Release Notes for all 2024 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).

2024 / 03 / 24

What's Fixed

  1. Symbee Connect User/Agent UI - update to fix issue identified with Mute in combination with Hold, and optionally in conjuntion with simultaneous Contact Center (Connect) and back-office User to User (Chime) calls.

  2. Symbee Connect User/Agent UI - update to fix issue identified with back-office User to User (Chime) calling introduced by recent Chime SDK API upgrade, related to certain characters no longer being allowed in Chime Meeting ID and Member ID's.

What Else

  1. AWS Marketplace integration updates for Partners, SCBI, and Billing.

2024 / 03 / 17

What's New

  1. Symbee Connect Customer Facing WebChat UI - New customizable Form Trailing Text message

    • An additional customizable Form Trailing Text label/message will be displayed (if configured) on the optional pre-chat input form displayed to the customer prior to starting a new chat. By default the new message is empty (and therefore hidden) to not effect current deployments. To configure the message, see the new Form Trailing Text field in the Canned messages and localization section of each WebChat Endpoint configuration in your Symbee Connect Admin Portal.
    • If configured, the new message is displayed below the last input field, and before the Submit/Start Chat button on the pre-chat input form view (but can be relocated visually via custom CSS if needed).
    • The intent of the new field is to provide an easier way to add a customizable terms-and-conditions type message to your customer pre-chat starting form. For example "In order to protect your privacy, please do not submit your credit card or personal information. See our privacy policy for further details."

  2. Symbee Connect Customer Facing WebChat UI - New (optional) simplified End Chat/Close option

    • By default, the Symbee Connect Customer Facing WebChat UI has a drop-down navigation menu with options such as Download/Email Transcript, Request Agent Call, and End Chat.
    • If none of these options are wanted, a new alternative simpler End Chat/Close button is available (disabled and hidden by default to not effect current deployments).
    • Refer to the "Alternate Closer" reference in the Example CSS Override File section of our Webchat Developers Guide for an example of how to enable.

  3. Symbee Connect Customer Facing WebChat UI - Re-label Amazon Connect and Lex "Bot" messages

    • Two new customizable fields are added to allow the "sender" name (always set to "Bot") on system-generated chat messages sent to the customer by Amazon Connect Contact Flows or Amazon Lex bots to be detected and replaced with a custom label.

    • To configure, refer to the two new fields added to the Canned messages and localization section of each WebChat Endpoint configuration in your Symbee Connect Admin Portal as follows:

      • System Bot label to override name of: Determines which system bot messages will have their "sender" label replaced with the overriding text configured below.
      • System Bot label override text: The replacement "sender" label to use instead of the above.

    • Note - this feature alters the visual text label displayed on the Customer Facing Webchat UI only, it has no effect on the underlying Chat Transcript, or what is seen on the agent side of the chat.

  4. Symbee Connect Customer Facing WebChat UI - Allow HTML tags in customizable messages

    • All customizable labels and messages within the Canned messages and localization section of each WebChat Endpoint configuration, used on the Customer Facing WebChat UI, now support embedding of HTML markup elements if needed. For example to add anchor links to messages, or <span> markup.
    • This allows embedding links to things such as privacy or cookie policies into the optional pre-chat input form displayed to the customer prior to starting a new chat, or links to the final end chat message to offer your own post-chat survey.

What Else

  1. Symbee Connect Customer Facing WebChat UI initial loading performance improvements.

Symbee Connect Business Intelligence (SCBI) Pre-defined Dashboard updates

The following SCBI pre-defined Dashboards (or related QuickSight Datasets) have received updates since the last release. To deploy updates to the Dashboards in your Amazon QuickSight environment, see here: Deploy the Managed/Predefined Amazon QuickSight Dashboards

  • All Agent-focused Contact/Interaction dashboards updated to have the From/To range controls filter based on ConnectedToAgentTimestamp time rather than InitiationTimestamp:
    • The scope of contacts/interactions on Agent-based dashboards is updated to follow the same behavior as Amazon Connect out-the-box views in the Amazon Connect console (which is, report on interactions delivered to the agent in the window rather than interactions that started in the window).
    • The following dashboards are updated to reflect this
      • Current Day Agent Queue Interaction Activity
      • Current Day Agent Interaction Activity
      • Current Day Agent Email Interaction Activity
      • Current Day Agent Preview_Progressive Interaction Activity
      • Current Day Agent Transfers Activity
      • Current Day Agent Contacts Activity
      • Current Day Agent Queue Contacts Activity
      • Historical Agent Preview_Progressive Interaction Activity
      • Historical Agent Queue Interaction Activity
      • Historical Agent Email Interaction Activity
      • Historical Agent Interaction Activity
      • Historical Agent Transfers Activity
      • Historical Agent Contacts Activity
      • Historical Agent Queue Contacts Activity

