January 2021 Server Release
Here are the main January release updates:
- Opt-in Graph,
- Contextual Campaign Triggers,
- Secure Automated Attribute Import,
- Improvements & Issue Fixes,
Opt-in Graph
Some of our customers showed interest in tracking the evolution of Opt-in for push metric for their apps, this is now available in the User Analytics section. The graph is displayed in Analytics page and it represents how installed & Opt-in for push devices are progressing over a defined period of time, and it's also possible to export those metrics from the UI using the export icon.
Contextual Campaign Triggers
There is a new option available in the contextual campaign triggers; after choosing a tagged event, users can select a specific key and its values. This option is only supported by SDK versions greater or equal to v6.7.0 for Android and v6.9.0 for iOS, so please update your app sdk version to a recent one to fully use this feature.
Secure Automated Attribute Import
The customers willing to use a secure attribute import process can ask their CSM to enable this feature for them. Then they just need to configure a job to drop attribute values files in a dedicated S3 bucket (provided by FollowAnalytics), those files are automatically processed and imported into the FollowAnalytics System of Records.
Improvements & Issue Fixes
-
Add a unique index at the DB level to ensure that there is only one FCM key for any given app,
-
Run automated export jobs at 3:00 UTC to make them available earlier for customers,
-
Improve segment analytics scheduling and enable CSMs to re-run app and segment analytics for a specific time window,
-
Fix an issue with the sending of web pushes to devices that are opted in but have no token,
-
Update the UI icon library as part of the new design system,
-
Fix the configuration file creation for the cart feature in the app builder.
December 2020 Server Release
Here are the Improvements and Issue fixes released in December:
Improvements
-
Build Editor:
-
Manage 2-step form login configuration in the build editor,
-
Allow to import a configuration json file for your apps,
-
Display floating button for section features in the preview.
-
-
Automated Exports:
-
Add encryption settings to automated exports, there are 3 possible options :
AES-128-CBC
,AES-192-CBC
andAES-256-CBC
,
-
Detect export job crashes to make sure the status of the export is marked as
Failed
instead ofExport Ongoing
.
-
-
Display template media dimensions as a tooltip in the campaign in-app editor, the default templates will be updated soon to include the required image dimensions, meanwhile you can use this example template to see how the tooltips are set in the
definition.json
file.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed the silent push campaigns initial audience estimation, it should represent all app devices that have a token regardless of their opt-in/opt-out or uninstalled status,
- Resolved an issue that prevented sending batches of recurring campaigns when sending time is adapted to the user's time zone,
- Removed
Trigger occurrences in the last 7 days
for contextual campaigns when the trigger isSession events > App is launched for the x time ever
because that data is not consistent, - Fixed the
selector to remove
feature in the build editor, - Changed the wording
Issuer Key
toTeam ID
for .p8 iOS push authentication key in the app administration section.
November 2020 Server Release
Below the improvements and issue fixes brought by the November release:
-
Automated Exports:
- Adapt some export queries to improve data consistency in initial and incremental export files,
- Make export retries use the new Databricks export system,
- Remove
application_id
column fromraw_campaign_logs
.
-
User Analytics:
- Improve the analytics calculations scheduling,
- Allow the CSM team to recalculate analytics for specific days from the backoffice.
-
Increase the processing capacity of transactional campaigns & their feedback,
-
Add data retention period parameter in the backoffice at entity level, to allow the CSM team to configure it for each customer. By default it's set to 18 months,
-
Use spark aggregations for attribute values to improve their display in the filters,
-
Enable exporting the segments list data from the UI, the export includes the following columns: Name, Identifier, Seg. population, % Over app population, % Opt-in push, Status, Creation date and Last usage date,
- Improve the UI of
Browse files
actions to make them display the required formats.
October 2020 Server Release
Here are some more improvements and issue fixes that were released in October:
-
Improve the management of automated exporters: differentiating initial and incremental exports and adding internal export state,
-
Add a validation to guarantee that the
sent_at
of transactional campaign batches is always in the future, -
Fix the sorting by status in campaigns list,
-
Fix a synchronisation issue of transactional campaigns reports in the data base.
Server 4.24
October 19th, 2020
Here are the main October release updates:
- New Design System: Typography,
- App Builder Improvements,
- Other Improvements and Issue fixes,
- Coming Soon: Automated Data Exporter V2.
New Design System: Typography
One of our main concerns is to provide the best user experience to our platform users, to fully take advantage of all the proposed features. In this release, we've started by updating the typography, colors, buttons, actions and icons according to our new design system.
We will keep updating the UI progressively in the future releases.
App Builder Improvements
This release includes the following improvements of the app builer:
-
Extend the color picker so it allows to pick a color from the app preview,
-
Display the corresponding button in the preview, when a new feature is added to a section,
-
Allow to import configuration json files,
-
Add API key to the mobile code to be able to see analytics and send push notifications to the generated app,
-
Improve cart configuration,
-
Fix the 'selectors to remove' behavior to work correctly in the generated app.
Other Improvements
-
Send a silent push for pull campaigns to guarantee that the campaign is fetched by the SDK and ready to be displayed when the trigger happens or when the app is opened, this concerns all in-app campaigns and contextual push campaigns,
-
Remove global SORs from filters and update the public documentation accordingly https://dev.followanalytics.com/platform-apis/sors_v3/.
Issue fixes
-
Resolve an issue where app versions don't preload in the filters,
-
Fix a display issue of the logs in the device observer,
-
Make the child apps appear as intended in the app picker.
Coming Soon: Automated Data Exporter V2
We are happy to announce that we are launching our Automated Data Exporter Service v2 using Databricks solution very soon. This will imply small changes in the export files format:
- The header will be present in all export files regardless of the state of
Include Headers
option set for the exporter, Sessions with Carrier
will be renamedSessions
and the oldSessions
will be removed,- The column
application_id
will be removed from all export files,app_identifier
column containing the app external id will still be present.
