Executive Summary

The Self-Service 2 (ESS2) 2025.2 release introduces many new features that improve ESS2's usability.

Forms for Product Items

We are pleased to announce a new feature - forms for product catalogue - that significantly improves the purchasing process. Previously, our catalog provided fundamental information such as product name, description, and price. With the new functionality, administrators can now enrich product entries with tailored form fields, like dropdown menus for color selection, directly associated with each item.
This enhancement allows users to efficiently navigate choices, selecting options with precision to align perfectly with their needs. By consolidating options within customizable forms, we simplify the catalog.

Administrators have the flexibility to configure these forms to adapt to diverse product offerings, whether deploying a single form across multiple items or creating unique forms for individual listings. These advanced forms elevate the user experience, enhance service capabilities, and provide greater value through improved catalog interaction.

Access Groups for Product catalogue

With Release 2025.2, we are expanding our role-based content capabilities to encompass the product catalog, further refining the personalization of the self-service user interface. This enhancement ensures that content presented to the end user is restricted according to their specific business role, resulting in an even more customized user experience.

Coupled with our previously introduced forms capability, this update significantly extends the potential use cases for self-service interactions by providing more targeted access to products and services. By assigning catalog access based on user roles, you can offer more distinct experiences tailored to each user's needs and responsibilities. Administrators will continue with the user-friendly approach to managing access groups now extended to the catalog.

List of Other Important Improvements

• Unseen Announcements : We have improved the announcement feature so users can easily see only the new messages. This helps users stay updated without sifting through old announcements.
• Field Validation : This feature checks the information users enter to the short text fields using regular expressions (RegEx), a popular method for ensuring inputs follow specific patterns. This helps make sure all entries are correct and consistent.
• Configurable Greeting Text : Administrators now have the ability to modify or remove the welcome message that appears on the home page allowing more personalized or simplified user greetings
• Multiple Category Assignment for Products : Product items can now be placed into several categories at once, making it easier to organize and find items in the product catalog.
• Extended Links on Home Page : The number of links you can have on the home page has increased from 5 to 15. This gives more options to add quick links, especially useful when using role-based content.

Release notes 2025.2.0

New Features

ESP-10547 Additional Information on Service Requests

Release note

On Catalog & Orders/Presentation tab, an admin can specify a Catalog Form that will be applied to all items in the Catalog. Catalog Forms list will only show forms that are associated with the current Order Template. If the Order Template is changed, the selected Catalog Form is removed from the field.

ESP-10696 Create & Manage Catalog Forms

Release note

Administrators can define form fields for items in a catalog, so that it enables gathering addtional information when an end-user makes an order/service request. “Form Pages” is renamed to “Process & Ticket Forms” and introduced a new section: “Catalog Forms”. Under Catalog Forms, the admin can create new Catalog forms.
Catalog & Orders/Order Settings/Order Template must be specified before any forms can be added. It is good to acknowledge that:

- Override defaults are not supported in catalog forms.

- Conditions can be added to form fields.

- A catalog form associated with the Catalog items is automatically set to Published.

- The catalog form will not appear in search results.

ESP-10834 Viewing catalog forms on End user UI

Release note

On ESS2 portal, UI will display form fields and form elements associated with the specified Catalog Form on all product items.

ESP-6480 Configure permissions to Catalog Items

Release note

Self-service administrators can add role-based content configuration to Product catalog (items and categories). The configuration section is located under a “Catalog” tab, under the “Access Rights” section of an Access Group. The admin can specify catalog items to which an Access Group grants access by selecting checkbox next to the item name. When new items are added to the catalog, new items initially appear as unselected.

ESP-10848 Specifying a Product Item Form

Release note

Administrators can specify a Catalog Form for for one or more specific items. When configuring, one or more product items can be selected from a list of all product items. Note that the admin cannot select a product item already used for another form. The admin can add as many new product item/catalog form combinations as necessary and edit an existing combination.

ESP-12186 Apply permissions to Catalog Items

Release note

For portal users, access to the catalog item will be controlled by permissions. If a user belongs to multiple groups, access to an item is granted if at least one group provides access.

ESP-12596 Setting Scope for Access Groups

Release note

Administrators can control where permissions are applied in the self-service by enabling settings for Forms and Catalog separately. The individual sections are controlled in platform settings and are:

for Forms → setting key ess2.access.groups.enabled.for.forms
for Catalog → setting key ess2.access.groups.enabled.for.catalog

For permissions to be applied to Forms or Catalog, both must be true. When the setting for Forms or Catalog is disabled, all portal users gain full access to the associated content.