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

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

All Symbee Connect CloudFormations that deploy Java-based Lambda's are updated to use the Java8 Amazon Linux 2 AWS Lambda runtime environment. Includes the following CloudFormations:

  • Symbee Connect Voicemail and Direct Dialing CloudFormation
  • Symbee Connect Pause/Resume CloudFormation
  • Symbee Connect Interaction Search CloudFormation
  • Symbee Connect Optimize CloudFormation
  • Symbee Connect Amazon Pinpoint SMS CloudFormation
  • Symbee Connect Preview Dial CloudFormation
  • Symbee Connect Email Channel CloudFormation
  • Symbee Connect Business Intelligence with QuickSight CloudFormation
  • Symbee Connect Clio CRM CloudFormation
  • Symbee Connect NetSuite CloudFormation
  • Symbee Connect Salesforce CloudFormation
  • Symbee Connect Zendesk CloudFormation
  • Symbee Connect Zoho CloudFormation

2024 / 03 / 07

What's New

  1. New User Setting to control the ability to make Outbound Calls when in an OFFLINE state

    • A new Offline Outbound Contact Center Calls Allowed setting is added to the Phone Call Optional Features section, within the Voice Channel group of the Symbee Connect User Template and User profile views in the Administration Portal.
    • This setting is enabled for all users by default, which continues the current/previous behavior.
    • When disabled (unchecked), a user using the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI is blocked from making any outbound calls if they are currently in an OFFLINE agent status.
    • Disallowing outbound calls from an Offline state avoids users making outbound calls and spending time that is not tracked or accounted for in your agent-online Contact Center statistics.

  2. New Copy Transcript feature added to the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI for Chat Interactions

    • A new Copy Transcript Enabled setting is added to the Chat section, within the Digital Channels group of the Symbee Connect User Template and User profile views in the Administration Portal.
    • When enabled, the Copy Transcript to Clipboard action button is available on the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI during all types and variants of Chat interactions (including WebChat, SMS, and Social).
    • The new action button allows the agent to copy the current contents of the chat transcript with the customer into their copy/paste clipboard (for example, to quickly paste into a CRM case) either during the chat, or during post-interaction wrap time.
    • Provides an easy no-code solution if there is a requirement to have the Chat Transcript captured in your CRM without having to use complex CRM API integration if its not feasible in your environment.

What Else

  1. Symbee Connect Customer Facing WebChat is updated, for the idle-timeout scenario, to suppress any follow-on system-messages (for example, customer has left the conversation, or agent has left the conversation) on the customer side of the UI, once the Idle Timeout message has been sent/delivered as a result of no activity being observed in the Idle timeout period.

  2. Symbee Connect Real-time Statistics service performance improvements (used by Supervisor real-time queues and agent views, User real-time queue stats tool, and Symbee Connect Business Intelligence real-time QuickSight dashboards) to reduce the number of API calls made to the Amazon Connect Service API.

  3. Symbee Connect Unison and Engage Direct User-to-User Calling and Chime SDK updates:

    • All Symbee Connect features that use Amazon Chime SDK integration to support direct user-to-user back-office calling, and Chime SIP-based PSTN calling and forwarding have been updated to the latest Chime SDK API versions.
    • A Chime Interaction CloudFormation download and Update is required to receive these updates.

  4. Internal AWS Marketplace integration updates.

Symbee Connect Business Intelligence (SCBI) Pre-defined Dashboard updates

The following SCBI pre-defined Dashboards (or related QuickSight Datasets) have received updates since the last release. To deploy updates to the Dashboards in your Amazon QuickSight environment, see here: Deploy the Managed/Predefined Amazon QuickSight Dashboards

  • Amazon Connect / Amazon Connect Agent Reports / Agent Online dashboard - multiple updates:
    • Updates to address inconsistences in percentage column values.
    • Updates to fix invalid results when agents leave interactions open in ACW and not logging out properly at end of shift.
    • Separate Day tab is removed, and replaced with a Total (HH:MM:SS) tab to allow results to be viewed as either total second durations or durations in hours : minutes : seconds format.
  • Amazon Connect / Amazon Connect Agent Reports / Historical Agent Login Logout Activity dashboard - default To date filter control changed to end of previous day.
  • Utilities / Current Day Interaction Search dashboard - updated Contact ID, Task ID and Customer Endpoint filter controls to be basic text input fields instead of select dropdowns.