Server 4.23
September 8th, 2020
Here are the release updates:
Recurring Campaigns
The Scheduled Campaigns allow platform users to send push and in-app campaigns at a specific date and time. With this release we are introducing a new delivery option: Reccurence, that can be set to daily, weekly or monthly. It is also possible to set an end date and a limit of notifications per device.
Example of recurring campaign: Send a weekly reminder on Mondays to evaluate the app to all active users, and limit to 3 notifications per device.
As mentioned in the UI, this is the beta version of this feature that we would like to improve in future releases based on your feedback.
Improvements
-
Some improvements on the Push Server: implemented a retry mechanism, improved the pusher module and added a job validation API. This will increase the performance and reliability of our push campaigns,
-
A new Survey Popup template is now available in the in-app library, it includes multiple pages and different answer choices,
Recent Hotfixes
-
Fix the end date for transactional in-app campaigns, that was causing in-apps discarding by the sdk,
-
Add internal monitoring and alerts for in-app campaigns,
-
Fix an issue that was blocking the loading of campaigns list for a specific app,
-
Improve the behavior of in-app templates closing in case the user clicks twice on the close button.
Server 4.22
August 13th, 2020
The highlights of this release are:
Segments
- Send an email to CSM and admins (having access to the apps) informing them about the dormant segments that are about to become inactive:
- New way to display the labels of segments in list view mode:
- Homogenisation improvements related to segments' actions in segments list and segment page. Adapt the actions depending on the category of segment, i.e the actions for
active
segments are: 'Create campaign', 'Duplicate', 'Delete', while fordormant
segments are 'Create campaign', 'Activate', 'Duplicate', 'Delete' and forinactive
segments: 'Activate', 'Duplicate', 'Delete'
Build
-
Ensure the preview is working when the connection is lost (add a retry button), reflect in the preview any update done in the editor,
-
Warn the user when there is missing mandatory information when saving changes,
-
Correctly sort the list of apps by creation and last update dates,
-
Improvements related to features' icons.
Improvements
- Add a search bar allowing to search by an attribute inside a custom attribute or an app attribute collection
- Allow to filter the SORs by custom or app (Android, iOS or Web) inside an exporter
- Update Campaigns API and App devices endpoints documentation in dev portal.
Issue fixes
-
Fix an aggregation issue when a customer attribute value list was not loading,
-
Allow adding an app icon for non-B2B apps,
-
Fix the segments' sorting by creation date.
Server 4.21
July 7th, 2020
Improvements
-
Data exporters: Implementing pagination in logs tab to reduce the loading time,
-
Attributes: Adding a search box in the attributes tab to ease identifying attributes,
- Filters: Changing the wording of the filter
Push notification wasn't opened in
to match the expected behavior of the filter,
-
Campaign page: Always display the end date of scheduled in-app campaigns,
-
Adding errors definition for attributes imports in the public documentation available here,
-
The crash export endpoint doesn't require
log_id
anymore as documented here, -
Since attribution feature has been deprecated in the previous release, the columns
attribution_publisher
,attribution_campaign
,attribution_advertising_identifier
have been removed fromDevices
automated export.
Issues fixes
- SFMC FA activity: Guarantee the display of any error that may happen in the in-device preview at the bottom of the page.
Server 4.20
May 25th, 2020
The highlight of this release:
Attributes UI Revamping
This section is still available in Administration menu, the tab name has changed to Attribute Collections
instead of Profile Data
. It is split into two main blocks:
Custom Attribute Collections:
The existing custom attribute collections are displayed either in list or tiles mode. A search input box is available to ease the search by collection name.
The button Add Collection
allows to create a new custom collection.
The collection page is composed of 2 tabs:
-
Structure: lists the created attributes for the collection and gives their type and their status. When an attribute is disabled, we ignore the requests to feed it with new values using the imports or the API. An attribute can be deleted from a collection therefore all its values will be deleted. After creating the list of attributes, the user can import attribute values using an uploaded .csv file or a URL pointing to the .csv file, the button
import attribute values
is available in the collection page > structure section. -
Explore: it returns the attribute values for a specific
user id
ordevice id
only for enabled attributes.
App Attribute Collection: These collections group attributes collected by the sdk, the creation of attributes and feeding them with values are completed managed by the sdk. However it's possible to change attribute status to enabled/disabled or delete them in the Structure tab of the UI.
Important improvements
Here are some major improvements of this release grouped by feature:
Attributes
- Add
action_type
parameter for the import API to allow ADD, REMOVE, DEL actions of attributes of type SET, for more details you can check devportal documentation here.
Campaigns
-
Improve Push Server processing system,
-
Reduce campaign list loading time by caching quick stats for 15 minutes,
-
Make the audience estimation calculated only when closing the audience panel to avoid launching heavy calculations for each modification in the filters,
-
Keep only segments that are not inactive in the campaign audience filter,
-
Display a warning when uploading big images for in-app templates (image size>10MB),
Analytics
- Homogenize decimal and integer numbers in the UI according to the display language.
Issues fixes
-
Display an error on the login page when the user doesn't have a membership,
-
Manage the case where the sdk has been freshly integrated, when there is no data yet to display in the UI,
-
Fix a display issue of native in-app buttons in the in-device preview,
-
Fix the action of canceling transactional campaigns.
Deprecated features
Store comments and Attribution pages, that used to be in Store Analytics
section, have been deprecated from the product in this release.
Server 4.19
April 28th, 2020
Upgrade to Rails 5.2.
