As OvationCXM grows and evolves, we have shifted our mobile focus from generally available support applications to more flexible, configurable, and developer-friendly mobile support SDKs to provide you with the ability to design and implement the exact customer experience you want to deliver on mobile.

With this in mind, we have decided to deprecate our Connect mobile applications on iOS, Android, Poynt, and Clover. 

Effective June 30, 2023, the mobile applications will be removed from the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, Poynt Marketplace, and Clover Marketplace. The application will continue to function until September 30, 2023, at which point it will be shut down.

To facilitate a smooth transition, we recommend taking the following actions:

1. Remove References to Connect: Identify all references to downloading the Connect application on your website and documentation and remove these references.
2. Migrate to Mobile SDKs: If you still use the Connect application to support your customers, you can use our mobile SDK to create more integrated and customized experiences for your customers on iOS, Android, or Cordova. If you are interested in our SDK for Clover, please contact us.
3. Reach out for assistance: If you encounter any challenges during the migration process or have questions regarding our SDKs, our support team is ready to assist you. Feel free to contact us through our support channels, and we will be glad to help you.

We understand that these changes may require some effort on your part, but we believe they will contribute to a more robust and streamlined experience within OvationCXM. By deprecating these mobile applications, we can focus our resources on enhancing other areas of our product to better serve your needs.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation as we continue to improve OvationCXM. We are confident that the updated mobile experiences will provide you with a more efficient and secure platform. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us.

We are excited to announce the latest update to our V3 API suite. This update will allow the service providers orgs to utilize a subset of API endpoints on behalf of one or many standard organizations in their ecosystem. This feature enhances the flexibility and functionality of OvationCXM, enabling service providers to interact with customer data efficiently. Please read below for more details on this update.

The OvationCXM API has been enhanced to provide a subset of endpoints for service provider organizations. While the API was initially designed for standard organizations to interact with their data, this new functionality allows service providers to perform certain actions on behalf of a standard organization.

To take advantage of this use case, the following conditions must be met:

1. The standard organization, on whose behalf the service provider is acting, must be the rightful owner of the customer data being accessed.
2. An ecosystem relationship between the service provider organization and the standard organization must be defined within CXMEngine.

New HTTP Header: X-Boomtown-OBO

To utilize the subset API endpoints, service provider organizations are required to include an additional HTTP header in their API calls. The header, X-Boomtown-OBO, should contain the unique ID of the standard organization on whose behalf the API calls are being made. This ensures proper authorization and linkage between the service provider and the associated standard organization.

Please note that the availability of specific endpoints and their functionalities may vary based on the subset API access granted to service provider organizations.

We believe that this feature enhancement will greatly benefit service providers by enabling them to offer more comprehensive and efficient services to their customers. It strengthens the collaboration between service providers and standard organizations, fostering a seamless customer experience.

For more information on how to implement and utilize the subset API access for service providers, please refer to the updated API documentation and guidelines provided by OvationCXM.

If you have any questions or require further assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out to our support team.

Best regards,

The OvationCXM Team

As part of our commitment to delivering a secure and efficient platform, we constantly review and update our offerings. With this in mind, we have decided to deprecate the v2 APIs within the OvationCXM platform. 

Effective September 1, 2023, API v2 will be deprecated. Please note that once these APIs are deprecated, we will no longer provide technical support or further updates for them. If you are not using any of the v2 APIs, you can safely ignore this message. Otherwise, updating your integrations and applications to leverage the latest API versions available within OvationCXM is essential.

To facilitate a smooth transition, we recommend taking the following actions:

1. Update your integrations: Identify all instances where the deprecated APIs are being used and update them to utilize the recommended alternatives. Our documentation and developer resources will be updated to guide you through this process.
2. Test and validate: After making the necessary changes, thoroughly test and validate your integrations and applications to ensure they function as expected with the new APIs. This step is crucial to maintain seamless operation and avoid any disruptions to your workflows.
3. Reach out for assistance: If you encounter any challenges during the migration process or have questions regarding the updated APIs, our support team is ready to assist you. Feel free to contact us through our support channels, and we will be glad to help you.

