What's New in the 21.03 Release of CI360

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Improved Usability in an Activity
To improve the user experience when adding a task to an activity, more tasks are displayed in the Add Task window.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital and SAS 360 Engage Direct)

Improved Large Image Rendering for Mobile In-App Messages
In this release, changes are made to improve the rendering of large images for mobile in-app messages. The mobile SDK now gives preference to larger images on newer devices. To ensure that images are rendered correctly, use the latest mobile SDK, test across a variety of devices, and choose the graphic that works best across all devices.

(Available in SAS 360: Digital)

Control the Display of Message Types
When you create a message, the Properties tab of the message displays a Type field. The field lists the options for message types. Now, you can configure settings to show or hide the Type field in the message properties. If you choose to hide the Type field, you can use the user-defined categories and custom properties fields to display a customized list of options for message types. This feature can be accessed from the navigation bar by selecting General Settings => Content Delivery => Messages.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage)

New Mobile App Events

In this release, you can use the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 user interface to define events that capture behaviors in a mobile app, such as making purchases or adding a product to a cart. These are the events that you can now create specifically for mobile apps:

• These eCommerce events:
  • Add to Cart
  • Cart View
  • Checkout View
  • Product View
  • Purchase View
• Internal Search
• Promotion

When you create an event, you specify the event type (for example, Add to Cart) and an action, which in this case, is Mobile App Action. You provide a unique mobile event key that both you and your mobile app developer use, and custom attributes (if desired).

The new mobile events are available for selection throughout SAS Customer Intelligence 360, including for these activities:

• Creating data views
• Creating cloud segments
• Defining metrics
• Targeting the audience for a task
• Triggering a task or activity

Data from these new mobile events flows into the following tables in the Unified Data Model (UDM):

• Product View to the PRODUCT_VIEWS table
• Add to Cart to the CART_ACTIVITY_DETAILS table
• Cart View to the ORDER DETAILS and ORDER_SUMMARY tables
• Checkout View to the ORDER DETAILS and ORDER_SUMMARY tables
• Purchase View to the ORDER DETAILS and ORDER_SUMMARY tables
• Internal Search to the SEARCH_RESULTS table
• Promotions to the PROMOTION_USED and PROMOTION_DISPLAYED tables

New columns are added to the UDM tables to be able to distinguish mobile events from web events.

(Available in SAS 360: Digital)

Expanded Options for Triggering In-App Messages Based on Event Attributes
In this release, you can orchestrate the sending of personalized in-app messages to mobile app users based on an additional set of trigger events and their associated event attributes.

In the previous release, you could specify a trigger condition based on the value of the trigger event attribute for Standard events (such as Click-Through, Page View, and Mobile App Focus) and for Custom mobile events. In this release, you now choose from an expanded list of events that are defined specifically for mobile app behaviors:

• These eCommerce events (only the mobile app eCommerce events):
  
  • Add to Cart
  • Cart View
  • Checkout View
  • Product View
  • Purchase View
• Internal Search (only the mobile app Internal Search events)
• Promotion (only the mobile app Promotion events)

Note: For these events to have maximum effect as triggers, the events must be deployed in the mobile app code by using the mobile SDK version that is applicable to release 21.03 and configured in SAS Customer Intelligence 360. After the new mobile app code is available for download in the Play and App stores, respectively, it might take some time before the trigger events are available for orchestration.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital)

Monitor Job Execution and Delivery Progress of Bulk Push Notification Tasks

In this release, the Job Information page includes more details about bulk push notification tasks. This feature enables you to track the progress of tasks and to review specific operational metrics.

To access the Job Information page, on the Tasks page, click . The Task Execution tab provides the following information:

• Total Recipients
• Recipients Completed
• Recipients Failed
• Recipients Processed
• Recipients Skipped

 When looking at Recipients Failed and Recipients Skipped, click   to see these additional details about the reason for failure and how many recipients are affected:

• Failed to Create Message
• Failed to Send Message
• Device Endpoint Invalid
• Device Recently Logged Out
• Impression Limit
• Device Token Revoked
• Device Has Not Registered a Token

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital)

Send Test Push Notifications as Part of Diagnostics

When mobile devices are not receiving push notifications, it is important to understand why and if there is an issue that needs to be addressed. In some cases, the mobile device is not technically reachable. (For example, this issue can occur if the user opted out of push notifications for your app or the app was uninstalled.)

