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Stack Overflow Enterprise Release Notes
Stack Overflow Enterprise Release Notes

Release notes for all versions of Stack Overflow Enterprise.

Joel Bradley avatar
Written by Joel Bradley
Updated this week
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Tags | Release notes |

Applies to: Enterprise

This documentation is for Stack Overflow Enterprise. Free, Basic, and Business users can access their documentation here. Find your plan.

Release 2024.3 (4/30/2024, SOE hosted only)

Major changes

Additional Home Page Widgets and Improvements

We’ve added additional homepage widgets with more actionable content to engage your users:

  • Reputation widget Shows reputation gains in a graph format.

  • Trending and unanswered questions An improved algorithm makes these sections more relevant to the user.

  • Your Contributions tab Allows users to view their contributions within the homepage.

  • Tag recommendations Based on their activity, recommends tags to users who are not yet watching any tags.

  • Welcome state Improved for new users.

Consistent Search Results

Prior to this release, users could experience inconsistent results when searching from within SOE, the MS Teams and Slack integrations, and the API. Now SOE, integrations, and API v3 use the same search algorithm for consistent results.

API v3 Enhancements

We’ve added new API v3 endpoints to delete answers, undo upvotes, and search content. The new API v3 /search endpoint offers results consistent with other search methods.

NOTE: Prior to this release of API v3, API searches could deliver results inconsistent with other search methods. If you're using API v2 search, we strongly recommend using the improved API v3 search instead.

Accessibility Improvements

  • Editor controls are now supported in forced colors modes (for example: Windows high-contrast mode).

  • Checkboxes checked status is now accessible in forced colors modes.

  • Improved keyboard navigation for Create new article element when in high-contrast mode.

  • Save notification and Cancel buttons on questions are now accessible via the keyboard.

  • Appropriate role given to Add People and Create a Custom filter.

  • We have redesigned our button groups to make them more accessible.

Release 2024.2 (2/22/2024, SOE hosted only)

Major changes

New Homepage

The Stack Overflow Enterprise homepage has been redesigned to add more actionable content to engage your users.

  • For You overview

  • New trending content

  • New top unanswered questions

  • "Your Impact" and badge progress

  • Recent activity

Article Drafts

With article drafts, you can revise your article and collaborate with other users before publishing to your Stack Overflow for Teams site. Article authors can add collaborators via the article Permission settings. Collaborators will receive a For You notification so they know they've been added as an editor for the article. Article drafts are visible to the original author, collaborators, site administrators, and moderators in the Articles feed.

New communities and collections API endpoints

Communities API v3 endpoint

  • Fetch a list of communities and their properties (e.g. tags, member count) for reporting.

  • Users may join communities via the API.

  • Fetch community data for the /questions, /answers, and /users endpoints.

Collections API v3 endpoint

  • Fetch a list of collections and their properties (e.g. tags, content count) for reporting.

  • Manage collections at scale by bulk adding questions and articles to a new collection.

  • Fetch collection data for the /questions,/answers,and /articles endpoints.

Integration for Slack app improvements

Use the @ command to search
You can now invoke the Stack Overflow for Teams app to search your knowledge base for a particular topic using the "@Stack Overflow for Teams" command in addition to the "/stack" command.

Avoid clutter with responses in thread
When you use the @ command to search your Stack Overflow for Teams knowledge base, responses will be in a thread instead of the channel to avoid unnecessary noise and clutter.

Updated response UI

  • Search response shows questions and top answer

  • Upvote

  • See more results

  • See more answers

  • Suggest a person to answer

*NOTE: To take advantage of these integration for Slack improvements, you'll need to download a new manifest file and install the updates to the Slack app. Learn how to update the Slack manifest. *

Accessibility updates

To increase legibility, several UI (user interface) elements now have a 3:1 contrast ratio that complies with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.2 Level AA requirements. These include left navigation focus state, search dropdown list, and the focus ring on various UI components.

Bug fixes

  • Upvoting from the Slack bot no longer returns a 500 error.

  • Searching for users in dialogue boxes and @ing users in comments should be faster for sites with a significant amount of users.

  • "Last seen between" filters on the Users and permissions page is now working.

  • The MS Teams integration will no longer post duplicate notifications.

  • APIv3 - The Article endpoint now supports Title, Body, Type, and Tags using a PUT command.

Security updates

  • .NET was updated to 6.0.27

  • The integration for Slack now verifies all incoming Slack requests.

