multiple content deployment servers while setting up a specific publishing environment in Contentstack. We recommend that you instead make use of Webhooks to trigger deployment to multiple web servers whenever you publish content to an environment.

This update will be effective across both the new and classic Contentstack interfaces.

Breaking Changes: Once the July 26, 2022, product update is completed, all Content Management API (CMA) requests related to environments will no longer return the deploy_content and servers keys in the response. Please consider these parameters to avoid breaking changes in your application. For any inquiries, please reach out to our support team at [email protected].

For more information on this update, refer to our API Change Log documentation.

New Asset Filters

Finding assets is now easier than ever. Introducing three new filters — Code, Executable, and Archive — on the assets list page that help you find your code files, executable (.exe) files, and zip files, respectively. These filters are also available while searching for assets in the global search. Refer to our documentation on More asset filters for more information.

More Sorting Options

We have added new sorting functionality to some of the common list pages:

• Users & Roles (sort by Status)
• Webhooks (sort by Status)
• Workflow (sort by Status)
• Extensions (sort by Name, Type, Field data type, Hosting method, Last modified)
• Audit Log (sort by Date, Module, Remote address, Title).

UI Enhancements

Disabled past date selection while scheduling publishing

It is no longer possible to select a date that has passed while scheduling a release.

Improved search experience

The search bar now has a dedicated “Advanced Search” button that lets you switch to an advanced mode where you can add complex and nested condition sets. We have also added a shortcut to our documentation site and have improved the look and feel of the “Filters” button.

“See more” Localized language entries in a separate pop-up

When you click on the "See more" option under the Localization Status section (see screenshot), the list now opens up in a separate pop-up modal window, making it easier to see all of the languages for which that entry has been adapted.

See more - modal:

Selected localized language entry opens in a separate tab:

New “Default field” tag for default fields of content types

We have added a “Default field” tag to the fields that come by default while creating a content type.

Change in the “Remove” icon in the entry reference field

The “Remove” icon, which appears when you hover over the reference field of an entry, has been changed to be more consistent with other icons in the interface.

Cancel scheduled publishing of an entry

You can now easily cancel the scheduled publishing of an entry from the Publish Queue by simply hovering over the entry and clicking on “Cancel Scheduling".

Earlier, an Organization could perform as many webhook executions as they wanted at any given time, without restrictions. Due to this setup, there was a huge probability that a single customer could flood the network by occupying higher positions in the queue.

To avoid this bottleneck situation, we have imposed a rate limit of 200 Webhook executions per minute for all Organizations. So, when an Organization reaches this rate limit, further webhook messages will be set to process in the next queue, without dropping any of the events beyond the rate limit. For more information, refer the documentation on Webhook Rate Limit.

Now, you can choose which users you want to notify when Webhook Circuit Breaker disables a particular webhook. You can specify the email addresses of the users to be notified under the Users(s) to Notify section when creating your webhook.

For more information, refer to the Create a Webhook and Webhook Circuit Breaker documentation.

We introduced the following changes in our June 8, 2022 release:

• Contentstack now allows you to run a text-based search for an asset folder present in your stack. You can enter a search phrase that entirely or partially matches the name of the asset folder to bring it up in your search results.
  
  For example, you can run a Basic Search based on a search phrase such as “Marketing” to search for the “Marketing Images” asset folder, thus reducing effort and time.
  



• Contentstack now allows you to run a Basic Search for assets and asset folders based on a search phrase that partially matches the name of the asset or folder to bring it up in your search results. Instead of entering an exactly matching search phrase, you can type in a specific part of the asset or folder name for your basic search.
  
  For example, you can run a basic search using partially matching search phrases such as “smart” or “phone” to search for the “Smartphone.jpg” asset in your stack.
  

We introduced the following changes in our June 8, 2022 release:

• Contentstack now allows you to run a text-based search for an asset folder present in your stack. You can enter a search phrase that entirely or partially matches the name of the asset folder to bring it up in your search results.
  For example, you can run a Basic Search based on a search phrase such as “Marketing” to search for the “Marketing Images” asset folder, thus reducing effort and time.
  

  

• Contentstack now allows you to run a Basic Search for assets and asset folders based on a search phrase that partially matches the name of the asset or folder to bring it up in your search results. Instead of entering an exactly matching search phrase, you can type in a specific part of the asset or folder name for your basic search.
  For example, you can run a basic search using partially matching search phrases such as “smart” or “phone” to search for the “Smartphone.jpg” asset in your stack.
  

