Google Business Messages is now a supported messaging channel on YesHello. 🥳

This allows customers to reach you through multiple entry points, including Google Search, Google Ads and Google Maps.

Customers who land at these touchpoints can message you directly from the same page to make reservations, inquire about product availability, check opening hours during holidays and more.

To get started, create a Google Business Profile. Then, connect your Google Business Profile to YesHello to start receiving and responding to messages in your YesHello inbox.

You can even add Google Business Messages as a standalone widget or as a channel in the multichannel widget on your website.

Other supported functionalities for Google Business Messages include Workflows automation, Dialogflow, Zapier 2.0 and API 2.0.

Feel free to contact our support team if you have any questions about connecting Google Business Messages to YesHello.

YesHello’s Workflows receives a powerful upgrade: The ability to trigger Workflows externally via webhooks.

Previously, Workflows could only be triggered by events within the YesHello platform, such as new conversations or Contact Tag updates. Now, two-way integration allows Workflows to be triggered by events in external applications like CRMs or Shopify through incoming webhooks (HTTP POST requests).

In short, Workflows can be triggered internally or externally to sync information between platforms, prompt actions on YesHello or send messages about events on third-party platforms. For instance, updating a contact’s information on Hubspot could trigger a Workflow to update their profile on YesHello.

Let’s check out the new feature.

Design Workflows that can be triggered by external events with the new Incoming Webhook Trigger. Follow the below steps to set and configure this Trigger.

You can also store payload data items in the incoming webhook as variables to be used in the Workflow.

For example, create an order confirmation Workflow that saves order numbers on Shopify as variables. When customers make a purchase, the Workflow will send them a confirmation message with the order number.

The new and improved Zapier integration is now available! 🥳 Here’s your ticket to building more comprehensive automation with over 5,000 applications. Updates include more triggers and a host of actions on the application or YesHello for more intuitive use.

To get the new version of the Zapier integration, go to Settings > Integration > Zapier. Generate an API key that will authenticate your Zapier account with YesHello.

Previously, the Zapier integration only supported two triggers: New contact created and New or Updated Custom Field. The range of new triggers makes a variety of use cases possible:

In a similar fashion, the legacy Zapier integration did not allow for any actions to be performed. The new integration supports a host of actions to choose from, including:

Keep an eye out for the YesHello Zapier templates coming soon to help you get started with popular applications such as Hubspot, Shopify, Magento, Salesforce and Pipedrive among others.

YesHello’s legacy Zapier integration will be deprecated on 22nd of March.

Fret not, existing users — Zaps that currently use the legacy Zapier integration will continue to run until the deprecation date. To ensure no disruption to your workflows, we encourage you to update all existing Zaps to access the new triggers and actions.

This time around we have a fast release with several valuable improvements. You’re going to be thrilled about our headlining feature: Shortcuts!

So, what is a Shortcut and what can you do with one?

A Shortcut is a Workflow that has been created with the newly-introduced Shortcut trigger. It can be initiated in the Messages Modules, allowing platform users to launch Workflows during conversations with Contacts without leaving the module.

When creating a Workflow with ‘Shortcut’ set as a trigger, provide a name and description for each Shortcut, as well as personalize them with icons. All the provided information will be displayed in the Shortcut menu so you can quickly distinguish between Shortcuts and their purposes to select your desired Workflow.

Sounds cool? That’s just a fraction of what you can do with this feature. For instance, you can create customizable Shortcut forms that are prompted whenever the Shortcut is triggered. Users can input data or comments that will be reflected in the Workflow. Use custom fields in the forms to obtain everything from Order IDs to reasons for refunds or product exchanges.

Can you imagine how powerful and flexible Shortcuts is? You can build an escalation process for agents, a refund process for customers, and so much more.

As it’s such an advanced feature, perhaps you want Shortcuts access to be restricted only for use by Managers and Owners. We’ve got you covered with advanced restriction settings in the Workspace User Settings that allow you to disable the Shortcuts button for Agents.

Let’s look at another new feature.

Say you want to regularly send Conversation data to your own data warehouse. Exporting data manually from Reports module is awfully time-consuming. To ease your workload, you can now use trigger variables!

Trigger variables are variables that are tied to a specific trigger. In this case, we’ve added them to the Conversation Closed trigger.

