New at Yext

Here are release notes for the latest features and enhancements from Yext (formerly Hearsay Systems). Click Subscribe to Updates to have future updates delivered to your inbox.

2 years ago

March 2023 Product Release

Here's what's in the March 27th release:

Social

  • AI-Powered Content Recommendations 🔷 

Relate

  • Access LinkedIn direct messaging via Relate 🔷
  • Advisors/agents cannot disconnect their Relate phone number 🔷
  • Attestation in one workspace applies to the whole organization
  • New message notification for Salesforce Embedded Relate 🔷

Mobile

  • Relate Mobile App includes Post Library and AI-Powered Recommendations (can preview in Testflight)

Sites

  • Sites Post Library design matches the Social Post Library design 🔷
  • Preview changes on Sites

Platform

  • Desktop notifications appear in a drop-down list 🔷

Data & Analytics

  • Breakdown by Actions Workspaces report shows if advisors/agents receive daily emails and push notifications
  • New Sites Content Performance report monitors pre-approved content usage in Sites 🔷
  • New Sites Overview dashboard shows aggregate business measures for all Sites

🔷 Sandbox preview available. Contact your Customer Success Manager for more information.

Social 

AI-Powered Content Recommendations

Using data related to advisor/agent interests and behavior like keyword searches or post dismissals, as well as audience engagement, we created an AI solution that provides personalized and automatic Post Library content recommendations for each advisor/agent, similar to recommended lists in popular apps like Spotify or Netflix. The more advisors/agents use Hearsay Social, the more content recommendations are tailored to their preferences and their audience’s interests. Advisors/agents are more likely to post content when it is relevant to them.

Recommended posts are on the new Recommended tab in the advisor/agent Post Library, which supports both 3rd party and admin-created posts, depending on your organization’s configuration. New recommendations are processed in batches and sent to advisor/agent workspaces once per day. Posts can only appear if they are released or pre-released and active, and not yet published by the advisor/agent. All posts are included in recommendations except campaign-only posts, or posts that are part of a campaign the advisor/agent is subscribed to.

Some recommendations use our in-house content recommender engine. The engine algorithm recommends posts based on the post topic and whether the contents of the post match the interest profile of either the advisor/agent (Based on your interests) or the audience (Recommended for your audience). Interest profiles are based on advisor/agent behavioral data (keyword searches or post dismissals), advisor/agent historical publishing data (excluding campaigns), and audience engagement, which are collected from the first day an advisor/agent was connected to Hearsay.

There are six sections of content in the new Recommended tab, as follows:

  • Highlights at : Content recommended by content creators/admins using the Pinned Posts feature. For this section to appear, at least one pinned post must be available to the workspace.

  • Recommended for your audience: Posts about topics the advisor’s/agent’s audience is engaging with the most, as determined by our in-house recommender engine. For this section to appear, the following must be true:

    • There are posts in English available for the workspace
    • There are link type posts available for the workspace.
    • There is at least one audience engagement on posts published from the Post Library by the workspace.

  • Based on your interests: Content based on the advisor/agent search and publishing history, as determined by our in-house recommender engine. For this section to appear, the following must be true:

    • There are posts in English available for the workspace
    • There are link type posts available for the workspace.
    • The workspace has accomplished at least five activities, which can be either publishing a post or performing a search in the Post Library.
  • Most recent: The newest content added by content creators/admins. For this section to appear, at least one post must be available in the Post Library for the workspace. 
  • Most engaging: Content receiving a lot of audience engagement when posted by the advisor’s/agent’s peers. For this section to appear, at least one post must be available in the Post Library for the workspace. 
  • Popular with your peers: Content being published a lot by the advisor's/agent’s peers.  For this section to appear, at least one post must be available in the Post Library for the workspace. 

The regular Post Library still exists in the new Browse tab.

The feature is on by default but can be disabled in the Admin view, under Organization Settings > Workspace & Emails > Recommended in Post Library.

Relate 

Access LinkedIn direct messaging via Relate

LinkedIn Direct Messaging functionality is available in the Relate web platform. Advisors/agents can now send and receive LinkedIn direct messages on Relate in Hearsay Desktop, as they would a Relate text message. 

