Version 5.23.0 Release Notes

The Bright Pattern Contact Center 5.18.99.Messengers release includes new features and enhancements that make it easier and faster to connect with customers using social media messaging. Notable social media messaging additions to this release include built-in support for two social media powerhouses, WeChat and WhatsApp.

With over 1 billion monthly active users, allowing agents to communicate with WeChat using the familiar Agent Desktop chat interface opens your contact center to another broad and geographically diverse audience.

The WhatsApp messaging channel now uses the native WhatsApp API. The decision to switch to the native API ensures Bright Pattern Contact Center's future compatibility with the next generation of WhatsApp features.

This release combines social media messaging capabilities with Bright Pattern Contact Center features to support business use cases like:

Customer consultations about products, starting as text exchanges and evolving into digital conversations using voice and video messages, images, URLs, and payment forms.
Quick processing of customer product issues which let a customer provide photographic and video evidence of their issue to an agent, allowing the agent to resolve the problem and add the resolution steps to the contact center knowledge base.
Reducing labor costs by automating deliveries using a scenario builder to create intelligent bots to work with customers to set up scheduling, rescheduling, and proof of delivery.

Bright Pattern Contact Center continues to offer best-in-class contact center software while looking deep into technology like social media messaging, data mining, and artificial intelligence, ensuring a future-proof contact center, positive digital ROI, and competitive advantage.

Notices

This section contains essential notices for this release.

Browser Support Changes: Bright Pattern will discontinue support and product testing for Internet Explorer 10 & 11 starting November 2022. Existing applications may work after discontinuation, but Bright Pattern will not resolve issues in these browsers.

Recommended Browsers

Google Chrome 96.0 and later for Windows OS
Microsoft Edge 13 and later
Mozilla Firefox 94 and later
Safari 15.1 and later for Mac OS X

Recommended Operating Systems

Windows 8.1, Windows 10, or Windows 11
Mac OS X 10.15 (Catalina)
Chrome OS (support via auto update)
Ubuntu 20.04

Changes in System Behavior

Integration with LINE supports Channel Secret and Token now, all existing LINE Integration Accounts should be updated with Channel Secret

Added/Updated Features

New Communication Channels

Expand your contact center's global reach--add the social media messaging app WeChat to your list of communication channels

Leverage the Bright Pattern Omnichannel platform to provide customers the ability to connect with your agents over WeChat while adhering to your established administration, automation, and case lifecycle management processes.

Bright Pattern Contact Center Implements WhatsApp Native API

The WhatsApp channel now uses the WhatsApp Native API. Switching to the Native API provides access to a stable messaging platform and makes it easier and faster for Bright Pattern to implement the latest WhatsApp features and changes.

Add More Security to Your LINE Messenger Integration with a Channel Secret

LINE added a channel secret to further secure their messaging API. This version of BPCC lets you set a channel secret for your LINE integrations. For more information, see the LINE integration overview.

Send Proactive Messages to WhatsApp Users

WhatsApp rules require businesses to use approved templates when starting conversations with users. This version of Bright Pattern Contact Center introduces automatic WhatsApp template matching. instead of reacting to user requests for information, automatic template matching lets you proactively message users with things like appointment reminders, payment updates and issue resolutions.

Customize System Chat Messages with More Flexibility

Chat conversations share common events like participants joining, leaving, and ending the chat. Now, Bright Pattern lets you set templated messages for those types of events at three levels: contact center chat settings, messenger account integration, and scenario entry. These automated chat messages keep chat participants informed and are recorded in chat history where they're available for review. For more information, see Chat Settings, Messaging/Chat Scenario Entries.

Chats

Edit a contact's messenger details using the contact form

The contact form in Agent Desktop lets agents update a contact's messenger details.

Quickly Initiate Outbound Messenger Sessions from the Keyboard

This release of Bright Pattern gives agents the ability to start a messaging session from the keyboard by typing in a contact's messenger ID and initiating a chat. For more information, see Start a Messenger Chat from Agent Desktop

Capture a New Contact's Detail When They Connect Via Messenger

Agent's don't need to enter a new contact's messenger details because Bright Pattern's automatically captures and stores details like the messenger ID, username, and avatar image, if available, when a contact is added.

Support for More Messenger Content Types Ensures Seamless Chat Conversations

Customers expect to send and receive all the types of content their messengers support. Now, Bright Pattern's Omnichannel messaging platform supports URLs, proprietary stickers and emojis, audio and video attachments, hosted file attachments, images, contact information, read notifications, delivery notifications, and location, allowing your contact center to take advantage of each messenger's content types to meet user expectations.


	Not all messengers support all content types. For more information about the supported capabilities of each messenger, visit the messenger guides listed in the Messenger Integrations Overview.

Multimedia Content Support Opens the Door for More Use Cases and Scenarios

With this release, you're not limited to simple text-based interactions. The additional multimedia content support opens the door to unlimited opportunities for business use cases like allowing customers to send pictures of damaged items, letting sales agents sending real-time video of items in a warehouse or retail sales floor, and creating bots to analyze a customer's images and make suggestions based on that analysis.

Quick reply Buttons Make it Easier and Faster for Customers to Communicate with Your Business

The quick reply button feature makes it easier and faster for customers to respond to questions while allowing a contact center to direct the conversation flow. For more information, see Buttons Directive.

