v2

Ai Assistants and Bots

Improvement

Ai Assistant Settings and Training Updates

We've made some changes to the layout and controls on the Ai Assistants settings page.

First, the page now has three tabs:

Knowledge

You'll add knowledge sources and create stock answers in the Knowledge tab.

Persona

We've moved the settings for controlling your bot's persona to the Persona tab. Here you can set your bot's name, upload an avatar, and update the bot's tone instructions.

Evaluation

You can now review the conversations your bot participated in and provide answers directly inside the Evaluation tab!

Choose a conversation from the left side of the page and use the thumbs up/thumbs down icons to provide feedback to the bot on each answer.

Second, we've moved the deploy controls directly into the Ai Assistant page.

Now, instead of visiting the Chat Widget settings to deploy your bot in your chatbox, you'll select the bot in the Ai Assistants page dropdown and click the ENABLE button.

v2

Improvement

We've made a small adjustment in our new chat interface that has a big impact for agents on smaller screens.

The menus and settings in the lower left corner have been collapsed into a horizontal row of icons. This provides more space for the list of agents directly above it, allowing agents to see more of their team and status at a glance.

New Feature!

Ai Assistants and Bots

v2

Two new bot knowledge improvements shipped today:

Support for JSON and ZIP files

You can now upload JSON and ZIP files as knowledge sources to your bot. No more converting those files!

Support for larger website knowledge crawls

A new indexing method has allowed us to increase the number of pages that we can ingest on a website.
If you have a large website and have had trouble with knowledge upload previously, we suggest you take the following steps:

• Go to Ai Assistant >Knowledge Sources >import source >URL and start a new ingest of your webpages
• Use the "Test this Ai" widget to test the bot's knowledge - particularly knowledge it was struggling with previously
• Give us feedback! Start a chat with us at olark.com or email [email protected] with your questions and feedback

New Feature!

v2

Static Offline Message

Earlier this week we added the ability to set a static message in the offline chatbox via the v2 settings.

You'll find this setting under Settings > Chat Widget in the Surveys section.

Group IDs

We've shipped an update that exposes the Group ID string for each agent group. You'll need this Group ID string if you use our API to lock visitors to agent groups.

Groups, and their IDs, can be accessed under Settings > Team Management in the Groups section.

New Feature!

Accessible Olark

v2

Over the coming weeks we'll be rolling out the latest version of Olark to current users of the new interface and some Classic Olark users.

We've put together a FAQ document to help users quickly orient themselves: https://olark.com/help/migrating-faq

Some Highlights:

Primary navigation is now oriented vertically on the left side of the screen to maximize space.

The Home page includes new reporting features and metrics, as well as customized next steps and how to get the most out of Olark.

Easily train, configure, and test Ai Assistants in the updated Ai Assistants section.

Additionally, we've packed in all the most useful Settings and Configuration tools, Integrations setup and Team Management tools into the new settings pages.

We'll be posting updates to the new interface here, with the tag v2.

Accessible Olark

Fix

Last week we implemented a speed improvement that introduced a bug which caused some contacts to be removed from your inbox before you archived them.

We're deploying a fix that will resolve that issue. You may see those contacts return to your inbox. You can archive them, as normal, by clicking the archive icon on the contact.

Accessibility

Howdy! We just got home from an amazing week at the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference. Even though the quarter isn’t quite over, we’re feeling so energized from hanging out and learning with the accessibility community that we decided to make the update a little early.

Olark at #CSUNATC

The biggest news from the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference was that our very own Barbara Maniar did a talk called Supporting Neurodiverse Users Using Chat Support with Hana Levay! Their talk covered reasons why using phone calls for customer support can be difficult for autistic people. Instead of forcing people to get on the phone, chat is a great alternative because it provides people time to process what the support person said, consider their response, and have a record of what they talked about for future reference. The talk also covered how autistic employees can provide super effective chat support. For those who were unable to attend, we definitely recommend looking over the presentation slides because they have a ton of information!

Improved In-App Notifications

Sometimes, it is faster when coding to copy/paste code you used somewhere to implement a similar feature somewhere else. We got trapped in a cycle of copying and pasting the same code to show the people a notification when they saved their settings and it reached a point where we had copied it in so many places that it was really time to improve how we handle in app notifications as a whole.

There were a couple of reasons for this:

1. There was a bug where the dismiss button on all of the notifications wasn’t working correctly
2. We received feedback that when the notifications showed up in the bottom left of the screen, it was really easy for people to miss the notification and showing them in the top center would be better.

For both of these issues, we would have to change every single place where in-app notifications are created - which is not very efficient. Instead, we decided to create one singular place where notifications are managed and shown to the user.

