Product Update - v6.1.0, November 2022

Webex Connect (formerly imiconnect) v6.1.0 release brings multiple new capabilities to help you continue delivering seamless customer experiences. Here’s a list of the key updates:

• Support for Automated Speech Recognition
• Email channel enhancement
• Push, In-App Messaging, and Live Chat related enhancements
• Descriptive logs enhancements
• Usage Report enhancements

Please refer the details below to know about all the changes and enhancements. Make sure to take a note of the new API endpoints that are being added and recommended actions to avoid any disruptions.

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Release Date

The date of release will be communicated separately over an email.

Details

Added – Support for Automated Speech Recognition

We have added the ability to accept speech from the user and translate it to text as part of the flow executions using IVR Menu and Collect input nodes.

The IVR Menu node can now be configured to check the presence of certain keywords within the speech and route the call to an appropriate path based on these condiitional checks.

Collect input node can be configured to accept the speech, convert that into text, and access it using one of the output variables.

The converted text and the actual speech will be available in the Debug Console (both old and new). The usage details will be available in Usage section on a monthly basis.

Notes:

• The Speech feature is currently in Beta.
• The speech feature in IVR and Collect input nodes have associated costs. Please reach out to your account manager for more information on enabling this feature for your tenant.

Changed – Email channel enhancements

We’re making several enhancements to improve the experience of using Webex Connect for Email channel. Here’s a summary of the key changes:

Starting this release onwards, we’re adding the ability to send emails to multiple ‘To’ recipients in a single email transaction using Messaging API v2. This would require you to pass an additional parameter ‘multipleToRecipients’ to be passed as part of the request with its value set to ‘true’. Refer API reference post this release for more information. Outbound Webhook notification for ‘Submitted’ status for such email transactions will have all the email ids mentioned in the destination field.

Until this release, when Webex Connect is used to send emails to multiple email recipients (To, CC, BCC) in a single transaction, the message submitted count was incremented by one. This is being updated to reflect the total number of emails sent (counting each of the recipient in To, CC, and BCC fields individually). These changes will reflect in the ‘Reports’ and in the ‘Usage’ sections for email transactions conducted after the deployment of this release in your region.

Currently, when Webex Connect is used to send emails to multiple recipients in a single email transaction, the Status field in Debug Console (when viewing the details for such a transaction) is populated with the email delivery status for the latest update from any of the multiple recipients disregard of whether they are in To, CC, or BCC fields. Starting this release onwards, for email transactions with multiple recipients, the Status field in Debug Console and in Export Logs will only be updated until ‘Submitted’ Status. Email delivery status for each of the individual recipients will need to be tracked using Outbound Webhooks. Separate outbound notifications will be sent for email delivery to each of the recipients mentioned in To, CC, and BCC sections. Please note that AWS SES doesn’t support the ability to uniquely track who from the list of multiple recipients mentioned in a single email transaction opened or clicked an email hence destination field will be empty for Read and Clicked status notifications for email transactions with multiple recipients.

Apart from these changes, the platform will not trigger/resume a flow, nor trigger a rule or an outbound webhook notification for incoming emails where Sender Email ID is same as the Recipient Email ID. However, details of such incoming emails will be available within Export Logs.

Please refer documentation for Webex Connect v6.1.0 after the release for more information.

Changed – Push, In-App Messaging, and Live Chat related enhancements

Option to enable/disable server-side inbox for Live Chat and In-App Messaging channels at an app asset level

This release onwards, you can choose to enable the capability of having a server-side copy of your in-app and live chat messages/conversations, if needed. The feature will be disabled by default and if required can be enabled from the app asset configuration page. It doesn’t impact the existing app asset configurations and server-side inbox capability will be enabled for existing assets by default.

Alongside this enhancement, we have introduced a new error code that will be returned in response to fetchThreads and fetchMessages methods in all core SDKs, Get User Messages APIs (both versions) and other related APIs if you try to invoke these APIs when you have chosen to keep server-side inbox disabled for your app asset.

Rate limiting for Threads and Messages APIs

We are introducing rate limits for Threads and Messages APIs. With this change, if you invoke these APIs at a higher rate than what’s provisioned for your account, you will receive an error message to indicate that the limit has been exceeded. This will allow you to build retry login in your applications to handle this scenario better, and to plan for relevant capacity based on your usage requirements. You can reach out to your account manager if you would like to increase the rate. This change doesn’t impact existing services and you would receive a separate communication if any change would be needed at your end.

