A new toggle has been added within the Specifications and Product Specifications sections of the admin UI.

This toggle allows Catalog Managers to easily show or hide individual specifications associated with a product. This functionality provides the flexibility to curate the information displayed to customers on product detail pages.

Key Benefits:

1. Enhanced Product Presentation: Control which product specifications are visible to customers, allowing for a cleaner and more focused product presentation on the storefront.

2. Improved Data Accuracy and Relevance: Hide internal or less relevant specifications, ensuring that customers only see information pertinent to their purchasing decisions.

This release introduces in-context translation for all the form fields directly within the page editor. This empowers content creators to easily create localized form experiences for their users, enabling them to complete forms in their preferred language. Only designated localizable form fields will be translated, ensuring precise control over localized content.

Key Benefits:

• Faster time to publish localized forms: Translating directly in the editor reduces the steps needed to launch forms in multiple languages.

• Reduces reliance on external tools or workflows: Content teams can manage translations within the same interface they use to build pages, simplifying the process.

• Improves accuracy and consistency: Only the form fields marked as translatable are included, so there's less risk of translating the wrong content or missing something important.

• Better experience for global audiences: Visitors can complete forms in their preferred language, which can increase completion rates and engagement.Gives teams more control over localization: Editors can choose exactly what gets translated and when, without needing developer support.

We have introduced a new publication size classification feature to help users better manage and plan the publishing process, especially for "large" publications where there are many changes involved. This feature categorizes publications into three tiers: Small, Medium, and Large, based on factors such as the number of changes made and the size of the database. This will allow users to better understand the scale of their publication and take the necessary steps to avoid potential conflicts or performance issues during publishing. Publication Owners are also notified whenever a Publication has changed sizes.

Key Benefits:

• Improved Planning: With the new size classification, users can see the current "size" of their publication and allocate the appropriate time and resources for publishing. This helps avoid rushing through a publishing process that might take longer depending on the publication's size.

• Better Visibility of Potential Impact: The classification provides users with a visual indicator that highlights the size of the publication, offering transparency about what to expect during the publishing process. It also helps reduce the chances of errors or performance issues related to publishing "large" publications.

• Clear Communication: When users hover over the size classification, a helpful tooltip explains what the classification means and the potential consequences for the publishing process, ensuring users have all the information they need to make informed decisions.

Field visibility can now be configured based on values within the same custom fragment. This enables fields to dynamically show or hide based on user input, supporting more responsive and context-aware interfaces.

This update gives teams more flexibility when building custom fragments, making it easier to support complex use cases without additional custom code.

Enhancenment of the review change screen by adding a progress bar to provide clear, visual feedback during the publication process.When you initiate the publication, you’ll now see a progress bar that tracks the status of the publishing process, helping you understand how much time is left before the process is complete.

Key Benefits:

• Better Visual Feedback: The progress bar offers a clear, real-time indication of where you are in the publishing process, so you always know how much time is remaining.

• Enhanced User Experience: With the addition of the progress bar, the publishing process feels more responsive and user-friendly, providing you with a smoother workflow

Customers very commonly deploy fragments through the deploy folder, we identified that we are missing one log once the fragment import finished. Until now Liferay added a message in the application server logs that show that the fragment import has started, but it never indicates when it finishes. Some advantages of logging when the import process finishes is that customers can check when the deployment is still in progress and when it ends, not only being informed in case of failures.

When issues happen during maintenance periods, end users saw an unbranded default maintenance page. This leaves part of the user flow unattended, with customers unable to forward users to the correct next steps. Setting up and managing maintenance pages that work when DXP is down requires technical skills that not all customers possess, making it impractical for many.

Now we allow customers to upload a maintenance page they designed, fitting their brand and instructing customers on what to do. The implementation functions indepedently from their DXP instance so, as soon as they detect a downtime, they can enable the maintenance page in their Cloud Console to be displayed for their users while they address the issue that caused the downtime.

Configuring the scaling behaviour of Liferay is not simple. Customers are required to have a deep understanding of how their application' metrics behave to set their thresholds. Since charges are also incurred depending on the hours and instances scaled, customers can feel confused on the value they are being invoiced. 

