February 2021 Releases

Announcements

OAuth Support for Expert API Authorization (announced 2021-02-19)

OAuth is an industry-standard specification for secure API authorization and access. In addition to Expert's existing API tokens for browser-hosted and server-hosted applications, Expert is now providing API tokens for OAuth authorization flows. By supporting OAuth, developers building integrations between applications or devices, such as IoT or mobile, and the Expert API can leverage a wide variety of open source or commercial OAuth-compatible API authorization frameworks. In addition, OAuth authorization flows require that users' must consent to any integrated application or device's request to read or write their Expert private data - providing a safe and secure way to integrate with trusted third-party applications.

If you or your organization is interested in taking advantage of the Expert API, contact your Customer Success Manager!

New Expert Success Center API Developer Experience (announced 2021-02-11)

Microcontent (small, purposeful content that provides value as briefly as possible) is excellent for extending content into ticket submission forms to prevent support cases or powering chatbots with knowledge. By breaking up content into bite-sized pieces, one can provide structured navigation experiences, providing customers with the most relevant knowledge they need at each step of the content journey.

However, when it comes to software development documentation, developers appreciate a landing page that contains all information they will ever need to get started or be successful when building something great with a software development kit (SDK) or API. Many developers have found that a navigation bar on the left side of the content area, and guides, examples, and references on the right side, is the page layout that results in the quickest path to mastery of the API and it's capabilities.

The Expert API can integrate with applications and systems such as websites, voice assistants, and IoT devices. In addition, integrations with publishing automation systems, user management, and translation management systems can be very desirable when Expert becomes a critical piece of your organization's business. 

These types of integrations typically require more complexity and application programming skills. While the Expert API can be easily used to quickly fetch or update content on the fly, it's value is realized when integrations unlock the ability to extend Expert functionality into key parts of an organization.

Expert is pleased to announce that we have updated our API developer documentation to provide a content experience that developers have come to rely on to be successful.

A new layout puts all necessary information at their fingertips including how to get started, authorizing integrations securely, the core building blocks of the API, and specific API endpoints they can use to integrate with or build applications on top of. If you or your organization is interested in taking advantage of the Expert API, contact your Customer Success Manager!

Expert Capture Manager User Experience Enhancements (announced 2021-01-28, released 2021-02-04)

When embedded in Salesforce, SAP, or Genesys Cloud, the Capture Manager authoring and knowledge management experience is limited to only the tools necessary to facilitate KCS methodology workflows. However, by listening to Expert customers and analyzing user behavior, we discovered that the Capture Manager experience, embedded on pages within an Expert site, was not as intuitive. The presence of Expert site tools and user interfaces such as access controls and classification management created confusion and slowed down efficient KCS adoption.

We are introducing a more intuitive user experience for Capture Manager embedded in Expert site pages, removing the most common situations that confuse support agents and knowledge managers. As a result, KCS onboarding and adoption can be achieved at scale leading to improved support and service KPIs.

Users could accidentally change KCS-related classifications using page settings, conflicting with the classifications set by Capture Manager. We have removed KCS confidence, visibility, flag, and governance classifications from page settings:

When knowledge managers change the KCS Enabled status of page hierarchies, the impact of doing so was not clearly explained before the change was applied. A confirmation dialog now appears when users attempt to change the KCS Enabled setting, so that they fully understand what site structure operations they are executing:

Like page settings, KCS classifications could also be changed in the Page Classifications Manager, resulting in conflicts with the intended KCS classifications handled by Capture Manager. We have removed KCS confidence, visibility, flag, and governance classifications from the Page Classification Manager:

 

Page privacy settings, when changed in the Restrict Access page, conflicted with the intended visibility settings for KCS in Capture Manager. We have limited controls in the Restrict Access page for KCS-managed page hierarchies, allowing user and group permission assignment, but blocking privacy changes:

Finally, we discovered that agents, following the KCS methodology, were confused by the presence of non-KCS article templates when creating new pages. Conversely, product technical writers do not use KCS article templates. When creating new pages, the dialog now lists KCS article templates only when the agent is in a KCS-managed page hierarchy. Authors creating product documentation and drafts outside of KCS-managed page hierarchies will no longer see KCS article templates:

 

The Expert Product and Engineering Team appreciates the feedback of our KCS-practicing customers and always aims to improve KCS onboarding and deliver great KCS-powered outcomes!

Enhancements

Expert Capture Manager User Experience Enhancements

See Announcement!

Fixes

Dialogs

Dialogs will now allow the user to scroll if the content inside them is too tall for the container.

Images

Attached images to draft pages from another page will no longer show an older revision of that image if the source page does not have a draft.

Fixes

Contextual Help Touchpoint

Searching without a query will now redirect to the search results page with no results shown.

Editor

Find and replace in the editor will now support all special characters.