Relate will frequently crawl LinkedIn direct messages between 8:00 AM Eastern Time and 9:00 PM Eastern Time to check for new messages. To port/view LinkedIn conversations in Relate there must first be an existing conversation in LinkedIn, i.e. the user has sent or received at least one direct message to/from another person on LinkedIn native platform. Messages received via LinkedIn direct messaging are marked with a blue LinkedIn icon in the Conversations tab in Relate.

For advisors/agents to see LinkedIn DMs in their Relate messages, their LinkedIn account has to be connected to the Hearsay workspace and the account has to be “opted in” for Hearsay to crawl and collect data. This happens automatically as part of the process to connect the account to Hearsay. 

Integrating LinkedIn direct messages with Relate meets compliance guidelines, providing a better unified direct messaging experience on the Relate platform and reducing delays in communication. 

This feature is only available to users who have both Hearsay Social and Hearsay Relate enabled.

This feature is off by default. To enable it, or to enable the sandbox preview, contact your Customer Success Manager.

LinkedIn direct messages in Relate


Advisors/agents cannot disconnect their Relate phone number

Agents/advisors will no longer be able to disconnect or remove their Relate phone numbers. 

Disconnecting a Relate number leads to a violation of regulatory requirements because it creates an audit trail gap, resulting in a lack of transparency and accountability for communication. Restricting advisors/agents’ ability to disconnect their Relate phone number provides assurance to regulators and our users that their communication is compliant, secure, and accountable. By maintaining a complete audit trail of communication, Relate reduces the risk of regulatory fines and damage to company reputation that may arise from non-compliance.

Attestation in one workspace applies to the whole organization

An organizational opt-in model is replacing the individual advisor/agent opt-in model so that all advisors/agents from an organization can text clients who agree to receive messages from that organization. This reduces the need for multiple opt-in approvals, increases opt-in approval rates, improves client satisfaction through faster communication, and increases the number of conversations that drive business.

This new organizational attestation model is based on 4 rules: 

  • When a client has opted-in (by responding YES) to texting with an advisor/agent at an organization, their number is added to the allow list and all advisors/agents at that organization can text that client without additional opt-in requirements. 
  • If a client opts-out (by responding STOP), their number is removed from the allow list and added to the deny list. Their number is blocked and nobody from the organization will be able to text them.
  • If a client responds with UNSTOP, they are automatically removed from the deny list and added to the allow list for the organization, and advisors/agents can send text messages to their number.
  • Attestation in one workspace propagates to the whole organization almost in real-time.

This feature is currently only available for organizations whose Relate attestation settings are set to Explicit Consent.

This feature is off by default. To enable it, contact your Customer Success Manager.

New message notification for Salesforce Embedded Relate

A new Hearsay messaging hub has been added to Salesforce's utility bar. This hub provides advisors/agents with real-time alerts when new messages arrive, enabling them to respond promptly to customer inquiries. The messaging hub can be added to any lightning app within Salesforce, allowing agents to quickly navigate to the relevant record page to view the message and respond, without having to manually check for new messages. 

In addition, the messaging hub includes a new feature that allows agents to create new Salesforce records directly from the navigation flow when a message comes from a phone number that has not been captured in the system before. This streamlines the record-creation process and eliminates the need for agents to switch between applications to manage their customer communications.

This feature is available for organizations using Salesforce Embedded Relate. 

Hearsay notifications in the Salesforce utility bar

Mobile 

Relate Mobile App includes Post Library and AI-Powered Recommendations

In a continued effort to transform the Relate app into a unified mobile experience that encompasses both Relate and Social functions, advisors/agents can now browse, filter, and post suggested content within the Relate mobile app on the new Post Library tab. This change helps advisors/agents efficiently promote their brand by quickly publishing compliant content they are interested in while on the go using a single mobile app.

The new AI-Powered Content Recommendations enhancements for Social, also in this release, is included on the Recommended page of the mobile Post Library and enables advisors/agents to quickly find the most relevant posts within the six recommended categories. 

