product Updates

This month’s wrap-up of product updates includes changes to the update field and archive contact journey actions, new options for some of our data sources, and a better capture experience for customers with an SPA. 

See the highlights below, and visit our changelog for a complete list of updates, improvements, and bug fixes. 

• CDP — when importing a CSV file, you can now choose only to update existing records and not create any new contacts.

• Capture — we have improved how capture widgets work on single-page applications (SPA). Now, when your customers change pages in your SPA, all currently open capture widgets will be closed without triggering a ‘widget dismissed’ event and then re-loaded in the appropriate order. 

• Journeys — you can now use the ‘update field’ action in a journey to perform calculations. This means you can automate processes like adding points to a loyalty card or adding whole integer values to a lead scoring model. Plus, the ‘archive contact’ journey action has now been updated to include the option of archiving and suppressing the contact’s email address. 

• Filters —you can now use large text fields in filters throughout Ortto when doing things like creating entry and exit criteria for a journey. 

• Facebook — you can now manually trigger a Facebook data backfill. Plus, if you change the data retention period, we will automatically backfill the extra data.

• Shopify — if you are connecting Shopify as a data source, you can now choose what to do if a record already exists by selecting a merge key strategy. 

New and noteworthy knowledge base articles: 

• Recurly activities and attributes —  learn about the activities and attributes that are automatically added to your Ortto account when you connect Recurly as a data source. 

• Push notifications in Journeys — how to add a new or existing push notification in a journey. 

• How to trigger a custom activity via Zapier — you can trigger custom activities using a middleware tool like Zapier. This article guides you through the process. 

• Gmail’s promotion tab — this article explains the role of Gmail's promotions tab and how you can make tweaks to your email content to avoid it. 

• System activities overview — a detailed list of all system activities and their definitions. 

• Understanding SMS subscribes — this article explains different scenarios in which people can be unsubscribed from SMS communications and how they can be resubscribed.

• What happens if you exceed your contact limit? — each plan includes a set number of contacts covered by your monthly subscription. This article explains what happens if you exceed that limit.

• Retrieve contact activities via API — the get Ortto endpoint of the activities entity is used to retrieve data from one or more activities for a given contact in Ortto’s CDP. This article explains the request and response. 

We've reached the end of another quarter after a big month of updates. In September, we shipped enhanced controls on capture widgets, added a new settings option for notifications, gave you more control over how your Salesforce and HubSpot data is integrated, and more. 

Check out the full list below, and visit our changelog for a complete list of updates, improvements, and bug fixes. 

• Capture — you can now target capture widgets to both known people who meet specific filters and anonymous users. For example, you could target known users who are still on a free trial and anonymous users on your website. 

• Notifications — we’ve added a new settings page called ‘Notifications’ where you can specify which users or non-user email addresses should receive notifications, and/or provide a Slack channel for notifications. This applies to billing notifications, as well as general account notifications like data sources being disconnected. 

• Journeys — you can now choose whether to keep trying to display widgets or stop attempting to show them when a contact exits a journey. 

• Salesforce — reduce unnecessary time and data load by selecting to backfill specific objects rather than the whole list. 

• SMS — the brand prefix input in the settings page is now optional, making it simpler for multi-brand accounts to run SMS marketing campaigns. 

• Currencies — we’ve extended the list of supported currencies in settings. 

• API endpoints — there are two new API endpoints available. One to update a custom field and another to get contact activities. 

• HubSpot — you can now choose to auto-archive contacts in Ortto when deleted in HubSpot and control how HubSpot finds matches when merging contacts. 

Knowledge base article updates: 

• Understanding email unsubscribes — there are several ways someone can be unsubscribed from your communications. This guide explains them and shows you how to resubscribe contacts who were incorrectly unsubscribed. 

• Updating custom fields via the API — the update Ortto endpoint of the custom-field entity is used to update single-select and multi-select field options and to start or stop tracking field changes in the CDP. This article explains how it works. 

• What happens when delay and filter shapes are modified — learn how delay and filter shapes behave when they are modified and there are still contacts waiting at the shape. 

• Send messages to Slack — discover how to utilize your Ortto data to send messages to private or public Slack channels via the journey builder.

