Our new Messaging widget is modeled around our existing Chat widget for a familiar experience for your agents. This familiar interface reduces the learning curve and improves usage speed. The new widget was designed to increase agent focus and efficiency. It was upgraded for messaging operations to handle multiple channels of conversation at scale asynchronously.
What's New?
Status Header
A status header has been added to provide agents with better visibility of the status of the current conversations.
| Status | Icon | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Unread | Conversations that are not read yet | |
| Unresponded | Conversations that were read but not answered yet | |
| Ongoing | Open conversations that are currently active | |
| Closed | Conversations that have been marked as ‘closed’ by you, by consumers, or have been automatically closed by the system due to timeout |
Conversation List
To enable agents to swiftly manage more conversations, the conversation list is prominently displayed.
When a conversation is selected from the list, it will open in conversation mode where you can view the full transcript. To help agents distinguish between agent and visitor messages quickly, the colors of the messaging conversations have been changed, with the bot messages in yellow, agent messages in grey, and visitor messages in blue.
End and Resume Conversation
Like in Live Chat, the agent still has the ability to end the conversation.
In addition to that, the agent can now resume the conversation and reply to a consumer even if they are not online. This enables the brand to improve consumers' journey.
User State Indicators
New indicators were also added to denote the user state allowing the agent to quickly identify the channel that the visitor is originating from, and see if the visitor is authenticated or has been linked to a contact record in CRM.
| Indicator | Icon | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Web | Indicates that the conversation originates from the web | |
| Indicates that the conversation originates from Instagram | ||
| Indicates that the conversation originates from Facebook | ||
| Twilio | Indicates that the conversation originates from Twilio | |
| Indicates that the conversation originates from WhatsApp | ||
| Email Connect | @ | Indicates that the conversation originates from an email |
| Authenticated | Denotes the visitor is authenticated, either via an authenticated engagement or an official channel | |
| Link-to-contact | Denotes the visitor has been linked to a known CRM contact |
Visitor Information
The agent widget was also enhanced with an easy view of visitor information.
For better visual notification, a large ring alert for new chats is now available.
To activate this feature, enable the ‘Show large ring alert for new Chat’ option from the Settings menu of notifications.
Emoji Picker
To improve consumer interaction, the option for agents to send emojis during a conversation was also added.
Note: The Messaging widget can only be displayed inside a panel within the main Microsoft Dynamics 365 user interface. It can't be popped out into a “Full Mode”.
Ready to get started?
Our Messaging widget is now generally available but will require back-end enablement. You can start using the new Messaging experience by following the steps outlined here: Enabling the Messaging Agent Widget
You can also check out the product highlights here: Product Updates - Messaging Preview Release