Here is a list of trigger variables that are now available for the Closed Conversation trigger. They reflect data related to the conversation that has been closed.

$conversation.opened_time

$conversation.opened_by_source

$conversation.closed_time

$conversation.closed_by

$conversation.closed_by_source

$conversation.first_response_time

$conversation.resolution_time

$conversation.incoming_messages_count

$conversation.outgoing_messages_count

$conversation.category

$conversation.summary

$conversation.assignee

$conversation.assignee_team

Read more about trigger variables here.

When you log in feature requests, you aren’t just sending out wishes into a void. We hear you, and we act on them! You wanted more branch conditions and we are delivering.

Similar to the Time Since Last Incoming Message condition, we now have a Time Since Last Outgoing Message option. You can incorporate this into a Workflow to create an action based on the time since you last sent a message to a Contact.

Another request was for an Assignee Status branch condition, so you can create different actions for Contacts depending on the status of the agents they have been assigned to (Online, Busy or Offline). Talk about fine attention to detail for customer care.

We’ve made a major improvement to our Website Chat that’s going to make customer conversations on the channel more seamless than ever.

Users who are logged in to your platform and message you on the embedded Website Chat will no longer have to fill up a pre-chat form. Instead, they can be instantly identified by their user details. Read more about this here.

Good news for Vonage users! Vonage has finally released a new version of WhatsApp API, which means it will support WhatsApp Interactive Messages. Use interactive features like Lists and Quick Reply buttons in messages to your Vonage contacts.

New assignee variable: $assignee.team

You can now also refer to an assignee team, instead of only individual team members. The value of the $assignee.team variable is the name of the assignee’s team.

We now accept non-emails as usernames for an SMTP server. You can now connect to other email service providers such as Mailjet, Mailgun and so on.

We used to list users without grouping them by teams, with no way to know which team anyone belonged to. Identifying teams and their members is now a breeze with the new presentation.

Yes, we have worked on this! If a Contact is assigned to you manually or automatically via Workflows, you will now receive a sound notification.

Drum roll..... for the first release of the year! 🎉

We’ve made tons of improvements on the platform, especially in the Messages Module. We have also completed a long-awaited feature that you’re going to love...

To welcome 2022 in style, we’ve redesigned one of your most frequently visited pages — the Messages Module 💬

Let’s start with a quick tour of the new UI. First, we’ve built a collapsible Inbox panel on the left for you to access all your inboxes with a single click. Here you’ll find the new Team Inbox and an improved Custom Inbox with configurable access levels, designed to reduce noise for agents and ease supervision for Managers 😍

We’re also introducing more nuanced views of your Contact list with increased filtering and sorting options. And have you noticed that Contact profiles now have new avatars?

In short, the fresh layout of the Messages Module lets you do more with less effort than ever 😎 Check out more details on the highlight features of this new design ⬇️

Teamwork makes the dream work 🙌 We’ve enhanced your collective working experience by introducing Team Inboxes. Whenever a new team is created, a corresponding inbox will be added and all the Contacts assigned to team users will be listed in it for easy reference. Talk about leveling up your team’s game.

Another change is the renaming of “Views” to “Custom Inbox” to reflect the enhanced usability of this function. Advanced filtering capabilities give you complete control over how you see your messages. It even allows for nested conditions, so you can specify exactly which conversations pop up in your inbox 🤯 Tailor it to your needs, whether it’s to supervise new agents or monitor interactions with high-value Contacts. Owners, Managers and Agents can create their own Custom Inboxes, though only the first two can share them. How’s that for operational efficiency?

Are you seeing a little green dot 🟢 next to one of your inboxes? That means it’s time to check your messages. We know firsthand the importance of responding to customers in a timely manner — that’s what we’re all about! The New Message Indicator alerts you about incoming messages in real-time while our Open Conversation Count (the numerals by the side) lets you view at a glance the total number of open conversations in each inbox. This helps you know which inbox requires immediate or extra attention.

That’s it for the home tour. It’s time to invite your guests in and show them what you can do now 🥳

Special treat for ALL YesHello users: Integration with ANY yes, ANY!! third-party messaging channel is now possible 🎉 Our brand-new Custom Channel feature allows you to integrate any messaging channel with YesHello so you truly can handle all conversations on a single platform.