We understand that these changes may require some effort on your part, but we believe they will contribute to a more robust and streamlined experience within OvationCXM. By deprecating these APIs, we can focus our resources on enhancing other areas of our product to better serve your needs.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation as we continue to improve OvationCXM. We are confident that the updated APIs will provide you with a more efficient and secure platform. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Hello, OvationCXM world!

We are thrilled to announce the release of the Topic Modeling Flow for training unhandled responses in the OvationCXM Virtual Assistant. Unhandled responses are phrases that your customers type when interacting with a Virtual Assitant that don't match to a response you have defined.

The following feature is now available under the clustering section on the VA navigation panel. This innovative feature empowers users to enhance the VA's understanding and response accuracy by leveraging advanced clustering and modeling techniques to efficiently organize and train unhandled conversations.

Overview:

The Topic Clustering Flow is a powerful feature that empowers users to efficiently train unhandled and missed user responses. With this feature, our state-of-the-art AI embedding model will create clusters of unhandled phrases for users to map them to intents, and train the system for improved response accuracy.

The Flow:

Key Features:

Cluster Creation: The Topic Modeling Flow automatically generates and names the clusters of unhandled phrases. By clicking on "Populate Clusters," users can quickly view and organize unhandled responses based on common topics and patterns. Users can also manually create new clusters to categorize relevant unhandled phrases into it

Cluster Details and Metrics: Users can access a dedicated view that provides comprehensive information about each cluster. This includes overall impact metrics, top keywords, the status of each cluster, and the intent it is mapped to. This overview helps users understand the relevance and importance of each cluster.

Phrase Acceptance and Rejection: Users can review the phrases within each cluster and accept or reject them accordingly. Accepting a phrase indicates that it should be mapped to the associated intent while rejecting a phrase excludes it from the training process and maps it to an ignored phrases pool.

Cluster Management: Within the cluster view, users have the flexibility to perform various actions. They can rename clusters, map them to specific intents, and interact with the phrases within each cluster.

Drag and Drop Functionality: To further customize the clusters, users can easily drag and drop phrases from one cluster to another. This feature allows for intuitive organization and refinement of the unhandled responses.

Training Process: Once all the clusters are prepared, users can initiate the training process. This step ensures that the phrases within each cluster are properly mapped to the corresponding intents. After training, the system is reset and ready for the next round of virtual assistant training.

Benefits:

Enhanced Training Accuracy: By mapping phrases to specific intents and training the system, users can significantly improve the Virtual Assistant's response accuracy. This leads to a more seamless and satisfactory user experience.

Efficient Cluster Management: The Topic Modeling Flow simplifies the organization and management of unhandled responses by automatically creating clusters based on similar topics. Users can easily navigate and interact with clusters, saving time and effort.

Intuitive User Interface: The drag-and-drop functionality and user-friendly cluster view make it straightforward for users to customize and refine the clusters according to their requirements.

Streamlined Training Process: The automated training process ensures that phrases are accurately mapped to intents, eliminating manual intervention and reducing the risk of errors.

We are excited to introduce the Topic Modeling Flow in the OvationCXM Virtual Assistant and we would appreciate your feedback as we continue to enhance our VA platform.

For more information or assistance, please contact our product team at product@ovationcxm.com.

Note: This release note provides a high-level overview of the Topic Modeling Flow features. For detailed instructions on how to utilize this feature, We will be adding relevant knowledge articles and documentation.

As part of our commitment to delivering a secure and efficient platform, we constantly review and update our offerings. With this in mind, we have decided to deprecate certain APIs within the OvationCXM platform.

Effective from September 1, 2023, the following APIs will be deprecated:

1. /api/v3/customers/password_reset
2. /api/v3/customers/users/sso/{user_id}
3. /api/v3/customers/sms_invite
4. /api/v3/org/users/sso/{user_id}
5. /api/v3/reports/technicians
6. /api/v3/reports/org
7. /api/v3/reports/kpi_issues_by_geography
8. /api/v3/reports/kpi_average_time_to_scheduled
9. /api/v3/reports/kpi_parner_owned_issues
10. /api/v3/reports/kpi_time_onsite_by_location
11. /api/v3/reports/kpi_issues_by_location
12. /api/v3/reports/kpi_active_support_minutes
13. /api/v3/reports/kpi_issues_time_to_completion
14. /api/v3/reports/kpi_issues_remote_vs_onsite
15. /api/v3/reports/kpi_issues_by_category
16. /api/v3/reports/kpi_issues_over_time
17. /api/v3/reports/kpi_open_issues
18. /api/v3/reports/kpi_issues_by_age
    

    
    

Please note that once these APIs are deprecated, we will no longer provide technical support or further updates for them. If you are not using any of the above-mentioned APIs, you can safely ignore this message. Otherwise, it is essential to update your integrations and applications to leverage the latest versions and functionalities available within OvationCXM.

