What's New in the 20.04 Release of CI360

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This release of SAS Customer Intelligence 360 includes the following new features and enhancements.

Require Approval before Publishing Items

You now have the option to require an internal review and approval process before you publish items that are used in customer interactions. If approvals are enabled, an approval is required to publish an item such as a task or a message. When you submit an item for approval, you can specify approvers, due dates, and instructions. Approvers receive an email notification with a link that prompts them to approve or reject the item. After the item is approved, it can be published.

If changes are made to an item (such as modifying the targeting settings for a task), an approval is required before you can republish the updated item.

An administrative user can enable approvals for the following items (depending on your product license):

• Activities
• Tasks: web, mobile, email, direct, and external
• Segment maps
• Data views
• Messages
• Creatives

This feature requires two licenses:

• A license for SAS 360 Plan
• One of these licenses: SAS 360 Engage: Digital, SAS 360 Engage: Direct, or SAS 360 Engage: Email

Edit the Schedule of a Published Item

If you define schedules for items such as tasks or segment maps, you can now edit the schedules after you have published an item.

For example, you might set up a direct marketing task to run on the first Monday of each month. After the task is active, you can revise the schedule to run on the first Friday of each month if desired. You have the flexibility to update the schedule as needed throughout an item’s life cycle.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Direct, SAS 360 Engage: Digital, SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Choose Whether to Generate Contact Events

Prior to this release, an impression event for a task always generated a corresponding contact event. Starting with this release, you control whether a task’s impression event automatically generates a corresponding contact event. This new option is set on the Properties tab of a task.

For example, when you create an email task, the email send event does not trigger the creation of a contact event unless you select the Generate contact events based on the email send event option on the Properties tab.

By default, this option is not selected for new tasks. For any task that was created before this release, the option is selected by default because this was the default behavior prior to this release.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital, SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Publish an On-Premises Direct Marketing Task without an Assigned Message

You can now publish an on-premises direct marketing task without requiring a message to be assigned to the segments that are selected on the Targeting tab.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Direct)

Assign Multiple On-Premises Export Templates and View Export Properties

You can now assign multiple on-premises export templates in an Export node in an on-premises segment map or on the Export Contents tab in an on-premises direct marketing task. You can also create multiple custom exports or combine any assigned and custom export types.

In addition to selecting or creating multiple exports, you can select a check box to display the properties of the export, such as the export field, output name, format, and type. Selecting the information icon enables you to view the export details such as the setting for append or replace, the inclusion of a header row, and the option for discarding duplicates.

Export Properties

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Direct)

Run an Unscheduled On-Premises Direct Marketing Task Now or Later

When an activity map begins with an on-premises direct marketing task that is unscheduled, you now have the option to publish the activity map without automatically running the on-premises direct marketing task.

Here are the two options when you publish an activity map:

• Run Now: The activity map publishes, is set to Active, and runs the on-premises direct marketing task.
• Run Later: The unscheduled on-premises direct marketing task publishes and becomes Active without running the task.

If you choose to run later, you can execute the unscheduled task through the REST API, or you can select Run Now in the on-premises direct marketing task to execute the task when you need to.

Scheduled tasks continue to run according to their designated start date and time.

Run Unscheduled Tasks Now or Later

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Direct)

Reference ID and Reference Version ID Available as Exportable Data for On-Premises Items

The Reference ID and Reference Version ID data items are now available in the export templates for on-premises items. 

A Reference ID is a unique identifier for the item. The Reference Version ID is the unique version of the item.

These data items are available for tasks, segments, segment maps, messages, and activity maps.

Reference ID and Reference Version ID

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Direct) 

Enhancements to the Roles Page within General Settings

The Roles page in General Settings now includes users who are SAS App Central administrators. This enhancement enables you to see a complete list of all users in SAS Customer Intelligence 360. Administrators that are from SAS App Central continue to automatically have all roles, so you cannot add or remove roles for these users.

The Roles list now also includes a last login column, so administrators can view the most recent login date and time for other users.

From the roles list, administrative users can add or remove roles to a group of selected users. The option to add or remove roles from a group of selected users is in the overflow menu (with three dots).

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital, SAS 360 Engage: Direct, SAS 360 Discover, SAS 360 Plan)

Push Notification Report Includes Android-Only Data

The report for mobile push notification tasks now includes information about how the tasks are performing for Android devices.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital)

Operating System Support for Android Mobile Devices

In release 20.01, support for Android 5 was discontinued. In response to a customer request, changes are made to the mobile SDK to re-enable support for Android 5 in release 20.04.

Note: Support for Android 5 is provided only for data collection and analytics. Android 5 devices do not support mobile spots, push notifications, or in-app messages. Android 5 is not supported in releases 20.01 through 20.03.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital) 

New XCframework Bundle Format for Mobile SDK for iOS

In 2019, Apple introduced a new XCframework bundle format for iOS developers. The SAS Customer Intelligence 360 mobile SDK is now activated by adding the new framework to the project settings.

SAS Customer Intelligence 360 now provides a single framework instead of the static library and resource bundle that was delivered in previous mobile SDK versions. This change is a more modern approach and allows the mobile SDK to be embedded as a dynamic library instead of a static library. For more information, see SAS Customer Intelligence 360: Developer’s Guide for Mobile Applications.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital) 

Retry Failed Workflow Service Tasks

Workflow service tasks enable you to integrate with external systems through predefined connectors. If there are any failures when the system invokes a connector in a workflow service task, you can view the error messages directly within the workflow user interface (if you are the Workflow Manager). A failure might result from a scenario such as an external system API that was unavailable.

If the workflow service task fails, the system sends an email notification, and you have the option to retry the service task from the user interface. This option enables you to address any errors with the external systems and continue workflow execution.

(Available in SAS 360 Plan) 

Codes for Workflows

The system now includes unique codes that enable users to easily identify and find a workflow using the unique identifiers.

Each workflow must have a unique code, but workflow names can now be duplicated. Users can use a code to search for a workflow from the Workflows list.

The codes can be automatically generated or manually entered for each workflow. Administrative users can configure code formats for workflows in the same way that they configure the code formats for planning items.

(Available in SAS 360 Plan) 

Search Planning Items by Using Tags

When you add tags to planning items, you can use those tags to search planning items on the Plans page. This feature enables you to find items of interest more easily.

To run a search by using a tag, enter the tag value directly into the filter box in the upper left corner above the list view. Alternatively, you can use a new section in the advanced filter pane to filter the list of planning items by tags.

(Available in SAS 360 Plan) 

Copy Tasks within Planning Items

You can add tasks that are associated with a plan on the Relationships tab of a planning item. Now you can create a copy of any task that is already associated with the planning item. This feature makes it easier to set up associated tasks that are similar to other associated tasks.

You can copy tasks in the same way that you copy other planning items on the Relationships tab.

(Available in SAS 360 Plan)