At Lobster, innovation and progress are at the heart of everything we do. With the new Lobster Data Platform, we’re now able to advance these goals more effectively than ever. And the latest proof of that is our Autumn Release 25.1, available exclusively to all Data Platform customers starting October 9.
The latest Long-Term Support (LTS) release of the Lobster Data Platform marks a milestone: the first appearance of Pathfinder, our brand-new, AI-powered guide for building and managing integrations. Pathfinder isn’t just another feature – it’s the start of a smarter, more collaborative way of working with your data. Think of it as your integration co-pilot: always available, always ready to help, and always learning alongside you.
This release also unlocks legacy system data for AI-powered use cases, introduces a guided wizard for faster integration setup, and enhances the platform with more consistency, security, and flexibility across your integration workflows. Whether you’re a newcomer building your first profile or a seasoned pro managing high-volume processes, this release is built to help you work faster, with less friction, and more focus.
Introducing Pathfinder – your intelligent guide in the Data Platform.
Every integration journey has its challenges – cryptic error messages, remembering the right function names, documenting what you’ve built, or spending hours hunting for a solution.
Pathfinder changes that.
Pathfinder is our vision for a true digital collaborator in the Lobster Data Platform. It helps you build, troubleshoot, document, and optimize integrations with step-by-step guidance, contextual search, proactive recommendations, and smart automation. It’s designed for everyone – from newcomers finding their footing to experienced users scaling complex projects.
- Human-readable error logs through AI: Say goodbye to indecipherable error messages. Pathfinder translates technical logs into clear, actionable explanations so you know exactly what went wrong and how to fix it – fast.
- AI-Powered Function Search: Describe what you need to do (“split text,” “remove duplicates”) and Pathfinder instantly finds the right function – even if you don’t remember its name – helping you discover new capabilities along the way.
- Document Function Chains: Generate documentation for complex function chains, easing maintenance and onboarding of new team members.
And this is just the beginning. Over time, Pathfinder will evolve into a multi-skilled digital assistant – handling diagnostics, mapping, expanded documentation capabilities, and more – so you can spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time delivering value.
Lobster MCP – turn core systems into AI enabled resources.
LobsMany companies still rely on decades-old core systems for storing critical data, but oftentimes these tolls are hard to access in modern workflows. Our new MCP (Model Context Protocol) capability transforms these existing systems into AI-ready resources – without requiring migrations or large IT projects. With this new capability core systems become valuable context when using LLMs (Large Language Models). Business users can now query, analyse, and even transact core system data using natural language, unlocking a wide range of new possibilities.
Example use cases:
- Customer self-service: A shopper uses the retailer’s AI assistant to check real-time availability and pricing from a legacy ERP. The AI responds instantly, helping the customer complete the purchase without needing human support.
- Sales team enablement: A sales representative uses an AI agent to check stock levels in the ERP, suggest product alternatives from the PIM, analyze best sellers from sales data in the warehouse, and automatically update the customer’s order – all within one interface.
Why it matters: You extend the value of your existing infrastructure while accelerating AI adoption, enabling faster decisions and operational efficiency without touching your core systems.
Profile Creator.
Starting a new integration can feel overwhelming due to the flexibility and range of profile configuration options available. Our new Profile Creator changes that by walking you through the process step-by-step, based on common integration scenarios. It reduces guesswork, accelerates setup, and gets you to your first working integration in minutes.
Whether you’re onboarding a new EDI partner, setting up a file-based transfer, or connecting to a database, the wizard provides a clear, structured path – while still allowing advanced users to jump into deeper customization at any point.
Why it matters: This speeds up onboarding for new users, shortens time to value for integration projects, and makes the platform more approachable without sacrificing power for experienced users.
Courier, Express, and Parcel (CEP) connectivity.
Managing integrations with multiple shipping providers can quickly become a logistical nightmare. Each carrier – whether it’s DHL, FedEx, UPS, or regional providers – comes with their own API formats, authentication methods, shipping label standards, and data requirements. This forces businesses to build and maintain separate integrations for each provider, multiplying development time and ongoing maintenance overhead.
