New in Smooch this month: Our authentication mechanism got an overhaul; We’ve made a couple of updates to Facebook Messenger and Line; Get your website ready for our upcoming WhatsApp button; and a new customer spotlight.

What’s new 🎊

Introducing basic authentication

Calling all developers! 📣 Smooch is very excited to announce that we've released a new authentication mechanism for our API called ‘basic authentication’. This authentication method allows users of our API to make requests directly with an API key (previously known as a ‘secret key’).

Those of you already using our API know very well that we require users to generate JWTs to access our API since our initial release in 2015. Authenticating this way was especially challenging for those who were not familiar with JWTs and who had to learn how to use them just to be able to access our API. 😐

We’ve known for a while that there was a better way to do this and we’re glad to have finally delivered. Basic authentication removes the clunky step of generating a JWT and should help you get started with our API much more quickly. Both our API libraries and our postman collection were updated to support basic authentication. Enjoy!

Channel updates

• We shipped an update to our Facebook Messenger integration yesterday that adds support for postback actions in the welcome message of click-to-messenger ads. We also added a section in the guide to explain how click-to-messenger ads are supported at Smooch, as this functionality exists on other channels as well.
  
• We’ve also released a small update to our LINE integration, allowing a `qrCodeUrl` to be specified when creating or updating a LINE integration via the API.
  

Sneak peek 👀

WhatsApp button

Just because it’s summer doesn’t mean we’re all on vacation sipping piña coladas and soaking up the sun! 🏖 We’ve been working on a handy new feature for our WhatsApp customers: you will soon be able to add a Message us on WhatsApp button directly to your website! 🥳

With the simple click of a button, visitors will immediately be able to message you through WhatsApp. If browsing via desktop, the visitor will be sent to web.whatsapp.com, which will trigger the desktop app. If browsing on mobile, the visitor will be sent to the WhatsApp native app. We’re just putting the final touches on this and documenting everything you’ll need to make use of this feature as soon as it’s ready, so stay tuned.

Other API & SDK updates ⚙

• Android SDK In version 6.2.0 we added the ability to retrieve conversation metadata using the getMetadata() method.
• iOS SDK In version 6.15.0 we added the ability to retrieve conversation metadata using the metadata property.
  

Be sure to check out our changelog for a complete list of updates.

Smooch in the news 🗞

Customer spotlight: Milaap was profiled by Facebook Business this month, highlighting the success of their WhatsApp integration. Milaap is the largest crowdfunding platform in India, and they use Smooch to power customer conversations on WhatsApp. You can read about how they used WhatsApp to carry out 240,000 conversations, doubling their gross donation volume!

This month on the blog, we wrote about how Milaap uses our Notification API to proactively reach out to customers on WhatsApp, and why it’s been so difficult for brands to reach out to their customers until now. Give it a read here!

A thorough primer on conversational commerce by Chavie Leiber — “Why brands are sliding into your DMs” — mentions Smooch joining Zendesk alongside a slew of examples of brands who deal in the business of conversations. Check it out here in Business of Fashion!

Another news flash 🔥 hot off the press: Our bi-weekly newsletter, The Message, was named as a finalist for best e-newsletter in the 2019 Content Marketing Awards! Shout out to Dan Levy from all of the Smooch team on this amazing accomplishment! 👏