  

For more information, refer to our API Change Log documentation.

New Features:

• High increase in memory consumption & thread count when updated to the 1.9.0 version.
• Setting Proxy in config
• Adding query parameter for the Live Preview #52.
• Enhancement in logger for the different class (Suggested through a pull request) #51.

We are excited to introduce Contentstack Marketplace and our App Development Framework (in Public Beta).

• Contentstack Marketplace is a one-stop platform that allows you to explore and use third-party integrations and pre-built extensions to solve all your business-specific needs. Read more about Contentstack Marketplace.
• Contentstack Developer Hub is an app development platform that allows you to build your own apps and publish them to Contentstack Marketplace. It is currently in the Beta phase. Please reach out to your CSM to get access. Read more about how you can use Contentstack Developer Hub to build apps for Marketplace.

Note: This plan-based feature is available only in the new Contentstack interface.

Asset Sidebar Extension, a new type of Experience Extension, allows developers to create custom sidebars for assets. With this new extension, they can add powerful new capabilities for content managers to manage, transform, and optimize assets easily.

Refer to our documentation on Asset Sidebar Extensions for more information.

Note: This plan-based feature is available only in the new Contentstack interface.

Developers can now add custom metadata to entries and assets, so content managers can easily organize, categorize, and find content. You can add new metadata without incrementing the version, using the Metadata Content Management API requests.

Refer to our documentation on Metadata for entries and assets for more information.

Note: This plan-based feature is available only in the new Contentstack interface.

Contentstack now allows you to use the "Export" option to export details of all the users on the organization users list page into a Comma Separated Values (CSV) file. You can open this CSV file using any spreadsheet application to clearly view the exported user details.

With this option, you can skim through user details in a single view instead of viewing only 30 users on a page at a time, avoiding the need to constantly scroll through long user lists.

Note: The "Export users list" feature is available only in the new Contentstack interface.

For more information, read our Export Users List documentation

Now, you can also set trigger conditions based on actions performed on entry comments and discussions. Refer to our Comments and Discussions webhook documentation to learn more about the trackable events.

Post this release, i.e., April 11, 2022, Contentstack will restrict you from creating or importing content types and global fields with unique IDs specified in upper case. If you try to create or import a content type or global field with an uppercase unique ID, your Content Management API (CMA) requests will return an error in the response.

Content Type Related Error Messages

For content type creation requests (with upper case UIDs), you will encounter the following error:

{
    "error_message":"Content Type creation failed. Please try again.",
    "error_code":118,
    "errors":{
        "uid":[
            "is not valid."
        ]
    }
}

For content type import requests (with upper case UIDs), you will encounter the following error:

{
    "error_message":"There was a problem importing the Content Type. Please correct the Content Type and try again.",
    "error_code":118,
    "errors":{
        "uid":[
            "is not valid."
        ]
    }
}

Global Field Related Error Messages

For global field creation requests (with upper case UIDs), you will encounter the following error:

{
    "error_message":"Global Field creation failed. Please try again.",
    "error_code":118,
    "errors":{
        "uid":[
            "is not valid."
        ]
    }
}

For global field import requests (with upper case UIDs), you will encounter the following error:

{
    "error_message":"There was a problem importing the Global Field. Please try again.",
    "error_code":118,
    "errors":{
        "uid":[
            "is not valid."
        ]
    }
}

If the "Branches'' feature is part of your plan, all webhook-related API requests that hit the Content Management API (CMA) will return the branch key in the response body. This key specifies the unique ID of the branch on which the concerned webhook was triggered. Additionally, it also highlights the unique ID for any alias assigned to the branch and the source branch from which it inherits data.