To facilitate a smooth transition, we recommend taking the following actions:

1. Update your integrations: Identify all instances where the deprecated APIs are being used and update them to utilize the recommended alternatives. Our documentation and developer resources will be updated to guide you through this process.
2. Test and validate: After making the necessary changes, thoroughly test and validate your integrations and applications to ensure they function as expected with the new APIs. This step is crucial to maintain seamless operation and avoid any disruptions to your workflows.
3. Reach out for assistance: If you encounter any challenges during the migration process or have questions regarding the updated APIs, our support team is ready to assist you. Feel free to contact us through our support channels, and we will be glad to help you.

We understand that these changes may require some effort on your part, but we believe they will contribute to a more robust and streamlined experience within OvationCXM. By deprecating these APIs, we can focus our resources on enhancing other areas of our product to better serve your needs.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation as we continue to improve OvationCXM. We are confident that the updated APIs will provide you with a more efficient and secure platform. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out to us.

[Action Required for users of api.thinkrelay.com]

OvationCXM is in the process of sunsetting the thinkrelay.com domain in conjunction with our move to Google Cloud Platform and as required under trademark law. The final outstanding reference to the thinkrelay.com domain is the use of api.thinkrelay.com. If you are not using api.thinkrelay.com you can safely ignore this message.

If you are actively using api.thinkrelay.com, we ask that you please update any api.thinkrelay.com references to api.goboomtown.com as soon as possible. 

A few years ago we implemented forwarding so that calls to api.thinkrelay.com automatically route to api.goboomtown.com, so the change is minimal. We have everything configured so it will be a simple find-and-replace exercise to update the references. Firewall rules will still work without any updates because the IP address is the same. We would be happy to schedule a call with you to assist with the update.

We are targeting a full shutdown of the api.thinkrelay.com hostname on September 1, 2023. 

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact your account manager or email us at product@ovationcxm.com. 

Release Date: 05/18/23

CX Manager

Cases

• Updated the Daily Digest email content to be more useful and scannable
• Made several performance improvements related to setting Cases to Waiting and the corresponding events that display in the Case Event timeline
• Fixed a bug where an Event was missing on the Event timeline whenever a Case changed from Waiting to Ready
• Fix a bug where setting a Case to Waiting for a specific time duration did not always return that Case to Ready after the time was reached

Automations

• Fixed a bug in the Automation Engine where emails were not being sent to the specified emails in the "Send to Others" field on the Send Email action

Navigation

• Fixed an issue where the text in the main navigation selector dropdown on small screens was being cut off

Knowledge

We made several updates to the internal and external facing screens, focusing on ADA compliance. 

• Accordions in an Article are now accessible and operable using your keyboard to comply with ADA regulations
• We updated the color and styling of the Chat Case Tiles to adhere to our new color scheme and for ADA compliance
• We updated the color and styling of the Phone Case Tile to adhere to our new color scheme and for ADA compliance
• We updated the colors of tags, chips, and badges to comply with ADA regulations
• We removed the duplicate search field from the bottom pagination bar on Article lists
• The search button on the External Knowledge home page is now right-aligned and focused after the input field in order to comply with ADA regulations
• We have added an ADA-compliant skip link to the header of External Knowledge Libraries that allows keyboard users to jump straight to the main content
• We made links that open in new tabs in Articles viewed in the External Knowledge Library ADA-compliant by adding an aria-label that announces the visible text in the link as well as "opens in a new window"
• We removed the announcement of the line separating the header from the rest of the page in the External Knowledge Library to comply with ADA regulations
• We removed the logo and search buttons in the header of the external library from being announced as a list to comply with ADA regulations
• We updated the banners pinned to the bottom of Articles when you were viewing an Internal Article or previewing a Draft in the External Knowledge Library. There are now alerts above the title of the Article that are ADA compliant.
• We updated the Logo in the External Knowledge Library header to be ADA compliant by addressing its structure and the way it is announced by screen readers
• We updated the structure of Article links when viewing a Label page in the External Knowledge Library to be ADA-compliant by removing the sub-title from the link text
• We updated the structure of subtitles and timestamps when viewing an Article in the External Knowledge Library to make them ADA-compliant by removing their heading designations
• We updated the way Sub-labels are announced when viewing a Label page in the External Knowledge Library to be ADA-compliant by only announcing them as a list when there are more than 1 displayed on the page
• We fixed a bug where Tags displayed on Article cards in Knowledge Home looked like they were clickable