In this release, there is a new diagnostic feature that helps you identify the source of the issue by determining the validity of the device’s token. For example, if you confirm that the device can technically receive a push notification, you can rule out an “invalid token,” and then investigate other potential origins of the issue, such as the recipient having exceeded impression limits.

To use this capability, navigate to General Settings => Content Delivery => Diagnostics. After you enter your ID type in the console, you can see associated mobile device IDs on the Identity Map tab. If you select the Table view and scroll to the Mobile devices table, you can select multiple device IDs, and then press Submit Test. If the mobile device is technically reachable, you see a test push notification that says, “Push test successful <current date/time UTC> for Device ID <device ID>”.

Here is an example:

Sample Test Message

(Available in SAS 360: Digital)

Imprint URL Included in Email Send Events

Email send events now include an imprint URL so that you can audit or reference email imprints that were generated in the past 90 days. This imprint URL enables you to view the exact email content that was received as part of an email task.

You can retrieve the imprint URL for each recorded event from the EMAIL_SEND table in the Unified Data Mart.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Set the Email Background Color

You can now set specific conditions that control the background color for the entire body of an email. This feature enables you to personalize an email’s theme for recipients who meet a specific business condition.

To set a background color based on business cases, you can use conditional merge tags and specify the corresponding color (by name or color code). For recipients who do not meet the business conditions, the email can use the background color that you set as the default.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Hard Bounce Events for Malformed Email Addresses

In this release, SAS Customer Intelligence 360 generates a hard bounce event for emails that are addressed to malformed email addresses.

When an email generates a hard bounce event due to a malformed address, the system adds an event attribute that specifies the hard bounce as a “bad address”. You can use these events to help identify and remove email addresses from your database.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Enhanced View of Expenses in Planning Item Financials

You can now view the cumulative expenses for a planning item and its associated child items in the hierarchy below it. The rolled-up information about the allocated expense amounts for all the dependent items is now represented through a tree view when you view totals on the Expenses page. In addition, you can hide or display the available financial columns to customize your views.

(Available in SAS 360 Plan)

Associate Planning Items with Tasks and Activities

In this release, you can directly associate a planning item with a task or an activity if you have a license for SAS 360 Engage: Digital and SAS 360 Plan. Planning properties must already be added to the task or an activity that you want to associate with the planning item.

To access the new option in a task or activity, your view must be in Planning mode. On the Properties page of the Details tab, a new Parent planning item field is added. The system displays a filtered list of planning items that are available for association based on the planning start and end dates and either the business unit or the currency settings.

The planning item that is associated with the task or activity is designated as a parent level object for the task or activity in the marketing hierarchy.

(Available in SAS 360 Plan and SAS 360 Engage: Digital)

View Upcoming Workflow Task Assignments

If you are assigned to workflow tasks, you can now view and plan for upcoming task assignments to workflows that are not yet active. In addition to the pending tasks, you can filter and view workflow tasks with a non-initiated status from the list view and the calendar view. For group assignments, this feature can be accessed by clicking  on the My Workflow Tasks page.

(Available in SAS 360 Plan)

Schedule a Connector Endpoint to Activate at Specified Hours or Minutes

Administrators who set up connectors and endpoints have several options to configure a schedule for activating the endpoint. The administrator can specify a one-time schedule or a recurring schedule by selecting various frequency options such as daily, weekly, and monthly.

In this release, the recurring schedule of a connector endpoint can be specified by the number of hours (1 to 23) or the number of minutes from the listed options. This feature provides more flexibility in scheduling API calls.

