We are launching a number of new features with this release as well as updating core workflows and fixing bugs. Here's what's going live next Thursday:

New General Form Type

Up until today, all of our forms served a specific purpose and tied into specific workflows and interfaces in the platform. For example, creating a Case, collecting customer feedback, diagnosis issues, etc. With this release we have added a new “General” form type that can be used anywhere. This form comes with a public URL so you can capture information from anyone on the web. It is also accessible inside webchat and the SDK and will be able to trigger automations from the Automation Engine that’s coming soon.

This new form type creates new use cases for our forms, such as empowering teams to send bulk emails to run NPS surveys, collect non-transactional feedback, display micro-forms inside chat conversations, and more.

In the near future we will be able to trigger custom automations and actions on the submission of these forms, which will unlock new possibilities for automated workflows.

New Form Design

We also updated the styling of our public forms to improve the design for colors, text size, weights, spacing and more. This updated styling now also allows you to include custom titles, descriptions, and Help Links (tool tips that link directly to Knowledge Articles) on each form field.

WebChat 

We are launching a major update to WebChat with this release that brings more knowledge, flexibility, and support options into the chat experience.

Webchat will now be similar to our in-app support SDK where you can provide more targeted and personalized experiences for customers from a single interface. 

We have added the ability to include new support options on your webchat home screen. Instead of just chat, you can now add six different support options based on your needs, each with the flexibility to customize the titles and descriptions. These are the options:

• Welcome message - set your own personalized welcome message
• Chat - turn on and off the ability to chat
• Knowledge - bring your knowledge base search inline on your webchat home screen
• Email - quickly give your customers access to your support email if you prefer that channel
• Phone - Display your phone number for a quick click-to-call option
• Forms - Allow users to submit forms from your home screen or send forms via conversations to capture structured data 
• Web - A flexible module that you can use for announcements, product launches, link to new promotions, or anything else you can think of

Over time we will add additional options for the home screen of your WebChat widget, including third party apps, so you can customize it to deliver the exact experience you want based on who the customer is.

New WebChat Customization Capabilities

We also added a few additional customization options to ensure your chat experience is a natural extension of your overall brand experience. These updates include:

1. Configurable chat widget icon. You can now upload your own icon or images to WebChat to display your brand mark in addition to your colors 
2. Configure the avatar that appears on your authentication screen directly from the webchat configurator page to simplify the setup process

WebChat Configurator Updates

These new support options can be updated and activated with a single click from the cloud-based configurator. No code changes necessary. These are all new additional options so if you don’t make any changes, your chat will continue working as it does today.

Support SDK Updates

We made a number of updates to our Support SDK across iOS, Android, Clover, Pax, and Cordova:

• Updated Owner Team and Sponsor Team mapping for chats created from the SDK (as defined in the SDK configurator)
• Updated our Case Creation Forms to create Cases on form submission from SDK even if no SSO is configured
• Added native dark mode support
• Surfaced Help Links on Forms in the SDK to link to integrated Knowledge Articles
• Enhanced our SSO functionality for the SDK on Clover and Cordova 
• Removed the Initial navigation controller requirements on Cordova iOS
• Fixed a bug in the Case History module that was preventing certain data from displaying
• Updated all documentation to reflect the new color and styling customization options via JSON

Knowledge Updates 

We continued to update our Knowledge product to create a better experience for teams that create and edit content:

• Updated the CSS to allow tables to display as less than 100% width
• Removed the ‘Deleted’ option from the Status filter for users that don’t have delete article permissions
• Updated the copy/cut + paste image functionality inside an Article so it retains the original file type instead of converting the image to a .bin file.
• Updated the styling and formatting of Embedded Articles to remove special characters that sometimes get added
• Updated the Sort options at the top of the screen to show ‘Recently Updated’ instead of ‘Sort’ when that option is selected.
• Fixed a bug where updating an Article to Partner Ecosystem and Published would add a VIP tag onto the Shared list.
• Fixed a bug where removing the ‘Nest Label Under’ option would result in a runtime error
• Fixed an issue where sorting search results could result in showing no records
• Fixed a bug where creating an Article while having a sub-label selected set the default visibility for that Article to Public instead of starting as Internal
• Fixed a bug where certain articles would give an error when accessed from search results

Search Updates

We updated our search functionality across the system with the following updates:

• Enhanced partial search matching logic across all objects 
• Improved search results response time within Knowledge
• Added escalated icon to escalated cases on global search results
• Updated knowledge search so removing your query returns you to the All Results list
• Fixed an issue where ‘Resolved’ Cases were showing as ‘New’ in search results
• Hid all deleted cases from global search results
• Fixed an issue where users would see results for objects they didn’t have access to (previously would get an error on open, now they don’t display)
• Fixed an issue where Article search results would sometimes show an incorrect query highlighted
  
  

Communications Panel

We updated the core of the messaging panel for increased speed, responsiveness, and stability. This includes the speed that new chat notifications appear in your chat bar and the consistency in load times for messages across threads on each Case. We also made a few updates that include:

1. CC recipients now always remain on email threads
2. Preventing emails from adding more than one “Re:’ to the beginning of long email threads
3. Fixed periodic ‘Join’ errors and ‘Failure to Send’ errors
4. Updated the +Email threads to not show ‘loading new messages’ when there are no messages
   
   

RingCentral Integration

We are launching our RingCentral integration that will allow Organizations that use RingCentral to automatically create Cases from inbound phone calls, route them to the correct team, and pop the Case on the screen assigned to the agent that answered the call.

Security & Performance 

Both security and performance are incredibly important and we will continue to work to improve both with every release. This sprint we did the following:

• Updated error messages with more granular request IDs to allow us to better track and resolve performance-related issues
• Optimized a number of endpoints to reduce periodic timeouts errors. These include Article list views, Article cards, Case views, Case Insights, search results
• Made a small security policy update related to cross-site-scripting attacks
  
  

General Bugs & Updates

• Fixed an issue with cloning Form fields where they would show at the bottom of the list instead of immediately following the cloned field
• Updated outbound email templates from the Customer room to retain subject line prefixes set in the email template
• Updated the link of the logo at the top of email templates to now point to each Organization’s website rather than boomtown’s website
• Added a missing Create button on Customer Locations to create new Locations, Contacts, Products, and Cases.
• Fixed a bug where completing a Journey Stage would sometimes throw an error
• Updated the View Customers permission to allow users to view customers across teams in global search results
• Updated the View Cases permission to allow all users to view Cases for Teams they are not on (still requires edit access to make any changes)
• Updated our copy/paste functionality to allow copy/pasting from additional sources (OneNote, Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.) and have it paste as text instead of an image.
• Added a scroll bar to the Views filters for when you have more than 8 filters and they go beyond the viewport
• Updated the Case history in the first column of the Case screen to now display the creation date and escalation flags
• Updated the total Case count on the Case history to show all Cases and not just the visible Cases
• Fixed an issue where users with the proper permission were not able to delete Contacts or Products from a Customer Location
• Removed the 32 Team limit on fields where Teams are added to other objects (e.g. Alert Templates, Linked Teams)
• Fixed a bug preventing date/time adjustments on forms
• Fixed a bug preventing the ‘Is Between’ operator from working on date filters