Release Notes

Release Notes 10 Mar 2023 

This is a major feature release, adding some improvements to existing features and quality of live additions to the Nimbus installation experience:

• Service Provisioning via MS Teams - Several improvements have been made to the Service Provisioning (Nimbus Installation) process: 
  • Users can now select an Organization Unit for their to-be-provisioned service directly during Nimbus Installation. Previously all new services and non-existing users were provisioned on the Tenant level Organization Unit. With this update they are now provisioned under the selected Organization Unit. In Addition, tenant Administrators can configure the default Organization Unit of newly provisioned services and users.
  • The Tenant Administration can now limit the provisioning via MS Teams to a certain role(s) or disable it completely. In this case, services can only be added via the Administration interface.

• Assistant (Standalone App) - Now allows the Outbound Service Calls (Call on Behalf) feature.
  Precondition: Enterprise Routing and Contact Center Services need the feature enabled in the Distribution Service Settings to be selectable for Outbound Service Calls.

  

  Three steps to make an outbound call (on behalf of) a service within Assistant
• Attendant Console - Added support for IM message templates (MS Teams)
  • A prefilled text with call details will now be included in the IM Message to the search contact. 
  • The language of the template text is picked based language set in the User Settings of the user currently logged-in user (same as Email templates) We plan to improve this feature with individually configurable templates in near future. 
    KNOWN ISSUE IM template text remains in the sender's chat window after having it sent once, needs to be deleted manually after. This is a MS Teams issue we reported to Microsoft, confirmed as a bug to fix.
• Other improvements:
  • Opening Hours Activity check - Fixed an issue where the last period of a multi-day spanning event was not recognized by the "Check Opening Hours" activity.
  • Opening Hours Calendar - Fixed an issue that prevented removing a single instance from a recurring opening hours calendar event.
  • Workflow Announcement / Play Music activities - Fixed several related issues that caused "Announcements" and "Play Music" activities to be either not played at all or twice in a row.
  • My Sessions Search - Fixed a search issue showing additional (unwanted) current-day call results in addition to the actually searched user/term.
  • UI Localization:
    • Attendant Console - Fixed an issue which defaulted to english in E-Mail templates instead of using the user's language set in the User Settings
    • Fixed several Italian and French keys not being correctly resolved in the Reporting and Configuration frontend.
  • Service Provisioning script: Updated (soon to-be-deprecated) modules to their latest counterparts. Your next provisioniong script run will automatically request a script update and install missing dependencies.

Release Notes 23 Feb 2023 

This is a hotfix release, improving some features from the last update:

• Assistant Info pop-up improvements:
  
  • Fixed an issue that ended a calls too early for Users being in "Away" state, making all Attendant content pop-ups disappear earlier than expected.
  • Improved handling where users set to "Busy" state still had the last call details shown altough the call has already ended.
• Fixed a backend issue that caused some calls to hang after transfers between skill-based services.

Release Notes 16 Feb 2023 

This is a major feature release, bringing a lot of features and and quality of live improvements.

• New Workflow Templates allow for detailed control over workflow instances. Apply changes in one go and standardize call handling accross multiple services.
• New Not Available Reasons to extend the User States tracking feature with a new reporting dimension. During absence, users specify the reasons in Assistant.
• Visual refresh of Attendant Console , including improvments to the Contact list.
• Round-Robin support to prevent starvation of lower-priority tasks.
• Quality of life improvements for Administration users:
  • Backend features to handle users in an MS-Teams based team
  • Closure protection prompts for unsaved tabs that contain setting changes

Read the chapters below for an in-depth dive. Let's get to it! 

Introducing Workflow Templates

The Admin Configuration section has been expanded with a new entry: Workflow Templates.

Nimbus comes with a set of base "System" Workflow Templates to use as fixed baseline for news workflows. Alternatively you can design your own Custom Workflow Templates, starting a (blank or pre-filled) System Template. Your Custom Templates keeps a reference to any created "children" workflows. As your template is changed, children workflows inherit those changes automatically.