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

REST API for Managing Users, Groups, and Roles

If you have administrative access, you can now manage users’ permissions through the SCIM API. This REST API enables you to perform these actions:

• add and remove users
• add and edit groups
• add and remove roles that are assigned to users and groups

You can use the REST API to change these settings on an as-needed basis, but the API interface also enables you to automate role management and integrate this process with external systems.

For more information about this REST API, see SCIM API.

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

Marketing Design REST API

The Marketing Design REST API provides a way to access and view information about some SAS Customer Intelligence 360 items. You can use this REST API to perform these actions:

• access task information (for example, channel, details, status, and usage).
• filter and sort a list of tasks based on query parameters.
• access segment maps. For example, you can update the membership of a segment map and see information about the most recent job that affects the segment map.
• retrieve metadata about response tracking codes (RTC). The API enables you to use filters to get specific RTC metadata. This metadata can help you understand which content was shown to an individual.
• query metadata about occurrences of bulk tasks and segment maps. Similar to the features of the RTC endpoints, you can use filters to find the status of an execution and the metadata that is related to the execution.

For more information about this REST API, see Marketing Design API.

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

Workflow REST API

The Workflow REST API enables you to access and manage workflow resources for SAS 360 Plan through a public REST API. You can manage workflow items such as workflow processes, workflow tasks, approvals, assignments, and attachments.

For more information about this REST API, see Workflow API.

(Available in SAS 360 Plan)

Unified Data Model Schema Version 7

Organizations that are downloading data from SAS Customer Intelligence 360 now have access to a new schema version for the Unified Data Model (UDM). Depending on your license, you have access to new enhancements as a part of schema version 7.

The following columns are added to most SAS 360 Engage tables:

• response_tracking_cd: stores the response tracking code on SAS 360 Engage events
• task_version_id: enables users to connect to the specific version of the task in the metadata
• message_id: stores the message ID if a message is used in a task
• message_version_id: enables users to connect to the specific version of the message in the metadata
• creative_version_id: enables users to connect to the specific version of the creative in the metadata
• segment_id: stores the segment ID if a segment is used in a task
• segment_version_id: enables users to connect to the specific version of the segment in the metadata
• properties_map_doc: is used for storing custom attributes
• event_key_cd: is used to determine whether the event came from the API

The following columns are added to some SAS 360 Engage email tables:

• program_id: denotes the email program that is used
• recipient_domain_nm: represents the domain of the individual who is opening an email
• reason_txt: represents the reason an email bounces, such as an invalid address

The following columns are added to the MD_TASK_X_CREATIVE metadata table to help users understand which creative and spot combinations were used in testing:

• spot_id
• arbitration_method_cd
• arbitration_method_val
• variant_id
• variant_nm

Five new SAS 360 Engage tables that provide more visibility into how SAS Customer Intelligence 360 executes tasks are added for download:

• AB_TEST_PATH_ASSIGNMENT: represents the A/B test assignment in activities
• IMPRESSION_DELIVERED: represents that content has been delivered to a spot
• IN_APP_TARGETING_REQUEST: represents when a request is made to execute an in-app message
• NOTIFICATION_TARGETING_REQUEST: represents when a request is made to execute a mobile push notification
• SPOT_REQUESTED: represents the spot-requested event

These new columns are added to some existing SAS 360 Discover tables:

• channel_nm: with the introduction of mobile events, provides the channel that the event came from
• mobile_app_id: provides the mobile application that generated the mobile event
• event_key_cd: is used to determine whether an event came from the API
• properties_map_doc: is used for storing custom attributes
• cart_nm: is added to the CART_ACTIVITY_DETAILS, ORDER_DETAILS, and ORDER_SUMMARY tables
• availability_message_txt, saving_message_txt, and shipping_message_txt: are added to the CART_ACTIVITY_DETAILS table
• activity_dttm, activity_dttm_tz, cart_id, and order_id: are added to the ORDER_DETAILS table
• referrer_url: is added to the PAGE_DETAILS table
• response_tracking_cd: is added to the EXTERNAL_EVENTS table to store response tracking codes for events that are being injected into the API gateway

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