Ada release notes

In voice bots, you can now add custom bot vocabulary, so your bot can more easily pick out terms that are specific to your brand or your industry.

For more information, see Help your voice bot understand special terms.

We've improved the appearance of List Option and Quick Reply blocks in WhatsApp. Now, instead of seeing a text list of options and having to reply with the number corresponding to the option they want, chatters can see a series of buttons to click.

For examples and more information, see our notes on WhatsApp channel content.

We've been working on reducing latency for blocks that perform backend actions (e.g., the HTTP Request, Set Variable, Answer Utilities, or Actions blocks). You can now strategically build Answer flows to significantly reduce pauses when these blocks appear and improve caller experiences. For more information, see Minimize pauses while your bot performs backend actions.

We've made several improvements to Ada Voice:

• We've added a Play button to blocks that contain spoken content, so you can test your content directly in the dashboard.

• In the menu where you can see an Answer's parent Answers, we've added an icon where you can easily see whether the parent Answer has live content for messaging, voice, or both.

• When you're editing an Answer and click Test Answer, the testing window now opens to the same modality you were editing, depending on whether you were in the Messaging or Phone tab.

• The Messaging and Phone tabs now stick to the top of your screen, so it's easier to keep track of which modality you're editing content for.

We've updated our Zendesk Messaging handoff to align with Zendesk's best practices for bot partners. While there are no changes to the builder or end user experience, please note that Zendesk Messaging tickets originating from your bot will now be tracked in Zendesk through a new channel source, "Sunshine Conversations API," instead of "messaging." Your Zendesk administrator may want to update your triggers and automations in Zendesk to leverage this new channel.

You can read more about configuring Zendesk Messaging with Ada in our guide Configure and use Ada Glass for Zendesk Messaging.

In the Answer Utilities block, we've removed the 1024 character limit for the Render Templated Text action's output. Previously, if the output was too long, it would show 1021 characters followed by ... and would truncate the rest of the output.

We've updated the Fetch Chat Metadata block, so it now only saves the current conversation with a chatter. Previously, it saved every message from all conversations the chatter had with the bot, which resulted in handoffs containing very long transcripts and irrelevant content.

This change primarily impacts channels where chatter IDs don't change between chatter interactions with an Ada bot, which includes third party channels (Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp), Voice, and bots that have their chatter persistence settings set to "Never Forget."

We're excited to announce that, starting today, you can now use the Quick Reply block to help resolve phone conversations. Just like in the messaging channel, you can use the Quick Reply block to provide your caller with choices at the end of a flow.

When a caller reaches a Quick Reply block:

• The different Quick Reply options will be read out to the caller
• The caller can select one of the options by saying it (they don't need to say it exactly as read - we use fuzzy matching to help make a match!)
• The caller's choice directs them to a new, relevant Answer flow
• If we can't match what the callers says to one of the Quick Reply options, the bot will instead respond to what the caller says like a normal utterance

The Quick Reply block is handy in voice if you want to provide callers with a menu of suggested options, but also want callers to have the flexibility to ask something else altogether.

For more information, see Use Quick Replies and List Option blocks for voice conversations.

You can now access the content of your connected CMS directly inside your dashboard on the brand-new Knowledge Hub page.

On the Knowledge Hub, you can turn on Article Suggestions, which returns relevant articles when the customer inquiry didn't match with any existing answers. Individual articles can be marked as enabled or disabled at your convenience to only surface articles that matter.

For more information, see Let chatters search your Zendesk or Salesforce knowledge base content.