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Release Notes & Updates
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Khoros Communities 26.2 Release Notes [Updated]

MiladC's avatar
MiladC
Khoros Staff
2 months ago

The 26.2 release introduces Aurora AI capabilities for content moderation, automated responses, and workflow orchestration. It also addresses critical security vulnerabilities, delivers search and rich text editor improvements, and resolves stability issues across analytics and content archival.

New Features (Aurora — Early Access)

Availability: All three features below are in early access behind feature flags — nothing activates automatically. Fully configurable from the admin panel. Contact your Customer Success Manager to enable. Classic customers should reach out to their CSM to discuss migration.

AI Moderation + Appeals

Automates content moderation decisions based on your community guidelines, configured in plain language.

  • Auto-approve and auto-block: Clear-cut content is handled instantly, reducing manual review volume.
  • Gray-area escalation: Ambiguous content is held for human review rather than auto-actioned.
  • Member appeals: Members can submit structured appeals against moderation decisions, preserving trust without adding moderator workload.

Community Language Model (CLM) / Answer Assist

Provides AI-generated responses to unanswered community posts after a configurable time threshold has been reached.

  • Community-first response window: You define how long to wait before Answer Assist activates, giving members the first opportunity to respond.
  • Source attribution: Every AI-generated answer cites the specific authors and posts it drew from, keeping community experts visible.

Community Orchestrator

A rules-based automation engine that triggers actions on community events such as new registrations, first posts, and milestone achievements.

  • Automated workflows: Configure welcome sequences, expert notifications, milestone recognition, and onboarding prompts.
  • Event-driven execution: Actions fire automatically when defined conditions are met — set up once, runs continuously.

Bugs & Security Fixes

Classic

  • Fixed search autocomplete not returning results when queries contain special characters like trademark symbols or apostrophes.
  • Fixed cursor jumping to the top of the article when applying formatting in Firefox.
  • Fixed message position count displaying incorrectly after submitting inline replies.
  • Fixed missing publish events in bulk data exports for republished content.
  • Fixed Members Online count showing inflated numbers by excluding partially registered users.
  • Fixed search results not sorting correctly by view count.
  • Fixed video sitemap XML validation errors affecting video SEO indexing.
  • Fixed usernames with certain Unicode characters causing registration failures and blank display names.
  • Fixed attachments remaining visible in the editor after sending private message replies.
  • Fixed "Show older messages" causing page reload when clicked after switching threads.
  • Fixed rank-up notifications not being delivered via email or private message.
  • Fixed abuse reports failing when member email addresses could not be resolved.
  • Fixed Admin Metrics date filter returning results outside the selected range.
  • Fixed content archival jobs getting permanently blocked when a single job encounters an error.
  • Fixed private messages with certain HTML content showing a misleading "character limit reached" error.
  • Fixed document viewer description to accurately reflect supported preview formats.
  • Fixed search box losing focus while typing, particularly with mobile keyboards or Chinese IME input.
  • Fixed external videos (Brightcove) failing with misleading "private video" error when the video provider returned an empty title.
  • Fixed content archival API returning success but silently failing to archive.
  • Fixed search bar defaulting to user search instead of content search on Hermes-themed communities.
  • Fixed product search API returning duplicate or missing results with cursor pagination.
  • Fixed @mention text inside code samples being dropped when entering edit mode.
  • Fixed notification feed showing empty state during backend timeouts instead of a descriptive error.
  • Fixed images pasted into the editor not uploading.
  • Fixed "PM the Author" button opening an empty window in moderation tools.
  • Fixed Top Solutions Authors leaderboard showing no users for time-range tabs.
  • Fixed Promoted Search results not appearing in autocomplete dropdown after 26.1 upgrade.
  • Fixed session token identifiers being exposed in HTML page source and error pages.
  • Fixed stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in user profile social link fields.
  • Fixed unauthenticated access permissions to the individual user API endpoint.

