Service Assist 2022.1: July 2022

Pages

• New ability to have multiple forms displayed in one overall page (TpPage). A page is defined as a collection that is sent to the Pages VBO, for more details see the VBOs section.

• The forms in the pages are dynamically created and can be updated independently by a separate digital worker or MiniBot.

• Pages can be dynamically updated, changing placement, content, look and feel to augment specific parts of an interaction.

• Pages can include AI or other tools to assist the user further, for example, AI-powered assistants to help advisors diagnoze issues with complex orders.

• Actions (TpAction), actions bars (TpActionBar), tiles (TpTile), and tile bars (TpTileBar) can be embedded into a page.

• A page can be the subject of a DirectURL – All Service Assist functionality of pages with multiple independent dynamic forms can be embedded in external applications, for example, Salesforce.com or ServiceNow. For internal systems, forms and pages can now be referenced directly via URL, for example, https://<service assist url>/page/45, assuming the contact center advisor is logged into the system.

• Forms in pages can be fully dynamic so that the entire form is created when the page is entered.

• Front-office user interface pages can now be triggered by clicking a button configured for this purpose.

Forms

• Several forms can now be displayed on the screen within a page at the same time.

• A form can now be associated with a tile or a menu item.

• There are no longer different types of form definitions (for example, no more Front Officer Form Start action), so a form can be configured for static or dynamic use, in enhanced view or not, for an action or not, in exactly the same way.

• The same form can be sent to multiple users, reducing the storage required substantially.

• Previously, the use of a form had to be defined at the start of a process via Form Start and Form End actions and by selecting the form type (for example, Front Officer Form Start). This is now done separately via the Create Form Payload action allowing the form to be re-used for any purpose. This also applies to form containers, such as accordions, tabs, and field sets. See the VBOs section for more details.

• Forms can now have embedded triggers (either URLs or buttons) to submit queue items.

Fields

• The JSON input parameter has been updated to Form Fields JSON in all VBOs. This is to differentiate between JSON used to describe fields in a form from JSON used to describe other functionality, such as drop-downs.

• The following fields have had attributes removed as they were no longer required:
  • Number – Removed attributes: Regular Expression, Regular Expression Flags, and Hide Number Stepper.
  • CalculationModel – Removed attributes: Type and Hide Number Stepper.
  • Currency – Removed attributes: Regular Expression and Regular Expression Flags.
• Additional CSS classes have been made available for use in fields by default.

Field sets

• Field sets are a new feature in this release which work as a collection of fields that are highlighted with an enclosed border, additional label and background color. A set of fields exists within an overall form.

Buttons

• The different button types (for example, Button, Front Officer, Static Form, Close, Link) associated with tiles and forms to initiate an automated process in previous versions of Service Assist have been consolidated into a single Button type.
• Several new features are available when using buttons, such as:
  • Ability to use Google Material Design icons of multiple types.

  • New IPC option – When a button is clicked and a queue item is created the form no longer expects a response and a spinning wheel is no longer displayed.

  • New Allow Cancellation option – When a button is clicked, the user is presented with a Cancel button allowing the spinning wheel to be stopped and the user to return to the original form.

  • Ability to open simultaneous URLs and generate queue items from TableModel cells.

Tiles

• New tiles icon has been added to the menu bar and takes the users directly to the Summary page.
• Tiles can now display badges indicating that the user needs to perform an action on them.
• A hide icon allows the horizontal bar containing tiles to be hidden from view.
• Users can click directly on a tile to start a process.
• A user can configure the order of tiles and save it for the next time the user logs in.
• If Enable Tile Delete Option has been selected on the App configuration screen, tiles can be deleted by right-clicking a tile so they will no longer display in the tiles bar in enhanced view.

Menu items

• Menu items displaying in the top bar can be used instead of tiles to start processes.
• Menu items can display badges indicating that the user needs to perform an action on them.
• Users can click directly on a menu item to start a process.
• Menu items can still be accessed if the user chooses to hide the horizontal bar containing tiles.