Server 4.18
March 6th, 2020
The highlights of this release are:
Attributes refactoring
- Removal of global SORs and share option,
- Attribute type is no longer modifiable,
- Customer profile list endpoint was removed, instead it can be used via API
/api/customer_profiles/export
, - Customer profile view endpoint was removed as well, instead, it can be used via API
/api/attribute_values
, -
Provide V3 endpoints to improve the speed of response for the API calls to retrieve the attributes values and to export customer profiles along with the associated attributes values. You can start using the API V3 by adding the parameter
Accept=application/vnd.fa.v3
to the request header:
Segments categories
The segments are now split into 3 categories: active, dormant and inactive. The UI was updated accordingly to group the 3 states in different lists and also to display segments creation date:
A segment becomes dormant after 23 days without being used. It can be activated again by user action:
After 7 days of being dormant (or after 30 days of inactivity) the segment becomes inactive. It can be activated as well by user action:
Other improvements
-
Refactoring of transactional requests to improve the performance for huge transactional requests,
-
UI improvements on 'scheduled batches' tab of transactional campaigns page,
- Adding more columns on campaigns automated exports:
application_id
,app_identifier
,campaign_identifier
,as_of
,user
,device_id
,action
( can be 'PushOpened', 'InAppDisplayed', 'InAppClosed', 'ButtonClicked'),details
(the button name).
Moreover, all other type of exports now contain application_id
and app_identifier
columns.
Please note that the exports include ongoing
, finished
, canceled
and failed
campaigns and ignore the draft
, deleted
, start later
ones.
-
Better management of edited In-app templates permissions,
-
Emoji picker is now available to be used in campaign templates,
-
FCM key check added for 'Indevice preview' and 'Uninstalls&New installs' page,
-
Contextual campaigns: when the type of trigger chosen is
Tagged events
, the optionAdd an event
is now expanded and valueANY
is selected by default),
Issue fixes
- In Events & Errors section, handling event details tab display when a filter by segment is set,
- Display a warning when segment analytics cannot be retrieved before segment creation date for 'Analytics', 'Events&Errors', 'Crashes' pages,
- Device observer fix: attributes are now shown in device observer simplified mode for iOS apps.
Server 4.17
January 7th, 2020
The highlights of the release are:
-
Implementation of a new system for transactional campaigns: there are new endpoints to send transactional campaigns, retrieve the report and cancel a request (the documentation is updated accordingly). The old endpoints are obsolete and they will be disabled in the near feature,
-
Refactoring the way we calculate the analytics: we improved the app analytics so that we can have analytics as old as 1 hour maximum. Similar work is being done for segments,
-
Improvement of Usage block from Analytics page: we have now a new section called 'Usage by location' with a map and a list of countries. For the moment, only the metric 'sessions by country' is available. On the next releases, the metric 'sessions by city' will be provided,
-
Contextual campaigns: we are now able to create a trigger for an unknown event:
- For campaigns only we can now create filters targetting the devices opt-in/out analytics:
-
Improve the 'Indevice preview' of campaigns: the switch between debug and release mode was removed. Depending on the app mode set (release or DEV), we send the push in production or debug mode (for iOS apps),
-
We are able to export the data for sessions heatmap and sessions frequency graphs:
-
Validity check at upload time for
.p8
authentification keys -
FCM key check for
SDK versions>=6.0
: for Android apps withSDK version >= 6.0
that do not have FCM key defined we display an error under the app picker for campaigns page.
Server 4.16
November 22nd, 2019
This release brings the following:
Improvements
-
Automated exports of campaign logs stats for all types of campaigns: The current release enables the exports of campaign results per user for all types of campaigns. As announced in the past for transactional campaigns exports, the files include:
campaign_identifier
,user_id
,push_sent
,push_opened
,in_app_displayed
,button_action
andbutton_names
. For technical reasons, the campaigns non transactional and for which we only received push sent logs, only the ones created after this release will appear in the export file. However, if any of those campaigns contain inapp logs (buttons click, etc) or push opened logs, they will appear in the export file. Here is an example, -
Export of campaign logs for multi apps through endpoint: The CSV export includes: app_identifier,
campaign_identifier
,as_of
,user
,device_id
,action
,details
. Here is an: example. For more details, please check Dev portal page, -
Automated exports for crashes and customer attributes: This feature will enable users to get exports of crashes and customer arributes. Improvements are planned for next releases (for customer attributes),
-
Export of customer profiles through endpoint: The export includes
system_of_record_identifier
,customer_attribute_identifier
,customer_attribute_key
,customer_attribute_value
,customer_id_type
,customer_id
. For more details, see Dev portal page, -
Enable User Flow engagement for clients: The feature is disabled by default. In order to enable it you need to give the permissions ('View User Flows' and 'Manage User Flows') to clients (back office page),
-
Enable AB testing: This release brings the AB testing refactoring and activation of the feature for clients,
-
Visual improvements on moments for contextual campaigns:
-
Improvement of the customer profiles API endpoint to return only SOR changes since a particular date: A new parameter name
updated_since
has been added to the existing endpoint. For more details, please check Dev portal page, -
Campaign improvements: For 'All apps' selection, in the campaign list we have now one icon showing the platform type and one logo app.
Issue fixes
- Fix an issue with the iOS Crawler
- Fix an issue related to a latency of transactional campaigns
- Fix an issue when dev portal links have not been displayed correctly for inapp repertory
- others
Server 4.15
October 18th, 2019
This release brings the following:
Improvements
- Support icon and image upload for Web Push on the platform: With this feature we are able to add both an icon and an image assets to the Web push campaigns. The compose part and the preview of campaign creation were changed accordingly.
Issue fixes
- Fix an issue in exports of customer profiles happening when the csv fields contain quotes.
