Release Notes for all 2022 Q4 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).

2022 / 10 / 07

What's New

  1. Hours of Operation updates

    • An Hours of Operation check now returns more detail about the Open or Closed status, indicating whether the Open/Closed status is due to regular hours, or a configured exception date. This allows you to, for example, more easily play different prompting based on the reason for closure.
    • A new operation is added to the Operating Hours Contact Flow Lambda that returns more details to the Contact Flow about the current Open/Closed status, including (for both Open and Closed) whether its due to standard hours entries or alternatively due to which exception date entry.
    • A new Additional Info setting is also added to each Exception Date entry in the Operating Hours maintain screen in the Administration Portal. This can be used to hold any additional configuration you want to keep related to each Exception Date entry, up to 250 characters - you can format the contents however you need. For example, a partial snippet of prompt text to be played in the contact flow, or an associated Flow Table key with additional settings.
    • Both the Exception Date Description and Additional Info field values get returned to the Contact Flow by the new Operating Hours Contact Flow Lambda operation. Refer to documentation here.

  2. **Contact Attributes Fusion now supports display of up to 8 (previously 5) Attributes **

    • Three more settings are added to User Templates and User profiles, under the Universal CRM Integration => Contact Attributes Fusion section, for a total of 8 Contact Attribute values that can be automatically displayed within the Symbee Connect Agent/User UI on interaction arrival

  3. New Outbound Email Delivery via SMTP option for Email Channel

    • The Symbee Connect Email Channel to date used the Amazon SES Service as the mechanism for both receiving inbound and sending outbound email. A new Outbound Email delivery option is added to support optionally using an external SMTP gateway (for example, Microsoft Office 365) for delivery of outbound email (incoming replies, forwards, and unsolicited outbound emails) as an alternative to using Amazon SES for the outbound delivery.
    • This allows all contact center outbound email to be sent via your existing SMTP Email solution, utilizing any existing scanning or security pipelines you have configured in your SMTP gateway provider. Sent outbound emails are also therefore visible in the Outbox of the mail solution associated with your SMTP gateway.
    • New SMTP credentials settings are added to the Symbee Connect Administration Portal, under Email Administration => Email Standard => Outbound Email Settings. Settings include:
      • Delivery Provider (either Amazon SES or SMTP)
      • SMTP Password, Host, and Port
      • (Note: Only Secure SMTP connections are supported)
    • Your outbound SMTP communication to your external SMTP gateway can also (optionally) be sent via an existing VPC in your AWS account if needed. A VPC is not required for using the SMTP option, and a VPC is not created when you enable the SMTP option. But you can optionally select an existing VPC to use during Email Channel CloudFormation stack creation or update (which allows you to control and set a fixed and predictable source IP-address for your outbound SMTP traffic if needed in your environment).
    • If you already have the Email Channel CloudFormation installed, you will need to download and run a CloudFormation Update to make use of the new SMTP features. Two variants of the Email Channel CloudFormation are now provided, in support of the VPC-attached scenario if needed.

  4. New Security Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) option available for Symbee Connect Administration Portal Login

    • MFA via Email can now be enabled on any Administration Portal admin user.
    • This feature does not conflict with any existing Symbee Connect Administration Portal SAML SSO integration you may have already configured, and if you already have your SAML IdP performing MFA, you don't need to enable both. However if you don't have SSO configured on your Symbee Connect Administration Portal, you now have the option to enable MFA without SAML integration. It also allows you to have MFA required for an administrator's non-SAML rescue login in a SAML SSO enabled environment.
    • When enabled, during login, a 6-digit one-time security code is generated and sent to the user's configured email address, and is required to be entered into the resulting Admin Portal Security Code form to complete login
    • To enable, from you Company menu (left button on the top navigation bar), select Administration Users. A new Two Factor Authentication Enabled setting is added under the Access Control section of each administration user's definition.

  5. New Admin User Idle Session Timeout setting added

    • A new Idle Session Timeout setting is added under the Access Control section of each administration user's definition, to allow the default 30 minute idle Symbee Connect Administration Portal session timeout to be changed on a per admin user basis as required.

  6. New columns added to the Administration Users listing screen

    • Two new columns are added to the Company Administration Users listing screen, showing each user's currently enabled authentication method, and the last successful admin portal login for each user.

What's Fixed

  1. Fix for an HTTP 500 Error that was occurring on the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI during manual accept of an interaction delivered via the CRM Routed Email channel.

  2. Fix for user-to-user Instant Messaging (IM), where IM was being disabled if max conversations was configured higher than 5 concurrent.

  3. Fix for outbound Email (replies, forwards, and unsolicited new outbound) where sometimes clicking the Send action button would hang and not send the email, as a result of Microsoft .msg file attachments being added to the emails.

  4. Updated Symbee Connect Reporting V2 CloudFormation to address error seen when running CloudFormation in Sydney region related to the PostgreSQL verion.

What Else

  1. Updates to latest AWS SDK Library versions

  2. Stability Updates

  3. Capacity Increases for all regions

  4. Additional automated monitoring health-checks added

  5. Adding Service Limits for Email Shared Parking Areas

  6. Minor Administration Portal help text and description updates for clarity based on feedback, to settings related to Pause and Resume, Click to Call, Flow Control Tables, and the Email channel,

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

  • Hours of Operation CloudFormation

    • Updated Contact Flow Lambda. You will need to apply this CloudFormation update to make use of the new Hours of Operation features listed in this release.

  • Email Channel CloudFormation

    • Additional Lambda is deployed for optional outbound email delivery via SMTP
    • An alternative version of the Email CloudFormation template is added to support running Email Lambda's attached to a VPC.
    • You will need to apply this CloudFormation update to make use of the new SMTP delivery features listed in this release.

  • Data Feeds and Reporting - Reporting V2 CloudFormation

    • Update to support the latest Aurora PostgreSQL versions currently available in each AWS Region