Release Notes for all 2023 Q1 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).

2023 / 03 / 25

What's New

N/A.

What's Fixed

  1. Update to the Support Tools - Amazon Connect Endpoint test Utility option within the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI.
    • Updates to work with the recent changes to the AWS Amazon Connect Endpoint Test Utility page.

What Else

  1. Security update to the Symbee Connect Email Channel.

2023 / 03 / 18

What's New

  1. Symbee Connect Preview Channel update

    • Previously, each task delivered through a Preview Campaign had lifecycle states of: NOTWORKED, INQUEUE, WORKED, DELIVERED, COMPLETED, REMOVED or FAILED.
    • A new ABANDONED task lifecycle state is added, to capture situations where a task was assigned and delivered to an agent, but the agent never took any action to close the task (either to complete the task, or return the task for another attempt) within the default auto-abandon time window (default of 6 hours).
    • Download and run an update on your Preview Dial CloudFormation for this new behavior to take effect.

  2. Symbee Connect Email Channel updates and usability improvements

    • Inbound Email Routing Rules processing
      • The default Inbound Routing Rules processor is updated to treat any regular-expression based rules (regex rules on From:, To:, Subject and Content) to be case-insensitive.
    • Additional input validation in the User/Agent UI Email editor on the To:, Cc:, and Subject: fields for validity prior to send.
    • Email thread/history header showing From, To, Subject, and Received Date of the original inbound email is added to the Reply/Forward view when editing.
    • The email thread/history header in both plaint-text and HTML content of Reply, Reply-All and Forward emails has been updated from the previous Gmail-style single-line summary, to a full 5-line header block showing From, To, Subject, and Date Received.
    • Loading messages added to the User/Agent UI during email handling for better usability when dealing with large 10MB+ emails, and slower network speeds.

What's Fixed

  1. An update to the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI to address an issue where occasionally an agent was not getting returned to an Available/Routable state within Amazon Connect after completing and wrapping a phone call. The agent had to be skilled for both voice and email, with unsolicited outbound emails allowed, configured with Voice over Tasks behavior, and an open unsent Unsolicited Outbound email in-progress when the voice call completed.

What Else

  1. Performance improvement for delivery of in-conversation chat messages to both agent and customer side.
  2. Internal ACD updates to allow for easier Support troubleshooting.

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

(Refer here for additional guidance on applying our CloudFormation updates).

2023 / 03 / 01

What's New

  1. Symbee Connect Email Channel updates

    • Outbound Email delivery has been updated to use the latest AWS SES SDK release which allows an increase of delivered Email size from 10MB up to 40 MB.
    • Related updates to the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI Email Viewer/Editor to relax the validation to allow outbound emails (replies, forwards, and unsolicited outbound emails) of a size up to 40MB to be sent.
    • You will need to download and run an update of your Symbee Connect Email Channel CloudFormation to receive the Email size increase to 40MB.
    • An update is made to automatically requeue any inbound Email that was delivered to an agent, and where the agent did not take any action to complete the email (either by explicitly closing it, or replying/forwarding) within 6 hours.

What's Fixed

  1. An update to Interaction Search in the Symbee Connect Administration Portal to address an issue where downloading/viewing email content wasn't working when Interaction Search and Email CloudFormations were deployed in different regions.

What Else

  1. The Symbee Connect Administration Portal UI has received a refresh.

  2. Branded Partner updates.

  3. Performance update to Call History view in the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI

  4. Performance update to Chat Message delivery (all channels, both Amazon and Symbee delivered chat configurations - includes WebChat, SMPP SMS, AWS Pinpoint SMS, and Social Messaging).

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

(Refer here for additional guidance on applying our CloudFormation updates).

2023 / 02 / 18

What's New

  1. Symbee Connect User/Agent UI - Realtime Stats tool update

    • The Realtime Stats tool is updated to show both Staffed Agents as well as Available Agents counts for each Skill.
    • In the list of Skills the agent is assigned to, the Agents column now reflects two values, separated by a slash. For example: 5 / 22, indicating a total of 22 agents currently staffed for the skill, with 5 agents currently in an Available state.

What's Fixed

  1. An update to the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI to address an issue where the UI occasionally continued to show WRAP status after the agent completed their previous call and the next incoming call started alerting.

    • Issue was see occasionally, when the Contact Center had calls waiting in queue, and the agent completed the previous call (or Callback) and the next incoming call immediately started alerting. Was also affecting the Wrap Time counter visually shown to the agent. Most prevalent in the Sydney region.

  2. Fix for an issue where sometimes chat messages were not being shown to the customer for Amazon Delivered WebChats, when a Company had multiple Environments configured.