Here's a sample of the webhook data returned along with the branch key when you run the Get webhook executions API request:

{
  "webhooks":[
    {
      "uid":"bltf00ec3b37082288b",
      "channel":[
        "content_types.create"
      ],
      "created_at":"2021-09-21T07:24:48.757Z",
      "event_data":{
        "module":"content_type",
        "api_key":"blt29ec365eaa0c8d67",
        "event":"create",
        "data":{
          "uid":"new_content_type",
          "title":"New Content Type",
          "branch":{
            "alias":[
              "test"
            ],
            "uid":"development",
            "source":"main"
          }
        }
      },
      "event_headers":{
        "Content-Type":"application/json",
        "User-Agent":"Contentstack",
        "X-Contentstack-Signature":"d7b6d307f35086885f64a8a8sd7s878d7s8"
      },
      "org_uid":"blteac54a27425b3b0e",
      "request_details":[
        {
          ...
            "body":{
              "triggered_at":"2021-09-21T07:24:43.734Z",
              "module":"content_type",
              "api_key":"blt29ec365eaa0c8d67",
              "event":"create",
              "data":{
                "uid":"new_content_type",
                "title":"New Content Type",
                "branch":{
                  "alias":[
                    "test"
                  ],
                  "uid":"development",
                  "source":"main"
                }
              }
            },
            "headers":{
              ...
            },
            "json":true,
            "resolveWithFullResponse":true,
            "timeout":30000
          },
          "response":{
            "statusCode":500,
            "message":"Unable to connect to host.",
            "request":{
              "uri":{
                "href":"https://webhook.gatsbee.com/hooks/data_source/12345"
              },
              "method":"POST",
              "headers":{
                "Content-Type":"application/json",
                "User-Agent":"Contentstack",
                "X-Contentstack-Signature":"d7b6d307f35086885f64a8a2a47ef2e374837"
              }
            }
          },
          "created_at":"2021-09-21T07:24:48.757Z"
        }
      ],
      "retry_count":1,
      "status":500,
      "updated_at":"2021-09-21T07:25:28.860Z",
      "webhooks":[
        "blt6b256750460b99c0"
      ],
      "destination":{}
    }
  ]
}

Additional "branches" and "branch_aliases" Keys to Specify Branch/Alias Scope in Responses

If the "Branches" feature is part of your plan, you will see additional keys named branches and branch_aliases in the API responses in some of the Contentstack modules (listed below). The branches and branch_aliases keys specify the unique IDs of the branches and aliases selected within the scope for the concerned modules.

• Webhooks-related API requests that hit the Content Management API (CMA) will return a top-level branches key in the response body. This key specifies the unique ID of the branch to which the webhook is applicable.

  When creating or updating a webhook, you need to specify the branch scope through the following schema in the request body:

  "branches":[
      "main"
  ]
  
  

  For instance, here’s the response that you will get for the Create a webhook API request:

  {
      "notice":"The webhook was created successfully",
      "webhook":{
          "uid":"blta4c0a90071d12f38",
          "channels":[
              "assets.create"
          ],
          "branches":[
              "main"
          ],
          "disabled":false,
          "concise_payload":true,
          "name":"Test",
          "destinations":[
              {
                  "target_url":"http://example.com",
                  "http_basic_auth":"basic",
                  "http_basic_password":"test",
                  "custom_header":[
                      {
                          "header_name":"Custom",
                          "value":"testing"
                      }
                  ]
              }
          ],
          "retry_policy":"manual",
          "updated_by":"blta7eaf6883dd73a0b",
          "created_by":"blta7eaf6883dd73a0b",
          "created_at":"2021-09-20T18:54:01.105Z",
          "updated_at":"2021-09-20T18:54:01.105Z"
      }
  }
  
  

• Workflows-related API requests that hit the Content Management API (CMA) will return a top-level branches key in the response body. This key specifies the unique IDs of the branches to which the workflow is applicable.

  When creating or updating a workflow, you need to specify the branch scope through the following schema in the request body:

  "branches":[
      "main"
  ]
  
  

  For instance, here’s the response that you will get for the Create a workflow API request:

  {
      "notice":"Workflow created successfully.",
      "workflow":{
          "workflow_stages":[
              {
                  "color":"#74ba76",
                  "SYS_ACL":{
                      "others":{
                          "read":true,
                          "write":true,
                          "transit":false
                      },
                      "users":{
                          "uids":[
                              "$all"
                          ],
                          "read":true,
                          "write":true,
                          "transit":true
                      },
                      "roles":{
                          "uids":[
                              
