Blend Release Notes - 2022/05/17

For this release, we anticipate the following introductions in your environments. Each entry below is linked to their specific update containing more information. Major features are documented in the Blend Knowledge Base accessible at Blend Help Center  

If that resource does not answer your question, please reach out to Blend Support support@blend.com  Summary:

• Maintenance Announcements
  • (New) Blend services database maintenance 
    • Blend will be updating database services to apply standard security updates. These changes are transparent to the application experience and not intended to impact core business functions. Please note: the dates and times labeled with (if necessary) will only be used for downtime if there is a need for additional maintenance. 

    • Maintenance Window: 

      • Beta: 10 minute downtime

        • Wednesday, June 22, 12am - 2am PT

        • Thursday, June 23, 12am - 2am PT (if necessary)

      • Prod: 10 minute downtime

        • Wednesday, June 29, 12am - 2am PT

        • Thursday, June 30, 12am - 2am PT (if necessary)

        • Friday, July 1, 12am - 2am PT (if necessary)

  • Updating networking related to core lending backend
    • The Blend application may be briefly inaccessible to certain users for a period of up to 2 minutes. It will not be fully down, but certain requests may fail while we are rotating the service. Users will be able to retry those requests and proceed in the application.

    • Maintenance Window: 

      • Beta: Friday May 20, ~2pm PT, up to 2 minutes

      • Prod: Tuesday May 24, 12am-2am PT, up to 2 minutes

  • Blend fee collection service network maintenance

    • The platform and infra team will be performing maintenance for routine network updates for the fee collection service. This will cause about 20 minutes of downtime for that service (only) in production during the 60 minute maintenance window. Borrowers will not be able to submit payment for tasks during this time. We do not expect any other impacts to the platform.

    • Maintenance Window: Tuesday 5/24 12-1am PT (60 minutes)

      • Beta: 20 minutes down downtime, 10 minutes validation

      • Prod: 20 minutes down downtime, 10 minutes validation

  • Blend Income database maintenance

    • Blend will be performing an internal database migration and upgrading our database version for Blend income. Income verifications using Blend Income will fail during this time period.

    • Expected downtime: 15 minutes

    • Affected Period: 

      • Beta:  2 hours, 5/13/2022, 12AM-2AM PT

      • Prod: 2 hours, 5/25/2022, 12AM-2AM PT

• Announcements

  • (New) Release “Add governmental program information for USDA loans” on hold

    • The production release for the feature titled “Add governmental program information for USDA loans” has been put on hold. For customers using Optimal Blue, there is a new feature in development that will allow LOs to pull the upfront fee percentage via a pricing engine search, rather than using Blend’s defaulted value. We will hold this USDA loans feature until the secondary feature is ready to be rolled out as well.
      
      The feature will remain ON in beta environments, and we will re-communicate production dates in future Release Notes when they are available.

  • (New) “Admin” removed from “Your settings” dropdown menu

    • As mentioned in a release note from 3/29, the intention from the start was to retire the “Admin” option under the “Your settings” dropdown menu shortly after phase one of the self-service administration feature was introduced to production environments. That feature rollout completed on 4/26. In an effort to avoid redundancy and encourage users to adopt the new flow via the “Setup” option, we have removed the “Admin” option from the dropdown.
      
      All user admins will be able to perform the same functions in the Setup page as were available in the Admin page. Please review the following two release notes for a refresher on what is now included in the Setup page:

      • ​​​​​​​Phase one rollout of customer self-service administration

      • Phase two rollout of customer self-service administration

  • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Release Notes being published 2 business days earlier on Fridays

    • ​​​​​​​In addition to the change above, we are also working to give customers more advance notice about upcoming releases. As part of that effort, beginning on Friday May 20, we will start publishing finalized Release Notes in Blend Community two business days earlier (i.e., on Friday instead of Tuesday). There will no longer be a need for the “Release Preview” document, since that is currently sent on Fridays and will be replaced by the finalized version of Release Notes that will be published on the same day. Please click “Subscribe” in the Product Updates section of Blend Community to be automatically notified when Release Notes are published each Friday.

  • ​​​​​​​Release Notes being published to Blend Community instead of being emailed

    • ​​​​​​​As a reminder, Release Notes are no longer distributed as a PDF attachment via email, but instead are published here in the “Product Updates” section of the Blend Community. Please click “Subscribe” in the Product Updates section of the Blend Community to ensure that you are notified when Release Notes are published. A link to a pdf version will be available at the bottom of this General Announcements post.

• ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Preview Environments (Test/Beta/Dev)

  • ​​​​​​​(New) Set Mortgage Director API Credentials to Never Expire - 5/17 Beta, 6/7 Prod

• ​​​​​​​Production Environments (Prod)

  • ​​​​​​​(New) Migration of data source used by Reporting APIs - 5/16 Prod

  • ​​​​​​​VOA Reference Number updated for Byte Integrations - 5/10 beta, 5/17 Prod

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