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 February.
The Drop is packed with goodies this month:
- Carousels for SDKS are finally here!
- New channel alert: RCS business messaging
- Service Accounts: easily create and manage a subset of Smooch apps
- More customization options for Web Messenger
- Other API & SDK tweaks, see 👇 for more details
What’s new 🎉
Finally! Carousels in Smooch SDKs are here 🎠
One of the most anticipated features of our Smooch Embeddables has finally arrived. We’re thrilled to announce that carousels are now supported as a native message type in our iOS, Android and Web SDKs.
Carousels are an interactive way for businesses to present their products, services and features while messaging with customers. Now available in Smooch Embeddables, carousels allow you to deliver truly innovative and unique experiences through web and in-app chat that until now have only been available on leading consumer chat apps like Facebook Messenger.
Read all the details on our blog and start leveraging carousels by updating to the latest version of our SDKs | iOS SDK 6.7.0 | Android SDK 5.8.0 | Web SDK 4.7.0
New channel alert: RCS business messaging
Smooch has joined forces with Google as part of their Early Access Program to bring Rich Communication Services (RCS) to your software and apps. RCS business messaging is a new way for businesses to text customers on Android devices, while offering the sort of modern messaging experiences they've come to expect from popular over-the-top (OTT) chat apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and iMessage. Think of it as SMS 2.0.
RCS business messaging enables brands to send rich messages like high-res images, videos, GIFs, audio, files, location, buttons, suggested replies & actions, and more. The UI can be customized to the business’ branding with their name, logo and colors, and a verified business checkmark offers peace of mind to users. Each business gets their own detailed information page with additional ways users can contact them, and a hero image for additional branding opportunities.
Smooch was at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week along with Google and key partners to showcase the technology which has started to roll out in the U.S. and, soon, Mexico. Since its Jibe acquisition in 2015, Google has rallied 43 carriers and device manufacturers to bring better native messaging to every Android user. The list of Early Access Partners is constantly growing and we’re proud to be among the first to bring this new channel to you and your customers.
Read the story behind RCS and what it means for Google and the B2C messaging wars.
Visit our RCS business messaging integration page to learn more and request early access for your account.
Service Accounts: Easily create & manage a subset of Smooch apps
If you’ve been creating and managing multiple Smooch apps on behalf of customers or doing on-premise deployments that connect to Smooch, we’ve just made your life easier. With the launch of Service Accounts, a new feature of our Account Provisioning APIs, you’ll be able to create scoped credentials to create and manage a set of Smooch apps.
Ideal for enterprise software makers, service accounts allow you to securely isolate access to your customer’s apps and corresponding data. When using service account credentials, the Smooch API will ensure that access will be limited to the apps created by the service account only, and prevent modifying those of other deployments and other customers.
More ways to customize Web Messenger
We’ve introduced a new way to change the look and feel of the Web Messenger UI. You can now provide styling settings in the call to the Smooch.init method.
The settings included in the Smooch.init method override the settings that have been set on the Smooch server via the Update Integration API or the Smooch dashboard. With the Smooch.init method, you’ll be able to run multiple variations of the Web Messenger depending on the websites it’s integrated on, a user’s location or their preferred language. View all init options here.
New customization options are also available:
- You can now add a background image to the chat window | Web SDK 4.7.0
- You can customize the size of the Web Messenger button | Web SDK 4.8.0
Other API & SDK updates ⚙
- Initializing Android SDK from an Activity: This is useful if can’t specify your Smooch app ID at app launch or if you want to run many Smooch apps in the same Android app. For instance, say you want to enable chat for a directory or marketplace app where multiple brands are represented and each want to be able to talk directly to users | Android SDK 5.9.0
- WeChat channel update: We added native support for
listmessages. See our WeChat guide and List API doc for details.
Industry intelligence 📰
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