Integrations & APIs

APIs

• Fixed a bug where the APIv3 Move Locations endpoint was not moving the custom fields for the location and contacts object.

Admin & Settings

• Fixed a bug where users we unable to add more than 32 teams to a Tag. Users can now add up to 50 teams.
• Fixed a bug where only default fields and ecosystem custom fields were showing in the Layout previews in Settings. Non-ecosystem custom fields will now also appear.

Hello, OvationCXM world!

We’re pleased to announce a new feature for OvationCXM Virtual Assistants: Sentiment Analysis! This new capability provides valuable insights into the conversations your virtual assistant (VA) is having with customers.

Our Sentiment Analysis feature offers an effortless and accurate way to measure customer sentiments. It uses a combination of natural language processing and artificial intelligence to classify the conversations into three emotions:

• Positive
• Negative
• Neutral

Now with Sentiment Analysis as part of OvationCXM’s VA Analytics suite of tools, you can better understand customer sentiments that can be used to improve customer engagement and drive operational efficiency.

We are adding visualization on the VA Analytics dashboard to quickly and easily understand the sentiment of your customers’ conversations with your virtual assistant.

Some of the visualizations we have added:

1. Overall Customer Sentiments: To provide an overview of the overall sentiments of the customers talking to VAs. It will enable you to get the full view of your customers' experience chatting with your virtual assistants.

2. Sentiments on Cases: To connect the user sentiments on VA conversations with the Cases they relate to. This will provide valuable analytics on how the sentiment of users impacted each case resolution.

3. Sentiment of Specific User Messages: To get a granular understanding of each message and the user sentiment at that time. This will help you to identify and analyze particular messages and why the occurred so you can better handle similar messages in the future.

4. Sentiments on Intents, Entities, and Flows: To provide analytics on customer sentiments with each VA intent, entity, or flow created. This will help you improve the particular intents, entities, or flows that are creating more negative sentiments and promote the ones that are creating positive sentiments.

Rollout Plan:

We will be adding the Sentiment Analysis Visualizations on the Virtual Assistants Analytics Dashboards following the 4/18 release. Please email product@ovationcxm.com if you would like access to User Sentiment graphs on your VA Analytics Dashboard.

Release Date: 04/18/23: 

Starting with this release, we shifted to monthly software releases. Here are the updates going live with this release:

CX Manager

• Fixed a bug where the phone screen pop icon was sometimes routing the User to an incorrect case
• Fixed a bug where Users were receiving an error message after editing and saving Form responses
• Reduced load times for screens containing Customer data

Knowledge

• We are excited to announce a new feature that allows users to restore Previously Published versions of Articles as editable Drafts. With this update, you can easily retrieve any version that you have published in the past and restore it as a Draft for further editing and/or publishing. If you already have a Draft version of the Article, you will receive a prompt letting you know that restoring the Previously Published version will delete your current Draft.
• We updated the way Insert Articles look in the new editor. If you insert an Article and do not choose to embed it, there will be a link to the Article that looks and behaves the same way inserting a link would. If you embed the Article, you will be able to see the entire embedded Article as if you were viewing it in the external Library. 
• Added a Load More button to the Version Picklist when in the view state of an Article. This will improve overall load times by limiting the list to 25 versions.  If you have more than 25 versions of an Article, you can click on the Load More button at the bottom of the list to access the remaining versions. We also fixed a bug where the Published and Draft versions were not always listed at the top of the list. 
• Added the ability to delete the entire Article to the more options menu when you are in the view or edit state of the Article
• Fixed a bug where inserting a file into an Article was not displaying the name of the file
• Fixed a bug where the Labels section while editing an Article would sometimes get stuck in a loading state. The issue was occurring due to Sub-labels not being deleted completely. We improved the behavior of deleting Labels and Sub-labels.
• Fixed a bug where Users were sometimes being logged out due to inactivity without receiving a notification
• Fixed a bug where archived Articles were appearing in the list of selectable Articles when inserting an Article