TENANT ADMIN / OU ADMIN Workflow Templates are managed by users with Administrator Role within the Nimbus Admin Portal.

Team and Service owners may create their own workflows, but not define them as Workflow Templates.

Please note: Workflow Templates are a powerful tool to standardize call handling across your services – but also can act destructively as any change on a template can impact multiple productive services at once. → Please read this chapter carefully and roll out templates gradually to test the effects of changes.

Changes in a Nutshell: 

• Nimbus UI: New "Workflows > Workflow Templates" entry in the Admin Portal, visible to Administrator Roles only.
• Reworked Workflow Templates page and UI concepts . Now moved to Configuration Administration as templates are now user-configurable. Please read this chapter carefully before you start creating your own templates.
  
  • Added new chapters explaining the creation and re-application of changes saved on an existing template. 
  • Nimbus System Templates are unchanged and can be used for new, user-generated custom templates.
  • Your existing workflows are not connected to templates and continue to act standalone.
• Related KB Content : Redesign of the Workflow Editing and Workflows pages to highlight the new template possibilities.

User State tracking now includes "Not Available Reasons"

The Admin Configuration section has been expanded with a new entry: Not Available Reasons.

Contact Center Not Available Reasons (or N/A Reasons, NAR) are reasons that a user must specify after becoming idle, either through inactivity or by manually selecting a User States that Nimbus considers as "Not Available" (Away, Busy, DND). The reasoning must be provided via the Assistant app UI and is stored for Power BI as part of the Nimbus Reporting Model.

You may find this term abbreviated in Nimbus, e.g. NAR or N/A Reasons.

Changes in a Nutshell: 

• Added Not Available Reasons as new Contact Center feature. New entry in the Configuration Administration for any Administrator role to configure.
  Note that "Track User States" needs to be enabled on your Tenant to see and use this feature.
• Updated the User Administration UI to reflect the new "N/A Reasons" Tab.
• Added the usage section for N/A Reasons to Assistant to the Knowledge Base.
  KNOWN LIMITATION Please note that this feature is currently only available for the installed standalone Assistant App and not within the Nimbus UI itself.

Attendant Console quality of life update

Attendant Console has gotten a small visual refresh and some updates to the search experience:

• New Attendant Settings option added, located directly next to the search field. 
  
• Attendant Settings introduces "Contact Groups" as new feature. Use the new Settings to Hide/Show your Favorites Contact Group or create your own 10 custom Contact Groups with up to 50 users each.
  
• New visual design for the Quick Action buttons in the Attendant UI

User Management: MS-Teams based teams in Admin Portal

Depending on your service and team setup Nimbus uses different User assignment types to synchronize and authenticate existing users. In an effort to keep the Admin-sided user management as easy as possible, the Service Administration > Service Permissions area now displays tabs for user management based on Service types as follows:

• Unchanged: For skill-based services (Contact Center license) a "Permissions" Tab is shown. Users are manually assigned.
• New: For MS-Teams based services, (Advanced Routing and Enterprise Routing licenses) a new "Members" tab is shown.
  
  • Allows Administrators to check which Role members of a Service team have.
  • Now supports "Active" toggle for each user to enable or disable call distribution to that user. 

Refer to the KB updates on the Service Permissions page, explaining the differences and use cases for each Service Type scenario.

KNOWN LIMITATION The Provisioning script needs to run at least once for a sync of permissions. Until this is done, all users are considered as team "Owners".

