What's New in the 21.05 Release of CI360

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Send Sample Test Emails from a Personalized Preview of an Email Task
In this release, email designers can send sample emails from within an email task that is still in the Designing state. This feature saves time by enabling you to review and validate how personalized email content is rendered across a variety of real email inboxes.

With this feature, you can perform these actions:

• send preview emails without publishing the task
• send up to 50 versions of an email at one time
• repeat the same email address, in case you want to compare different personalization scenarios in the same inbox

You can use this new feature to complement the existing preview features that are available in other areas of an email task.

Responsive Previews

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Improved User Experience within Detailed Link Tracking

Recommended Global Groups for Link Tracking
In this release, an administrator can create a set of global groups for link tracking. The groups that are added to the global list are available for users to select when they configure link tracking in an email task. Manage group names on the Link Tracking Groups page of General Settings.

Use global group names to encourage consistent nomenclature when users add link groups to email tasks. Consistency in group names allows for more consistent Link Engagement Reporting.

Note: This global list does not restrict or enforce rules on group names in a specific task. Email designers can still enter any names that they want in a task.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Configuring Link Tracking
To improve how you configure detailed link tracking, improvements were made to the user interface where you configure the Link Label and Link Group in an email task. It is now easier to edit a group name and create a group from the interface.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Improved Processing for Large Numbers of Display Conditions
In this release, SAS Customer Intelligence 360 improves the way that display conditions for email content are processed. Large numbers of display conditions can be evaluated much faster, which improves how quickly bulk emails can be sent.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Separation of Task Execution and Publish for Bulk Email Tasks
Previously, before emails were sent for a bulk email task, the bulk email task had to be executed in a separate step after the task was published. Now when you create an email bulk task, you have the following options:

• Publish and Run Now, which executes the task and sends emails.
• Publish Only, which makes the task active but does not execute it. Emails are not sent when you publish the task. Emails are sent only when you run the task. This option is useful if you want to use an API to execute the task.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Expanded Merge Tag Functionality for Mobile Messages
In this release, SAS Customer Intelligence 360 supports a larger variety of merge tags that you can use to personalize mobile push notifications and mobile in-app messages. This feature adds similar personalization capabilities that are available for web and mobile spots, providing more consistency across messaging.

Merge tags are now available in the following components of these creatives:

• Push notification creatives: Merge tags can be inserted in push notification title text, notification text, and the notification URI when the notification action is set to “Link to application”.

• In-app message creatives: 
  • In a small in-app message, merge tags can be inserted in the body text and in the banner URI when the banner action is set to “Link to application”.
  • In a large in-app message, merge tags can be inserted in the header text, body text, button labels, and in the button URI when the button action is set to “Link to application”.

In a creative, you can supply a default value to use if the merge tag cannot retrieve data. For example, if the user’s identity is not known, you might replace the name with “Valued Customer”.

You can use data that is specified in the task itself (not in the creative) to supply your merge tags. This functionality is enabled by personalization variables that act as placeholders in the creative design process. When you include the creative in a task, you can select the source data to replace the variables. Due to differences in how bulk tasks and triggered tasks are orchestrated, the available source data to replace variables varies across task types.

Here is a summary of the data that can be used as the source for merge tags for each task type:

• In-app messages and triggered push notifications:
  • uploaded customer data (except transient files)
  • customer behavior events or data views; more specifically, the attributes that are specified for the selected task targeting or task triggering events or data views
• Bulk push notifications: uploaded customer data

Note: The attributes of customer behavior and data view events are selectable only from within a task. In the creative, insert a variable. In the task that includes the creative, replace the variable with an event or data view attribute after you specify a task targeting or task triggering event.

Here are some important caveats:

• Pre-existing push notification creatives and in-app message creatives that use merge tags continue to work, even with a task republish. However, once a creative is republished, regardless of whether it is included in a task, the new merge tag behavior applies. You should not apply the newer merge tags to those pre-existing creatives. Instead, it is strongly recommended that you build new creatives that use the new merge tag features.
• When using uploaded customer data, make sure the channelContactInformation property for the data items in your customer tables is set to true.

(Available in SAS 360: Digital)

Specify Custom Properties for Invoices
You can now set your own custom properties for invoices. This feature gives you the flexibility to define attributes that are specific to your business needs.

Note: SAS 360 Plan already supports custom properties for planning items, workflows, assets, and commitments.

(Available in SAS 360 Plan)

Attach Files to Vendors

In this release, you can attach files to the vendor details that you add in General Settings => Plan => Vendors. This enhancement means that electronic files in supported formats such as .pdf, .docx, and .xlsx, or asset files that represent vendor information, or supporting documentation, can now be directly associated with your vendor record.

(Available in SAS 360 Plan)

Add Columns to a Transient Descriptor
Previously, you could add columns only to tables (data descriptors) that contained persistent customer data, and you could not add columns to an existing transient descriptor. In this release, you can now add columns to a transient descriptor, which means that you no longer have to create a transient table to add an additional column.

You can add a column by using the PATCH call to the marketingData/tables/<table ID> endpoint in the Marketing Data API. The call should include the table’s definition in the JSON body, including the new column that you want to add.

Note: When you add a new column to a transient table, the system deletes the existing data file that is associated with that transient table. You must re-import the transient data file to use it in the system.

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

Add New Values to the List of Metadata Values in Criteria, Map, or Split Nodes
You can now manually add a metadata value for nominal data items to the list of selectable metadata values for a Criteria, Map, or Split node.

This new feature enables you to enter a metadata value that exists in the on-premises data before the value has been included in a metadata upload.

The custom metadata values can now be added to Criteria, Map, or Split nodes. In a Criteria node, the count for a custom value can also be included.

Custom Values

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

Monitor the Updating of Counts in an On-Premises Segment Map
You can now use the Update Counts Progress page to monitor the updating of counts in an on-premises segment map. The information about this page enables you to view how counts are progressing and to gauge the time that is needed to complete the count update based on the progress results.

To open the page, click the Show update counts progress icon on the toolbar in the segment map workspace while a count is being updated. A progress bar appears, which indicates the completion of the count updates by percent. The status of the individual counts also appears in a table that includes these default columns: Step, Name, Type, Start Date, Duration, and Status. You can insert additional columns in the table. Click Download Details to download a JSON file that includes the contents from the Progress table so that you can create a record of count updates.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Direct)

Time-Based Option for Clearing a Direct Marketing Agent’s Request Queue
Administrators can now define a time-based option to discard requests after a direct marketing agent is brought back online. This feature is helpful when the direct marketing agent is brought down to upgrade to a new version of the agent. In this case, you might decide that streaming requests older than 24 hours should be discarded when the direct marketing agent is reactivated.

To enable this option, select a direct marketing access point from the General Settings => External Access => Access Points page. On the new Queued Requests tab, you can enable the option to clear the request queue when coming back online. You can choose to clear all queued requests or requests that are older than a specific time period. The default is set to 24 hours. Requests can include executions or update count requests for on-premises segment maps and tasks.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Direct)

Enhanced Search with Elasticsearch Support for Assets, Planning Items, Invoices, and Commitments

Implementation of Elasticsearch support enhances the search experience, which enables you to search through very long lists and find items quickly and easily. This feature provides pagination of item lists and also gives improved search results for a group of search keywords as well as subsets of keywords. Note that pagination is currently supported for assets, invoices, and commitments, but not for planning items.

Elasticsearch support is not available by default. The feature can be enabled by request. Contact your SAS technical representative to modify the property that enables the feature for your organization. 

(Available in SAS 360 Plan)