Discontinuation of support for Topics-based Messaging

We are discontinuing support for topic-based push, live chat, and in-app messaging. This change doesn’t impact existing Webex Connect clients who already have access to this capability. If you’re a new Webex Connect client onboarded after this release, Topic-based Messaging will not be available for your tenant. You’ll receive an error response indicating that this functionality is not available for your tenant if any Topic related APIs or SDK methods are invoked. Additionally, Topic will not be available as a destination type in Messaging APIs, Rules, and push, in-app and live-chat send nodes.

Discontinuation of support for Segments-based Messaging

We are discontinuing support for segment-based push, live chat, and in-app messaging for all existing as well as new users. After this release, Segment-based messaging will not be available for your tenant. You’ll receive an error response indicating that this functionality is not available for your tenant if any Segment related APIs or SDK methods are invoked. Additionally, Segment will not be available as a destination type in Messaging APIs, Rules, and push, in-app and live-chat send nodes.

Separate-download links for HMS and GMS integrated Android SDKs in the ‘Download SDKs’ section

Starting this release, you will see separate download links for the Android SDK integrated with Google Mobile Services (that uses Firebase Cloud Messaging) and the Android SDK integrated Huawei Mobile Services (that uses Huawei Push Kit) in the Download SDK section.

Time-to-live (TTL) limit for outbound In-App and Live Chat messages

Starting this release, we are introducing a time-to-live (TTL) limit of 24hrs for in-app/live chat messages. This means that if you send an outbound message to an app user and that user doesn’t open the app within 24 hours window of you having sent that message, the message will not be held to be delivered via the MQTT or the Web Sockets route.

Please note that if you use Webex Connect SDKs for proactive outbound messaging scenarios, your app developers will need to implement fetch threads and fetch messages functionality to download these messages from the server-side inbox. If server-side inbox is disabled for your app asset, then these messages will be lost if they are not delivered to the customers device within 24 hours.

Changed – Updated SDKs for Push, In-App Messaging, and Live Chat

We are releasing the following SDKs as part of this release:

• Android SDK v2.17.2 (both GMS-integrated and HMS-integrated Android SDKs)

• iOS SDK 2.16.1

• Cordova SDK v2.5.1

• JavaScript SDK v1.5.1

The updated SDKs mostly comprise of technical enhancements. Please refer documentation for Webex Connect v6.1.0 after the release for more information.

Changed – Enabling/disabling of Descriptive Logs

We’ve removed the need to edit and republish your flows for enabling or disabling descriptive logs. With this release, you will be able to switch on descriptive logging for a flow simply by accessing the Flow Settings section. Enabling descriptive logs for a flow will not require a change of flow version. Additionally, you now will have the ability to configure the time-period (anywhere between 1 to 1440 Mins) for keeping descriptive logging enabled. This is subject to a maximum limit of 1000 transactions. If the one thousand transaction limit is hit sooner than the time limit, the descriptive logging will stop as soon as the limit is hit.

Alongside these changes, some enhancements have been made in logs available in the Flow Debug section. You will now be able to see the message transaction details in flow debug even when Descriptive Logs are not switched on.

Please note that the above changes do not automatically come into effect for existing tenants but will be the default behavior for all the new tenants going forward.

Changed – Usage Report enhancements

We have updated the details available within the usage report that you can export from within ‘Usage’ section. Here’re the details:

• A new sheet ‘Apps’ has been added to XLSX usage report. This contains the details of channel app assets registered using your Webex Connect tenant.

• A new field ’subscription_type’ has been added to all sheets to indicate the subscription type.

• A new sheet ‘Summary’ has been added to provide an aggregated usage summary.

These changes will come into effect from the date of deployment of this release in the concerned Webex Connect cloud site.

Important Additional Notes

As communicated previously, we’ve deprecated support for following integrations: Enghouse, Skype for Business, ECE, IMIchat/imiengage, and the old version Salesforce integration. These will now be shown as deprecated in the platform UI as well. Please refer to the ‘Pre-Built Integrations’ section in Platform Documentation portal for the updated information on the supported integrations.
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