Here are some of the features, improvements, and bug fixes we shipped in May.
Sunsetting of legacy Groove
This past Saturday (1st of June) marked a big milestone for us over at Groove, as we shut down our legacy products.
After the launch of Groove 2.0 in April, we have spent the last few months refining our new products based on your feedback to ensure a smooth switch (introducing a host of new features and the “Classic” view layout).
Now with legacy out of the way, our team can be 110% focused on the new Groove, building a more feature-rich, powerful product.
Introducing the Groove Public Roadmap
With so much happening, we recently decided to show some of the bigger features we’re working on, along with a few more that are planned for the upcoming months. While this roadmap is mainly focused on bigger releases, you can rest assured that our product team is still making smaller refinements and improvements that may not be mentioned.
Inbox
Following emails
Ever wanted to keep up-to-date with a conversation without having to be part of the conversation? With the new “Following” feature, now you can.
When you choose to follow a conversation, you will receive notifications for any interactions that happen on it (replies / notes / state changes). We also built the ability for you to create custom folders for your followed conversations, along with the ability to have a rule automatically follow a conversation for you.
This feature is available to all existing and new customers on all plans, and you can give it a try by following the instructions here.
New conversation form
We’ve improved the look and feel of the new conversation form in our Inbox product and streamlined the experience in the process. With the rework, we’ve also made sure that it plays nicely with canned replies and fills in variables, such as first name, automatically.
Trash folder and the ability to permanently delete conversations
“Wait, you didn’t have a trash folder?” We did, but unfortunately it was just a bit difficult to set up.
That’s why we’ve introduced it as a new default folder and turned it on for all accounts. In addition, we’ve made it easier to permanently delete conversations from the trash (either individually or with bulk select).
Performance enhancements V3
Performance enhancements have been a priority over the last few months, and our most recent changes significantly improve the performance of your inbox when it’s under heavy load. This means you should see speed improvements during periods of high incoming email or high volumes of agent activity in your account.
Tagging & canned reply improvements (Coming soon!)
Over the last few months, we’ve gathered a lot of feedback on some of the usability woes of canned replies and tagging. With all that feedback, we will be implementing a more streamlined flow for you to add tags and canned replies to conversations.
Performance enhancements V4 (Coming Soon!)
During the month of June, we will continue our work on performance improvements, focusing on speeding up your inbox operations (opening/closing conversations and sending replies).
This means that the app will feel snappier as you work through your conversations in Groove.
Settings V2 (Coming soon!)
We are in the process of kicking off our new settings interface, along with bringing a host of improvements to the management of your inboxes, users, teams, and some of the more powerful Groove features (Rules, folders, tagging, canned replies, etc.)
This project is a biggie, but we will be sure to keep you up to date with the progress in our monthly updates.
Knowledge Base
Localization (l10n)
Need to support a language other than English with your KB? You now have the ability to completely localize your knowledge base! This feature allows you to customize all text strings in your knowledge base to match your language, your branding, or both. We even provide out-of-the-box translations for some of our most common languages. Read more about it here.
Access control
One of our most popular requests for the knowledge base has been access control—or privacy restrictions—so that only certain users can access your content. We have now launched the first phase of this functionality, starting with both password protection and IP whitelisting. To see exactly how it works, check out the dedicated article here.
Contact form (Coming soon!)
Want to know your customers’ thoughts after they read your articles? Besides ratings, we’ll soon introduce the option to add a contact form button below every article. So, if your customers reach the end of your content but still have some questions, they can contact you as easily as possible.
Printing (Coming soon!)
Sometimes you just need to have a help article available on paper, or have it accessible offline. Even though that’s always been possible, we’ll be making the printed version considerably nicer. We’ll also introduce a handy print button on your articles so people will be able to quickly find it.
