Release Summary 26.09 | May 04, 2026

ENG-32126

Find:

Prerequisite Service for Hybrid Search

A new prerequisite service has been introduced to streamline Hybrid Search setup using an asynchronous, step-based workflow. It validates and provisions required configurations for hybrid (lexical + vector) search.

The service supports Verification (read-only checks) and Execution modes, with job-based tracking and status polling via a returned jobId. This ensures controlled setup, clear visibility into step status, and reliable readiness validation before enabling Hybrid Search.

ENG-32086

Data Engineering:

Attributable Items Metric Added to Recommend Segment Report

The Recommend Segment Report has been enhanced to include Attributable Items as a new metric. This enables users to calculate recommendation conversion rate at the segment level using attributable items divided by placement views.

The new metric is available in the report table, providing improved visibility into segment-level recommendation performance.

ENG-32267

Recommend:

Recs Test Drive: Categories Tab Activation for Category Recommendations

Recs Test Drive has been updated to improve the preview experience for category recommendations. When a response includes a categoryRec object, the Categories tab is now automatically set as the active tab when the View Recs button is clicked.

Previously, the Products tab was shown by default even when category recommendations were returned. This behavior has been corrected and is working as expected.

ENG-31312

Data Engineering:

Aggregation Option Added to placementAnalyticsMetrics API

The placementAnalyticsMetrics API has been enhanced with a new optional query parameter that enables aggregated reporting across time periods and regions sharing the same currency.

When enabled, results are aggregated by placement and currency. Numeric metrics are summed, and click-through rate is recalculated as clicks divided by views. The API remains fully backward compatible when the new parameter is not used.

ENG-32263

Recipes: Image Generation Model Updated to GPT Image 1.5

The Recipes image generation workflow has been updated to replace the deprecated Azure DALL·E model with the GPT Image 1.5 model. The previous model was shut down, causing image generation failures in the RecipeModel job.

All image generation requests now use GPT Image 1.5 to ensure continued functionality. Existing file names and column references containing “dall-e” have been retained for backward compatibility with current system conventions.

ENG-32249

Recipe Support Updated for New Universal Catalog Fields

Recipe retrieval has been updated to support newly added fields in the universal catalog. The linked job has been adjusted to ensure recipes are retrieved correctly with the updated schema.

Locale handling has also been enhanced. The system now uses the provided locale when it is a valid ISO locale; otherwise, it falls back to the site’s default locale to retrieve recipes.

ENG-32271

Engage:

Engage Placements Now Restricted to Engage Content Only

An issue was identified where non-Engage content was being returned in Engage placements. Specifically, content with unsupported product_type values was included in results.

Engage has been updated to return only valid Engage content, filtering results to include only items with product_type 2 or 3. This ensures accurate and consistent content delivery in Engage placements.

ENG-31581

Enterprise Dashboard:

Recommendation Widget Template Added to New DynEx UI

A new Recommendation Widget template has been added to the New DynEx UI. This template expands the available experience options and enables users to configure recommendation-driven dynamic experiences directly within the updated interface.

ENG-32175

Science:

NLPSimilarity Job Created and Deployed

The legacy Empire Builder NLP similarity job has been replaced with a new NLPSimilarity job powered by the LLM-based model.

The new job is now triggered when NLP strategies are enabled in the NLP Configuration, and its output replaces the previous Empire Builder output. Configurable Strategies using the NLP Similarity model with a product context now return results generated by the new NLPSimilarity job.

ENG-32308

Engage:

Personalize API: Multi-Value Attributes Returned as Semicolon-Separated String

The Personalize API has been updated to return multiple attribute values as a semicolon-separated string instead of an array. This ensures backward compatibility with existing layouts and client integrations that expect a single string value.

For example, an attribute with multiple values will be returned as:
"color": "black;blue;red"

This approach avoids breaking changes while still supporting multi-value attributes.

ENG-32060

Engage:

Engage Variation Events Aligned with Visits Timezone Convention

The event_date handling in the Engage Variation Events table has been updated to align with the timezone convention used in visits data. Previously, variation events followed a different date calculation approach, which could cause inconsistencies when joining with visits data in downstream rollups and models.

Variation events now use the site’s timezone and follow the same 00:00 AM to 11:59 PM boundary logic as visits. This ensures consistent date partitioning and accurate processing across rollups, reporting, and inference models.

ENG-32053

Data Engineering:

Price Spike Handling for Incorrect Order Prices

An issue was observed where some order events contained incorrectly scaled product prices, such as 9.99 being recorded as 999.00 and 99.99 as 9999.00. These sporadic price spikes impacted downstream processing and reporting.

To address this, validation logic has been introduced to detect and correct abnormal price values by comparing them against the catalog price. When discrepancies are identified, the catalog price is used to ensure data accuracy before it reaches downstream systems. A configurable setting has also been added to enable or disable this logic, allowing flexibility once the root cause is resolved at the source.

ENG-32206

Find, Streaming Catalog:

Database Identity Column Update After PostgreSQL v17 Upgrade

After the PostgreSQL v17 upgrade, several catalog tables were updated to standardize the id column definition to GENERATED BY DEFAULT AS IDENTITY for compatibility with streaming ingestion.

A change script was applied to the affected tables, and ingestion validation confirmed successful processing with no impact on streaming components.

ENG-32193

Data Engineering:

Recs Test Drive: Import Request Parameter Handling Fixed

An issue was identified where the p parameter was dropped when importing requests into Recs Test Drive for category page placements. As a result, the parameter was not populated in the Custom Parameters field.

This has been resolved. The p parameter now behaves the same as productIds, and interchangeable parameter pairs (p/productIds, u/userId, s/sessionId) are supported consistently. The fix also applies to search page requests and Content Test Drive.

ENG-32335

Streaming Catalog:

NCA Partition Stall and Checkpoint Logging Fix

An issue was identified where NCA stalled on a specific partition following a streaming-engine recovery. Logs indicated uncompleted futures related to checkpoint processing, impacting event flow for large catalogs.

The issue has been resolved. Checkpoint handling has been stabilized to prevent connection leak warnings, and metrics for checkpoint start and completion are now logged per site to improve visibility and monitoring.