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

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

  • Symbee Connect Business Intelligence with QuickSight CloudFormation

    • All Java-based Lambda's deployed are updated to the newer Lambda Java8.AL2 Runtime engine.

  • Amazon Chime Integration CloudFormation

    • Updates to the Chime IAM Policy to include the new Chime API actions that make up the newer version of the Chime SDK
    • Updates to the Chime SMA (SIP Media Application) Lambda's to address changes for the newer version of the Chime SDK

2024 / 02 / 16

What's New

  1. New User Setting to control Customer Attributes section behavior after accepting an interaction

    • A new Leave Expanded After Accept setting is added to the Contact Attributes Fusion section, within the Universal CRM Integration group of the Symbee Connect User Template and User profile views in the Administration Portal.
    • The new setting controls whether the Customer Fusion Info section of the PRODUCT Name User/Agent UI (where Contact Attributes are displayed) remains expanded after the user accepts the interaction.
    • The following settings values are available: No, Voice Only, All Except Chat, and All. When set to No (the default) the UI section automatically reduces once the interaction is connected, but can be expanded by the user at any time after (the original behavior). The other options leave the section expanded until the user reduces by manually clicking, depending on the type of Interaction.

  2. New Attribute Highlighting feature added to the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI

    • New functionality is added to the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI to allow nominated Contact Attributes to be visually highlighted when displayed to the user in the Customer Fusion Info section of the UI.
    • Which Contact Attributes are highlighted, and how they are highlighted, is controlled by adding an optional additional sc_hilight_attributes Contact Attribute to the contact via Contact Flows. This means highlighting can be controlled on a contact-by-contact basis.
    • Options allow either the attribute Label, the Value, or Both to be highlighted.
    • Options allow the highlighting to be either: POSITIVE (highlighted in Green), NEUTRAL (highlighted in Blue), or NEGATIVE (highlighted in Red).
    • Refer to the Displaying Contact Attributes to the User/Agent Step by Step guide in the documentation for further details on setting this up.

  3. Symbee Connect Business Intelligence (SCBI) - Background Query Runner updates

    • The Background Query Runner is a no-coding-required Lambda function automatically deployed as part of the SCBI solution that can be used to perform scheduled recurring SCBI Athena data pulls for delivery to third-party systems (such as external reporting systems, WFM solutions, etc.).
    • The Background Query Runner is updated with additional options to allow:
      • Addition of a UTC date/time stamp in the filename of generated CSV files
      • An optional configurable CSV Column Header row
      • The Athena SQL Query statement to be saved and imported from an S3 bucket (to allow for SQL Query statements that are longer than the Amazon EventBridge payload maximum of 8192 bytes (8kb) ).

What's Fixed

  1. The Bulk Maintain User Settings screen in the Symbee Connect Administration Portal is updated to fix an issue where user settings for some hidden columns weren't always getting preserved on update.
  2. Symbee Connect Business Intelligence (SCBI) update to the maintenance/population of the User Names reference table used to add user friendly names into QuickSight Dashboards. Issue was occasionally causing some user's to appear twice on real-time Agent dashboards. (An SCBI CloudFormation download and Update is required to receive this fix)

What Else

  1. Search boxes are added to all Skill Queue selectors on the user Skill Queue Assignment screens and dialogs in the Symbee Connect Administration Portal, for better usability with Environments configured with many Skill Queues.
  2. Symbee Connect CRM Routed Email Channel updates to add further diagnostics to assist with customer troubleshooting.
  3. Enhancements made in the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI related to the background automatic connection recovery that occurs when a network connection loss is detected and recovered (more aggressive Agent State syncing).
  4. Symbee Connect Business Intelligence (SCBI) QuickSight Dashboard deployment screen updates to detect and allow deletion of custom Dashboards found to be incorrectly saved into the SCBI Managed Shared Folder in the customer's Amazon QuickSight account, that are not part of the set of out-the-box SCBI pre-defined dashboards.