Introducing "Round-Robin" distribution method for prioritized calls

Task Priority - configured in Distribution Service Settings - now makes use of a "Round-Robin" algorithm to avoid starving tasks. More explanations on this in the following:

Configurable Property	Description	Behavior	What it looks like
Task Priority	Strict* Highest Very High High Normal (Default for Services) Low Very Low Lowest Nothing Else* * see	When a new task enters the to the queue, it gets a priority according to the service setting: Tasks are distributed according to your currently applied Distribution Policy (e.g. "Longest Idle" or "Most qualified" users first). The order of Tasks is handled by priority, meaning: A new task of higher priority over existing tasks will take precedence and be handled as soon as possible. A new task of equal priority will be sorted in below already existing tasks of the same priority, as it entered the queue at a later point of time. A new task of lower priority will be sorted "in-between" higher priority task rounds, using a weighted round robin method. → See chapter below. When should I select "Strict" or "Nothing Else" as my priority? "Strict Tasks" will always be put on top of your queue. Use this for Emergency services and important VIP hotlines that always should get precedence over anything else in your queue. "Nothing Else" Tasks will only get distributed when your service queue is empty. Note that selecting either "Strict" and "Nothing Else" will ignore round-robin distribution. Tasks get lost due to potentially long queue times.	In views with a task list (e.g. My Overview or Personal Dashboards with "Task" widgets) a "Priority" column indicates how high this task is ranked in the queue. With this setting, tasks may now "displace" existing tasks to a new rank.

Weighted Round Robin Task Distribution

Due to the rules above, task may "starve" for very long in a queue. An example would be a "Lowest" priority task getting outranked by higher priority tasks. To avoid this, a weighted round robin method is in place to mix in lower-priority tasks, equally distributed amonst available users:

 Learn more...

_{Q: Calls in Queue | H: Handled | R: Remaining}

Priority	Q	H	R	H	R	H	R	H	R	H	R	H	R	H	R	H	R	H	R	H	R	H	R	H	R	H	R	H	R	H	R
1 (high)	12	2	10			2	8					2	6			2	4					2	2			2	0
2 (med)	6			1	5			1	4					1	3			1	2					1	1			1	0
3 (low)	3									1	2									1	1									1	0
Round Counter		Round 1				Round 2						Round 3				Round 4						Round 5				Round 6
Time (t)		t1																													tn
Weighted Round Robin The Round Robin procedure distributes the calls in such a way that the ratio between the individual priority levels is always 2:1. Each time another "Round" is started, that round counter is applied to the "weight" of the remaining tasks. The example above assumes a configuration with 3 priority levels. There are 21 calls in the queue, with the following priority: 12 calls with priority 1   6 calls with priority 2   3 calls with priority 3 Following the 2:1 rule, the calls are queue over time t as follows: Round 1: High Med tasks added in 2:1 ratio.  No "Low" priority tasks in Round 1 as "Medium" task count outweighs the low task count. Round 2: High Med Low tasks added in 2:1 ratio. The "Low" priority  tasks get a round-multiplier added to their weight, now outweighing "Medium" tasks and thus are added in a 2:1 ratio. Round 3: Same as Round 1. Sources: Weighted Round Robin (Wikipedia Article). Please note that this example only works as long as no new calls are being processed. Calls with strict or no priority are not considered in this rule.

Other Changes and Improvements

• Assistant (Standalone App):
  • Added new support for Not Available Reasons
  • Assistant Configuration now supports "Agent Token" as Authorization method. 
  • Added a new Use Case - Retrieving Azure AD fields via Agent token to showcase this method in a practical example.
• UI - Tab closure prompts:
  • To avoid a loss of changes made to forms and settings, Nimbus now prompt users before closing an open tab.
  • This prompt now appears in various areas of the Admin and Frontend Portal areas (e.g. Settings and Dashboard views).
• Reporting "Task Heatmap" widget: Fixed an issue preventing tasks from Sundays being shown correctly.
• Opening Hours Calendar:
  
  • Fixed an issue that displayed a false opening status on the last day of an all-day event spanning more than 1 day.
  • Fixed an issue displaying a different Start/End time for recurring events when a single instance is viewed.
• Personal Dashboards:  Fixed an issue that prevented tasks to be sorted by "State" first instead of just "Time in State".
• Backend: Fixed a case where a terminated call keeps inviting users.

Previous Releases

Looking for previous release notes? Visit the Release Note History.