Oracle Eloqua 19D Release Overview

It's almost time for the last Eloqua release of the year. The 19D release was supposed to roll out to pods 1 and 2 this weekend, but the update was delayed a week ago due to last minute bugs. This leaves pod 3 and 4 customers on the front line of any issues that may arise when the update finally lands in their instances next weekend. Customers on POD 1 and 2 will instead get the update on the 7th December, two full weeks after the other data centres.

DataFox

In a user facing sense, the release is a light one, even though it addresses a couple of major pain points for Eloqua customers and introduces another of the Oracle Marketing Cloud platform integrations heavily trailed at Modern CX earlier this year. That integration is with DataFox, a predictive data platform for Sales that Oracle acquired last October.

DataFox offers two capabilities for B2B that are not available elsewhere in the Oracle portfolio, namely account scoring and B2B account segmentation. Designed initially to prioritise leads for Sales and to source new opportunities, DataFox primarily integrates with CRM platforms but is now being turned towards Marketing use cases through a new integration with Eloqua. This provides a native alternative to capabilities frequently provided by cross-platform vendors such as D&B or Mintigo.

Assets

The most welcome enhancement for Eloqua users is the ability to replace images and files. This capability has technically existed for a while but has never worked as users would want. There is a buried replace image button in the Eloqua UI, but it frequently doesn't work and will take 24 hours to work in scenarios where it does. Now it has been significantly enhanced so that both files and images can be completely replaced, even if filenames are different. The process will be a lot quicker too, taking a couple of hours rather than a couple of days. As such, Oracle will for the first time support the ability to replace images and files.

The enhanced asset browser introduced on the email launchpad in the last release has now made its way to the landing page and form areas of Eloqua. This functionality significantly upgrades the search functionality by adding filtering capabilities to search results. A side effect of this is that the widely used 'Recently Modified' and 'Recently Accessed by Me' asset views are removed and replaced by built-in search filters. This will become more intuitive once the updated behaviour has been introduced consistently across all areas of Eloqua, rather than just in Emails. Another nice benefit of this update is the ability to search for landing pages based on vanity URL, which is incredibly useful. Oracle also claim that the update introduces the ability to search for forms by HTML name, which is news to me as that feature has existed for some time in my experience.

Integration

There have been significant updates to the reporting and notification options in the new salesforce.com integration app. This app finally reached feature parity in the last release, and now gains new capabilities not in the native integration. This includes the ability to integrate history objects with Eloqua to ensure that tracked field changes in Salesforce are reflected in Eloqua and can be used in campaigns or programs. With this capability, Eloqua users can build nurture campaigns that are triggered by changes to lead status or lead ownership as well as notification alerts when account details change.

Otherwise, numerous new notification options ensure that admins are always kept up to date with the status of the integration. Statuses are now clearly visible imports while are in progress, and imports can be cancelled whilst running in the event of an error. The initial configuration of the app has been enhanced, with migration from the native integration becoming a much smoother process and less prone to unexpected errors.

Security

The introduction of SSL enabled branded app and image domains is notable. This was previously announced and has now reached controlled availability, with the process for configuring an SSL enabled app domain even available in a self-service capacity. Once enabled, email redirect links and images will always be rendered as https:// rather than http:// in emails. Previously, customers requiring https links to be used in emails sent from Eloqua, had to use t.eloqua.com branded tracking links rather than links branded using their organisation's own domain. In the past, this was a niche concern limited to industries with strict security requirements, but it has become increasingly important as the browser vendors and IT security community promote SSL everywhere.

Also for security conscious customers is the general availability of secure email messages. This is an add-on to the optional advanced data security module used to encrypt the Eloqua contact database. With the data security module in place, Eloqua can then be used to store and send confidential information such as purchase history or financial information to contacts. Access to this secure information is possible through password protected secure microsites or encrypted emails that can only be viewed by logging into one of those secure microsites. The new capabilities allow the creation of these secure emails within Eloqua.

Finally, there has been a change to the Eloqua cookie settings that customers should be aware of. Eloqua cookies will now be set to expire after 13 months. This is significantly lower than the current 99 year expiry date but is of limited consequence in practice. The change means that the Eloqua tracking cookie used to track website visits will be automatically deleted 13 months after the contact last visited an Eloqua tracked page. Return visits reset this timer, so only a small minority of contacts who visit less than once a year are affected. Given that browsers have started automatically blocking old tracking cookies anyway, the practical effect of this change is limited.

The Oracle Eloqua 19D Update is scheduled over two weekends starting November 23rd, 2019. Contents of the release are subject to change. Full details, including smaller changes not mentioned in this article such as a change to hard bounce and soft bounce classification, can be found in the official release notes.