July - December Release Notes

Instagram Direct Messages 

Instagram Direct Messages have been available within Instagram for years, but its availability for API integrators was made public only recently. As this is an important and frequently asked-for channel, we are launching support of this channel in Brand Embassy just now! 

In order to set up Instagram DM, you can go to settings > channels and add the channel from there.
 

MS Teams 

As part of our initiative to enable collaborative messaging, you can now integrate MS Teams both in your own solution as well as in the Teams instances of your B2B clients. The integration offers 1:1 direct messages and sending of attachments both by customers and agents. 

How to set it up – reach out to your account manager to have the new channel enabled. Then go to the All channels page and click on the MS Teams button. Click a button to create a new channel and fill out two fields: teams tenant ID (see how get it here) and channel name (the name of the channel will then appear in Brand Embassy and Teams itself). Once the channel is created, you can download zip installation package. A person with sufficient permissions can then install the app on MS Teams instance (see the full process here). 

Improvements made in the new Agent UI 

In the last months we have rolled out New Agent UI to most of our accounts and with that, we have also incorporated a lot of various feedback. Here we are highlighting the main improvements. 

 

Darker mode 

Based on the feedback we have enabled to activate in Profile Settings darker mode for the new UI, which is more grey and less sensitive for your eyes. 

How to turn it on: 

 

Browser notifications 

We have reworked browser notifications informing you there is a new Case assigned to you. This helps especially in situation when you are working at the moment in different application on your desktop so it gives you information to pay attention to newly assigned case.  You can turn on the browser notifications in your profile settings the same as the darker mode we showed above.

 

Improved Public Posts 

Public posts now showing also comments around from another cases other than the agent is working on right now. This helps to see the context when agents are responding to customers. Also, you can set as “checked” those others comments too. Additionally, you can click on three dots on the message “...” and select “Show case”, which takes you to the full detail of that another case with a different customer. 

We are now continuously rolling out this improvement to all accounts with the new UI. This improvement will work for new incoming messages only, it won't be applied retroactively on data created in history. 

New case detail 

We have expanded details displayed about the Case if you need to get more detailed information. 

Payments, Appointment Scheduling, Secure Forms 

Customers can now take advantage of powerful new communication tools which will help drive positive outcomes with their customers.  Let’s take a closer look at these three new, exciting features 

Secure Payments – Do you want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to pay immediately?  If a customer contacts you to pay a bill or fee, are you able to make that happen in under one minute?  With our new Secure Payment feature, you now can.   

We are now integrated with the global Stripe payment platform. This enables admins to configure a secure payment link which can then be grabbed by agents in the Knowledge Base section of the agent UI and sent to customers.  The customer gets the link in a matter of moments, opens it into the Stripe payment gateway, and pays for exactly what they need to pay for.  The agent gets a confirmation of a successful payment.  In other words, you are able to close cases faster and with successful outcomes.  Customers are happy because they can pay quickly, easily, and securely in a matter of minutes. 

Prerequisites:  You need to set up a Stripe account for your company in order to use this new feature.  The Secure Payment feature needs to be toggled on.  It is accessible as an integration box in the Channel (Points of Contact) settings 

Secure Forms - Do you want to share forms with your customers?  For example, a loyalty and reward program registration form?  Or a change of address form?  Now you can easily do that by creating forms and sharing links with customers so they can quickly and easily fill in those forms.  The form fields are completely configurable so you can create as many data fields as you need.  You can also set up the form with colors and styles by linking it to a style sheet.  You can also link the form data to an external data source like a CRM system.  Creating the form is a simple, straightforward process which then allows agents to find the form in the knowledge base and quickly share with customers.  It puts so much power into your hands to gather the data that you need in order to better serve your customers. 

Prerequisites: The Secure Forms feature needs to be toggled on.  It is accessible as a new menu item in Settings. 

 

Secure Appointments – Do you want to be able to set up appointments with your customers at a moment's notice?  Now you can create an appointment schedule and share it with your customers so they can immediately schedule follow up actions.  This is a great tool to close sales cycles faster.  Customers contact your contact center with a need, a “job to be done” and by providing an appointment for them to speak with an expert, whether that be a salesperson or a technician, you are giving customers confidence that their “job to be done” is going to get done at a day and time that suits them.   

The appointment is set up from the Channel (Points of Contact) settings as an integration box.  The admin can define days of availability, time slot length, number of time slots available in a day, the number of concurrent time slots available, and also days where no time slots are available (holidays).  The appointment calendar is sent as a link in an outbound message.  When the customer clicks the link, they choose the day/time that suits them and submit it.  The customer receives a confirmation in their email inbox shortly after. 

 

Prerequisites: The Secure Appointment feature needs to be toggled on.  It is accessible as an integration box in the Channel (Points of Contact) settings 

 

Contact your account manager if you are interested into using these features. 

Search in admin selection 

When selecting channels / routing queues / tags in Workflow Automation conditions or Intelligent Routing filters we have added search capabilities for customers who have hundreds or thousands of these objects. 

 

Customer Card – new cases view 

We have reworked the Cases view in the Customer Card, which is now giving a better overview of all Cases solved with a customer. 

We will be activating the feature for accounts continuously in the upcoming weeks. 

Message search – searching by using a query 

You can now search in Messages by using query search. See more documentation here.

We will be activating the feature for accounts continuously in the upcoming weeks. 

Proactive Chat Suite 

You can now set up a wide variety of rules when and if should the popups appear. These include visited pages, device types, OS and many more: 

The proactive chat needs enhanced web tracking to operate. If you would like to turn the tracking on, please reach out to your account manager. 

If you need something more subtle than displaying a classic popup, you can opt to display welcome messages directly within chat window. These can be set up in WFA. 

 

Custom HTML Popups 

It is now possible to create your own popups in HTML. These can be operated the same way classic popups but can be used for a wider variety of use cases such as links to other channels or custom made pre-chat forms. 

WhatsApp Rich Messages 

You can now use our API to send WhatsApp templates with headers, footers, quick replies and call to action: 

See our API documentation to learn more. 

 

Mobile SDK for Messaging (Coming soon) 

We will launch new iOS and Android SDKs that will enable you to easily integrate messaging, rich media, chatbot support and notification capabilities into your mobile apps in native way! With that you can create a rich, compelling and great user experience for your customers. 

Our SDK is of high quality, well written and easily understood by even inexperienced mobile developers as it will contain guides and samples on how to implement. We start beta testing at the beginning of 2022 (contact your account manager if interested) and during the year the SDK will be available to all our clients. 

Stay tuned.