Virtual Assistants

We are excited to announce the launch of our Topic Modeling update to our Virtual Assistants, which will allow you to easily enhance and fine-tune how your Virtual Assistants respond to customer inquiries. We will share a full detailed post on topic modeling soon, but here is a preview of the new functionality: 

• Added a default view page to review each individual cluster. This page will enable users to get relevant information/analytics on each of the phrases, select/ignore phrases, rename the cluster and map the cluster to relevant intents for training.
• Created a new page under "Clustering" section of Virtual Assistants to run the Topic Modeling flow which automatically creates the clusters with unhandled user responses for mapping them to VA Intents. 
• Added a default view page to review all the created clusters under "Clustering" section of the VAs. The page will enable users to get relevant information, select/ignore phrases under each cluster and map the cluster to relevant intents for training.
• Integrated BERT Topic Model with our VA classification models to capture, classify and train any unhandled/unclassified user responses
• Added a static Ignored cluster which will collect all the user-ignored phrases. The following Ignored cluster can also be mapped to an Intent
• Added the capability to collect the user responses from Messenger instances as training data for the Topic Model
• Added Cluster Table Creation functionality where Topic Model will group the unhandled responses into relevant clusters and populate the tables with the generated cluster details
• Fixed an error, which sometimes prevented the Bots Activity table from successfully loading on the Analytics Dashboard

Connectors & APIs

• Fixed a bug where the customers/location/get endpoint on APIv3 was not returning the filtered location

Admin & Settings

• Fixed a bug where adding conditional logic to Custom Fields on Case and Location layouts was not working as expected. You should now be able to apply Show/Hide logic to Custom Fields based on one or more requirements. 
• Fixed a bug where all of the text became distorted after creating a new Tag in Settings
• Fixed a bug where Users were allowed to update Tags with Teams that they were not on

ADA WCAG 2.1

We made several color and styling enhancements throughout the platform to continue on our path of becoming ADA WCAG 2.1 compliant. These color and styling updates were applied to input fields, switches, the main navigation menu and dropdown, text, and button borders. 

Release Date: 03/23/23 

CX Manager

• Added a toggle to the IMAP email integrations to optionally ignore the auto-generated email headers and thus allow auto-generated emails to create cases in your CXME
• Added additional monitoring and alerting on IMAP email integrations to alert teams if an email integration connection fails
• Reduced load times for screens that contain Customer data
• Fixed a bug where custom date fields on the Location Layouts were not always displaying correctly
• Fixed an issue where Automations did not always trigger when the proper criteria were reached
• Updated colors throughout the application from teal to blue

Knowledge

• Updated the way you select multiple Articles on Knowledge home screen. You no longer have to click the Select button to make checkboxes appear. They will always be visible as long as you have a specific Library or Label selected.
• Updated the user workflow for adding Comments to an Article
• Added an "Articles" header above the list of Articles when you are viewing a page in the external library that has both labels and Articles listed
• Added the ability to include alt text when uploading an avatar to your external knowledge library
• Fixed a bug where changing multiple Article's Access Controls with the multi-select action did not properly change Internal Articles to Public
• Fixed a bug where labels containing public Articles would disappear after a User logged into the external library
• Fixed a bug where error messages were being displayed when attempting to insert legitimate image files into the body of an Article
• Fixed a bug where article stats were no longer updating properly

Integrations & APIs

Added extended standard field and custom field support to the Case Created and Case Updated Webhooks

Virtual Assistants

Added the ability to create a lead in Salesforce directly from the Virtual Assistant conversations. When enabled in a Flow, your Virtual Assistant can capture the user information and send it directly to Salesforce to create a new lead.

Admin & Settings

Fixed a bug on active Custom Fields that showed the Field Type field as editable even though it was not editable