Release Notes for all 2021 Q2 Updates

All releases listed are deployed to all Symbee Connect Regions globally. Each release begins deployment in US Virginia (us-east-1) region first, and then progresses to all other regions globally over the course of approximately 48 hours.

The release dates below mark the date of the release deployment into the first region (us-east-1).

2021 / 06 / 04

What's New

  1. Customer Facing Webchat support for Immediate Conversation Launch (without Pre-Chat Form)

    • Symbee Connect WebChat Instance configurations now support, by optional configuration, a customer experience where the chat conversation starts immediately, without an initial pre-chat questionnaire form.
    • A new Disabled Customer Form setting is added to WebChat Instance setup (within the Chat Client UI Customization section. When checked, the initial pre-chat form is bypassed, and the customer chat conversation begins immediately.

  2. Customer Facing Webchat support for new Pre-Chat Questionnaire Field Type - Hidden

    • When adding custom fields in the Additional Customer Form Items section of a WebChat Instance configuration, there’s a new item type: Hidden.
    • Hidden items are not displayed to the Customer, and can only be set via Query String parameters added to the WebChat Instance customer facing URL as its launched.
    • Hidden items show up in the Agent the same as other items, and (if Amazon Delivered) are loaded into Contact Attributes the same as other items.
    • A hidden item can be marked as Required.
      • Note: if you do so, and have the Customer Form enabled, the Chat wont let you start if a Hidden field value is not supplied on the query-string

What's Fixed

  1. Instant Message update

    • For Instant Message Only: When user’s instant message each other, and they do not have a “Friendly Name” configured, their name becomes their user-id, rather than the generic “Agent” label.

  2. Outbound Email / Fax update

    • Update to address an intermittent issue where sometimes an Outbound Email / Fax would fail to send.
    • Issue could also be experienced seen when un-parking emails.

What Else

  1. Email Channel updates in support of allowing Reporting to search on Email content.

  2. Email Channel performance improvements.

2021 / 05 / 28

What's New

  1. New configurable Inbound Email Routing Rulesets

    • Allows routing of Inbound emails based on subject and body keyword spotting, and From: and To: email address patterns
    • Control the destination Skill Queue an inbound email will be delivered through based on the rules configured in an optional Inbound Routing Ruleset.
    • Rulesets optionally configured against one or many Email Endpoint configurations - when configured, and rule matches override the Email Endpoint's default Skill Queue
    • Refer to Inbound Routing Rules documentation here: Inbound Routing Rules

  2. New Administration Portal Email Inbound Ruleset Configuration Screens

    • Configure Inbound Routing Rulesets for use in any Email Endpoint Configuration
    • Each Ruleset consists of one or many Rules
    • Rules match inbound email based on From Address, To Address, Subject Line, or search of complete email content.
    • Rules match for simple “contains” strings, or complex regular-expression statements.
    • Upon Rule Match, either:
      • ROUTE - Deliver through a specified Skill Queue (can be different from that configured on the Email Endpoint).
      • STOP - Don’t deliver to any queue (can use this to block spam emails, take action on nuisance emails, etc.)

  3. New flexible (optional) Inbound Email Routing Lambda hook

    • An default Inbound Routing Rules Lambda is provided for standard operation.
    • The default Lambda implementation can be optionally replaced with your own custom implementation which will be invoked during each inbound email arrival.
    • A custom implementation receives input of all rules configured within the Administration Portal (if needed, otherwise can be completely custom) and the location of the Email content.

  4. New Inbound Email Parking

    • Ability for an agent to Park an inbound email if they can't respond immediately, and respond at a later time.
    • Parking is optionally enabled at a User Profile/Template level - refer to the Digital Channels => Email section
    • When enabled, each user is provisioned their own personal parking area

  5. New Inbound Email Shared Parking Areas

    • Configure Shared Parking Areas at a Company/Environment level
    • Control of which Shared Parking Areas are visible to each user is controlled at a User Profile/Template level.
    • Refer to Email Configuration documentation here: Shared Parking Areas

  6. Parking Service Levels

    • Control the maximum time an email can be parked in a single park (in minutes):

      • At a User Profile/Template level, for personal parking areas.
      • At the Parking Area level, for Shared Parking Areas

    • Control the maximum number of times an individual email can be parked (or re-parked):

      • At a user profile level, for personal parking areas.
      • At the Parking Area level, for Shared Parking Areas

    • If the maximum parking time is exceeded, the system automatically requeues the inbound email to be worked:

      • Back to the same queue originally delivered through.
      • With “preferred agent” set for the user that last parked the email.
      • If the “preferred agent” is unavailable, the next-best skilled agent will be selected.