Server 4.14
October 14th, 2019
The FollowAnalytics team is pleased to announce a new platform release, which includes some important Improvements and Issue fixes,
Improvements
-
Automated exports for transactional campaigns: This feature will enable users to get exports of campaign results per user. The export includes: Campaign_identifier, user_id, push_sent, push_opened, in_app_displayed, button_action and button_names. Here is an example of the export file,
-
Event details exports: Adding the event name in the export file name will help our clients organise and process their events details export files, here is an example of the file name: AppLogDetails-2018-09-26-2019-09-25-Demo_app-Event_name-1569515065.xlsx,
-
Attributes import improvements: We are now handling these errors of attributes import files; empty file, file containing disabled attributes and when an attribute has a non shared global attribute equivalent,
-
Improvement of labels filters UI: We’ve added the count of the usage of each label in the filters for Events & Errors, Locations, Segments and Campaigns pages. Also, the labels that are not used within the selected app are greyed out,
- Improve analytics calculations in order to enhance the performance of user analytics pages.
Issue fixes
- Display an explicit error message in the UI when trying to add a user that is already a member,
-
Correct the event & errors exports name when the web browser is Firefox,
-
Resolved an interaction issue in Sessions by country graph,
-
Removed
Expire Date
column in the CSV import file of in-app transactional campaigns, in case it’s not a variable added by the user when creating the campaign, -
Resolved an issue concerning badge incrementation for push notifications,
We are currently working on many exciting new features: AI, App Builder, Alerts... that we'll be happy to share with you in the next months!
Server 4.13
September 6th, 2019
This release brings some Improvements and Issue fixes,
Improvements
- In administration section, enabling to filter the list of users by app access through the app picker and by user permission using the filter as shown below,
- Adding ‘No labels’ option in the labels filter in Events & Errors page to be able to display only events and errors that don’t have any label,
-
Enabling to search text inputs that have spaces,
-
Improving the UI/UX of the campaigns list filter,
-
Providing attributes imports monitoring: when users upload their CSV attributes files in the UI, they get an email with a URL to view the import errors json file. The monitoring APIs documentation is available here.
Issue fixes
-
Solving a display issue of events & errors list in Firefox browser,
-
Fixing an issue concerning web app domains not displayed in app administration section UI,
Server 4.12
August 12th, 2019
Release highlights:
Support Apple Push Authentication Key
Until now, we have only supported apple push certificate (.p12) for push notifications on iOS apps. Now, we also support apple authentication key (.p8).
Users can retrieve the authentication key, key Id and Issuer Id from their apple developer account, and upload them easily in the push tab of their app administration page.
Please note that uploading a new authentication key or push certificate will automatically replace the existing one.
Improvements
-
Backend refactoring of transactional campaigns to improve performance and stability of this feature,
-
Restricting ‘Manage In-app Library’ permission; it now requires an action from the admin to enable it for members,
-
Improvement of uninstall tracking after feature activation,
-
Adding monitoring pages for SFMC campaigns and for store analytics crawlers in the FollowAnalytics Backoffice for a better issues detection and support,
-
Providing time window filtering in Campaigns dashboard, based on campaign launching date. By default the selected time window is ‘All time’,
- Enable sending push notification in dev mode for iOS devices in 'Test devices' tab of Administration section,
Issues fixes
-
Enable the trigger ‘app is launched for the first time’ for in-app contextual campaigns,
-
Improve the management of the displayed language in the UI according to the settings,
-
Remove the action 'retrieve my device id' for web apps.
Server 4.11
July 29th, 2019
This release brings the following:
Uninstalls & New Installs
We are happy to announce a new feature that allows users to easily visualise uninstalls & new installs metrics of their iOS and Android apps over a selected period of time.
In order to provide uninstall metrics, we are regularly sending silent push notifications to devices to update their uninstall status according the response received from Google and Apple servers.
However, you need to keep in mind that for iOS apps, uninstall metric is not very precise because it depends on Apple response that may not give the right uninstall status because of user privacy policy constraints.
You can activate the ‘Uninstalls & New Installs’ feature in its dedicated tab in User Analytics section of the frontend:
Once data is available, you can choose a period of time and visualise uninstall, new install and user growth metrics:
This feature will be deployed progressively for our clients while monitoring performance and scalability.
Improvements
-
Update Salesforce package to make it compatible with August 2019 Salesforce API upgrade,
-
Support Branch as an attribution provider,
-
Enhance monitoring for store analytics crawlers.
Server 4.10
July 16th, 2019
Release Highlights:
- New Events & Errors UI,
- Smart delivery,
- Device observer (Simplified mode),
- Improvements and Issues fixes,
New Events & Errors UI
As part of continuous improvement of FollowAnalytics product, we’ve been focusing lately on one of the most important user analytics features of our platform: Events & Errors analytics and management.
This refactoring offers an intuitive display of events & errors list, you can add up to 10 events & errors in the graph to visualise the hits over the selected time window. This selection is saved in local storage for the chosen app.
Events can be selected from the list to display event page, that offers the possibility to edit event display name, change its labels, set it as a key event and it gives access to 3 sub-pages:
- Event hits graph,
- Event details page with event values and event key values presented in a list and graph,
- Event flow.
This refactoring helped improve loading performance of the pages of this section, and we continue improving this performance in future releases.
Smart delivery
We are happy to introduce this new feature that allows you to send push notifications at the optimal time of each user, based on their usage of the app, which helps increasing conversion likelihood.
The option ‘smart delivery’ is now available in Delivery page while setting a scheduled campaign. It requires only to choose a date and we make sure the notification is delivered at the best time of the day of each user.
Device Observer (Simplified mode)
The device observer has now a simplified mode, that displays only: session information, event logs, attributes and campaign logs. Verbose mode can still be activated easily in the frontend:
The main purpose of this simplified version is to keep only relevant logs that help our clients to validate their tagging plan and to do regular checks after sdk integrations.
Improvements
-
Improve password renewal policy to meet ISO27001 requirements,
-
Replace the old debug page by the device observer page in the platform,
-
Improve analytics calculations.
Issues fixes
-
Remove unwanted carriage return in push notifications,
-
Improve CrashLogs and LocationLogs processing in the new pipeline,
-
Improve store data crawlers.
