What Changes need to happen on the Client Side when I Upgrade Versions?

Search Best Practices - Integration
1

Hey Team,

My client who is already Live and has integrated Answers recently upgraded the version of Answers they are using to encompass new saught-after features. What changes do they need to make on their side to support this update - if any?

I remember that the version number was included in the initial integration instructions we used - which is why I ask!

2

Hi Jessie!

  1. What version are they currently on, and what version are they upgrading to?
  2. Are they using our CSS?

Next week (when I’m back from OOO), I can provide some mores specific answers given the above info, but here’s some general info on upgrading:

  • If they’re updating the second digit of their version (IE going from v0.9.0 to v0.13.0), we are currently counting these as breaking-change upgrades. I would just advise them that the structure of the search bar may have shifted slightly (for WCAG compliance, we’ve added SR only text, added some ids) and it’s possible that there have been some class name changes – if they’ve added styling that’s targeting specific classes, they might need to tweak it to reference the updated class names. It should be pretty quick for them to see how much effort they’ll need to put in once they update the version. To be clear, I can’t imagine these changes would take a dev longer than 30 minutes maximum to adjust.

  • If they’re planning on going from any version to v0.13.1 or above and are using our CSS, they will get the new animated icon by default. Further instructions on this icon are in slack.

Thanks!
Rose

3

Hey Rose,

Looks like the client was on v0.12.1 before they upgrade to to v0.13.1!

Do you mean are they using our CSS to style the search bar? Currently, no.

So far they haven’t updated anything and things are functioning with no breaking changes (I’ve tested a bit and we’ve done quite a bit of query evaluations since then). based on your message - since they aren’t using our CSS to style the search bar I thinkt that’s why everything has been fine, correct?

4

Hi Jessie, yes that’s likely the case! Moving forward, as you have clients upgrading, feel free to check the release notes for updates around any changes between minor versions. As of version 1.0.0, all minor versions are non-breaking. You can read more about how the library uses semantic versioning in this module, https://hitchhikers.yext.com/tracks/answers/ans150-overview-front-end/01-how-frontend-works/.

Note that the CSS is now a key part of the integration instructions and should be used by default in order to make sure the search bar looks good on the main domain.