All you need is a Custom Integration Server to translate messages to YesHello's format and voila, it will work like any natively integrated channel.

Here’s a visual to give you an idea of the message flow:

Learn more about Custom Channel here!

What can we say, being YesHello user has definite perks!

You wanted to know the elapsed time since an incoming message was received. We heard you loud and clear 👍 In addition to absolute time, date operators also now support relative time, applicable to all date-type custom fields. The new date operators are: “is greater than X time ago”, “is less than X time ago” and “is between X and Y time ago”. This means you can now create Workflows branch conditions such as “Time since last incoming message is greater than X seconds/minutes/hours/days ago” and build a Workflow that automatically closes conversations after a certain amount of time, for instance. You could also apply these operators in other modules to filter how you view messages or Contacts.

Judging by the demand, this is going to be popular! Previously, the WhatsApp Message Template option was only available after a messaging window closes. It’s now a permanent feature and is available even during conversations. Simply click on the WhatsApp Message Template icon at the bottom of the message composer and select the desired template 💬 This is the messaging shorthand you’ve been waiting for.

We have introduced a new type of dynamic variables - system variables! These include:

$system.current_datetime

$system.current_date

$system.current_time

You can apply these the same way as all other variables. Here’s one important use case to consider: Add any of these as a Column Mapping value in the Add Google Sheet Row step in Workflows. It would serve as a timestamp when new Google Sheet Rows are added so you’re always on top of what happened and when.

As always, we don’t let the little things slide.

A few small improvements and some bug fixes...

It has been a few months since you last heard from us, but our silence has not been in vain. We are now back with the most highly-anticipated feature release of the year: Workflows 🎉

It's a one-stop center that handles everything from setting Greeting and Away Messages to automation creation and automatic assignments. Excited yet? You will be! Let's go through some of the Workflows highlights.

Yes, Workflows has a dedicated module. You can add, manage and edit your Workflow easily here, as well as have an overview of all automated processes in your space. Current modules such as Automations, Surveys, Greeting Message, Away Message, and Automatic Assignment can all be achieved with Workflows. And that means that all the above-mentioned modules will soon be deprecated - but not yet, so don't panic!

Instead of creating automation in a form, you can now use a Workflow Builder. The builder provides a map-like view of automated processes, as well as simplifies the building and editing of Workflow with easy drag-and-drop steps.

Interested? Learn more about Workflow Builder here.

That's not all. As Contacts have a variety of interaction purposes and needs, you can now create specific branches for different user journeys. Set conditions to direct Contacts to the right branch, and create failsafe branches for those who fall outside the conditions. How's that for a personal touch?

You asked and we delivered. After receiving numerous requests for more automatic assignment options, we made sure those wants would be met in Workflows. Check out the Assign To step, which gives you unrivaled flexibility in assigning Contacts to anyone in the space, specific users, and even users in specific teams - a brand-new feature! You can also use conditions such as channels, tags and, custom fields to take Contacts down different branches and assign them to users accordingly. Learn more about Assign To here.

Say "hello" or "sorry we missed you" to Contacts easily with Workflows. We're introducing a better way for you to manage Greeting and Away Messages. With a little bit of automation wizardry, combine the Date & Time step that lets you define your business hours with a Send a Message step. Contacts who message you during work hours will be promptly greeted while those who get in touch outside of business hours will be sent an Away Message. There's a spell for that: it's called Expectations Managed!

You might be wondering if you can lighten your workload even more and send template messages over Workflows. The answer is a resounding yes. In the Send a Message step, check if your chosen channel supports a template message. If it does, you've hit messaging gold.

Wait, what? What's wait? Let's say you want to schedule a message to be sent after a certain amount of time. There's now a step for that: the Wait step. Slip it in between a sequence of steps and configure the waiting period between both events. This opens doors for things like follow-up messages.

Another good news is you can create unlimited workflows!

Want to find out more? Read all about Workflows here.

We heard you loud and clear. As requested, you can now send WhatsApp Template Messages to your WhatsApp contacts on the platform.

What's that you're asking? Does the API support Interactive/Media Message Templates? Aha, you'll have to check out the documentation here for more details!