🔎INSTANT MESSAGING DESIGN NOTES

💡The following notes are “by design”. They describe behavior of message protocols which cannot be circumvented or fully mitigated by Nimbus.

☝Data visibility: 

• Visible Customer Inputs: During an ongoing Instant Messaging session, any messages that customer enters into the chat will be visible to the Nimbus user, including information entered during Workflow Activities such as “Collect Information”.
• Attachments sent by either customer or user are subject to the Instant Messaging integration vendor (e.g. WhatsApp, Twilio) and their respective data handling and retention policies. If you are uncertain about handling certain media types via Instant Messages, consider restricting the Allowed File Types within your Data Privacy Service Settings.

☝Delay consideration for Power Automate (e.g. preferred user scenarios): 

• Note that – while Instant Messaging tasks can be routed with minimal delay – the measured roundtrip time of e.g. setting a preferred user via Power Automate Flow Action in many cases lies above 1 second. 
  → When you want to leverage “Preferred User Routing” in your Distribution Policies we recommend to add a delay in your workflow (e.g. via “Message” or “Delay” Conversation Handling Activity) before handing the task over to your “Queue”.

☝Maximum message length is 1600 characters.¹

• Twilio enforces a maximum message length of 1600 characters. Additional Parameters in your (automated) messages count towards this limit.
• In the UI (e.g.  My Sessions, Nimbus will detect the integration channel (e.g. SMS, RCS, WhatsApp) and display limits and warning messages accordingly.
• In Workflows, e.g. a “Message” Conversation Handling Activity Nimbus cannot anticipate the incoming integration channel proactively. If the length would be exceeded (e.g. a resolved Parameter leading to a long message), the activity will be skipped.

☝SMS length is impacted by character encoding². Please keep the length in mind:

• Please note that when you send a long message (via workflow or Nimbus UI), the customer generally receives multiple SMS at the same time. This could be considered as spam - on top of generating additional cost for the involved actors.
• The Nimbus UI will show the amount of SMS generated by a chat response. The amount of remaining characters and SMS will be adjusted when you change the encoding (e.g. by using emoticons).

💡Recommendation:  If you intend to handle multiple IM channels via the same workflow and service, keep messages (including resolved Parameters) short in order to not exceed the most restrictive limits. 

¹Also refer to Twilio' documentation on maximum message length. 
²Also refer to Twilio's documentation on SMS character limits and instruct your users accordingly before sending out long message chains.