So by changing how we implemented the in-app notifications, not only we were able to fix the two issues I mentioned before, but we were also able to make more improvements:

1. Add a user setting to turn off auto-dismiss for these notifications in case people want to have the time to manually dismiss the notification when they are ready
2. Longer messages remain on the screen longer so more people have a chance to read the message

Unique Page Titles in the Agent Console

As the new Agent Console has gotten more complex, we have moved from only having one page where agents can chat with their customers to a full application that includes: chatting, team settings, and new Knowledge AI features. With this increased complexity, we realized it was well past the time to add a unique title to each page. Now, it is easier for users to know where they were and what they were doing after they left their tab.

Web Accessibility Specialist Certification

On a slightly personal note, I also got the email that I (Lee) passed the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) Web Accessibility Specialist certification. I have been studying for the last few months and even had to write flashcards for the first time in years! I am so happy I had the opportunity to dig deeper into accessibility - from AAA WCAG Success Criteria to the Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines, and even the different legal requirements around the world - so that I can apply that to our work at Olark.

What’s on the Horizon

Coming out of CSUN, we have a ton of ideas for new improvements we can make to the new Agent Console. Some things to look out for this quarter are:

• Improving focus management in two key places:
  • When navigating between pages in the new Agent Console
  • When opening a modal dialog
• Updating how translated messages are rendered to improve how assistive technology announces content in other languages

Accessibility

As we enter the new quarter, we're excited to share Olark's first quarterly accessibility update. This is part of our commitment to both accessibility and working in the open as we try to make our products more accessible for everyone.

Introducing the new https://www.olark.com

The biggest update is our new website and documentation. Over the past few months, we have been migrating all prior documentation to a brand-new website which was carefully designed from the very beginning with accessibility in mind. It is crucial that our documentation and marketing pages be accessible as well, as we try to make a great first impression.

Migrating Pages to New Agent Console

As you may have heard, Olark has been building out a new accessible Agent Console and over the last quarter we have built several pages that used to be exclusively in the classic dashboard. These pages include the new Channels and Behavior settings pages, as well as account management features such as log in, create a new account, forgot password, and password reset. Plus, as a bonus - we have swapped in the new accessible login flow for all users, even if you’re still using classic!

Automated Accessibility Testing

A major advancement during this quarter was implementing automated accessibility testing into our development workflow. All new code merged into the new Agent Console goes through a set of accessibility tests using the Storybook test-runner, ensuring our code regularly meets our prescribed accessibility standards without/minus regression.

Small Wins

In addition to these larger projects, we've also received helpful feedback from users and accessibility testers on areas where we can improve. Our goal is not only to meet WCAG criteria but also to create a product that our users love, which would be much more difficult without user feedback, so thank you and keep speaking up!

Adaptive Theme Selection

One user told us they never realized we had a dark mode, but upon finding it, benefitted instantly from the darker UI because it was much easier for them to read. To improve user experience for this feature, we now use your operating system preference for light or dark mode to decide which theme we show you first - no more having to hunt around for the dark mode toggle!

Resolving Zoom-Related Chat Button Issues

Another user found that when you increase the size of the text in your browser, the launch chat button for the chat box gets cut off. A new fix makes it so the button's purpose is clear, regardless of text size preferences.

Enhanced Input Styles

Based on several users’ feedback, we've improved the visibility of text input boundaries and increased the size of labels and help text. These seemingly small design updates have a substantial impact on legibility, as inputs are found throughout the agent console.

What’s on the horizon

While Q3 was a big quarter for us, we are not leaning back in our chairs with a celebratory root beer— there is always more to do! As we approach the year's end, there are further improvements lined up, including:

• Improving the screen reader announcements system for messages sent in quick succession.
• Enhancing focus management within the chat box.
• Refining the heading structure in the new Agent Console.

Stay tuned for further updates and enhancements as we continue to prioritize accessibility and work toward making Olark a more accessible and user-friendly platform and we’ll see you in the New Year!

Improvement

Accessible Olark

Accessibility

We've made some changes to the layout that should enhance the experience for users with various screen resolutions and visibility requirements.

Here's a rundown of the latest updates:

Streamlined sidebar

The log out button and user settings link are now under your agent avatar in the upper right corner of the screen.

Collapsable sidebar

The left sidebar is now collapsable! This makes our app more accessible for users with smaller screen resolutions and helps reduce cognitive load by minimizing text on the page.

My Team list condensed

The list of logged in agents is now available when clicking on the My Team menu item. Relocating the team list to a dedicated page allows us to show more context about each agent.
We've added a number badge to the My Team menu item so that you can tell, at a glance, how many agents in total are online and available to chat.

Contrast and keyboard navigation improvements

Along with layout updates, we've shipped some contrast enhancements and made revisions that allow for more efficient navigation via keyboard. You'll see new borders around elements, bolder borders in some places, and overall more distinction between the various sections in the app.

Fix

Accessible Olark

Now when you press the ; (semi-colon) key on your keyboard and select one of your saved text shortcuts, we no longer enter the ; character in your composed message.