Release 2024.1 (12/15/2023, SOE hosted only)

Major changes

Improved search

New machine language learning (MLL) search capabilities transcend traditional keywords to consider context, intent, and meaning. Users can locate content faster and more consistently with flexible, intuitive searches ultimately leading to more relevant results.

MLL search is not available when searching private teams.

Your 2023 Stacked

Your 2023 Stacked is an annual look-back that showcases work done by contributors, subject matter experts, and community managers. Your 2023 Stacked goes beyond the dashboard, using a visually engaging experience to highlight and celebrate members’ contributions to—and impact on—their communities over the previous calendar year.

This can be accessed at /your-2023-stacked.

New Slack UI

The Stack Overflow integration for Slack now uses the latest Block Kit user interface. This update brings our Slack application user interface up to current standards, laying a foundation for improved interactivity in future updates. This improvement aligns with our ongoing commitment to deliver a seamless and efficient user experience. Stack Overflow Enterprise will automatically apply the new user interface with the 2024.1 release, with no installation prerequisites.

Bug fixes

Microsoft Teams notifications are no longer failing when the combined character length of tags exceeds 300 characters.

Security Updates

.Net updated to .NET 6.0.26.

Release 2023.3 (11/27/2023, SOE hosted only)

Major changes

Improved Search

New "fuzzy" search capabilities offer more flexibility in search terms for better search results.

New navigation

A clearer and better-organized navigation menu helps users discover content and take action, offering:

  • Increased visibility of key features.

  • Improved accessibility.

  • More prominent customer brand color.

Articles enhancements

With this release comes new Article features to enhance their usability, including:

  • Article timeline (edit history).

  • Expanded edit permissions.

  • Slack & MS Teams notifications of new Articles.

  • Subject Matter Expert (SME) author labels.

Community insights & updates

A new Community insights box displays key usage metrics including:

  • Median time to answer.

  • Answer ratio.

  • Interaction rate.

SOE now allows up to 30 tags in a Community (previously 10 tags).

New Tags page and SME insights

The new Tags page makes locating content quicker for users, and managing tags and SMEs simpler for admins and moderators.

  • A new table view allows filtering and sorting for quick discovery of popular tags, as well as tags that have no SMEs assigned.

  • Admins and moderators can easily assign SMEs and edit tag info, right from the table view.

  • Users can quickly see your site’s most popular topics and subscribe to get notified of new posts.

More ways to vote

Users can now upvote SOE content from the Slack and MS Teams integrations. This enhancement should increase voting usage and participation, as well as improve visibility of received votes.

New API v3 properties and endpoints

This release brings several improvements to Stack Overflow for Teams API v3.

  • Tags New watcherCount tag attribute shows how many users are watching a specific tag.

  • SME Status Returned answer objects now include the isSubjectMatterExpert attribute. With better visibility into SME contributions, your API integration can mark answers as “by a subject matter expert.”

  • Email address User objects now include the email attribute as a unique identifier to map Stack Overflow for Teams data across external systems. A new endpoint also adds the ability to search for users by email address.

  • Articles New API v3 endpoints allow for the creation and management of Articles.

Accessibility updates

  • Markdown-switching icons in the text editor are now white on the selected state in high contrast mode.

  • The following items now meet WCAG 2 AA contrast ratio thresholds:

    • Tags

    • Date & Time on Q&A content

    • “Draft saved” text

    • Page number and pagination controls

New SOE Help Center

The SOE Help Center at /help has been deprecated with the 2023.3 release. The Help Center link will now direct users to https://stackoverflowteams.help/en. This will allow us to offer continuous improvements to our end-user product documentation without waiting for new releases.

SCIM update

SCIM integrations can now promote and demote users from regular user, moderator, and admin statuses. A new checkbox on the SCIM management page enables the admin promotion/demotion feature.

Release 2023.2 (7/25/23)

Major changes

Connectivity

With this release comes Connectivity, a new Dashboard feature leveraging user attributes (department and job title) to surface meaningful insights into how knowledge flows across the organization, so you can track and visualize collaboration to continue to break down silos:

  • Report on and visualize Connection metrics to establish benchmarks and track progress on how knowledge is shared across your organization.

  • Visualize how cross-functional teams engage and how often answers come from other departments and roles.

  • Identify opportunities to engage less active departments and roles.

Communities Improvements

  • Community invitations: scale your Community more quickly with new invitation options - User Groups and Departments.

  • Community details: the purpose and content metrics now display below the Community’s name.

  • Community Actions For You: the Overview page now includes an “Unanswered questions” section, and Activity timeline can toggle between “your activity” and “all activity” feeds.

