We are excited to announce the release of MediationZone 9.2!

The key focus area in release 9.2 is to optimize productivity and efficiency benefits by introducing new features and enhancements designed to facilitate integration and interoperability. 

Three of the key features are:

Built-in Avro Encode/Decode with Schema Registry Support

Previously, you had to write Avro format definitions in Ultra formats, compile, and save them in MediationZone. Now we have introduced a more streamlined approach allowing you to refer to external schema registries where the Avro format definition resides, eliminating the need for any internally saved definition in MediationZone. This marks a significant shift as it is the first type of format definition that does not reside in MediationZone. You now have the flexibility to incorporate multiple schema registries within a single workflow, such as distinct ones for the Decoder, Encoder, and APL functions. 

Seamless integration with a centralized schema registry mitigates compatibility issues and promotes seamless interoperability and reliability in distributed systems, see Avro Support.

Git and AWS S3 Import/Export feature 

Import and Export integration with Git and AWS S3 enables you to streamline version control. You can clone Git and AWS S3 repositories, import/export configurations, and switch branches directly from MediationZone, which has been highly requested, see System Exporter.

Support for 3GPP release 17 

In terms of performance enhancements for our Telco customers, this release not only improves performance but also provides scalability benefits, unlocking new features and improvements for next-generation 5G network solutions providing you access to functionalities specifically designed to handle emerging charging use cases, such as network slicing and non-public networks.

We encourage you to explore all the detailed features and enhancements below to gain a comprehensive understanding of the capabilities in MediationZone 9.2:

New Features

Authentication and Access

• Authorization Server

• Access Controller - Access Group Name

• HTTP/2 Client Agent Supports Additional Access Token Request

• Support for 2-way Authentication for Web Services Agents and Profiles

MariaDB Support

• MariaDB in Database Profile

• Reference Data Management Supports MariaDB

APL Functions

• New APL function: mailNotifyHtml

• Database Table to Support tableGetMetaInfo Function

New Connectors

• FTP EWSD Agent

• Netia FTP Agent

Integration

• Avro Encoding and Decoding

• Support of Amazon S3 and Git in System Importer and System Exporter

• HTTP/2 Server Agent Supports Proxy During Registration in NRF

• REST Client Agent Supports Proxy

• Amazon S3 Agent Supports Proxy

Usability

• Log Files UI

Enhancements

Usability

• MZSH Command For Shutting Down Desktop and Legacy Desktop

• Download Page for Desktop Launcher and DTK

• Pico Management and System Monitor in the Desktop Online

• Operations REST Interface for Workflows and Workflow Groups

5G Profile Support

• 5G Profile Supports 3GPP Rel-17

• 5G Profile Supports Multiple Primary NRF Address in HTTP/2 Server Agent

Elimination of Disk Dependency

• Database Support in Inter Workflow

• Duplicate UDR Supports SAP HANA Database

Compliance

• Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Support

• Support for Python 3.12

Extended Functionality

• SFTP Supports Bind Address

• Data Veracity Supports SAP HANA Database

• Kafka Agents Support mTLS

All of these are explained in more detail in MediationZone 9.2 Release .

The release can be accessed: Release Information .

Overall user documentation is available at: https://infozone.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/MD92 .

Enjoy! 🌟

During the last quarter, we have released the following new capabilities and enhancements in Usage Engine Cloud Edition:

🚀 New Capabilities

Single Sign-On

In January we introduced Single Sign-On (SSO) for Usage Engine Cloud Edition users.

Usage Engine supports the federation of your Identity Provider, allowing you to centrally manage the identity of Usage Engine users, which is done by configuring Usage Engine to establish a trust relationship with your Identity Provider. Once the relationship has been established, any user belonging to your domain will be directed to your Identity Provider and you will have control over which users can access Usage Engine and their respective security policies, such as password complexity or Multi-Factor Authentication.

We currently support the following Identity Providers:

• Okta WorkForce

• Microsoft Azure AD

• Microsoft AD

• Google Workspace

• Ping Federate

If your Identity Provider is not on the list but supports SAML or OpenID, please, contact us through our Self Service Portal for an evaluation.

Key Benefits

• Streamlined User Experience - With SSO, you can access Usage Engine and other integrated applications with just one set of credentials, saving time and reducing the hassle of remembering multiple passwords.

• Enhanced Security - SSO enhances security by centralizing the authentication processes, reducing the risk of exposure to password-related vulnerabilities.

Enabling SSO

Contact contact us through our Self Service Portal and our experts will organize a meeting to guide you through the setup process for enabling SSO.

