Next Deployment

1.8: Week of October 13, 2008  (Available on sandbox Oct 6, 2008)

• introducing Action Tags (making Actions more powerful by giving them all the same functionality as Tags).  See Action Tags Explained.
• can filter user.getChallengeProgress by tags (meaning you can figure out which challenges correspond to a particular action)
• can administer canvas catalog and avatar catalog independently via Admin UI Catalog Module
• you can allow users to sell back canvas catalog items to the store for a percentage of the original price
• added user.getResponses as a client-side way of getting the results of previous logAction calls so you don't have to wait for the response of logAction server-side
• adding Search functionality in Admin UI for lists
• Reports Module enhancments in Admin UI: can hide/show filters within a report, can use wildcards (*) in filter list, better report labels, etc...
• user.login and user.logout are no longer counted as part of the API Usage reports, so the report is a better indicator of just the usage that is relevant to pricing
• site.getActionFeed has been optimized

Current Deployment

1.7: September 17, 2008

• Remodeled Rewards tab in Admin UI - Challenges and Actions. API Modified to reflect this. All customer data will be migrated automatically.  See Challenges and Actions for more information.
  • Orphaned Tasks in the current model (tasks without challenges) will automatically get converted to Challenges.  Challenges are the only Rewards entity now.  They can have one or more Rules, which represent the criteria.  Tasks as an entity go away.
    • This means that task completion will no longer be shown in the newsfeed, tasks do not have their own action urls or icons or awards, and there will be no task-based reporting or leaderboards.  They are just rules to add to challenges.  Everything you could previously do with a task can now be done with a challenge instead (in addition to the increased functionality that challenges always offered, like the ability to award trophies).
  • Events get renamed to Actions.  All APIs will change to reflect this.  Legacy names will continue to be supported for a while.
  • API Name and Response and Parameter Changes
    • user.logEvent -> user.logAction
    • site.getEventFeed -> site.getActionFeed
    • site.getEventStats -> site.getActionStats
    • site.getRecentEvents -> site.getRecentActions
    • all 'eventName' parameters change to 'actionName' (for example, in user.logEvent)
    • all occurrences of the word 'event' in any API method responses will change to 'action'
      • For example, the response of site.getEventStats will include an <actions> tag instead of an <events> tag, with child <Action> tags
    • the response of user.getChallengeProgress used to have a <tasks> and <Task> tags nested in the <Challenge> tags.  These will change to <rules> and <Rule> tags.
      • user.getChallengeProgress will now return full information on the configuration of the tasks and challenges as part of the response using attributes on the <Rule> and <Challenge> tags
• Point Categories introduced.  All API methods that deal with points, as well point awards in challenges, now take an optional pointCategory parameter.  You can divide your point economy into several categories and manage them independently.  See Point Categories for more information.
• The response of user.getPointsBalance changes to accommodate point categories.  See user.getPointsBalance.
• user.transferPoints - new API call to transfer a source user's point balance to a destination user
• filter out users from all leaderboards with the configured "User filter prefix" in Sites-General tab in Admin UI
• addition of tags in site.getRecentActions and user.getActionHistory and site.getActionStats.
• delta in user.getPointsBalance and site.getPointsLeaders will change to gain
• sessionKey generation mechanism will be optimized for performance, with the side-effect that session expiration will be set to 30 days after user.login was done, and cannot be refreshed. user.logout will be deprecated.
• site.getRecentChallenges will have a new parameter called includeRepeatable (defaults to true) which can be used to control whether or not repeatable challenges get returned. Also, it will return the fullUrl and thumbUrl attributes for the recent challenges 

Known Issues in 1.7

• There is a bug with tag-based action leaderboards (site.getActionStats when you use the "tags" parameter).  It will be fixed in 1.8.  If you require this functionality earlier, please contact us. 

Past Deployments

1.6: Friday, August 12, 2008 2am PST

• Reports available in Admin UI
• Achievement Callback functionality
• Performance improvements for site.getEventFeed

1.5: Friday July 17, 2008 0000 PST

• new Challenges API methods: site.getEventStats (now site.getActionStats), site.getChallengeStats, site.getRecentEvents (now site.getRecentActions), site.getRecentChallenges and user.getChallengeProgress.
• user.setPreferences added
• Event, task and challenge names need to be unique. Enforced in Admin UI.
• startIndex argument added in user.getPointsHistory to allow paging the response. Exposed in Admin UI as well.
• site.getEventFeed (now called site.getActionFeed) returns a simpler XML response with same data as before.
• A user's firstName and lastName can be edited via the Preferences API.

1.4: Wednesday June 25, 2008 1400 PST

• API methods name change - made them consistent and adopted a uniform convention. Segmented on sites and users. The old method names will be supported until all customers migrate to the new names.
• First version of Reports available in Admin UI
• Alpha release of the Newsfeed functionality available
• Support tags attribute in user.getPointsHistory