Release Highlights
Release 2.0 (Burgundy) introduces powerful new communication capabilities and specification enhancements to streamline supplier collaboration. This release focuses on reducing email overload, improving traceability, and expanding product data capture for global compliance requirements.
Key Takeaways:
- New Chat Feature - Real-time messaging between suppliers and customers eliminates email back-and-forth
- Enhanced Specification Templates - Expanded allergen tracking and regional compliance fields for global markets
- Strengthened Security - API rate limiting and cipher improvements protect your data
- Improved Workflows - Faster incident management, better document organization, and clearer task resolution
What's New
Major Features
Real-Time Chat Communication
Why this matters: Managing supplier relationships through endless email threads creates delays, lost messages, and difficulty tracking conversations. Teams waste hours searching through inboxes for critical information.
What you can do:
- Send instant messages to suppliers or customers directly within the platform
- Create user-to-user chats for private conversations or company-to-company chats visible to all team members
- Attach files to messages for quick document sharing
- See when messages have been read with visual indicators
- Search and filter conversations to find information quickly
- Receive hourly email digests of unread messages (with opt-out available)
- Get in-app notifications showing unread message counts in the header
- Add new users to companies directly from the chat interface when needed
Enhanced Incident Comment System
Why this matters: Complex incidents require ongoing dialogue between suppliers and customers. Previously, you could only communicate when submitting responses, creating artificial delays in resolving issues.
What you can do:
- Add comments to incidents without submitting a formal response
- View comment history with timestamps and author information organized by status
- See comment counts at a glance to understand conversation activity
- Add context and questions while working on incident responses
- Receive automatic notifications when new comments are added
Expanded Specification Data Capture
Why this matters: Global retailers need detailed product information to comply with regulations across different markets. Missing data causes delays and can prevent products from reaching certain regions.
What you can do:
- Track allergens at the individual ingredient component level for precise declarations
- Specify regional compliance for EU, Australia & New Zealand, or Canada & United States labeling requirements
- Capture weights for nutritional calculations without cutting waste
- Document certification claims including Organic, Fair Trade, Gluten-Free, GMO-Free, Non-GMO Project Verified, and Rainforest Alliance
- Record CIMSCEE calculation usage for food safety controls
- Add free-text values for final product percentages with more flexibility
⭐ Additional Features
- Company-Level Supplier Codes: Deep-link navigation from Safe Food now checks company-level supplier codes if no site-level match is found, enabling faster profile access
- Automatic Gross Weight Validation: Specifications now validate that gross weight equals net weight plus primary and secondary packaging components, catching data entry errors before submission
- Manual Certificate User Tracking: All edits to manual certificates now record which user made changes for improved audit trails
- Specification Request Due Date Updates: When reviewers send specifications back for corrections, the new due date automatically updates on the supplier's view
Improvements
High Impact
| Feature | Improvement | Benefit |
|---|---|---|
| Task Management | Tasks now resolve immediately when actions are completed, not through background processing | No more confusion from seeing "completed" tasks still listed on your homepage |
| Incident Management | Overdue specification notices now appear with clear messaging when viewing details | Suppliers immediately understand urgency and prioritize accordingly |
| Document Organization | Document versions automatically sort with newest at top | Faster access to current versions without manual searching |
| Assessment Workflows | Multi-answer assessment page loading speed significantly improved | Smoother experience when responding to multiple assessment questions |
Medium Impact
- Site Contact Assignment: When adding contacts from filtered profile views, the system now correctly associates them with the selected site
- License Code Display: License codes now display properly in supplier product reports with clear separation between company and site codes
- Workflow Layout: Improved visual organization when creating and viewing workflow steps
- Product Mapping Task Resolution: Rejecting product mapping requests now immediately removes the task from your homepage
- Comment History Display: Incident history view consolidates repeated status entries for cleaner reading when multiple comments exist under the same status
Bug Fixes
Incident & Site Action Fixes:- Returned incidents now load without errors when viewing details or attempting to close
- Incident review tasks update correctly when suppliers submit responses back to customers
- Specification request status dates now show the most recent action date in document headers rather than outdated timestamps
- Site assessment closure operations complete successfully without generating errors
- Assessment multi-answer pages render properly without infinite loading states
- Question-level report hover effects work as intended without excessive highlighting
- Product acceptance column displays at full width with improved site selection visibility
- Navigation controls on bulk assessment answer pages function without script errors
Technical Updates
Security & Compliance
API Rate Limiting: Implemented rate limiting across all API endpoints (Communications, Account, Admin, Assessments, Certification, Documents, Reporting, Site Actions, Specifications, Workflows) to protect against abuse while maintaining performance for legitimate usage. System endpoints exempt from limits.
PI Enhancements
Specification API Expansion: API responses now include ingredient-level allergen data, regional origin labeling information, nutritional calculation weights, and certification claim details when retrieving specification versions.