                          ],
                          "read":true,
                          "write":true,
                          "transit":true
                      }
                  },
                  "next_available_stages":[
                      "$all"
                  ],
                  "allStages":true,
                  "allUsers":true,
                  "specificStages":false,
                  "specificUsers":false,
                  "name":"Review",
                  "uid":"blt7336c2c86ede8b9a"
              },
              {
                  "color":"#2196f3",
                  "SYS_ACL":{
                      "others":{
                          "read":true,
                          "write":true,
                          "transit":false
                      },
                      "users":{
                          "uids":[
                              "$all"
                          ],
                          "read":true,
                          "write":true,
                          "transit":true
                      },
                      "roles":{
                          "uids":[
                              
                          ],
                          "read":true,
                          "write":true,
                          "transit":true
                      }
                  },
                  "allStages":true,
                  "allUsers":true,
                  "specificStages":false,
                  "specificUsers":false,
                  "next_available_stages":[
                      "$all"
                  ],
                  "name":"Complete",
                  "uid":"bltace4f008c3156e97"
              }
          ],
          "admin_users":{
              "users":[
                  
              ],
              "roles":[
                  "bltc5412bb640c8cce1"
              ]
          },
          "name":"Sample Workflow",
          "enabled":true,
          "branches":[
              "main"
          ],
          "content_types":[
              "author",
              "header"
          ],
          "uid":"bltf502c1bf4b742857",
          "api_key":"blt29ec365eaa0c8d67",
          "org_uid":"blteac54a27425b3b0e",
          "created_by":"blt1fd0057b90905592",
          "created_at":"2021-09-22T14:05:54.454Z",
          "deleted_at":false
      }
  }
  
  

• Publish Rules-related API requests that hit the Content Management API (CMA) will return a top-level branches key in the response body. This key specifies the unique IDs of the branches for which the publishing rule is applicable.

  When creating or updating a publishing rule, you need to specify the branch scope through the following schema in the request body:

  "branches":[
      "main"
  ]
  
  

  For instance, here’s the response that you will get for the Create publish rules API request:

  {
      "notice": "Publish rule created successfully.",
      "workflow": {
          "status": {
              "publishing_rules": true
          },
          "publishing_rules": [
              {
                  "uid": "blta7e8171bdaf013cd",
                  "actions": [],
                  "environment": "blta6fa90d8fc8a35b3",
                  "branches": [
                      "main"
                  ],
                  "content_types": [
                      "$all"
                  ],
                  "locales": [
                      "en-us"
                  ],
                  "approvers": [
                      "blt1fd0057b90905592"
                  ],
                  "status": true
              }
          ]
      }
  }
  
  

• Delivery Token and Management Token-related API requests that hit the Content Management API (CMA) will return the branches and branch_aliases keys under the scope section in the response body. These keys specify the unique IDs of the branches and branch aliases for which a delivery or management token is applicable.

  When creating or updating a delivery or management token, you need to specify the branch and alias scope through the following schema in the request body:

  {
      "module":"branch",
      "branches":[
          "main",
          "development"
      ],
      "acl":{
          "read":true
      }
  },
  {
      "module":"branch_alias",
      "branch_aliases":[
          "deploy",
          "release"
      ],
      "acl":{
          "read":true
      }
  }
  
  

  For instance, here’s the response that you will get for the Create a delivery token API request:

  {
      "notice": "Delivery Token created successfully.",
      "token": {
          "name": "Sample Delivery Token",
          "description": "Sample token.",
          "scope": [
              {
                  "environments": [
                      {
                          "name": "staging",
                          "servers": [
                              {
                                  "name": "default"
                              }
                          ],
                          "urls": [
                              {
                                  "locale": "en-us",
                                  "url": "http://example.com/"
                              }
                          ],
                          "deploy_content": true,
                          "app_user_object_uid": "system",
                          "uid": "blta6fa90d8fc8a35b3",
                          "created_by": "blta7eaf6883dd73a0b",
                          "updated_by": "blta7eaf6883dd73a0b",
                          "created_at": "2021-09-16T19:27:18.898Z",
                          "updated_at": "2021-09-16T19:27:18.898Z",
                          "ACL": [],
                          "_version": 1,
                          "tags": []
                      }
                  ],
                  "module": "environment",
                  "acl": {
                      "read": true
                  },
                  "_metadata": {
                      "uid": "csfa77cbd080f5afbd"
                  }
              },
              {
                  "module": "branch",
                  "acl": {
                      "read": true
                  },
                  "branches": [
                      "main",
                      "development"
                  ],
                  "_metadata": {
                      "uid": "cs766df728fb56e697"
                  }
              },
              {
                  "module": "branch_alias",
                  "acl": {
                      "read": true
                  },
                  "branch_aliases": [
                      "deploy",
                      "release"
                  ],
                  "_metadata": {
                      "uid": "cs27a40bf57db84414"
                  }
              }
          ],
          "uid": "blt9d62d10720189b2e",
          "created_by": "blt1fd0057b90905592",
          "updated_by": "blt1fd0057b90905592",
          "created_at": "2021-09-22T16:01:34.410Z",
          "updated_at": "2021-09-22T16:01:34.410Z",
          "token": "cs93d9e3bb4bf8a0612d8bdb77",
          "type": "delivery",
          "_metadata": {
              "references": []
          }
      }
  }
  