Server 4.9
June 25th, 2019
Release Highlights:
New campaign editor
FollowAnalytics provides a powerful engagement module and our aim is to make it as simple as possible to allow our users to easily create their mobile and web campaigns.
In this release we are introducing a brand-new campaign editor with only one main step; customize the message. However, the editor gives a permanent and easy access to ‘Audience’ and ‘Delivery’ sections to edit them before launching campaigns.
Label management for campaigns
In this release, we’ve also added label management for campaigns, in order to be able to group campaigns that have something in common. Users can add one or more labels to a campaign, either in creation mode or after the campaign is launched.
Those labels are used to filter campaigns in campaign list.
Improvements
- Display campaign statistics in browser's time zone,
-
Align message display in the frontend with the display on device regarding spaces,
-
Unify the style for search in all platform sections,
-
Improve sorting for tables such as locations and SDK version,
-
Improve security for templates folders,
-
Maintain and build new aggregations after pipeline release.
Issue fixes
-
Fix a display issue in ‘Logged in users’ page when the user ID is very long,
-
Make the number of event details consistent with the sum of its key values.
We will be happy to share with you new features such as events & errors page revamping, simplified device observer, optimal time delivery and other improvements in the next release!
Server 4.7
May 13th, 2019
This release introduces some important improvements and issue fixes:
Improvements
-
One of our major concerns is to improve the campaigns and their monitoring, so we've done a refactoring of contextual campaigns in this release and we've also refactored a part of in-app campaigns. And for monitoring purposes, we've added a dedicated page in the back office for batches,
-
To improve the display of pop up templates, we've added a darker background on all our default pop up templates available in in-app studio,
-
To be able to group locations easily, we've added label management for locations:
Labels can help filter locations in segments and campaigns sections:
Label management is now independent in segments and locations pages.
Issue fixes
-
Remove the option "app launched for the 1st time ever" in session event trigger filter for push notifications, because this use case is not relevant,
-
Fix an issue while uploading a Template zip that has been downloaded from the platform,
-
Improve performance of campaigns list and quick stats requests,
-
Enable saving changes of Multiscreen template available in In-app studio,
-
Fix a problem encountered when deleting exports in the back office.
In parallel, product team keeps improving campaigns and the new pipeline. On the other hand, Events & Errors and Campaign Editor are being revamped to provide a better experience for platform users.
Server 4.6
April 16th, 2019
Release Highlights:
- Brand location management,
- Campaign list refactoring,
- App picker revamping,
- Improvements and Issue fixes,
Brand location management
We are happy to announce our new feature Brand Location Management, to allow you to create locations and store lists, and to use it to build segments and to send notifications to those specific users based on their location.
For the creation and the management of location lists, here is the new page in Administration section:
To add a new location, you can either do it manually, by entering all information about the location or by uploading a csv file that contains required information to add locations; location names, coordinates and details.
Those locations can be used to build segments and campaigns:
Campaign list refactoring
In this release, the campaign list has got a new look in order to bring you a better user experience while visualising and navigating in the list of campaigns: * You will have a global view of total campaigns launched, push sent, push opened and In-app viewed, * You will find easily the campaigns you are looking for, through search and filtering features,
App picker revamping
As a first step towards adding cross app analytics feature, we’ve made some changes in the UI of the app picker, to ease the access to app groups and to single apps through search and filtering modules.
As a next step for future releases, we will be adding multiple selection to be able to visualise and study analytics of a group of apps.
Improvements
This release brings some improvements:
-
Adding 'sessions frequency' graph to User Analytics page,
-
In user analytics export, converting the median session to an integer in seconds to facilitate the usage of this data by end users,
-
Adding an extra layer of monitoring for campaigns on our end, to ensure more stability.
Issue fixes
-
Fixing a display issue in the legend of crash analytics graph for Mozilla Firefox browser,
-
In Events Flow & Details page, removing a duplicate of ‘No event’ in the event flow,
-
In campaign editor, fixing an issue with tooltip being sticky after clicking on delete button.
Server 4.5
March 26th, 2019
Improvements
Here are the main improvements brought by this release:
- Filters are updated with a new option ‘Carrier’ as part of 'App environment', to be able to filter devices according to their internet service provider,
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Backend improvements on campaign stability and monitoring,
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The status of scheduled campaigns is becoming more consistent and precise, especially regarding ‘Failed’ and ‘Finished’ statuses,
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There have been many improvements on the new pipeline, it's planned to be deployed soon,
We've been also working on brand location management feature, specifically on : Permissions, Location creation process, Management of the list of locations and Usage of locations in the filters for campaigns and segments... This feature will be available soon!
Server 4.4
March 12th, 2019
This is a minor release that brings a new multi-screen default template, available in In-app Library, alongside some improvements and bug fixes.
Improvements
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Add app picker in ‘Test devices’ page,
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Add unique users KPI in analytics page,
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In Administration section, after changing user's details, keep displaying user's page instead of going back to users list page.
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While creating a segment, keep the content of filters after changing the condition,
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Remove the limitation of emails sent to register test devices,
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New pipeline improvements.
Bug Fixes
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Fix message display when analytics data is not yet available,
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Display full event name while mousing over events of event flow page.
Server 4.3
February 22nd, 2019
Main updates:
Saving in-app templates changes
To meet the need of our users willing to save their edited templates, in order to use them later on for other campaigns, we’ve added ‘Save template changes’ action in the editor to save a copy of the template or to overwrite the original template when the user has the permission to manage templates.
That led us to split the library into 2 parts:
- Original templates: Containing default templates provided by FollowAnalytics and templates uploaded by platform users,
- Edited templates: Templates that has been edited and saved from the editor while creating a campaign.
Improvements
In this release, we’ve been focusing on improving campaigns, by doing some refactoring backend side, and also adding some slight improvements to the frontend:
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Add GCM deprecation warning in campaigns creation page and in apps administration menu,
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Display any media restrictions in the editor as specified in the template itself,
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Improve in-app preview UI in campaign creation,
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On deep-backend side, there has been a good progress on the new big data ingestion pipeline which, in the future, will help providing near-real-time stats.
