Eloqua 21C Release Overview
Another quiet Eloqua release introduces an important enhancement to blind form submits, as well as some interesting integrations and security updates.
The Eloqua release schedule has been relatively quiet this year, after a blockbuster series of updates in 2020. This month's 21c release is no exception. Although there are some useful new features this time, with more promised for future releases. For now, Eloqua users will have to settle for a set of smaller changes.
The most interesting new feature is a planned change to blind form submits. Improved security has been an ongoing area of focus during their ownership of Eloqua. Forms in particular have seen a lot of changes in this area. Throughout these changes, there has always been a risk of exposing personal data with blind form submits, because they expose contact names and email addresses in plain text. This becomes a concern when emails are forwarded or otherwise seen by someone other than the original recipient.
Oracle are now introducing a blind form URL shortening capability to Eloqua forms. For now, this is now an optional feature, although Eloqua customers are advised to enable this option as soon as possible. When enabled, it replaces field merges in blind form URLs with a unique key that is provided by the form editor. This makes sure that no personal details are included in the link, instead it uses Eloqua's native pre-population capabilities to pass the contact's personal details into the form.
Another form enhancement applies to account based processing steps. This is an automatic change, which requires no user input. Eloqua will now pass the account id to forms that use Save to Account processing steps, so that the right account is updated by these steps. In the past, these processing steps haven't run consistently because Eloqua is frequently unable to identify the right account to update. As such, they are rarely used. Now, Eloqua will pre-populate the Account ID on all form submissions and use that to decide which account record gets updated by form processing steps.
Security
All these form changes follow the beta release of form spam protection in the last release. This introduces spam prevention for Eloqua forms, similar to the Akismet technology used by WordPress. When enabled, this ensures that spam bots are filtered from form submission data. Not all Eloqua forms suffer from bot attacks, but this is an essential capability for those that do. It can be disabled on forms that don’t suffer such issues, making sure that no form submissions are missed.
Speaking of security, it is now much easier to see when SSL certificates expire in Eloqua. This information is now clearly displayed in a new certificate management screen. That UI is the first phase of a forthcoming enhancement which will automatically secure brand new domains, eventually introducing SSL by default to Eloqua. That will bring the platform into line with the ongoing trend towards secure websites that is currently being pushed by browser makers.
Integrations
Then there is this quarter's new Oracle integration. Last time it was account enrichment through Oracle DataFox. That application is Oracle's predictive scoring tool. Unlike similar products, DataFox is a sales focused scoring tool, which focuses on account and opportunity scoring. These scores can now be synced with Eloqua accounts, alongside the account firmographic information that is used to calculate those account scores.
This time, it is Maxymiser which is being integrated with Eloqua in a new beta capability that has been released under controlled availability. This app is Oracle's web personalisation platform. Its core A/B testing capabilities can be data driven using audience data pulled from other Oracle applications. Eloqua is now one of these apps which can be a source of contact information for website A/B tests driven using Maxymiser. The new integration allows Eloqua users to sync contact data to Maxymiser.
That's the main features in the latest in a series of light releases. The next release is promised to be much more comprehensive. In particular, native SMS capabilities have been teased for November's 21D update. That's something Eloqua users should be looking forward to.
The Oracle Eloqua 21C Update is scheduled over the weekends of August 13th, 2021 and August 27th, 2021. Contents of the release are subject to change. Full details, including smaller changes not mentioned in this article such as changes to Insight, can be found in the official release notes.