  

• User Roles-related API requests that hit the Content Management API (CMA) will return the branches and branch_aliases keys under the rules section in the response body. These keys specify the unique IDs of the branches and branch aliases of which a particular user role can access data.

  When creating or updating a user role, you need to specify the branch and alias scope through the following schema in the request body:

  {
      "module":"branch",
      "branches":[
          "main"
      ],
      "acl":{
          "read":true
      }
  },
  {
      "module":"branch_alias",
      "branch_aliases":[
          "deploy"
      ],
      "acl":{
          "read":true
      }
  }
  
  

  For instance, here’s the response that you will get for the Create a role API request:

  {
      "notice":"The role created successfully.",
      "role":{
          "name":"Demo role",
          "description":"Demo role.",
          "rules":[
              {
                  "module":"content_type",
                  "content_types":[
                      "author"
                  ],
                  "acl":{
                      "read":true,
                      "sub_acl":{
                          "read":true,
                          "create":true,
                          "update":true,
                          "publish":true,
                          "delete":true
                      }
                  }
              },
              {
                  "module":"asset",
                  "assets":[
                      "$all"
                  ],
                  "acl":{
                      "read":true,
                      "create":true,
                      "update":true,
                      "publish":true,
                      "delete":true
                  }
              },
              {
                  "module":"environment",
                  "environments":[
                      "blta6fa90d8fc8a35b3"
                  ],
                  "acl":{
                      "read":true
                  }
              },
              {
                  "module":"locale",
                  "locales":[
                      "blt37255d0c5a6d20b1"
                  ],
                  "acl":{
                      "read":true
                  }
              },
              {
                  "module":"branch",
                  "branches":[
                      "main"
                  ],
                  "acl":{
                      "read":true
                  }
              },
              {
                  "module":"branch_alias",
                  "branch_aliases":[
                      "deploy"
                  ],
                  "acl":{
                      "read":true
                  }
              }
          ],
          "users":[
              
          ],
          "uid":"bltc590a9b813590e8e",
          "org_uid":"blteac54a27425b3b0e",
          "api_key":"blt29ec365eaa0c8d67",
          "created_by":"blt1fd0057b90905592",
          "updated_by":"blt1fd0057b90905592",
          "created_at":"2021-09-23T08:09:30.971Z",
          "updated_at":"2021-09-23T08:09:30.971Z"
      }
  }
  
  

[Potential Breaking Change] Updated Asset Download URL Format as per Branch

If the "Branches" feature is part of your plan, you will see an updated download URL format for all assets part of any branch, except the default main branch. The branch={branch_UID} query parameter is attached to the download URL.

For instance, if you upload an asset to the development branch, Contentstack generates the following asset download URL:

https://assets.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt252b550c5ccdae26/bltc56f275260214c0b/61280d9625aca65092ce7f15/Sample_Image.jpg?branch=development

For any asset that you upload to the main branch, Contentstack will continue to generate asset download URLs in the earlier format:

https://assets.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt252b550c5ccdae26/bltc56f275260214c0b/61280d9625aca65092ce7f15/Sample_Image.jpg

Support "include_branch" as Query Parameter in CMA and CDA API Requests

If the "Branches" feature is part of your plan, you can pass the include_branch query parameter while running Content Delivery API (CDA) / CDN and Content Management API (CMA) requests. Set the include_branch key to true to allow the API to return the _branch top-level key in the response. This key specifies the unique ID of the branch and helps identify where the concerned Contentstack module resides.