Issues fixes
This release has fixed some issues mainly concerning user analytics:
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Fixing an issue on the Heatmap, in order to show the full 7 days,
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Fixing an issue happening with the Firefox browser, in user analytics settings section, in order to display full event names and to create event groups,
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Include all events and errors in the export available in events & errors analytics page,
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Adding missing labels for devices in analytics page.
Coming soon
We are currently preparing a new feature for our next release; Brand locations management, to let you add your locations and use them easily in campaigns and segments filters!
And there are many other exciting features and updates to come!
Server 4.2
January 24th, 2019
Release Highlights:
Device Observer
While integrating FollowAnalytics SDK within apps, it’s important to be able to register test devices, to test E2E integration and analyze device communication with our servers. We are now proposing a new section in Administration menu, to be able to:
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Manage test devices,
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Add test devices for a specific app,
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Test push notification on test device,
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Display device logs.
In-app Templates (Pop up Format)
In order to keep enriching our templates library, we've added 3 new default templates, in Pop up format :
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Basic template with title, body, a library of icons and buttons,
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Customized template that has images for background and as illustration, they can be uploaded through the editor,
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One image template, that has only one image and a close ‘x’ action.
This release is bringing also the following improvements to the editor:
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Enabling new lines in multi-lines fields in default templates,
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New color picker to better choose colors and save recently used ones,
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Improving the display of the close 'x' according to device size.
Some improvements
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Enabling to export apps in the administration section frontend side,
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To better analyse and understand the path to crash, that page has been simplified. It has now 3 depths instead of 5 and the number of events at each step has been limited to 2,
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On Deep-backend and API side, we've added Optimal Time delivery logic and improved the process of device targeting for broadcast contextual campaigns.
Issues fixes
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Implementing a workaround to display Close ‘X’ in in-app templates for old iOS sdk,
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To improve global user experience in the platform, refine app picker default selection while going from one page of the platform to another,
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Fixing a formatting issue in export files process,
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Fixing an Issue with ‘targeted devices’ storage in case of contextual campaigns.
Server 4.1
December 26th, 2018
We are happy to announce this new server release that contains the following:
Default Templates
Now that template library is launched, we are proposing three default templates in Fullscreen format:
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A Basic template which has a library of icon, text blocks and custom buttons, so that you do not need any asset on your end.
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A Custom template which includes images, text blocks and custom buttons.
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An Interstitial, made up of one image, an action can be configured and applied on the whole area of the image.
All those templates are now available in our platform for all users!
We propose also a git repository dedicated to default templates: https://github.com/followanalytics/fa-templates. It will keep evolving in the future, with more and more templates for both fullscreen and pop up formats. Feel free to create your own templates by editing these ones!
Templates library & editor improvements
We keep improving our template library and editor, here are some important points:
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Logging of campaign actions and displaying them properly in campaign results page,
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Handing of templates duplication in the library,
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Adding the option of displaying many fields in the same line of the editor,
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Handling of close ‘X’ in the editor.
We are also planning a new feature for the next release, to be make it possible to save the changes made on the template from the editor, in order to have it in the library and use it again if desired.
Operational population
To be precise on opt-in percentages displayed in Segments & Campaigns, we are now updating the population to take into account only active devices, which excludes all devices we detect as uninstalled.
This will be visible on segments analytics, segment population will decrease and opt-in percentages will increase significantly.
More improvements
This release brings in many improvements in various sections of the platform:
- Administration:
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Upload a custom app icons to the platform for apps added manually,
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Display a warning while uploading an iOS push certificate when the bundle ID doesn’t match with the one of the app.
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For User Analytics, we are able to make the export displaying data per day, and only for the selected events from the UI.
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On the Backend side, we are optimizing the new Kafka pipeline. We have also added monitoring for campaigns, exports and other features.
Issues fixed
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Fixing some translation issues that were occuring for special browser and preferences configurations,
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Changing how agregation are done for Heatmap, to be able to display correct heatmap regardless of the timezone set on the browser,
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Fixing a frontend issue about display timezone of dynamic campaigns,
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Handling the combination of silent push with multilingual campaign,
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Managing default values for campaigns after saving them as draft,
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Fixing the behaviour of ‘back’ action after selecting an app from search results list.
Upcoming releases
We are looking forward to delivering many new features in early next year, here are some:
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Brand location management,
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Device Observer: Manage test devices and display device observer,
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Template library improvements: Save edited templates, More default templates, Support pop-up format...
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Advanced campaign analytics.
Server 4.0
November 29th, 2018
Here are the release Highlights:
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Some improvements and issue fixes.
In-app templates library and editor
This release introduces a new UI and UX for a template library, and also a brand-new template schema that offers many customizable parameters.
In-app templates library
In the ‘Message’ step of in-app campaign creation, the user first chooses a notification layout in the library of templates. The library has a tab for each layout format (pop up and fullscreen for now) and is composed of native layouts, default templates and templates added to the library.
While hovering the items of the library, the user can see the device preview, view template information, download or delete added templates when they have template management permission, and also select one to start editing it.
The user has also the ability to upload a new template, to use it within the campaign or to share it in the library. This feature is only available for fullscreen format for now, and will be extended to pop up formats as well in future releases.
Users who have appropriate permissions can change sharing options of added templates, to make them available only for the current campaign, or to share them within the currently selected app or with all apps. This feature is available while uploading a new template, in the library, editor and review pages through ‘Template info’ pop up.
In-app templates editor
In order to allow platform users to use templates with editable fields that can be customized in the editor page, we are introducing a new templates schema.
Therefore, template .zip files include an updated version of the ‘definition.json’, that has different types of ‘input’ parameters, enabling users to define the template fields to display in the editor.
