Liferay Portal 7.4 CE GA78 and Liferay DXP 7.4 Update 78 Tomcat Bundles and Docker Images come with Elasticsearch 7.17.10 for Sidecar.

With this new front-end client extension users will be able to add an entry to the global import map.

This can be used to share code between decoupled client extensions that are freed from the need to know the deployment URL of the code at build time. For example, this will allow you to share your library or framework of choice among all your front-end client extensions:

For a script to consume the JavaScript module referred to by the import map entry, it needs to be of type=module.

In order to help developers to understand how to use this client extension, a sample has been provided: https://github.com/liferay/liferay-portal/tree/master/workspaces/liferay-sample-workspace/client-extensions/liferay-sample-etc-frontend-2

This new frontend client extension allows users to replace the existing theme spritemap without the need to redeploy a theme. The spritemap should include all icons needed for the scope where it is used.

The Control Panel still uses the admin spritemap.

After registering the client extension, in the page template or page you need to use it, configure it from the design options menu:

To enable this client extension, do it from the Feature Flags management UI:

It has extended the support for External Reference Code to other Liferay entities in version 7.4. With this new parameter, users will be able to access, create, update and delete various entities by simply specifying the scopeKey and the external reference code.

This External Reference Code is a custom identifier, which means that at the creation time it can be set, helping to migrate entities from one environment to another while keeping this External Reference Code the same across environments. You can check the available endpoints to be accessed by External Reference Code in the API explorer.

Now users can manage the tags and categories associated with the Objects entries from the REST APIs. When an Object has Categorization enabled, properties for tags and categories will be exposed in the Object entries schemas. Users can retrieve the information, set or update the tags and categories associated with the Object entries as well as use the information of these fields to filter information

Now it is possible to use all query parameters available from the API explorer. Parameters such as fields, nestedFields or flatten are accessible and ready to use in your test queries.

With this feature it is possible to differentiate the login failures in the audit messages, which one is caused by incorrect password and which one is caused by incorrect login.

Before this change, audit messages were only returned for cases when the authentication failed with FAILURE status, which happens when the user provides an incorrect password. The event type is LOGIN_FAILURE in this case.

With the new changes, it is provided audit information for cases when the authentication fails with DNE status by adding a LOGIN_DNE event type. DNE stands for user "does not exist", it always means that the login (email / screenName / userID) is incorrect.

So with the newly added LOGIN_DNE event type we cover authentication DNE scenarios when the login fails due to incorrect login (email / screenName / userID) .

We display some additional messages to Site and Site template Administrators when there is a Friendly URL collision between Site page and Site template page.

On LPS-136108: URLs using a virtual host are always reformatted on export and import, even in cases where they don't need to be the validation of the Web Content was added for Liferay layout URLs. Before this, there was no validation, so users could create their customizations where they could add different URLs to the Web Content's content. After the validation was added, some custom URLs became unable to be added to the Web Content. From user perspective this was a feature loss, so we decided to deliver a feature to make customers able to add their custom URLs to Web Content's content field. This feature is about adding a configuration for storing the user’s relative URL patterns. So custom URLs containing this pattern would bypass validation.

Two new configuration options were added:

• The first one gives the users the chance to automate an existing feature, which improves performance.
• The other one is about displaying the Advanced Staging configuration screen to the users, improving usability.

Creation of a new property called upgrade.report.dl.storage.size.timeout that specifies the number of seconds that the upgrade report generation will wait for calculating the DL size before timing out. This property is set to 10 by default but it can be modified in the portal-ext.properties file.

In order to allow developers to exclude directories from the build, a new property has been added: liferay.workspace.dir.excludes.globs= 

The portlets that are in the Contacts module will be deprecated.

These are:

1. Contacts Center
2. Members
3. My Contacts
4. Profile

In the first step, the modules were pushed to the maintenance mode.

Now you can create more detailed customer segments based on their specific actions. We have expanded our segmentation capabilities to allow you to segment your audience beyond standard website activities to include custom events. You can create highly targeted customer groups for more personalized experiences. Additionally, Liferay DXP now provides alerts when custom event criteria change, ensuring segment accuracy and relevance. Gain greater control over your customer analysis and the ability to deliver more relevant content.

Roles Managers can now define permissions for Object entries directly within the Roles UI. A new “Objects” main menu item has been added to the Define Permissions tab, listing all Custom Objects, allowing easier granular permission assignment.

This enhancement introduces configurable default permissions for newly created pages. Admins can set these permissions at both the instance and site levels. Instance-level settings are managed in a new Instance Settings panel, while site-specific overrides can be configured in the Site Configuration area.

This initiative focused on enhancing user interface (UI) of both Downloading Reports and Path Analysis tool, establishing a cohesive design pattern across them. In particular, we committed to standardizing the presentation of Download Reports, encompassing various formats such as PDF and CSV, within the Downloading Reports Feature. This strategic investment underscores our dedication to delivering high-quality solutions that effectively address the evolving needs of our stakeholders.

Users can now efficiently locate images or videos by specific size categories (small, medium, or large) using the new filter feature on the Content Dashboard. Additionally, they can easily filter content or documents based on a range of dates for various lifecycle events, including creation, display, expiration, modification, publication, or review. This enhancement streamlines content management and improves user accessibility to relevant documents.

Users can easily identify and filter fields that are already translated and those that still need translation within the content editor. Additionally, they can choose to mark a language as translated even if some fields are not yet translated. Users also have the option to reset a translation to its default values with ease. These features will streamline the translation process and enhance efficiency.

Some upgrade processes may not consider the ctColectionId column which may generate inconsistencies for customers using Publications, especially for older versions.