Here’s the list of the components that support the include_branch query parameter:

• Content Types [CDA / CMA]
• Global fields [CDA / CMA]
• Assets [CDA / CMA]
• Entries [CDA / CMA]
• Extensions
• Languages
• Releases
• Audit Log
• Publish Queue

Note: For Publish Queue and Audit Log related API requests, instead of "_branch": "{branch_ID}", you will see the "branch": "{branch_ID}" top-level key in the response.

Let us look at an example to understand how the response would look when you pass the include_branch query parameter. For instance, here’s the response that you will get for the Get all content types API request:

{
    "content_types": [
        {
            ...,
            "schema": [
                {
                    "display_name": "Title",
                    ...
                },
                {
                    "display_name": "URL",
                    ...
                },
            ],
            "last_activity": {},
            "maintain_revisions": true,
            "description": "",
            "DEFAULT_ACL": {
                "others": {
                    "read": false,
                    "create": false
                },
                "users": [
                    {
                        "read": true,
                        "sub_acl": {
                            "read": true
                        },
                        "uid": "blt690a3fed2a593445"
                    }
                ],
                "management_token": {
                    "read": true
                }
            },
            "SYS_ACL": {
                "roles": [
                    {
                        "uid": "bltdc9d89cd41565777",
                        "read": true,
                        "sub_acl": {
                            ...
                        },
                        "update": true,
                        "delete": true
                    },
                    {
                        ... 
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        ...
                        },
                        ...
                    }
                ],
                "others": {
                    ...
                    }
                }
            },
            "_branch": "development",
            "options": {
                "title": "title",
                "publishable": true,
                "is_page": true,
                "singleton": false,
                "sub_title": [
                    "url"
                ],
                "url_pattern": "/:title",
                "url_prefix": "/"
            },
            "abilities": {
                "get_one_object": true,
                "get_all_objects": true,
                "create_object": true,
                "update_object": true,
                "delete_object": true,
                "delete_all_objects": true
            }
        }
    ]
}

Note: The “branches” feature is available in Contentstack only for the new interface.

Contentstack now offers branching functionality that allows developers to experiment and innovate freely and collaborate with business teams. With Branches, developers can create copies of content type structures (schemas) to make changes and iterate without affecting deployments on the production server.

Branches can have their separate workflows to involve business users in making content modifications, enabling cross-functional innovation. Read our docs for more information.

Breaking Changes: When activating “Branches,” you will see a change in the API responses returned for several Content Delivery API (CDA) / CDN and Content Management API (CMA) requests. We have listed the changes introduced within the Breaking Changes PDF file for smooth adoption of the feature. You need to update your code with the relevant parameters to avoid breaking changes in your application.

Note: The Branches feature will be rolled out to all customers gradually over the next few weeks. It is available in Contentstack only for the new interface. For any inquiries, please reach out to our support team at [email protected].

Restrict Records Maintenance for Publish Queue Activities

Post this release, i.e., February 11, 2022, the Publish Queue of the stack will only maintain records of publishing/unpublishing activities performed within the last 90 days. This update ensures that constant publishing activity does not overload the queue.

For more information, refer to the Publish Queue documentation. You can also refer to the Publish Queue API documentation to understand how to fetch details using the Content Management API.

Restrict Records Maintenance for Audit Log Activities

Post this release, i.e., February 11, 2022, the Audit Log of the stack will only maintain records of activities (updates, deletes, publishing/unpublishing activities, etc.) performed within the last 90 days.

For more information, refer to the Audit Log documentation.

Webhook Signatures for Webhook Events

Post this release, i.e., February 11, 2022, Contentstack will sign all webhook events sent to your endpoints with a signature. This signature appears in each event's X-Contentstack-Request-Signature header. It allows you to verify the integrity of the data and the provider's authenticity (Contentstack) from which data is coming.

For more information, refer to the Webhook Signature documentation.

We introduced the following changes in our February 11, 2022 release:

• The Publish Queue of your stack now only maintains records of publishing/unpublishing activities performed within the last 90 days. This update ensures that constant publishing activity does not overload the queue.
• The Audit Log of your stack now only maintains records of activities (events) performed within the last 90 days.

Read more about these updates in our API Change Log documentation.

Contentstack now signs all webhook events sent to your endpoints with a signature. This signature appears in each event's X-Contentstack-Request-Signature header. It allows you to verify the integrity of the data and the provider's authenticity (Contentstack) from which data is coming.