That’s why we allowed for customers to set the maximum and minimum number of scaled instances in their Cloud Console scaling page. This means non-technical customers now can control how little or how much they want to spend in scaling their application. Allowing them pinpoint precision when balancing between improved user experience with more instances, and the increase in costs associated with that.

The Liferay Developer Studio installer now includes JDK 21 as a selectable option if it’s available, simplifying the initial setup and providing a more convenient and user-friendly experience for developers wanting to use the latest Java version supported by Liferay.

Previously, when managing complex data models, users must create scripts or code in order to make changes to multiple related objects. Now users are able to configure multiple objects as if they are one object. Related child objects now inherit permissions and account restrictions and more from the top level parent, making object management more convenient.

Key benefits:

Simplifies the management of multiple objects through a configuration on the relationship between objects

• Permissions and Account Restrictions for the child objects are inherited from the Top level parent

• API endpoints are nested under the same namespace of the top level parent

Allow users to move Object Definitions and Entries between environments

Key benefit:
Addresses a feature gap when moving applications built on Liferay between environments

Allow applications built on top of Service Builder to leverage the benefits of the Liferay Objects framework

Key benefit:
Applications built on top of Service Builder can now be migrated to Liferay Objects

Allow users to move display pages containing Object or Form widgets across environments

Key benefit:
Addresses a feature gap when moving content pages across environments
 

The batch engine's export endpoints now support filtering for object entries. This addresses a previous limitation where filtering was not applied to object entries during batch exports. This update ensures consistent data handling and filtering behavior across all entity types.

Key benefits:

• Object entries Personalization
• Equalize capabilities for all entities

Until now, there was no way in batch engine to export and import object entries and their permissions simultaneously. This new capability allows users to do that, streamlining workflows and reducing manual effort.

Key benefits:

• Execution in only one call.

• Possibility for users to choose to take into account (or not) permissions with object entries.

Implemented proactive access token management with automated email notifications. Users will now receive alerts 1 month, 10 days, and 1 day prior to token expiration, allowing for timely renewal and preventing service disruptions. Notifications are automatically cancelled if a new token is generated.

Key benefits:

• Users are notified before token expiration, allowing for timely renewal and uninterrupted access.

• Reducing administrative overhead, as automated notifications eliminate the need for manual monitoring and intervention.

• By prompting timely renewals, the risk of using expired and potentially compromised tokens is minimized.

Data imports, using batch engine, now allows users to preserve content creator information (if required). Previously, imported content with batch was always assigned the user performing the import, resulting in loss of original authorship data when moving content. This update ensures accurate attribution of content ownership (if required).

Key benefits:

• Able to keep critical user information during data promotion between environments

• Can be configured separately per import process

The SSL Certificate Management view now provides expiration alerts for certificates nearing expiration (e.g., within 30 days) and those that have already expired. Certificates must now be defined exclusively through the LCP.json file, simplifying management and ensuring consistency across deployments. This update reduces manual errors and ensures secure and uninterrupted deployments.

Highlights:

• Expiration Alerts: Notifications for certificates nearing expiration and those already expired, with clear visual indicators.

• Exclusive LCP.json Configuration: Certificates can only be defined through the LCP.json file.

• Improved Visibility: Organized list view showing certificate names, types, associated domains, and expiration dates.

• Proactive Management: Tools and alerts to help users maintain secure SSL/TLS configurations.

The vendor has deprecated OpenSSO/OpenAM, so there's no reason for us to keep it. The alternative, which is PingAM can be integrated using our existing OpenID connector or SAML Authentication.

The Marketplace release of the Liferay Connector to OpenSearch 2 provides an alternative to Elasticsearch for Self-Hosted Liferay deployments.

This connector integrates Liferay DXP with OpenSearch 2.12+, the open source and enterprise grade search engine. OpenSearch offers lexical search for text data, robust scalability and extensibility, and vector search for applications using embeddings, such as Liferay's Semantic Search.

The installation of this app requires specific configurations covered in the official documentation. For detailed compatibility information, see the Search Engine Compatibility Matrix.

The OpenSearch integration is currently a Beta feature with the intention to make it GA in the future.