What Else

N/A.

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

N/A.

2023 / 02 / 09

What's New

  1. New Optimize Evaluations feature to allow evaluations of non-interaction work
    • A new Evaluate Work option is added to the main Function menu, and related Optimize views in the Symbee Connect Administration Portal to support the ability to use Optimize Evaluations to evaluate non-interaction based work (for example, back office tasks).
    • A new Evaluate Work form is added:
      • Allows you to select a user/agent to evaluate for non-interaction work
      • Collects some basic additional information related to the non-interaction work being evaluated
      • Allows you to then launch an Evaluation, using any of the Optimize Evaluation Forms you have published
    • Please note, the new Evaluate Work form is not intended for use, or as a replacement for when evaluating Contact Center Interactions. Interaction based evaluations should still be performed via Reporting or via the Interaction Search page as those evaluations are then linked back to interactions to allow evaluation reporting based on interaction characteristics. It is intended for situations where you have the need to evaluate work that is not based on interactions received through (or made out via) Contact Center queues.

What's Fixed

  1. Fixing validation issue with Optimize Evaluations where not-required Value Range type questions were answered with a 0 (zero) value
  2. Update to Oracle NetSuite CRM Integration to address issues seen with SHA-256 hashing
  3. Fix for issue seen in Interaction Search when filtering based on Work Code values, in combination with other filters.
  4. Fix for issue seen occasionally when handling and replying to Email in the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI, where clicking "Send" on the reply would hang and not complete.

What Else

  1. Optimize Evaluations data export (to .csv) from the Evaluations History view is updated
    • The question response breakdown columns (showing question score and possible score) is updated to reflect both a score and possible score of 0 (zero) when a Not Applicable (N/A) response was given. Enables you to differentiate between a not-required question receiving a 0 (zero) response versus a Not Applicable response.
  2. Updates to support upcoming maintenance window where access to the Administration Portal will be unavailable.
  3. A re-release of the Interaction Search CloudFormation to address deployment issues seen in the Sydney (ap-southeast-2) region.
  4. Minor updates to Operating Hours to support better troubleshooting.
  5. Performance enhancements related to Email and Billing
  6. Email Channel updates to inbound Email arrival functionality for added resiliency. An updated Email Channel CloudFormation is available to introduce an SQS queue into your account to track inbound email events until receipt notification of the inbound email event is received from the Symbee Connect cloud.

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

(Refer here for additional guidance on applying our CloudFormation updates).

++ As of January 2023, the default behavior for all S3 Buckets is to at minimum have AWS managed Encryption enabled regardless. The explicit S3 encryption properties added to these CloudFormations are just for completeness and clarity.

2023 / 01 / 22

What's New

  1. New Audit / Change History visibility features are added to Symbee Connect

    • All updates made by administration users within the Symbee Connect Administration Portal are now visible via a new Change History view
    • Change history is segregated and associated with each Environment within your Symbee Connect Company
    • Change history also includes Administrator Portal login activity, and admin user password changes.
    • A new Change History option and view has been added, accessed from the Reporting section of the portal main Function menu.
    • Change history activity is kept for up to 45 days within the Portal. No steps are required for this to begin occurring.
      • For longer change/audit history needs, you can optionally enable streaming of your change history to a Kinesis stream in your AWS account.
      • A new Audit History CloudFormation is now available for download from the Symbee Connect Feature Integrations screen in the portal for this purpose, and creates the Kinesis Stream within your AWS account where audit activity is published to, in the form of JSON events.
      • After running the Audit History CloudFormation, a new Send Audit Activity to Kinesis setting (and associated AWS Region setting) is added to the Symbee Connect Integration screen, under the new Audit Configuration section that must be checked to enable streaming of audit activity to your AWS account.

  2. New Interaction Search features are added to the Symbee Connect Administration Portal

    • A new Interaction Search option and view has been added, accessed from the Reporting section of the portal main Function menu.
    • Interaction Search provides a unified search of all incoming and outgoing interactions, including both Amazon Connect delivered contacts, and Symbee Connect delivered tasks and interactions such as Webchat, SMS, Email, and Preview interactions.

    • The new Interaction Search view provides the following features:

      • Ability to search and view recent interaction activity based on various filter criteria, including Symbee Connect Work Codes chosen for each interaction if you have enabled and are using Work Codes
      • Review and play back call recordings associated with each interaction
      • Review and play back screen recordings associated with each interaction if you are using the Symbee Connect Optimize Screen Recording feature.
      • Download and view Email content associated with Email interactions for support, troubleshooting, and quality evaluation.
      • View and access Optimize Evaluations previously made against an Interaction if you are using the Symbee Connect Optimize Agent Evaluations features.
      • Initiate a new Optimize Evaluation for an Interaction
      • Ability to export Interaction search details to a comma-separated values (.csv) file for further analysis in spreadsheet tools such as Excel or Google Sheets.