For more information, refer to the Webhook Signature documentation.

You can now restrict access to the master language and add custom exceptions for all or specific languages while creating or updating a user role. For example, you can restrict a role from being able to "Create," "Update," or "Delete" entries localized in a specific language, e.g., English (United States) or French (France).

Read our documentation for more information.

You can now type in "/" in the JSON Rich Text Editor to open a formatting menu that contains options for formatting texts and bullets, embedding entries and assets, and so on. With the slash command, you can style and edit your content efficiently at a faster pace. To select a formatting option, choose from the displayed list or type the option you need to add.

For more information, read our documentation on Slash Command.

The new Update release items to their latest versions button updates all entries and assets in a release to their latest versions. This update feature ensures publishing up-to-date content with a release.

For more information, refer to our documentation on Update Release Items to their Latest Versions.

Post this release, i.e., January 21, 2022, whenever a webhook sends data to a specified notification URL, if any key name in the response begins with a dollar sign ($), it will be prefixed with the acronym "cs" as a wildcard. For example, the key named "$success" would be replaced with "cs$success."

Let's consider the following sample webhook data that contains a key prefixed with a dollar sign:

{
    "$success": true
}

The key name will be prefixed with the "cs" acronym, as shown in the following webhook data:

{
    "cs$success": true
}

With this update, whenever a webhook sends data to a specified notification URL, if any key name in the response begins with a dollar sign ($), it will be prefixed with the acronym "cs" as a wildcard. For example, the key named "$success" would be replaced with "cs$success."

Let's consider the following sample webhook data that contains a key prefixed with a dollar sign:

{
    "$success": true 
}

The key name will be prefixed with the "cs" acronym, as shown in the following sample webhook data:

{
    "cs$success": true
}

Read more about this feature in our API Change Log.

Password Reset Link Expiration

Earlier, Contentstack did not impose an expiration timeframe on password reset links you generate when you forget the password. This vulnerability could expose users to information security attacks.

Post January 07, 2022, Contentstack will invalidate all password reset links within 60 minutes from when you generate them. This update maintains a robust security mechanism and prevents accounts from being hacked. Once the link expires, you can create another link using Forgot password and reset your password.

You can now extend the functionality of your JSON Rich Text Editor with our latest JSON RTE Plugins. These plugins let you inject specific functional logic directly into the JSON Rich Text Editor through third-party tools, without the need to add separate fields to perform complex content checks.

JSON RTE Plugins lets you dynamically interact with and improve the rich text content by introducing features such as auto suggestions, grammar, and terminology checks that helps enhance content quality and accelerate editorial velocity.

Note: This plan-based feature will be available only for the JSON Rich Text Editor in the new Contentstack interface.

Read our documentation on JSON Rich Text Editor Plugins to get started with this feature.

Password Reset Link Expiration

Contentstack now disables all password reset links within 60 minutes from the time you generate them. Once the link expires, you can reuse the Forgot password option to generate a new link and reset the password.

For more information on this update, refer to our Password Reset Link Expiry API Change Log documentation.

Earlier, even though the Contentstack user interface did not allow the creation of multiple entries in a content type marked as "Single," users could still create them using the API. Post this release, i.e., October 19, 2021, Contentstack will restrict you from using the Content Management API (CMA) to create more than one entry in a content type that has been marked as "Single."

Note: This change will not affect existing entries created in a content type of type "Single" using the Content Management API (CMA). You will still be able to fetch those entries using the CMA.

To create multiple entries using the same content type, you need to mark that content type as "Multiple."

Webhook Circuit Breaker

A webhook request may fail to retrieve data from a specific notification URL under the following scenarios:

• The provided domain name is either invalid or does not exist
• The API fails to respond with data within 30 seconds
• The destination server aborted the connection

When a webhook request repeatedly fails 10 times under any of the above scenarios, the system detects the invalid URL and automatically disables the webhook configured for that client. Contentstack then marks the faulty webhook with an Unhealthy status.

If any webhook goes into an unhealthy state, webhook-related Content Management API (CMA) requests will return the unhealthy key in the response:

{
    "unhealthy":{
        "state":true
    }
}

We also send a notification email to the concerned client (user) whenever the Webhook Circuit Breaker disables any webhook in Contentstack. To enable the webhook again, you can refer to the webhook logs and debug the issue.