• Material Design icons can be used to augment or replace text in a menu item by using the Font Icon Name input parameter.

• Menu items can now be set as a landing page for a user. This can be done either using the Landing Page input parameter in the Users VBO or the Landing Page option under the Users tab in the admin interface.

Actions

• Actions can now be associated with both forms and pages.

• Actions and the forms associated with actions (action details) are now stored in a separate table and no longer as queue items.

• Each action and action details can be sent to multiple users, which substantially reduces the storage required.

• The order of actions can be set when creating an action. In the enhanced view, the default order of actions is determined by the priority attribute when the action is created. The default order can be overridden using the move icon to rearrange actions in a preferred order. Users can also order them by using the Order by Position, Created At, and Updated At options in the actions bar.

• A Load more option displays if there are more actions to be displayed in the actions bar.

• The actions bar can be hidden from view by clicking the hide icon.

• The bin icon can be enabled or disabled so users can be prevented from ignoring actions.

• Actions can be assigned different colors to highlight different types or importance to users.

• Actions can be filtered by priority, order, or color, which allows customer advisors to rank them by importance.

• Actions and objects are now passed as a text input in JSON format. Previously, they were passed as part of a collection.

• Simple non-compound tables have been improved so that the requirement for more complex compound tables is reduced.

• Tables can be sorted by Number or Date columns. Previously, it was only possible to sort on text fields.

• Drop-down lists of values are now supported.

• A single row can be selected in a simple table.

• Font icons can be embedded.

• The Form Controls VBO referencing the Table action has been updated to separate table values and column attributes into separate collections whilst also providing more flexibility.

• Rows can now be pre-selected when displaying a table.

• Significant improvements have been made to the way queue data is selected and processed, allowing more flexibility for a digital worker to determine the processing status of a queue. Previously, when responding to a queue item with a form, the queue item was automatically marked as complete, which could cause issues if not all processing was done. Now, a queue item is no longer automatically marked as complete and the status can be updated once all processing is done. A queue item can now have a status of pending, processing, delayed, complete, exception, or deleted.

• New tables separating Queues, Queue Items, Queue Item Details and Queue Item Tags have been added to improve performance and manageability.

• The descriptions for queue items (”request”/”response” instead of “robot_send_request/robot_receive_response”) have been improved, and a new type of queue item for coordinating work between robots, minibots, and channels (“ipc” or “inter-process communication”) has been added.

• Only digital workers with the appropriate key can pull work from protected queues.

• Tags can now be added to queues to help identify the transaction and for subsequent filtering of queue items.

• Forms are typically used to create queue items that multiple digital workers or MiniBots process but they can also be created by other digital workers, MiniBots, IVR and other digital channels for inter-process communication (IPC).

The following new features are available with Direct URL functionality:

• Directly access new pages, including multiple forms, actions, and tiles sections.
• Define a specific theme to be applied to a page or a form, allowing Service Assist to look identical to the embedded product (for example, CRM, intranet system).
• Pass parameters into the form to pre-filled fields, with data encrypted/encoded or not, based on the system requirements.
• Start a dynamic form from a Direct URL, including passing queue or page information.
• Better handling of expired tokens – When accessing an expired token, an error message displays rather than returning the user to the login page.
• Enhanced Access Tokens VBO functionality, see the VBOs section for more details.

All Direct URL forms, pages, or tiles must be created using the [email protected] user (id 4). Any previously created Direct URL access tokens using different users (for example, application_user) must be recreated to work as expected.

The config.json file must be updated as shown below, and the dockers must be restarted once this has been done:

"transient": {
"user_id": 4,
"duration": 6,
"secret": "password"
}

The TrustPortal Agent Registration utility has been removed due its limited functionality and increased size of the software download. TrustPortal Agent(s) must be registered using the TrustPortalAgent.exe setup --registerAgent –u <TP URL> -t <token> command.

Entering http://<tp agent url>:31999/status in a browser now displays detailed information about the TrustPortal environment to which the TrustPortal Agent is connected.