A detailed documentation will be available in dev portal in the next release.
User permission management (app access)
With the app access management feature, you will be able to fully manage user and team permissions in the FollowAnalytics platform UI.
This feature provides a full view of users and teams app access status, and gives you the possibility to override those permissions, and deny or allow app access for all apps, app groups or single apps.
Improvements
This release includes some frontend and backend improvements:
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Backend: complete the ingestion of logs and sessions into the new kafka-based pipeline,
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Provide exports of downloads, engagement and crashes data for the selected period of time from the UI,
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Prevent user enumeration and improve password policy as part of platform security audit,
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Reduce the delay to display AB testing statistics in the frontend.
Issues fixed
The main fix in this release is to properly manage copy pasting formatted content into fields in the UI.
Server 3.12
November 8th, 2018
Here are the release Highlights:
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Some improvements and issue fixes.
User permission management
Users permissions were managed by Followanalytics teams so far. In this version, we’ve allowed platform users that are admin to manage those permissions for both platform users and teams.
And we continue the work on this feature in the next release to provide also app access management in the UI.
Session heatmap
In order to have a better visibility of app and website usage over hours of the day across the days of the week, we’ve added a session heatmap graph to the user analytics dashboard.
The heatmap can be filtered by dates and by segments.
Simplified chinese
For some of our clients that have chinese users, it is important to handle separately simplified and traditional chinese users, for better segmentation and campaign targeting.
In this release, we made it possible to filter by simplified or traditional chinese
Auto-filling filter on string and set attributes
It is important for platform users to know the values of set and string attributes when filtering on them, and to know their distribution over the population.
Therefore, we are adding in this release auto-filling on filters for these attributes as shown below:
In-app templates library & editor
In server release 3.10, we’ve introduced a first step in the In-app templates library & editor feature deployment by updating the Message step in campaign creation flow.
In this release, we’ve made a step forward by making it possible - for users with appropriate permissions - to manage template sharing options.
We keep up the work to deliver the complete scope in the upcoming releases, including improvements on the library, new templates schema, editor and default templates.
Improvements
This version brings many improvements in user analytics, segments, user selfcare and also a good progress on the new data pipeline. Here are the main changes:
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Provide more operators on Date Attributes: ‘is before the last‘ and ‘is after the next’ X days,
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Enable to copy an existing segment as draft in the frontend,
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Let users change their password in preferences section,
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Improve the management of special cases when data is not available,
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Reduce the size of the delivery type block in campaign creation, as part of UI optimization in the creation flow,
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Backend: adding attributes to the new kafka pipeline.
Issues fixed
Here is a summary of the issues resolved in this new release:
-
Do not show more days than the requested period for event details analytics,
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Fix an issue with first and last seen dates for crashes,
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Handle labels with special characters in the frontend,
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Improve the creation and update of apple store account when ‘validated’ is set to true.
Server 3.11
October 15th, 2018
This release introduces 3 new features:
In addition to that, we keep improving analytics pages, campaign exports and we’ve added more granularity in push frequency limitation as part of the administration section.
We’ve also continued working on improving the token pipeline, refactoring the backend and fixing platform issues.
GDPR polling API
In addition to sending data access and erasure requests by email to our customers, we are offering in this version a new open API to allow our customers to get the list of data access and erasure requests, received by Followanalytics within the last 7 days.
You’ll find all technical information about this API here.
Segment-based analytics on more pages
As promised in previous releases, segment based analytics feature has been launched on ‘events & errors’ and ‘crashes’ analytics pages.
You can simply select a saved segment that has analytics previously enabled, and it will filter the KPIs presented in those analytics pages.
New permissions model
To prepare the launching of user permission management in the UI in the next release, we’ve been working on updating the existing permissions model to make them more precise and simple to manage.
Improvements
Unlimited languages for multilingual campaigns
Before, when setting up a multilingual campaign, we were limited to 5 languages while composing In-app and push messages. In this release, we’ve added a horizontal scrolling system to allow you to add unlimited number of languages in message page.
Alphabetical sorting for events & errors page
In this version, you have also the possibility to sort the events and errors graphs by alphabetical order in user analytics page.
Message frequency limitation per day
Up to now, as part of app administration options, message frequency limitation could be set to a limit per week or per month, now it becomes possible to set a limit per day as well.
Backend improvements
On the other hand, we keep up the work on the backend:
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Refactoring of DB,
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Fine tuning of token pipeline,
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Attribute workflow refactoring,
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Simplify timezone handline in the backoffice.
Issues fixed
Here is a summary of the issues resolved in this new release:
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Improve technical details display for crash analytics,
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Improve dates filtering for analytics in the backend,
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Fix an issue happening after refreshing attributes page,
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Improve the display of silent push options,
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Fix an error happening when trying to activate Transactional campaigns,
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Improve the UI of edit page for transactional campaigns,
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Correctly handle some exceptions in the backend.
Server 3.10
September 24th, 2018
We are currently building a new In-app template library and editor to offer editable In-app templates to our users. This feature will be available by the end of this year.
In this release, we’ve started preparing for the In-app template library by updating the message step in campaign creation flow, and also by increasing the width of the interface.
This release introduces also an important change in token ingestion pipeline and some improvements in the frontend and backend.
New in-app layout choice flow
To create an In-app message, first you choose either Pop up or Fullscreen format, and then you choose your layout.
For Fullscreen format, the layout can be either a web URL or a template to upload.
After choosing a layout, it’s always possible to change it using the "Change layout" button.
Wider interface
Increasing the width of the platform interface will allow us later to display more templates in the library we are building, besides having more space for template editor items.
It also improves the user experience overall the platform.
Before:
Now:
Improvements
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Enrich campaigns export data with open rates,
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Include all store comments in the export file,
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Handle new Google Play app statuses when parsing the store,
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Backend: Replace old token injection pipeline with brand new kafka-based pipeline.
