Blend Release Notes - 2024/04/05

Posted 12 days ago by José Gómez

J
José Gómez Admin

(Note: you can download the Release Notes PDF in the Release Notes PDFs section in Help Center)

For this release, we anticipate the following introductions in your environments. Major features are documented in the Blend Knowledge Base accessible at help.blend.com.

If that resource does not answer your question, please reach out to Blend Support.


Announcements (2)

Deprecating Paystub and Tax Return Retrieval Workflows in Blend

Update 3/15: The service that allowed the paystub retrieval workflow in Blend also powers the tax return retrieval workflow. Therefore, both the tax return and paystub retrieval workflows will be removed from Blend per the dates outlined below. The Release Note has been updated with this new information. 

These features allow borrowers to connect - via username and password - to their payroll provider and TurboTax to share paystubs and tax returns with a lender after submitting the application. The provider we partnered with to support these features is deprecating the service that powers this workflow. These features will be removed from customer beta environments on March 12, 2024, and then removed from customer production environments on April 9, 2024. Lenders can continue to use manual or automated follow ups to request that borrowers manually upload their paystubs and tax returns. Please reach out to Blend Support or your Blend representative if you have any questions.

Release Notes cadence change to bi-weekly  

We wanted to inform you of an upcoming change to our Release Notes cadence. Starting Friday, April 5th, Blend will transition from weekly to bi-weekly Release Notes.

We've heard your feedback that weekly Release Notes can be overwhelming. By slowing down our release cycles and Release Notes, we aim to provide you with a more manageable update schedule. With this change, you'll only need to check for new releases twice a month instead of every Friday.

Despite this change, there will be no change to the beta to prod testing periods. This means you'll have the same amount of time to test and explore new features in your beta environments before they're released to production.

Should you have any questions or concerns regarding this change, please don't hesitate to reach out to our Support team. 

Maintenance Announcements (2)

(Update) Onespan esign provider maintenance

Update (4/16/24): Please see the new updates OneSpan Maintenance times below

One of Blend’s eSign vendors, OneSpan, has announced recurring downtime for maintenance windows. These downtimes will result in periods where Blend lender and applicant users will not be able to create new eSign envelopes, or sign outstanding envelopes.

Will there be downtime associated with this maintenance?

Yes

If there will be downtime, will any failed tasks be retried after maintenance is done?

Existing eSign tasks will be able to be re-opened once maintenance is over. Failed creation of disclosures, closings, or other eSign tasks will not automatically be retried. Users will need to re-attempt creating or issuing eSign tasks.

What services or products are affected? 

eSign tasks utilizing Onespan will be affected. This includes creation of new Disclosures packages, closings, and some follow-up eSign tasks.

How will this impact the borrower app? 

Borrowers will be unable to access or complete outstanding eSign tasks. This does not impede in-progress applications, but may affect a borrower’s ability to review or sign any previously delivered disclosures packages, closings, or other eSign follow-ups.

How will this impact the lender app? 

Lenders will be unable to open the Onespan signing task for disclosures packages requiring lender signatures.

What are the affected periods for beta?  

3 hours, April 20th 2024, 9pm-12am PST

What are affected periods for prod environments?

3 hours, April 20th 2024, 9pm-12am PST

Vault Maintenance 

We are updating the way we deploy our vault instances in beta and prod so that managing and upgrading them in the future becomes easier. This upgrade will cause Blend services that handle encrypted data to experience a short period of downtime. As a part of this, we will also follow AWS guidelines and redeploy the app engine db.

Will there be downtime?
Yes, 1-2 minutes. 

If there will be downtime, will any failed tasks be retried after maintenance is done?

No. 

What services or products are affected?
Any services that handle encrypted data. 

How will this impact the borrower app?
Some requests to the application that interact with encrypted data may fail during this time.

How will this impact the lender app?
Some requests to the application that interact with encrypted data may fail during this time.

Time periods for beta?
12am-2am PT, Thursday April 4th 2024

Time periods for prod?
12am-2am PT, Thursday April 11th 2024

Preview Environments (Test/Dev/Beta)

 

Production Environments (Prod)

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