What's Fixed

What Else

  1. Symbee Connect Agent/User UI Amazon Chat updates

    • New Amazon Connect region (Canada - ca-central-1) required the very latest Amazon Connect Streams chat.js library version

  2. Internal updates to the New Company Signup process

  3. Continued support of old Amazon Connect CCP (v1)

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

2021 / 05 / 14

What's New

  1. Addition of Amazon Connect Tasks integration in the Administration Portal

    • New Tasks Integration option off the main Function menu.
    • New Tasks Integration screens (Overview, and Tasks Testing screens).
    • New Tasks Testing screen allows you to create "Example Tasks” and queue them up for Agent Delivery via an Amazon Connect Contact Flow
    • Updates to the Realtime Agents View to show when Agents are working active Generic Tasks.
    • Refer to Task Integration documentation here: Tasks Integration

  2. New Support for Amazon Connect Tasks in the Symbee Connect Agent/User UI

    • Adding support for new Generic Task Interaction Type

      • Supports all the same features as the Symbee Connect Preview Task Interaction
      • Any detected Phone Numbers get automatic Click-to-Call behavior.
      • Attributes displayed can be sorted.
      • Attributes can be highlighted on the display
      • "link" attributes turned into HTML links that pop externally
      • "button" attributes turned into HTML Buttons that pop externally
      • Attributes can exist and be hidden from display to the user

    • Updated New Outbound panel to support Transfer of Tasks from one Queue to another.

    • Refer to Task Integration documentation here: Tasks Integration

  3. New Support Tools added to Agent/UserUI and User Profiles/Templates

    • Allows a user/agent to download their logs from the Settings pane in the Agent/User UI, rather than having to open the Browser Developer Tools window.
    • Additional option can beenabled by an Administrator to enable a button which launches the Amazon Connect Test Tool, preconfigured with your instance, and auto-runs when it loads.
    • Refer to User Settings documentation here: Show Test Tool Link

  4. New Voicemail Features added

    • Allows Queue-based Voicemails to be sent to multiple addresses

      • The TargetGroupEmail Contact Attribute now supports having multiple comma-separated email addresses in its value. Email gets sent to all email addresses listed.

    • Optional custom text can now be added into the Subject Line of the Voicemail Email (for example, to delineate which Queue the Voicemail arrived through if you are sending Voicemail for multiple Queues to the same Email address).

      • A new (optional) VMSubjectInfo Contact Attribute can now be set for Queue based voicemail in the contact flow. If present, the contents of the attribute are injected into the Subject line on the resulting Voicemail Emails.

  5. Customer Facing WebChat updates

    • The pre-chat questionnaire Initial Question, if configured, and supplied by the user, now also displays to the customer after the chat conversation is started in the main conversation window on the customer side (previously it was sent to the agent, but not redisplayed to the customer).

  6. ZOHO CRM Integration added

    • New ZOHO option available in the dropdown in the Other CRM section of User Profiles/Templates in the Administrtaion Portal.
    • ZOHO Contact Flow Lambda added for use in Amazon Connect Contact Flows.
    • New ZOHO Plugin support in Symbee Connect Agent:
      • Screenpop support
      • Click to Dial support

  7. Third-Party and Conference Call Legs now included on Call History

    • Third-Party and Conference call legs are now included in the users recent Call History panel
    • (Previously Call History only showed entries for the primary call).

What's Fixed

  1. Symbee Connect generated Interaction Trace Records (ITR) - correction to ensure User Hierarchy is always populated on the ITR.

  2. Update to address Incoming Email delivery issue in Sydney region.

  3. Customer Facing WebChat update to resolve broken Logo Link in CSS, on the navigation bar after a chat had started.

  4. Symbee Connect Agent/User UI update for Secure IVR Contact Flows

    • Update to better handle when an agent conferences in a “Secure IVR” Contact Flow (via Quick Connect) into the call.