Kafka Consumer

Apache Kafka is a distributed publish-subscribe messaging system and a robust queue that can handle high volumes of data enabling you to pass messages from one endpoint to another. We have now introduced the Kafka Consumer function in the Usage Engine’s integrated function library which you can use to retrieve distributed messages from Kafka topics to process in your streams. We will be introducing the Kafka Producer function in an upcoming release update.

Main Capabilities

The Kafka Consumer collects messages from your Kafka cluster and processes them in your stream. You can configure the Kafka Consumer to collect messages from one or several brokers and topics. When the messages have been retrieved, they are converted to readable strings and passed on to the next function in the stream for further processing.

Additional Capabilities

• Options to collect all or new messages - For every selected topic, you can decide to collect either all messages or only messages from the last offset. A Consumer Group ID can also be assigned for a new collection.

• Batch collection - You can configure the batch size for messages to be collected. The collected messages in the batches are then committed to subsequent functions.

Feedback Widget

We’d like to hear from you!

To share your feedback about Usage Engine Cloud Edition, good or bad, click on the Give feedback option at the bottom of the navigation panel to the left. Your feedback will help us improve our product in ways that matter to you.

🌟 Improvements/Enhancement

Logs Viewer

In the Stream Logs View, we have added new columns and filtering options.

The Timestamp column now includes milliseconds and the Origin column displays the origin for all log events, including those triggered by mechanisms other than functions, such as Engine, Transaction Manager, etc.

New columns for Execution ID and Replica ID have been added which display the ID of the stream execution and the ID of the replica, respectively. This can be useful when applying filters to find events occurring during a specific execution or for a specific replica.

The number of rows displayed is by default 100, but it can be changed to 50, 20, or 10. You can apply filters on Message content, Execution ID, Replica ID, Date, Severity, and Origin, to narrow down the number of entries. When filtering on Message you can use both regexp and boolean statements.

You can also adjust which columns you want to display in the table.

Zuora Usage Records

With the Zuora Usage Records forwarder, you can send usage records to the Zuora billing system. Active Rating is also supported, which is useful for Zuora users who already have this feature enabled.

Main Functionality

The Zuora Usage Records forwarder sends usage records of any size to the Zuora billing system in a single stream transaction. Once the records have been received and accepted by Zuora, the billing system will process them according to the Zuora processing timeline.

Additional Capabilities

The Zuora Usage Records forwarder also has the following capabilities:

• Interconnect Setting - With the built-in interconnect function within the Zuora Usage Records Forwarder, the forwarder can send the session ID returned by the Zuora billing system to a subsequent stream, allowing you to track the processing of usage records in the Zuora billing system.

• Auto-populated field values - There are now pre-configured values available for selection in the Tenant field. If you select any of the existing Zuora environments in the Tenant list, the connection details, such as tenant URL, are automatically populated in the configuration.

• Pre-configured Mandatory and Optional fields - Mandatory and optional fields are pre-labeled according to the structure of the usage record for non-Active Rating and Active Rating, which simplifies the mapping of the fields.

• Retry on fail –  You can now retry sending requests when the initial request returns a 5xx error code, and you can configure the number of times to retry. Once the number or retries has been exhausted, you can select to either ignore the error or terminate the stream. 

🌟

We hope you enjoy these new capabilities and enhancements. As always, we appreciate your feedback. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to us through our Self Service Portal.

As part of our commitment and ensuring compliance with all regulatory requirements, we recently announced some changes to our software distribution process. We would like to inform you that these changes have now been successfully implemented.

For MediationZone 9 Releases:
The distribution of MediationZone 9 releases has moved to Salesforce. This change aims to streamline the download process, ensuring you have secure and straightforward access to the software. To access and download MediationZone 9 releases, please visit our Salesforce platform. This does not impact MediationZone 8 releases.

For Usage Engine Private Edition Releases:
We are maintaining the public availability of helm charts, allowing you to easily manage your deployments.
However, to further secure our software distribution, we have made significant changes to the accessibility of Usage Engine Private Edition containers:

• All existing Usage Engine Private Edition containers stored in GitHub repositories have been converted from public to private access.

• We have introduced a new distribution method for Usage Engine Private Edition releases. Usage Engine Private Edition images will now be distributed via an AWS ECR repository.

• To download Usage Engine Private Edition images, we kindly ask you to contact our Support team. Our team will provide you with the necessary access and connections.

Ongoing Support:

We understand that changes of this nature may require adjustments on your part. Should you have any questions or need further clarification, our Support team is here to help. We encourage you to reach out to us directly for assistance.