Directives Sent in Agent Desktop Chat are Recorded in Activity History and Chat Transcript in the Order Sent

When an agent enters an attachment, location, or sticker directive which requires multiple messages, the chat transcript and activity history records those messages in the same order as sent to the customer. For more information, see Chat Directives.

Prevent Oversized Messages from Being Sent

Check outgoing message sizes against the size limit for a messenger type and notify the sender when the message exceeds the limit.

Calendaring

Schedule Messenger Interactions

Agents put outbound messenger chats on the calendar, using Bright Pattern's calendaring process. For more information, see Schedule an Event.

Scenarios

Messenger Variables Hold Messenger’s Username/Phone Number and/or Messenger Name

A messenger user’s username/phone number and/or messenger name are held in the variable $(item_from). For more information, see Scenario Variables

Wait for an Agent When Agents Aren’t Available

The new Keep the chat in queue setting for Find Agent lets scenario creators configure scenarios in which messenger users wait for an available agent. For more information, see Find Agent.

Set Customer Inactivity Timeouts to Reduce Unnecessary Automatic Inactivity Messages

This release of Bright Pattern gives you more control over when to send inactivity messages, reducing annoying, unnecessary, and sometimes costly message traffic. For more information, see Chat Settings.

Archive Attachments Sent in Messenger Chats

Scenarios and Workflows implement an extended Fetch URL block to support enumerating and saving chat attachments and newly available content types for POST requests: multipart/form-data and a custom type for a single file upload. The new variable $(item.numFiles) holds the total number of attachments and The collection variable $(item. Files[n]) holds the URL of every attachment. For more information, see Workflow Builder Fetch URL, Scenario Builder Fetch URL, and Scenario Builder Variables.

Set an Escape Phrase to Stop Waiting in Queue or to Disconnect from an Agent and Fill Out a Survey

Escape phrases in Find Agent and Connect Chat blocks give scenario creators the ability to allow a customer to request cancelling a chat session or exiting a queue and process the request, asking for confirmation or asking the customer take a survey before exiting the interaction. For more information, see Find Agent.

Design Automatic Attachment Processing Scenarios (Complete with File Upload)

Combine “Wait for response” and “Expect a file” options of a SendMesage+ block to extend the timeout period for file upload scenarios to allow customers to send multiple attachments and messages without timing out. For more information, see Scenario Builder Send Message+ and Workflow Builder Send Message+.

Directives Sent via a Send Message + block Chat are Recorded in Activity History and Chat Transcript in the Order Sent

When a Send Message +block sends an attachment, location, or sticker directive which requires multiple messages, the chat transcript and activity history provide a record of those messages in the same order as sent to the customer. For more information, see Chat Directives.

If something goes wrong sending a message using the Send Message+ block, the Send Error conditional exit provides further processing capability

With the Send Error conditional exit, scenario creators can prepare for managing errors that may occur when sending messages over messengers. For more information, see Scenario Builder Send Message+ and Workflow Builder Send Message+.

Security

Automatically Block Suspicious Content and Send an Error Response to the Sender

Bright Pattern Contact Center rejects potentially dangerous content types sent via chat and notifies senders of prohibited files with a customizable error message. Suspicious files are blocked in Agent Desktop and scenarios. Blocked files types include: .ade, .adp, .apk, .appx, .appxbundle, .bat, .cab, .chm, .cmd, .com, .cpl, .dll, .dmg, .ex, .ex_, .exe, .hta, .ins, .isp, .iso, .jar, .js, .jse, .lib, .lnk, .mde, .msc, .msi, .msix, .msixbundle, .msp, .mst, .nsh, .pif, .ps1, .scr, .sct, .shb, .sys, .vb, .vbe, .vbs, .vxd, .wsc, .wsf, .wsh

One-Click Masking

No need to highlight content before masking it. Along with the highlighting option, Agent Desktop includes a new, faster, one-click option to mask sensitive data. For more information, see Remove content from chats.

API

SMS API Supports Messaging to Messenger Accounts

Send and receive messages to and from messenger accounts using the SMS API.

System Management

Control Messengers Integrations

Enable or restrict messenger integrations per tenant. For more information, see Enabling Messenger Channels for Tenants.

Chat Sessions Migrate from a Client Web Server to Another After a Graceful Shutdown

After a graceful shutdown, chat sessions automatically migrate from one CWS to another.

Known Issues

No known issues in this release.

Upgrade Notes

Changes to Dependent Software Packages

No changes to dependent software packages.

Live Upgrade

Upgrade without downtime is supported from version 5.22.0 only. To ensure uninterrupted operations during the upgrade, follow the upgrade procedure described in the Bright Pattern Contact Center Deployment Guide, section Upgrades.

Database Changes

The historical and configuration databases changed. To check for compatibility issues, perform a test run using copies of production databases. You must run the dbUpdate.sh script to update the database schemas. For instructions, see the Deployment Guide section, Performing Database Test Runs.

Offline Upgrades

Version 5.0.0 and newer supports offline upgrades. Contact Customer Support to upgrade older versions.

If upgrading from a version older than the previous release, review the What's New and Release Notes sections for prior releases to learn about new features, enhancements, and changes.

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