For more information, refer to our Webhook Circuit Breaker documentation.

Contentstack now deploys the Webhook Circuit Breaker (WCB) whenever any webhook uses up its allotted execution retry attempts. WCB automatically disables a webhook that repeatedly fails to retrieve data from a specific notification URL 10 times. The faulty webhook is then marked with an Unhealthy status.

If any webhook goes into an unhealthy state, webhook-related Content Management API (CMA) requests will return the unhealthy key in the response:

{
    "unhealthy":{
        "state":true
    }
}

Read more about this feature in our API Change Log.

Any regular expression added within the validation property of your content type should be valid. This update will restrict you from saving your content type if an invalid regex has been entered to avoid catastrophic backtracking.

The Regex Validation property helps you define a set of validation options for a given field. Initially, content types with invalid regexes were saved, and the validation check became time-consuming when executed. Regular expressions like these either freeze the browser or utilize 100% of the CPU core process.

The Get executions of a webhook API request now allows you to filter the webhook execution details based on a particular date range. To do so, you can pass from and to as query parameters within the API request. For both of these parameters, you need to provide a date in ISO format as the value. For instance, to set the start date in the from parameter to December 8, 2017, you can pass the date in ISO format as shown below:

from="2017-12-08T00:00:00.000Z"

Linking Content Management API Requests with Audit Log

Audit Log tracks and displays activities (events) performed in a particular stack. Initially, the API response body only contained information about the operations being performed. With multiple API requests being executed throughout the stack by various users, mapping each request was a tedious task.

After this release, you will be able to view a request_id key in the response body of the GET Audit Log and GET Audit Log Item requests. This key helps map the API requests made throughout a stack with the Audit Log.

The response schema would look as follows:

{
  "logs":[
    {
      "uid":"blt6f02145fb8599a9757be",
      "stack":"blt323b040550e614e3",
      "created_at":"2021-08-16T05:51:10.378Z",
      "created_by":"blt151bca2f320b01be",
      "module":"content_type",
      "event_type":"update",
      "request_id":"21028215907fbfe454c88df49ee5352a",
      "metadata":{
        "title":"Audit-log Test",
        "uid":"audit_log_test",
        "version":2,
        "scope":null
      }
    }
  ]
}

• from: Allows you to provide the start date in ISO format as value, e.g., from="2016-10-07T12:34:36.000Z"
• to: Allows you to provide the end date in ISO format as value, e.g., to="2017-12-08T00:00:00.000Z"

• Linking Content Management API Requests with Audit Log: We have updated the response body of the GET Audit Log and GET Audit Log Item requests with a request_id key which helps map all API requests made throughout a stack with the Audit Log. Let's look at a sample Audit Log schema:
  
  {
    "logs":[
      {
        "uid":"blt6f02145fb8599a9757be",
        "stack":"blt323b040550e614e3",
        "created_at":"2021-08-16T05:51:10.378Z",
        "created_by":"blt151bca2f320b01be",
        "module":"content_type",
        "event_type":"update",
        "request_id":"21028215907fbfe454c88df49ee5352a",
        "metadata":{
          "title":"Audit-log Test",
          "uid":"audit_log_test",
          "version":2,
          "scope":null
        }
      }
    ]
  }
  

  Learn more about the change in our API Change Log.

Whenever any webhook fails to send data to the desired notification URL or a session timeout occurs, Contentstack's exponential webhook retry policy attempts to send data to the destination URL again four more times after certain intervals. Setting a resend interval avoids several requests constantly hitting the server and prevents database overload.

The resend interval time lasts for 5 seconds, by default, for the first retry attempt. It increases exponentially as the retry instance number increases. The exponential backoff formula will look as follows:

{resend_interval} + {retry_instance} ^ 4

Read our Webhook Retry Policy section to know more.

The new JSON RTE field provides a hassle-free content editing experience for writers and enables developers to render rich-text data across all channels seamlessly. It stores and returns field data in JSON format, allowing developers to serialize the data in any human-readable format, paving the way for a truly omnichannel experience for your customers.

You can migrate your existing content from the HTML-based RTE to the new JSON RTE field using our CLI or change JSON data of the RTE into HTML using our serializer package. For more information, read our docs.

Note: This feature is available only in the new Contentstack interface.