Our out-of-the-box CEP connectivity changes that by providing a single, unified integration point that abstracts away all the carrier-specific complexity. Instead of wrestling with DHL’s API documentation one day and FedEx’s different authentication system the next, you connect once to our platform and gain instant access to multiple carriers through standardized endpoints. We handle all the provider-specific nuances – from label formatting to tracking data normalization – behind the scenes.
Whether you’re generating shipping labels, tracking packages, or managing pickup schedules, our CEP connector translates your requests into the appropriate format for each carrier while presenting consistent data back to your systems.
Why it matters: This eliminates the need to build and maintain multiple carrier integrations, dramatically reducing integration complexity and letting you add new shipping providers to your operations without additional development work. So you can focus on your business, not on parsing different API responses.
Business Partner WebEDI Template: A starter for web-based EDI workflows.
Many trading partners, especially smaller suppliers, lack the technical infrastructure for traditional EDI exchanges but still need to participate in your business processes. Our new Business Partner WebEDI template demonstrates how to leverage the full power of the Lobster Data Platform’s infrastructure and orchestration capabilities to bridge this gap.
This starter template shows how to transform EDI messages using supplier confirmations as an example into intuitive web forms that any business can use through a standard browser. The template handles the complete workflow: receiving EDI transactions, converting them to user-friendly web interfaces, capturing responses, and seamlessly integrating the data back into your EDI systems.
As a downloadable starter template, it provides the foundation you need to quickly deploy web-based EDI workflows while giving you complete flexibility to customize and expand functionality based on your specific business requirements and trading partner needs.
Why it matters: This template showcases how our platform’s orchestration and infrastructure capabilities can solve real business challenges, enabling you to include low-tech trading partners in your digital workflows without forcing them to invest in complex EDI infrastructure while giving you a proven starting point to build upon.
Further improvements.
We are committed to helping our customers solve any integration challenge and are continually expanding our core capabilities while also focusing on productivity and user experience. We know: even the smallest improvements can make your day-to-day work faster, smoother, and easier. In this release we implemented several features to improve your experience, such as:
- Enhanced SFTP communication capabilities: Gain stronger controls with session limits, multiple public keys, disk usage restrictions, and post-upload access rules – boosting both security and stability.
- Improved database configuration setup: Enjoy clearer labels, inline connectivity testing, and better error messages to reduce setup time and frustration.
- Support for MessagePack format: Integrate seamlessly with systems that use MessagePack for high-performance, bandwidth-efficient data exchange – both as input and output.
- Consistent UI and features across connection configuration: Standardized terminology, layouts, and universal “Test” and “Copy” actions mean faster, more predictable configuration – no matter the connection type.
- Enhanced Swagger Support with OpenAPI 3.1: We upgraded our Swagger implementation to use the official OpenAPI 3.1 library, which now supports XML parsing and provides better API structure generation with improved stability and easier maintenance.
- Lobster Bridge for private cloud & on-prem: Our private cloud & on premises customers can now also use Lobster Bridge to securely and easily connect with their trading partners.
- Recursive FTP file listing: We added recursive directory support to our FTP file listing functionality, automatically discovering all files across nested folder structures to eliminate manual file discovery and provide complete data visibility for complex integration projects.
- Jasper Report 6 Deprecation Notice: We’re deprecating Jasper Report 6 functionality in version 25.1 and will remove it completely in version 26.4 LTS (12 months from now) as we transition to the new Jasper Report 7.
Upgrade today and let Pathfinder and the guided wizard transform your integration experience. This LTS release is built to help you work smarter, connect faster, and scale further – with no compromises on performance.
Release Webinar – see it live
If you’d like to see all of this in action, mark October the 10th at 10:00 AM in your calendar. Jethro Borsje & Marco Schottke will walk you through all the new features in a 40-minute live session – clear, practical, and hands-on. Right after that, join us for an open Q&A session in both English and German. Whether you have technical questions or strategic ideas – this is your chance.
We’re looking forward to seeing you there – and to taking the next big step in integration together.