Advisors/agents can still view the library of approved posts on the Browse page, where they can sort available posts by Most Recent, Most Engaging, or Most Popular and filter by the post type, channel, and tags to quickly find the right content.


The new Post Library tab is located in the bottom right of the mobile app and replaces Settings, which has moved to the upper right of the Home tab.

This feature is on for organizations that both have Social and use the Relate mobile app. To preview the changes in Testflight, use this link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/PTz76hWO

Sites 

Sites Post Library design matches the Social Post Library design

The Sites Post Library now has the same look and feel as the Social Post Library, creating a consistent user experience and reducing confusion for advisors/agents who use both libraries to share content.

Here are the changes in the Sites Post Library:

  • The sidebar has been removed, and second-level menu items are now in tabs at the top. 
  • Filters have been removed from the sidebar and are hidden by default, but appear when you click Filters.
  • Sort by options are now in a dropdown.

Post library before release

Post library after release

Preview changes on Sites

The newest version of Sites now has a way for advisors/agents and compliance admins to preview changes to see how the website will look after the changes are made. This helps advisors/agents save time and effort going through multiple compliance revisions and helps compliance admins reduce the risk of accidentally approving something problematic.

For advisors/agents, there is now a Preview button on the Profile Editor page. 

Sites Profile Editor Page

For compliance admins, the Preview button appears on the Approval Request page in supervision.

Compliance Approval Request Page

To enable this functionality on the newest version of sites please contact your Customer Success Manager.

Platform 

Desktop notifications appear in a drop-down list

Notifications on Hearsay Desktop now appear in a drop-down list rather than in a separate tab, which prevents the interruption of existing workflows.

After clicking the notification bell icon, a scrollable list of read and unread notifications from the past 30 days appears below the icon. Clicking on an individual notification from the list navigates to the page that corresponds with the activity in the notification. For example, clicking on a content suggestion takes you to a page to publish the piece of content. 

Notifications are marked “read” after hovering over the notification and clicking Mark as Read, or by selecting Mark all as Read. Read and unread notifications are different colors, and toggling Unread Only shows only notifications that haven’t been marked “read”. A circular badge still appears near the bell icon indicating that there are unread notifications. 

Hearsay Desktop notifications don’t currently include missed Relate calls and texts. 


Data & Analytics 

Breakdown by Actions Workspaces report shows if advisors/agents receive daily emails and push notifications

Admins can now monitor if advisors/agents receive daily emails and push notifications for every workspace. The Breakdown by Actions Workspace report now has two additional fields:

  • Receive push notification
  • Receive daily email

Breakdown by Actions Workspace report with new Receive Push Notification and Receive Daily Email columns

New Sites Content Performance report monitors pre-approved content usage in Sites

The new Sites Content Performance report provides data on pre-approved content usage, including content types being used and the number of Sites using the content, making it easier to assess the value of each piece of pre-approved content and determine which pre-approved content organizations should remove, replace, or add more of. 

The Sites Content Performance report will contain the following fields:

  • Content category
  • Content item
  • Number of uses
  • List of Sites using the content

The report will be filterable by content categories and hierarchy.

Sites Content Performance Report

New Sites Overview dashboard shows aggregate business measures for all Sites

A new Sites Overview dashboard replaces the existing overview dashboard, and provides aggregated business measures for all available Sites solutions (legacy custom Sites, Library Sites, NextGen Sites, and the newest version of Sites). This dashboard measures the following: 

  • % of visitors converted to lead
  • Number of total leads (calculated based on the number of contact submission forms)
  • Number of Sites publishes
  • Number of Events publishes
  • Number of active Sites
  • Number of total visitors
  • Number of new visitors (not available for NextGen Sites, all visitors to NextGen Sites are considered new)
  • Number of returning visitors (not available for NextGen Sites, all visitors are considered new)
  • Number of Page Views (not available for Legacy Sites)
  • Session Time (not available for Legacy Sites)
  • Bounce Rate (not available for Legacy Sites)

The new Sites Overview Report