The Drop is our monthly update that highlights new features and recent enhancements we’ve made to the platform, so you can easily stay informed on what’s new in Smooch. Here’s what we launched in November.

This month, we added new typing indicators, timestamps and business read receipts to our SDKs; launched a new method to enable business-initiated conversations via our SDKs; and built an example repo for Conversation Extensions to inspire you. By the way, we're sharing Conversation Extensions with the world today on Product Hunt. Take a look here and let us know what you think!

What’s new 🎉

SDK support for typing indicators, timestamps, and read receipts

At Smooch, our goal is to help you power the ultimate end-user experience. That same, modern real-time messaging experience we’ve all come to expect from the leading chat apps. This past month, we added new features to our SDKs to help you deliver an improved messaging experience.

We added a new typing:appUser webhook trigger to let agents know when users start and stop typing. Read the release notes for our iOS SDK 6.4.0, Android SDK 5.5.0 and Web SDK 4.3.4 to learn more. We’ll add this feature for other channels as soon as they make it available.

Timestamps and asynchronous messaging go hand-in-hand. They’ve been supported for a while in our iOS SDK, but we’ve now released the feature on our Android SDK 5.4.1 and Web SDK 4.3.0.

We shipped read receipts for our mobile SDKs so businesses can notify users that they’ve read their conversation. Check out our API documentation here, and read the release notes for our iOS SDK 6.5.0 and Android SDK 5.6.0. We’re currently working on adding this feature to our Web SDK.

Conversation Extensions examples to inspire you

ICYMI, we introduced a new capability in Smooch that we believe is a total game-changer for B2C messaging. Conversation Extensions enable you to create custom interactive experiences that sit on top of the chat window and work across all messaging channels.

We built examples of what you can do with Conversation Extensions to inspire you and help you with implementation. Check out our brand new Github repo to view how Conversation Extensions would work in the case of a hotel room booking, a restaurant reservation and a service subscription. Keep an eye on this repo as we add more examples in the future.

Business-initiated conversations via the Smooch SDKs

Usually in Smooch, conversations are initiated by the end-user. Whether they’re reaching out on Facebook Messenger, or contacting a business via one of our SDKs, the user typically needs to send the first message. But in some circumstances it’s necessary for the business to proactively reach out to the user and engage them in a conversation.

We’ve just released a new method for initiating a conversation with a user via our SDKs for iOS, Android and Web. In order to proactively reach out to a user, the application or website must signal their intent to do so via the startConversation method. Once called, a new user and conversation will be created in Smooch and a conversation:start webhook will be triggered. The business can then use this signal to send a message to that user via the API.

Read our new guide to learn more on how businesses can initiate conversations in Smooch.

Smooch SDK & dashboard updates ⚙

• Support for Android notification channels: We’ve completed our support for apps targeting Android 8.0 (Oreo). Read the release notes here.
• Smooch Log tab dashboard update: All failed webhook delivery attempts are now displayed. Previously, webhook failure logs would only show up after retry attempts were exhausted.

Community challenge: show us your best Conversation Extension

We’d like to throw out a little challenge to you all 😛

We’d love to see what you can create with Conversation Extensions. Over the next few months, we’ll be showcasing some of the best examples on the Smooch blog, website and in our newsletter, which goes out to more than 30,000 software executives, product strategists and developers. Show us what you’ve got! Once you have a working example, submit your Github repo link via this form. We’ll pick the best ones to share with the world and we’ll have some awesome prizes too!