• Salesforce merge strategy — this new page consolidates information on the Salesforce merge strategy options available in Ortto.  

This month, we improved the styling in your Talk inbox, gave you more control over unique identifiers, updated some of our report settings, added a share option to emails, and more.

Check out the highlights below, and visit our changelog for a complete list of updates, improvements, and bug fixes. 

• Talk— we’ve updated the Talk inbox to give you a clearer view of which channel the conversation is happening in (email or chat). Plus, we updated the compose bar for email conversations and have allowed for HTML content in the Talk compose API.

• Unique identifiers — you can now specify a secondary custom field as a unique identifier. When you make this selection, the system will check a single incoming field against two different field options in Ortto. For example, if your contacts have a primary and secondary email address, the system checks against both fields. If either field is a match, we will merge the contact.

• Reports — pie charts now have ‘include’ and ‘exclude’ fields for ‘group by’ to give you more control over the fields you report on. We have also added a precision control when grouping a report by a date field or attribute to let you choose how you group. For example, you could choose to group by days instead of minutes. 

• Email — you can now create and share a public link to view sent and scheduled emails in a browser. This can be helpful if you want to create a limited preview of recent newsletters or give current subscribers another way to share your emails. 

• Knowledge base — we’ve added an option allowing you to change the color of the header in your knowledge base.

• Segment integration— you can now control the date format used on fields for ‘identify’ and ‘track’ activities. 

• Shopify integration — we added an ‘updated order’ activity for Shopify users.

Knowledge base article updates: 

• Data discrepancy between Ortto and Google Analytics — learn about the differences between conversion and session data tracking methods in Ortto and Google Analytics.

• Best practices for email design — this new guide outlines the best practices for email design, covering things like optimal email width, image-to-text ratio, and image formats. 

• Attaching files to a capture button for download — we’ve added a section to our configuring a capture widget article that details how to attach a downloadable file to a button.

• Creating and understanding funnel reports — learn how to build funnel reports with this in-depth explainer covering activity order, percentage calculation, and conversion windows. 

• Push non-delivery and complaints — this guide to invalid push statuses will help you understand the most common reasons for non-delivery. 

• How do I send data from Ortto to Salesforce — this article centralizes information on syncing data from Ortto to Salesforce to help you ensure your Ortto data is accurately reflected in Salesforce. 

• Shopify activities and attributes — this article has been updated to include all of our Shopify activities including the new ‘updated order’ activity. 

• How overall reaction sentiment is calculated — the email reactions article now includes a section explaining how sentiment is calculated in campaign reports.

We’ve got a major update for you this month — a fresh new sidebar! This change brings a more logical grouping to features and settings, helping you to navigate the app more intuitively. In addition, we’ve shipped an update to our funnel reports, added new ways to filter your audience, and more.

Check out the full list below, and visit our changelog for a complete list of updates, improvements, and bug fixes. 

• Sidebar — our new sidebar design is now live. Watch the video below to learn more, or click here for an A-Z quick reference guide. 

• Funnel reports — you can now click any of the metrics on a funnel report to view the matching cohort of subscribers and add a tag to all users or export the list. 

• Email suppression list — we’ve added a new API field that lets you choose to skip creating a new contact if their email address already exists in the suppression list. 

• Capture — you can now create capture widgets with direct media downloads. For example, you can upload an eBook PDF which can be downloaded directly by a lead who completes the form on a capture widget.

• Salesforce — use a merge tag to select which campaign to update in Salesforce ‘Change campaign status’ action. Plus, you can now search for field names when searching in the Salesforce mapping page. 

• Filters — we have two new filter options: build a filter with multiple values by typing the values separated by commas (e.g. First name is Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa) and the ability to filter for people who have started, are in, or have left a campaign.

Knowledge base article updates: 

• SMS non-delivery and complaints — this new article shares common invalid SMS statuses and the reason behind them. 

• Behavior of delay shapes when journeys are turned off and on — Learn how delay shapes work when you turn a journey off and then back on.

• Using capture widgets in journeys — this new collection of articles explains how to use a capture widget in your journey. 

• SMS custom domains — we've expanded on our article about SMS custom domains with a complete section detailing how to access, manage, modify, and delete SMS custom domains.