Server 3.9
September 11th, 2018
This release introduces a new major feature: Multilingual campaigns.
This new version also includes some significant UI changes in campaigns results statistics, besides some important bug fixes related to campaigns, sessions recording and last user-id to be set for devices.
Multilingual campaigns
With this feature, you will be able to add up to 5 languages while composing your Push and In-app messages.
Default language is set by default to your browser language and can be changed easily for your campaign to your convenience.
This feature is available for all delivery types and is also compatible with muli-app campaigns. Once all required languages are added, you can review all the messages in Review page and then launch your campaign.
In upcoming releases, we are aiming to remove the limitation of the number of languages.
Campaign results statistics
We keep improving campaigns section in this release where we propose some UI improvements on campaigns results page.
Push and In-app statistics are now splitted in two different tabs. Each statistics page has two main blocks; the first one provides global statistics from Initial audience to push opened or buttons clicks.
For contextual campaigns, we enhance relevant statistics such as moment reached, and unless
occurrences. The second block provides a zoom in a specific period of time. For AB testing, it allows also to focus only on either the sampling or optimization phase.
Issues fixed
Here is a summary of the issues resolved with this release:
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Improved push sending reliability,
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Some campaigns labeled as failed were actually sent,
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For scheduled campaigns, if 0 push is sent, it would remain with ongoing status,
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Avoid displaying that the user has restricted rights in administration section,
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Fixed last user-id not set for some devices,
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Fix on sessions occasionally not recorded after aggregation.
Server 3.8
September 3rd, 2018
This release introduces 2 new major features:
Revamping of the campaign section continues, with a new header style, improving readability and consistency for quick-view stats. The campaign detail page will be reorganized in the next release.
We also improved some of the exports you can get from the interface, as well as fixed a set of issues.
Segment-based analytics
FollowAnalytics already provided a first level of analytics for saved segments. This was however limited to a fixed period of days, on limited KPIs.
We are introducing the ability to filter your Analytics dashboard page using any of your segments. Simply select an analytics-enabled saved segment from the list at the top of the page to filter all the KPIs given below.
In the future, we will roll out this feature to the other tabs of the Analytics section.
Segment analytics has be activated on your segments
To be able to use a given segment to filter your KPIs, you need this segment to be saved and configured to compute analytics.
To do so, go to your segment in the Segments section and check the Analytics box.
Multi-app campaign creation
Many FollowAnalytics users create campaigns meant to be sent to both their iOS and Android apps. In some cases, similar apps are deployed as separate binaries to the app stores.
Thanks to this new product release, you will be able to create your message once and have the FollowAnalytics product create campaigns for up to 3 apps. All delivery types but Contextual are supported.
The process is similar to what you are used to:
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Select your apps (up to 3), delivery type and formats,
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Write your message(s), define general and platform-specific parameters. You can have a quick preview for each platform, and even send previews on any registered device for your selected apps,
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Define the delivery parameters,
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Select the audience to reach. For each app, you can choose to target all users or a list of saved segments. This means you can still leverage user preferences, behavior, and any other targeting you are used to rely on,
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Save your campaigns.
Campaign design updates
Continuing on our efforts to improve the campaign list and reports, this release introduces a new list item view, also used as the header of the campaign view page.
The quick-view stats displayed are better adapted to the type and state of each campaign.
Improvements
Campaign exports
The export file, which you can get from the campaign list, contains new fields:
- app name and platform,
- the app groups the app is in,
- open rate columns for messages.
Usage export
The usage export file, exported from the Analytics main dashboard, now contains the break down of app version.
Issues fixed
Here is a summary of the issues resolved with this new release:
-
Fixed occasional failure at loading crash details in Analytics section,
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Fixed a discrepancy in unique users KPI between pages,
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Contextual messages could sometimes not be displayed on Android,
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Fixed display of dashboard when Downloads feature is disabled,
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App message rate limitation could incorrectly be applied to contextual campaign audience calculation,
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Clicking on the User Analytics entry in the main menu while being in one of its page now properly redirects to the analytics dashboard,
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Fixed event details report file generation.
Server 3.7
July 31st, 2018
The campaign workflow gets a revamping for better consistency.
Campaign creation flow revamping
The flow for creating campaigns gets refreshed for better readability and consistency.
Order of steps
To create a campaign, you will be proceeding through the following steps:
-
Select your app, delivery type and formats,
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Configure your message(s),
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Define the delivery details of your campaign: start date, rate capping, and depending on your campaign type: your triggers, campaign duration, and recurrence parameters,
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Define the audience of the campaign. Depending on your campaign type, this audience serves distinct roles (as mentioned in the page):
- Scheduled: Who will receive your message(s),
- Contextual: Who is eligible to receive your message, when they perform the trigger you defined,
- Dynamic: Segment that will be watched to identify new members.
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Review and send.
Please note that the duration of an in-app campaign is now handled using a "Do not deliver after" parameter located in the Delivery step, under "advanced options".
Audience selection
The audience step has been redesigned to make it much easier to select one or multiple saved segments. You can still select custom filtering for one-off targeting.
Data Wallet
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We know setup can be cumbersome. So data elements have been simplified: the list of Follow data is lighter, and when a customer adds external data on a recipient, we suggest items both for easy filling and also to indicate the granularity level.
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New option to export a policy in XLS format from the history tab, to have it easier to read / review.
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Identifiers can now have capital letters and start with a number.
Misc
GDPR
Data extraction for GDPR data access request now contains an HTML viewer so that the data can be easily browsed (in addition to the JSON file for automated processing).
FCM Keys
Customers can now provide their own FCM server key, in case you do not use the default Android SDK configuration.
Fixes
This release ships several fixes, including the following ones on Campaigns: - Push server fix on Android transactional campaigns,
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Hits on Dismiss are now properly computed for in-app messages,
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"undefined" would appear in campaign summary audience details,
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Moment computation.