New Features

This update introduces First Responders with Skill Routing to streamline how new or reopened conversations are assigned, ensuring the right agents or AvoAI respond first. We’ve also improved the AI Agent Instructions editor, made Contact Digests smarter and easier to access, enabled sending Live Chat messages via API, and enhanced Website Widget disclaimers for compliance. Additional updates improve Salesforce Dispositions handling and deliver a range of bug fixes and mobile app improvements for a smoother experience.

Inbox “First Responders” and Skill Routing

Note this feature also requires “Skill Routing” to be enabled.

We have added the ability to designate Users and AvoAI Agents (or other users on the Auto-assignment roster) as “first responders”.

There is a new shortcut to setup “First Responders” via the Agent Configuration tab and automatically add your AvoAI Agent as a first responder. You can also mark users on your team with the “first_responder” skill. There can be any number of First Responders (note: if every active teammate is a first responder, it won’t actually prioritize anyone in particular).

How it works:

All “available” Users or AvoAI Agents with the “first responder” skill are considered the first line of defense in your inbox. Avochato will automatically assign those users to any new or reopened conversation (in addition to following any other routing rules you have setup in your inbox.)

This is intended to make it easy for all conversations to start off talking to a specific agent (or group of agents) before being escalated to other available teammates that are more specialized.

While enabled, all other agents will still be eligible to receive conversations that get escalated or becomes unassigned.

Your inbox will continue to follow any conversation limits, skills, or other automations you have in place to control who gets assigned to what conversation.

You can remove the “first responder” skill from your AvoAI Agent if you don’t want it to be a first responder

You can add that skill to any other user in your inbox.

You can still manually assign conversations to any user at any time.

Updates to AI Agent Instructions page

We updated AI Agent Instructions page: recipes have been adjusted and the the pane is less likely to close while you’re editing instructions, as well as some other visual adjustments.

New: Templates, Variables, and Tags menus have been added to the Instructions creation screen so you can insert various $template_key or $variable_name etc values into your prompts with ease.

Surveys & AvoAI

Fixed an issue where tags would not get applied by an AvoAI Agent during a Survey

Fixed an issue where escalation detection did not function during a Survey

Contact Digest updates

The digest is “smarter” about evaluating records and less verbose when proposing its summary.

The Contact Digest has been added to the Agent Assist side panel for easier access.

Digests now will only refresh on inbound activity after 12 hours since the last digest was generated for a given contact (previously the digest “expired” after 30 minutes). We have also added a manual refresh button to force-regenerate the digest, if necessary.

Insights

We’ve adjusted the spacing between the Summary and Actions for a block of Insights to make the Actions a little easier to read.

Messages API - Send Live Chat messages

You can finally send Live Chat messages via API just like other outbound message channels.

Every live chat has a “session ID” that looks like avochato:c:XXXX-YYYY-ZZZZwith a unique identifier for the contact that submitted the live chat. That value is available when parsing the response from our Website Widget webhook events, as well as the Messages Index API endpoint.

To send a live chat message programmatically, use the Send Message endpoint and pass the entire identifier (including avochato:c: in the Phone field.

Website Widgets - Disclaimer customization

We’ve made some updates to how we render the default or custom disclaimer shown on the widget submission form:

Widgets that use a custom disclaimer will always render that disclaimer. Previously, there were cases where the Avochato default disclaimer for SMS message would supercede the custom disclaimer while “Text with Us” was enabled for the widget.

Widgets for organizations that have specified a privacy policy URL yet do not contain a URLu n their custom disclaimer will have their privacy policy links appended at the end to err on the side of caution for TCPA compliance. This includes all new customers.

Salesforce & Dispositions

Disposition surveys that are based off of connected Salesforce Cases now properly respect any disabled or inactive Salesforce Types and Subtypes.

Additionally: some organizations have different record types for SF "Cases", and those record types can have different available picklist values associated to each field. We now properly handle those cases when generating Dispositions.

Lastly, we have updated some cases where Avochato automation was exceeding any custom rate limits that had been specified for the Salesforce organization. The Avochato platform curbs runaway requests to sync events via Restforce and should never sync more often than the API limits defined in the Salesforce Settings page.

Bug Fixes

Inbox

Fixed an issue where certain events would cause the inbox conversation feed to fail to appear or scroll further back in time

Avochato for iOS & Avochato for Android

We have released updated versions of our mobile apps containing bug fixes for issues with incoming calls or push notifications that would crash the app.

Android-specific fixes

Declining calls on Android won’t re-dial the same user than rejected the call. Other teammates can still accept the call (if they are available).

CSV files downloaded from the Avochato app are now easily detectable when looking through your local file manager on your Android device

Mobile (iOS & Android)

The “send” button should no longer get “stuck” when rapidly sending messages from the mobile app

Fixed an issue that was preventing cancelling pending message from going out on mobile while Suggestions was enabled.

Fixed a bug where clicking on an attached image in a conversation would expand it but never let you minimize it again.

Fixed various issues that could cause push notifications to fail to deliver when receiving many notifications in a small amount of time.

First Responders, Revamped Recipes UI, Updates to Messages API