Aurora

  • Fixed search autocomplete not returning results for queries containing special characters.
  • Fixed @mention autocomplete not triggering when typing @ on Android mobile devices.
  • Fixed pagination links from Linear display mode failing when viewed in Threaded display mode.
  • Fixed auto-hyperlink conversion inconsistently applied when pasting URLs and pressing Enter quickly.
  • Fixed auto-title feature incorrectly formatting hyperlinks when URL was followed by punctuation.
  • Fixed attachment validation errors not being properly surfaced when the virus scanner rejected files.
  • Fixed Group Hub members with the correct role being denied access to the Manage Members page.
  • Fixed "Newest" sort on search and tag results using edit date instead of original post date.
  • Fixed TKB article publishing history not recording state changes after loading autosaved drafts.
  • Fixed Community Experience Survey CSV exports producing malformed files when responses contain special characters.
  • Fixed JavaScript error when clicking "Add a tag" on boards where a previously muted node was deleted.
  • Fixed Add Co-Author overlay not reopening after being dismissed in Blog boards.
  • Fixed Analytics reports stalling or failing for multi-day date ranges.
  • Fixed custom fields for categories and forums not appearing in the Admin UI settings panel.
  • Fixed deletion of Idea status failing when reply messages had associated status entries.
  • Fixed TAR file attachments being silently removed after publishing.
  • Fixed application crashes caused by certain HTTP header configurations.
  • Fixed internal server requests being incorrectly counted in API billing metrics.
  • Fixed category permissions page failing to load in Admin UI.
  • Fixed Blog, TKB, and Ideas article body expanding to full page width instead of the intended column width.
  • Fixed the Ideas board becoming unresponsive when the Featured Statuses widget was present.
  • Fixed tag search filter returning no results after 26.1 upgrade.
  • Fixed bulk archive search failing to create jobs.

Pre-Prod Rollout: March 17-18. Testing window open from March 18 through March 31.
Production Rollout: April 1-2 >> April 8-9 [**Updated Release Dates]

The rollout will follow the standard maintenance windows

Updated 1 month ago
Version 3.0
communities aurora
communities classic
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19 Comments

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  • LucyL's avatar
    LucyL
    Khoros Staff
    1 month ago

    26.2 sdk is published now! Thank you 

  • Lief's avatar
    Lief
    Boss
    1 month ago

    There is an update I didn't see (and still don't see) in the release notes.
    It adds an "approved / in review / rejected" marker on all of our posts.

    Visible to Mods / Admins / and OG Poster according to my TAM.
    personally I think it is over-the-top to display on every post and clutters our mod/admin users' experience unnecessarily. Also annoying on Solutions (see below) and wraps annoying on Mobile - especially threaded replies.

    I don't see where I can adjust it, I don't know what case would have asked for something resulting in this approach, and generally don't see how it fits in with any strategy or purpose. 

    Rejected and In Review posts are already flagged in a banner (also see below) so...am I stuck with this experience?

     



  • allensmith81's avatar
    allensmith81
    Boss
    1 month ago

    Lief​ I noticed the same thing, and yes defiantly not in the release notes. The approved / solved thing is just confusing especially as they are different shades of green. Folks try to work out why and come up with some amazing misunderstandings.

    Like you I would like to have the option to turn it off. Our moderation is done from the moderation panel not the community front end.

  • Lief's avatar
    Lief
    Boss
    1 month ago

    Another super weird one that my Content Manager found.
    Every single draft, in our Article Queue has this number on the end.


    It appears to be a Link to something but it renders as a popup listing the author but. with a title of 0 authors?

    almost certainly a bug. I'll send it to Support. But wondering if anyone else (Aurora) sees the same.
    Seems to be innocuous.

    Now that there are 2 things (that there is no way I would have really ever found in STAGE environment.)...how many more oddities exist?

     

  • LucyL's avatar
    LucyL
    Khoros Staff
    1 month ago

    Hi Lief​, allensmith81​, and everyone following this thread,

    Thank you for flagging this and for the detailed screenshots, they were helpful.

    The moderation-status labels (Approved, Under Review, Rejected) appearing on posts were not intended to be part of this release. We're actively working on a fix.

    To clarify scope - this is not visible to all users:• Post authors see the label on their own posts only• Admins and moderators see labels across all posts• Regular community members viewing someone else's post do not see these labels• Signed-out / anonymous visitors do not see them either

    So while it's understandably noticeable to those of you managing your communities, your general member population is not affected.

    Fix status:• Currently in QA - once validated, it will be deployed to production• No action needed on your end - this is a product-level fix• We'll update this thread once the patch is live

    On your feedback:We've noted your concerns around the visual clutter, the Approved vs. Solved label confusion, and the mobile experience. The intent behind this feature is to improve moderation visibility for authors and admins, but we understand it needs to be configurable - both in terms of whether labels show at all, and what they say. That's something we're factoring into upcoming releases.

    Finally, this feature was not included in the release notes because it wasn't part of the intended release. We apologize for the confusion, and we'll ensure our notes accurately reflect everything customers should expect going forward.

  • LucyL's avatar
    LucyL
    Khoros Staff
    1 month ago

    Still looking into this! I believe support can provide better information on this but i'll still look into on my side too! :)

  • RachaelS1's avatar
    RachaelS1
    Contributor
    16 days ago

    Jumping in to add that we, too, would like to turn off the large APPROVED UX, so I'd like to see a plan come forward to establish how it's going to be an option to turned off in the future :)