  • Filter Dashboard by Community or multiple tags: users can now filter the Enhanced Dashboard by multiple tags (up to 10) or by a Community (based on the Community’s pre-defined set of tags) to get more data around a big picture topic. Note, the option to filter by Community will show only if Communities is enabled.

Bookmarks

Bookmarks make it easy for users to save and retrieve their favorite content by clicking on the bookmark icon under the voting buttons. To help users get even more out of this feature, we’re making the following improvements in this release:

  • Better discoverability: now users can easily access Bookmarks wherever they are on their SOE site by clicking on “Bookmarks” in the left-hand menu to access saved content.

  • More content: in addition to Questions, users can now bookmark Articles and Collections, with all of their favorite content stored in one central space.

  • Improved searchability: users can search and filter saved content on their Bookmarks page.

On-premises: changes to infrastructure requirements

Exceptions storage optimization and new ExceptionsEE database

As of the SOE 2023.1 release, SOE Hosted stores exceptions in a new, dedicated database. As of the 2023.2 release, the new database connection information is required for all On-premises deployments as well, with the following actions needed before upgrading to 2023.2:

  1. Create a new ExceptionsEE database and create or map db user(s).

  2. Ensure required permissions exist and prepare connection strings.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed an issue preventing the merge of two tags when User Groups are assigned as Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).

  • Resolved an issue where Weekly Digest Email Notifications were sent to deleted users (as of post-GA update).

  • Microsoft Teams integration: fixed a bug so that tag filer selection is retained when editing new notifications (as of post-GA update).

Security

  • Updated to Microsoft .NET 6.0.21 (as of GA Release).

    • Updated to Microsoft .NET 6.0.23 from Patch Tuesday Oct 10 2023 (as of post-GA update).

  • Addressed an open direct vulnerability with the logout button as reported from a security audit (as of post-GA update).

Release 2023.1 (3/21/2023)

Major changes

Communities

The Communities feature provides open central spaces for users to connect with colleagues, break down knowledge silos, share resources and grow their expertise. Unlike Private Teams intended to restrict information within a group for specific purposes, Community content and membership are open and visible to all users on your site:

  • Any user can create, join, or leave a Community.

  • Any user can browse and contribute to questions, answers, Articles and Collections, see tags, Subject Matter Experts, Community members and activity.

  • Administrators, Moderators, and the Community creator can manage the name, purpose and tags of a Community.

  • All users will see Community activity in the existing weekly digest email, which highlights newest Communities in the past month and largest Communities (by member count) on your site.

Users can also subscribe to notifications for a Community via Slack and/or Microsoft Teams integration.

Stack Overflow for Teams API v3

This release introduces the third version of our Stack Overflow for Teams API which extends API v2 capabilities with new functionality by popular customer request, providing endpoints for Subject Matter Expert (SME), User Group, and Private Team management:

  • Get or update SMEs for a tag, add or remove users or User Groups as SMEs.

  • Create and edit User Groups, add or remove members.

  • Perform actions via API in Private Teams in addition to the Main Site.

Built on a new interface in a separate location within the SOE application at https://[your_site]/api/v3, API v3 can be used alongside v2 (https://[your_site]/api/docs) to augment existing integrations.

Elasticsearch v5/v6 and Redis v2/v4 support deprecation

The 2022.3 release brought long-awaited updates to both Elasticsearch and Redis, while continuing to support Elasticsearch versions 5 and 6, and Redis versions 2 and 4, alongside the newer versions. Starting with this release, SOE will support only Elasticsearch 7 and Redis 6. If using your own Elasticsearch and/or Redis cluster(s), you must upgrade to the supported version after upgrading to SOE 2022.3 and before upgrading to SOE 2023.1, otherwise some SOE features will cease to function.

Windows Server 2022 support available, Windows and SQL Server 2016 support deprecated

SOE officially supports Windows Server 2022 as of the 2023.1 release. We no longer support the following versions of Windows Server and SQL Server whose Microsoft Mainstream Support ended in 2021 and 2022:

  • Windows Server 2016: Mainstream Ended Jan 11, 2022

  • SQL Server 2016: Mainstream Ended Jul 13, 2021

Bug fixes

  • Fixed an issue where saving a Custom Filter excluded Articles from the results page.

  • Clarified Enhanced Dashboard "Compared to" date range options text (such as from “Previous 3 months” to “Three months ago”).

  • Fixed a bug where user profile images were not rendered in the “Manage subject matter experts” popup.