Symbee Connect Business Intelligence (SCBI) Pre-defined Dashboard updates

The following SCBI pre-defined Dashboards (or related QuickSight Datasets) have received updates since the last release. To deploy updates to the Dashboards in your Amazon QuickSight environment, see here: Deploy the Managed/Predefined Amazon QuickSight Dashboards

  • scbi-itr-combined (and -spice) datasets - additional cfds_is_sla_XX calculated fields are added for the following SLA's (therefore available to all Integrated Queue, Agent, and Endpoint dashboards):
    • Answered within 3 hours
    • Answered between 3 and 24 hours
    • Answered between 24 and 48 hours
    • Answered between 48 and 72 hours
    • Answered in greater than or equal to 72 hours
  • scbi-ctr-master (and -spice) datasets - additional cfds_is_short_call_XX calculated fields are added for < 5 second and < 10 second variations (therefore available to all Amazon Connect Queue, Agent, and Endpoint dashboards)
  • Real-time / Agents Real-time dashboard - Skill Queues filter added to allow filtering to show only Agents that have the selected Symbee Connect Skill Queues assigned to them.
  • Amazon Connect / Amazon Connect Agent Reports / Agent Online dashboard - multiple updates:
    • Dashboard is renamed (previously Current Day Agent Online, now Agent Online)
    • By Day tab is removed
    • Updates to address various edge cases that were causing Idle and Interaction time to have negative or incorrect values
  • Integrated / Integrated Work Codes Reports / Historical Work Code Interaction Activity dashboard - update to fix issue with the From / To date-time filtering.
  • Integrated / Integrated Agent Reports / Current Day Agent Email Interaction Activity dashboard - the dashboard wasn't loading properly in QuickSight (coming up blank)
  • Integrated / Integrated Queue Reports / Current Day Queue Email Interaction Activity dashboard - the dashboard wasn't loading properly in QuickSight (coming up blank)

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

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

  • Symbee Connect Business Intelligence with QuickSight CloudFormation
    • Updated Query Runner Amazon EventBridge rules to address occasional duplicates in the User Names reference table (see What's Fixed above)
    • Updated Background Query Runner Lambda to support new options added in this release (see What's New above)

2024 / 02 / 03

What's New

  1. New Company Reporter administration user Role is added to Symbee Connect Administration Portal
    • When provisioning admin users in the the Symbee Connect Administration Portal, a new Company Reporter role is added as a role option
    • A Company Reporter, only has access to the QuickSight Real-time Dashboards option on the main Function Menu of the Administration Portal.

What's Fixed

  1. A minor update is made to the Symbee Connect Business Intelligence (SCBI) nightly background task runner that populates the Amazon Connect Routing Profile to Queues reference table in Athena/Glue (some Routing Profile to Queue relationships were missing from the reference table). (An SCBI CloudFormation download and Update is required to receive this fix)

What Else

  1. Symbee Connect User/Agent UI - updates to the main Directory Tool, and New Outbound control in the UI, to limit which Amazon Connect Quick Connects are shown to be inline with the out-the-box Amazon Connect CCP, and to show External Phone Number Quick Connects (for new outbound calls) when a user is active on an Amazon Connect delivered Chat or Task.

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

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

  • Symbee Connect Business Intelligence with QuickSight CloudFormation
    • Updated Query Runner Amazon EventBridge rules to address some missing Routing Profile to Queue relationships in the reference table (see What's Fixed above)

2024 / 01 / 27

What's New

  1. Updates to Symbee Connect Customer Facing Webchat for QuickReply (Connect / Lex Interactive Messages)

    • The Symbee Connect customer-facing Webchat client, when configured to use Amazon Delivery, now supports the Quick Reply display template (Connect Lex Interaction Messages). Refer here for further details on setting up Interactive Messages within Connect and Lex.
    • For reference, the following Amazon Connect interactive message display templates are supported:
      • List Picker
      • Panel
      • Quick Reply

  2. Symbee Connect User/Agent UI WebChat Interaction Updates

    • Adding support for the Quick Reply display template (Connect Lex Interaction Messages) on Amazon Delivered Chat interactions.
    • Adding support for receiving chat transcript history for Amazon Connect Persistent Chat use-cases.
    • Adding support for display of Markdown formatted chat message content (ContentType: 'text/markdown') received by the agent.