    • A new Interaction Search CloudFormation is now available for download from the Symbee Connect Feature Integrations screen in the portal for enabling Interaction Search. This CloudFormation is required to be run to enable Interaction Search.

    • After running the Interaction Search CloudFormation, a new Interaction Search Region setting is added to the Symbee Connect Integration screen, under the new Interaction Search Configuration section, that must be set to the AWS Region you deployed the CloudFormation into for Interaction Search to be enabled.

  3. Symbee Connect Optimize Evaluations enhancements

    • Two Interaction-related new data items are added to Evaluation headers to support further reporting on Evaluations based on the type of interaction being evaluated. These are:
      • Skill Queue - for Amazon delivered Contacts this is the Amazon Connect Queue name, for Symbee Connect delivered Interactions this is the name of the Symbee Connect Skill Queue.
      • Customer - the customer far end identity for the associated interaction. For example, for a evaluation of a phone call this is the customers calling phone number.
    • When an evaluator is performing an evaluation, a question can now be marked as not applicable.
      • The not applicable option is only available on questions that are configured as not required (update the is required setting as needed on each question within the Evaluation Form editor).
      • When a question is marked as not applicable by the evaluator, the overall possible score for the evaluation form (for that evaluation) is reduced by the total possible points for the question being marked as not applicable. For example, if a form has a total possible score of 100, and a question is valued at 10 points and marked as N/A, the total possible form score is changed from 100 down to 90.
    • The Optimize Evaluations Form Groups, Forms, and Form Editor screens have been redesigned for better usability.
    • Enhancements to the Evaluation agent dispute/contest flow for better usability.
    • A Send Email button is added to the Evaluation completion page after a new evaluation is completed, or an evaluation is updated as a result of a dispute.
    • A new LastUpdated timestamp property is added to the Evaluation JSON stored in S3, to better support detection of evaluations that get updated in external reporting solutions, as a result of agent disputes and resolutions.

  4. New Symbee Connect Optimize Evaluations History view

    • A new Evaluations History option and view has been added, accessed from the Optimize section of the portal main Function menu.
    • The Evaluations History view allows review of recent evaluations performed, updating evaluations to resolve contests/disputes, and export of evaluation data for further analysis.
    • The new Evaluation History view provides the following features:
      • Ability to search and view recent evaluations performed based on time range, evaluator, user being evaluated, evaluation group/form/version, and interaction type if needed.
      • Filtering by evaluation status to identify any evaluations that are currently in a dispute/contested state (if contested evaluations features are being used).
      • View the content of recent evaluations previously performed.
      • Update existing evaluations to resolve disputes, or to correct any mistakes.
      • Ability to mark an evaluation as "Voided" if needed.
      • Export a summary of evaluation results (including total score, and score of each question) to a comma-separated values (.csv) file for further analysis in spreadsheet tools such as Excel or Google Sheets.

  5. ServiceNow CRM Integration Update

    • Support is added to allow a screen-pop within ServiceNow using an optional alternative URL based approach

What's Fixed

  1. Update for Email in the User/Agent UI, to address an issue where email history in a reply/forward thread was occasionally getting lost and replaced by the word "false".
  2. Update to the User/Agent UI to address a race condition where the UI was not visually getting updated from wrap state when a new call started delivering immediately as the previous call is closed out.
  3. Update for Email when using SMTP delivery mode for outgoing and reply/forward emails, to address an issue where the media location in the resulting Interaction Trace Record (ITR) was sometimes not getting set correctly. An update of the Email Channel CloudFormation is needed to receive this fix.

What Else

  1. ServiceNow CRM Integration update

    • The ServiceNow integration in the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI now supports optionally receiving details on which Entity to be popped via Amazon Connect Contact Attributes. If the following Contact Attributes are present on the arriving Contact delivered to the agent, the values of these Attributes will be used to perform the Entity pop in ServiceNow. If these Attributes are not present, the previously existing behavior is followed:
      • sn_tablename - the type of Entity to be popped in ServiceNow
      • sn_id - the value used for the pop lookup/search

  2. Updates to the Optimize Evaluations viewer within the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI used by agents to view Evaluations sent to them by Evaluators. Updates are in support of the related new Optimize features added in this release.

  3. Internal monitoring updates.

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

(Refer here for additional guidance on applying our CloudFormation updates).