  • Resolved an issue where tag-related For You notifications remained for ex-SMEs when the tag was deleted, causing “Unable to render UserFeedItem” exceptions as shown on /admin/errors page.

  • For SOE instances with Private Teams feature enabled: resolved a bug where total counts in “Activated” and “All” filter labels did not match search results under Admin Settings -> Users and permissions.

  • Addressed an issue in SOE user account creation messaging to clarify the information comes from the Identify Provider (IdP).

  • Fixed an issue where quarterly or yearly sorts by reputation in Users tab may be outdated on larger SOE instances with >10k users.

  • Fixed a field description typo on the Custom Award creation page.

  • More...

Security

  • Addressed a low-risk Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability impacting tag deletion as part of a regular proactive security audit.

  • Addressed a Reflected Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability impacting several /developer routes as part of a regular proactive security audit (as of GA release).

Release 2022.3 (11/16/2022)

Major changes

Enhanced Dashboard improvements

First introduced in the 2022.2 release, the Enhanced Dashboard provides key metrics to help you measure community engagement and take action. The 2022.3 release improves upon these features:

  • With new "View posts" quick links in the "Answers Ratio" widget, you can now choose to view questions with an accepted answer, questions with unaccepted answers, or questions with no answers. These specific question sets help you prioritize and surface posts to ultimately improve the answer ratio on your site.

  • We’re bringing back the Total Users and Reputation Earned metrics in the Dashboard subheading based on the selected timeframe. You can see at a glance the number of activated users on your site, and how users are demonstrating expertise and building trust with your team during the selected time period.

Accessibility improvements

To help fulfill our mission at Stack Overflow to empower the world to develop technology through collective knowledge, our products must provide an accessible experience to all users. For the 2022.3 release, we’re focused on improving color contrast, alternative text, form labels, and screen reader compatibility.

Microsoft Teams Integration: editor improvements

This release brings the full Stack Overflow Enterprise editor experience to the Microsoft Teams integration. Users now get the full WYSIWYG formatting functionality when asking questions within the integration as on the SOE site, as well as the ability to upload images.

On-premises: updates to both included and supported versions of Elasticsearch and Redis

Stack Overflow Enterprise uses Elasticsearch to index data for searches, calculate related questions, and provide suggestions when asking a question. SOE uses Redis to cache data and reduce load on the databases. We also use Redis as a publish/subscribe mechanism to share information between Redis clients.

This release brings long-awaited updates to both Elasticsearch and Redis. The SOE 2022.3 installer will replace Elasticsearch version 5 with 7 (which contains bundled Java 18), and Redis on Windows version 2 with a Redis 6-compatible service (Memurai), if you choose to use default setups. It will also remove the older Java 8 dependency unless configured otherwise. The 2022.3 release continues to support Elasticsearch versions 5 and 6, and Redis versions 2 and 4, alongside the newer versions.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed a Subject Matter Expert refresh issue where a stale SME list is shown when a question’s tags change.

  • Fixed Enhanced Dashboard widget "Daily unique visitors" legend by removing percentage sign for raw totals.

  • Addressed an issue where the end date on Dashboard metric widgets does not appear to match the selected range.

  • Fixed an issue where large Article edits are not condensed in For You notifications.

  • Addressed a User Management menu rendering issue for deactivated users.

  • Fixed a bug where a user’s reactions on posts are not shown under User profile -> Activity -> "Votes and reactions" page when filtering by reactions.

  • Resolved an issue where "About me" placeholder text configured via Custom Messages is not displayed in the User Profile text editor.

  • Fixed markdown issues within the Stacks Editor such as with underscores and bolding.

  • More...

Security

  • Deprecated the Auth.SAMLAllowMultipleAssertionsOn Site Setting introduced in the 2022.1 release, in order to further tighten security.

  • Addressed a user interface issue to ensure jQuery and CSS are loaded from the local file system to reduce supply chain vulnerability risks.

  • For SOE instances with Private Teams feature enabled: discovered and remediated a script injection vulnerability by sanitizing the names of Private Teams, as part of a regular proactive security audit (as of GA release).

  • Updated to System.Data.SqlClient 4.8.5 which addresses Microsoft Security Vulnerability CVE 2022-41064 (as of GA release).

  • Addressed a low-risk Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability impacting tag deletion as part of a regular proactive security audit (as of Build version 2022.3.39.29).

Older releases, more details

For release notes for older SOE versions, or for more details on certain releases listed above (such as minor changes, additional bug fixes), please reach out to support.

If you need further support or have questions, contact your site administrator.

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