Product Newsletter January 14th

Hi there!

In line with the spectacular passing of another decade, we've pushed out a new release that contains some pretty awesome stuff. But before we get to all that, we want to address the recent instability of the platform.

In the previous week, we've experienced some unfortunate performance issues that we've determined were caused by the Inbox section. Because of that, we've decided to temporarily suspend the use of the Inbox until we've applied changes to it to ensure that it won't affect the performance of the platform in the future.

We apologize for any inconvenience this issue might have caused, and rest assured that we are taking the appropriate measures to prevent it from ever happening again.

Protip: you can still use Message Reports to access conversations.

If you want to know more about what this means, please don't hesitate to contact us. Now, onto the new additions:

New features and improvements:

Evaluation of Module Connections before Global Connections
Huge performance increase to the Global Connections view
Creating a module from Global Connections
New highlighted Webhook Templates

Continue scrolling to find a detailed description of our new additions to the platform.

Global Connections performance boost

In one of our previous releases, we introduced some improvements to the evaluation speed of Global Connections. While those improvements were great at increasing the rate at which connections were matched in the conversation, they did not address the issue of slow performance when viewing a bot that contains a substantial amount of Global Connections.

To remedy that, we've pushed out another update to the Global Connections that improves the speed at which you are able to interact with the Global Connections view as a Bot Operator. This is something we've wanted to improve for a while, so we're ecstatic that it's finally here (and we hope you are too!).

Navigate to the platform to see the performance improvements in action

Module Connections before Global Connections

Originally, the evaluation order of Connections meant that Global Connections would always be evaluated before Module Connections. However, because of the great customer feedback we've been receiving (and are eager to receive more of!), it's been made clear that there are situations in which where it is preferable to evaluate Module Connections before Global Connections.

Because of that, we've made some changes to the evaluation order of Module and Global Connections, so that you will now be able to decide which connections you want to evaluate first.

You've got the power!

Creating a module from Global Connections

I'm sure you've all experienced this one time or another. You're defining a connection, and you've input several conditions and details, and then you realise you don't have a module to direct the connection to. When this happens, you're forced to either direct the connection to a module you don't want it to go to and then having to change it later, or to cancel creating the connection altogether, which can lead to a great deal of mental anguish (speaking from experience).

That's why we're now giving you the option to create a module from Global Connections. In the future, we will also provide you with the ability to do this from other modules, so stay tuned for that.

Highlighted Webhook Templates

As is tradition, we've put together some easy-to-use Webhook Templates that add value to your chatbot.

The first template is PostNord Get Tracking Information, which uses PostNord's Track&Trace V2 endpoint to retrieve the tracking information for a given tracking ID. The template allows you to send information to the end user pertaining to the status of their parcel.

If that wasn't enough to get you positively salivating, we've also put together a few templates for the platform SendGrid.

SendGrid is an email delivery platform that allows you to send marketing emails to specific contacts (It's actually the very platform I'm using to craft and send this product newsletter!). Since some of you may also be using this service, we've put together some templates that will allow you to use your bot to build a bigger network of contacts.

The second template is SendGrid Add Recipient, which creates a new recipient in your contact list based on the information that the end user has supplied your bot with. This template only creates the contact, so if you want to add the end user to a recipient list, you'll have to use it in conjunction with the following template.

The third template is SendGrid Add Recipient to a List, which takes a specific recipient ID and adds it to a particular recipient list. Since the previous template already returns the recipient ID of the contact that's been created, these two templates complement each other quite well. Teamwork makes the dream work.

Check out the latest templates in the marketplace

Bug fixes:

As always, we've been fixing some things to make your life a little easier:

Users were unable to see the BotXO widget in Internet Explorer.
Some users were experiencing issues saving bots that were created using a template.
Users were presented with an error when trying to access old conversations from the Inbox.
Inbox would not show some webhooks being fired in a conversation, despite them being fired.
Users were experiencing that bots from other brands (when using multiple brands in Zendesk) would sometimes invade the conversations of other brands.
An issue was causing some Zendesk-based bots to not be able to enter conversations.

Known bugs:

Inbox is inaccessible.
The template bot "Starterbot Zendesk" is not able to be used.
Deep links made using the BotXO Dynamic Email Notification template will not work until the Inbox is restored to working order.

Please see our known bugs article for a list of unsolved long-term bugs.

Get in contact with us

Whether you need assistance from our Customer Success team, want to request a new feature or search for an article in our knowledge base; we love being in contact with you.

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Customer Success

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