  5. Symbee Connect Agent/User UI updated Phone Conference Call End Call For All button behavior

    • Previous behavior only removed the agent (leaving 2 far end parties on the call)
    • Now ends conference for all parties (original intended behavior)

  6. Update to resolve Lost Connectivity to Amazon Connect error briefly displaying during user sign out.

What Else

  1. Updates to all downloadable CloudFormations to include the new Canada (ca-central-1) region Lambda Distribution Bucket as an available parameter in Dropdowns.
  2. Amazon Connect Instance Management Integration reliability updates.
  3. Administration Portal Security updates.
  4. Administration Portal Performance updates.
  5. Update of Amazon Connect Streams Library to the latest release (v 1.6.5) in the Agent/User UI.
  6. Database Performance updates.

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

2021 / 04 / 16

What's New

  1. Direct Inbound Chime BRIDGE and FORWARD calls can now be reported on

    • BRIDGE and FORWARD calls now generate Symbee Connect Interaction Trace Records to allow for these types of call to be viewed in Reporting.

  2. User-level Call Forwarding now supported for Direct Inbound (Chime) PSTN calls

    • Inbound Chime PSTN DID calls will now be forwarded to the forwarding number configured in the User Profile, if the User Profile has Call Forwarding enabled.

  3. Screen-Pop URL Fusion now supports two simultaneous different Screen-Pops

    • A User Profile/Template can now be configured to have two concurrent Screen-Pop’s:

      • Current existing ScreenPop URL settings now renamed Screen-Pop (1)
      • Additional Settings section added (labelled Screen-Pop (2))

    • Updates in Symbee Connect Agent/User UI to support having two screen-pops firing simultaneously.

  4. Screen-Pop URL Fusion(s) now support popping to a Targetted Window Name

    • Supports the ability to have screen-pops for each new interaction being popped into the same browser window or tab, rather than opening a new window/tab for each interaction
    • New (optional) Target Window Name setting is added to both Screen Pop URL setting groups.
    • Refer to User Settings documentation here: Target Window Name

What's Fixed

  1. Symbee Connect ACD update to address Work Assignment occasionally not selecting the correct longest-available agent for assignment of the next task, when agent is skilled with multiple skills at the same level, and all assigned skills are in-queue with work.

What Else

  1. Symbee Connect Agent/User UI updates for better support and troubleshooting
  2. SaaS Cloud Proactive Monitoring updates
  3. Performance updates
  4. Preview Channel Update to handle non-standard characters in preview intake file-names.
  5. Chime call setup and tear-down efficiency improvements.

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

2021 / 04 / 06

What's New

  1. Global Region Expansion - Symbee Connect now available in Canada (Montreal)
    • New Symbee Connect Canada region: ca-central-1

What's Fixed

  1. Chime Integration update for PSTN Calling
    • Update to resolve Outbound PSTN calls not always reaching a “connected” state due to the Chime SDK not always firing the “Party joined” event for the PSTN leg.

What Else

2021 / 04 / 03

What's New

  1. Symbee Connect Agent/User UI Alert Message added when Third-Party calling is unavailable

    • Alert Box is now displayed when a user attempts third-party calling on a Voice Interaction in a situation where Amazon Connect wont allow it. These scenarios:
      • Following third-party calls being attempted from Wrap
      • Third-Party calls when the primary customer connection has already ended
      • Third-Party calls when another Third-Party call is already in progress

  2. Update to Initiation of New Outbound SMS Interactions

    • Updated Send Outbound SMS behavior in the New Outbound window (now uses/pre-pends Country-code and Local Area code from user settings, the same way phone calls do).

  3. Preview Channel Updates to Campaign Export

    • The following new fields are added to Campaign data, and are therefore available in Campaign Exports:
      • sys_worked_attempts - the number of times to-date an agent has worked the task
      • sys_last_attempt_agent - the userid of the user that worked the last attempt made
      • sys_last_attempt_time - the date/time (in UTC) the last attempt was made. Note: This gets updated twice – first upon delivery/accept to the agent, then again on completion/reschedule by the agent. If a Campaign is exported while a record is being worked, this will contain the delivered/accept time.

What's Fixed

  1. Auto Text updates

    • Update to resolve AutoText errors being seen in Frankfurt region
    • Update to resolve the AutoText library not displaying correct in the agent when an AutoText group has been configured with no text entries in it

  2. Update to address issue where Agents sometimes had the wrong concurrent task thresholds being set

    • Issue where user’s task thresholds were being treated improperly, when configured with the combination of: Voice, Email, Preview Tasks, and with Amazon over Task allowed set.

  3. Symbee Connect Agent/User UI - minor updates to correct scrolling in the Internal Users (UC) Directory

  4. Preview Channel - fix for intake files failing to load if a dot (.) was in the file name

What Else