  3. Symbee Connect Business Intelligence (SCBI) QuickSight Dashboard deployment screen usability updates

    • Realtime progress bar added to the long-running Discover Available Reports action
    • Progress also added to the Install updates action when deploying many Dashboard updates
    • Adding Quick Select action buttons

What's Fixed

  1. Symbee Connect Interaction Search - update to address issue where Interactions stopped updating in the Interaction Search page. (An Interaction Search CloudFormation download and Update is required to receive this fix)
  2. Symbee Connect Work Codes / Preview Channel - update to permanently address obscure issue where some user's were occasionally not getting presented the expected Work Codes to pick from during Wrap of Preview Channel Tasks.
  3. Symbee Connect User/Agent UI - update to fix issue where Amazon Delivered chat transfers received by an agent, with long chat-transcript history weren't always receiving the entire history.
  4. Symbee Connect Business Intelligence (SCBI) fix to resolve issue where user friendly name fields (User FirstName, LastName) were sometimes getting displayed as 'null' in some Amazon QuickSight Dashboards. (An SCBI CloudFormation download and Update is required to receive this fix)

What Else

  1. Symbee Connect Customer Facing Webchat - for Connect Interactive messages - the UI behavior is changed to automatically hide any Interactive Message panels/buttons once the customer has completed the interaction with that message.
  2. Symbee Connect User/Agent UI WebChat Interaction update to expand the list of Quick Connects available to the agent when transferring an Amazon Delivered Chat, to match the same Quick Connect list the out-the-box CCP offers.
  3. Symbee Connect WebChat - supportability updates.
  4. Symbee Connect Microsoft Dynamics Plugin - supportability updates.
  5. Symbee Connect Business Intelligence (SCBI) - Predefined Report/Dashboard updates for better performance
    • All Current Day reports have been updated to switch the Filters/Controls that contain drop-down selection lists, to use the equivalent SPICE based datasets to populate the controls.
    • Updates result in a much quicker Dashboard load, and ensure the lists populated in the drop-downs are always based on current/recent data.

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

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

  • Symbee Connect Business Intelligence with QuickSight CloudFormation

    • Updated Query Runner Amazon EventBridge rules to address user friendly names sometimes being displayed as 'null' (see What's Fixed above)

  • Interaction Search CloudFormation

    • Updated Interaction Search Kinesis Lambda (see related Interaction Search What's Fixed above)

2024 / 01 / 22

What's Fixed

  1. Business Intelligence - Update to accurately categorize Symbee Connect delivered WebChat Abandons in predefined reports/dashboards. (An SCBI CloudFormation download and Update is required to receive this fix).

What Else

  1. Business Intelligence - Update to exclude RONA (Redirect On No Accept) activity for Symbee Connect delivered Interactions (ITR's) from all SCBI predefined Integrated Current Day and Historical reports/dashboards, to match equivalent Amazon Connect CTR behavior, for better alignment in integrated/combined reports/dashboards. (An SCBI CloudFormation download and Update is required to receive this fix).

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

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

  • Symbee Connect Business Intelligence with QuickSight CloudFormation
    • Updates to ITR Glue/Athena views related to Abandon and RONA updates (see above)

2024 / 01 / 05

What's New

  1. Business Intelligence - Routing Profile filter added to Real-time Agents Dashboards
    • User associated Routing Profile reference table is added to the Glue/Athena database and updated via a scheduled AWS EventBridge rule
    • User Routing Profile is added to the Real-time Agents dataset in QuickSight, and is now available for usage in any real-time agent dashboard
    • Routing Profile control/filter is added to predefined Real-time Agents dashboard
    • An SCBI CloudFormation download and Update is required to receive this new functionality

What's Fixed

  1. Update to address issue with Symbee Connect delivered webchat, where agents would occasionally see a Communication Error message when receiving a webchat transferred between queues.
  2. Business Intelligence - fix for intermittent missing user friendly-name values on real-time agent reports/dashboards. (An SCBI CloudFormation download and Update is required to receive this fix).

What Else

  1. Symbee Connect delivered webchat performance improvements.
  2. Fix for character-set issue with Symbee Connect Interaction Trace Records (ITR's)
  3. Business Intelligence - update to all QuickSight predefined reports/dashboards that have Interval breakdown tabs, to use Contact/Interaction Initiation Time rather than Disconnect Time to determine which Interval the contact/interaction is reported in. Previous interval behavior was reporting accurately, however this update is made to match interval bucketing behavior in Amazon Connect out-the-box reporting.

Feature Integration CloudFormation Updates available

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

  • Symbee Connect Business Intelligence with QuickSight CloudFormation
    • Updates to Glue/Athena views to address user friendly-name issue (see What's Fixed above)
    • Updates to support User Routing Profiles in Real-time Agent views

2024 / 01 / 01

What Else

  1. Infrastructure upgrades and updates (Amazon Linux upgrade)