When the setting for Access Groups is disabled, but (any combination of) settings for Forms or Catalog are enabled, all portal users gain full access to all published content.

Note: There is no scope setting for the “Category Management”. When access groups are enabled, access rights are always applied to categories based on items end user has rights.

ESP-13258 Caching Permissions for Catalog Items

Release note

The system caches access rights to catalog items in order to aid in the responsiveness of permission checks to content of the catalog.

ESP-13657 Applying permissions to the catalog

Release note

A self-service user can access the catalog access groups allow it. A user has access to the catalog if any of their access groups lets them view at least one item in it. The “Catalog” link in the main header is only visible if the user has access to the catalog. In the categorization tree (Panels and panel groups), links to the catalog are only visible if the user is allowed to access both the specific link and the catalog.

ESP-13942 Remove existing Catalog Item permissions when the catalog item template is changed

Release note

All existing catalog item permissions to be automatically deleted when the catalog template is changed, so that it is easier to ensure permissions can be set to the new template.

Before changing the catalog template, the admin is warned that all catalog permissions will be irreversibly deleted.

ESP-13955 Decouple tabs in Access Groups Admin UI

Release note

Administrators can manage access rights for category topics and their underlying resources independently. By removing synchronization between the category and forms tabs, admins can enable or revoke access rights for forms or catalog items more freely because all elements on all tabs are enabled and selectable. A warning icon will be displayed alongside selected category topics without the linked resource being selected. A warning will be shown in cases where there is no access to related content (form or catalog) or the associated form is in a draft state. Note that the access group can be saved even when warnings are present.

ESP-14059 Add authorization for Catalog Forms

Release note

An end user can see fields, options, and reference tooltips of form fields attached to a catalog item, only when they are member of an access group that grants access to that catalog item. When access groups are disabled, all authenticated users gain access to all forms attached to catalog items. 

ESP-10919 Field Validation

Release note

An ESS2 Administrator, can define field validation to Short Text Fields so that there is way to validate data entered by their users, to ensure it’s accuracy. In order to define field validation, the admin must enter a Regular Expression and a message if the validation fails. In the end-user portal, the associated string input should be validated when focused is moved out of the field and if data has been entered by the user.

ESP-11618 Unread announcements

Release note

If the user has not opened some of the announcements (to detail view), those announcements are bolded (“unread”), and the amount of unread announcements is indicated with number indicator (badge) on the top navigation. Once all the valid announcements are read (have been opened), the badge is not there. Note that read announcements don’t carry over to different browsers and devices because the status of the announcement (read or unread) is not shared between different users on the same browser or device.

ESP-3166 Configurable greeting text

Release note

A self-service administrator can customize the greeting text that is visible above the search bar. Admin can also enable or disable the greeting text in configuration. If greeting text field is empty the Self Service UI will display the default from the static file. The default text in English is "Hi", which is static text and has translations. On homepage configuration area of the self-service, the admin can override the default text. Note that altered greeting text does not use translations. User name (as received from the identity provider e.g. EPE/ESA), is always appended to the greeting text.

ESP-13380 Header can overlap the background image on ultrawide screens

Release note

Fixed the overlapping header on ultrawide screens.

ESP-12002 Search is not cleared after navigation to search results (iPad)

Release note

Search is now cleared on the iPad, after user navigates to the search result.

ESP-11867 Cannot delete form if there are conditions set

Release note

Fixed.

ESP-13710 Conditional field is not hidden if multi-select dropdown is cleared with clear button

Release note

Fixed when the conditional field is not hidden if multi-select dropdown is cleared with clear button.

ESP-13286 Actions bar on the Mobile is in wrong color

Release note

Fixed

Release notes 2025.2.1

Bug fixes

CP-10299: Access retained in ESS2 when saving Person Data Card to remove access group memberships

Release note

Fixed an issue where saving a Person Data Card that removed all access group memberships would result in an error instead of properly updating the membership cache, causing that person to retain their previous access rights in ESS2.

Release notes 2025.2.3

Bug fixes

CP-10359: ESS2 issue with 2 or more @ characters in username

Release note

When populating access group membership, username values from person data cards are used as they are.

CP-10346: ESS2 search/filtering does not work correctly

Release note

Filtering recognizes better different separators.

CP-10364: ESS2 form field values added in different order to text attribute in 2025.2

Release note

Resolved a bug where the order of multimapped data did not match the sequence of form fields when saving.