Content Comparison

Capabilities rolling out in May 2021

Journey Orchestration

Template Screen

Service Cost

Templates can now have a Service Cost assigned to them. Journey Orchestration allows you to create Rules that provide optimised CX decisions. In tandem Control Groups and Conversion Rules allow us to understand how effective a specific Rule is in meeting your brands Business Goals.
What needs to be factored into any measure of success is the cost of running that Rule.

To simplify this process we have created the Service Cost attribute for each template. We define “Service Cost” as any cost you as a company bear each time that Rule and the Tiles within it run. Simple examples include:

• Rule sends an email – Company bears cost of email

• Rule sends an SMS message - Company bears cost of SMS

• Rule looks up details from third party integration – Company bears lookup cost

• Rules provides optimised scripts for the Call centre – Company bears cost of Calls and these differ based on the script used.

These costs should be included when working out the success of a Rule and with the addition of Service Cost they now can be. They can be added as CPM or Flat Rate and will show as Flat Rate in each template once uploaded.

Rules Screen

Parameters

The Parameters screens in Journey Orchestration now include a search function allowing the user to easily see similar parameters next to each other, allowing easy comparison and educated adjustment.

Operational Reporting - Service Cost

Operational Reporting now allows you to see the Service Cost of a Rule over three timescales so you can assess ongoing costs generated by a Rule.

Rule Designer

Sequence Number and Step added to the Logging screen

Sequence Number (unique reference for the call into Journey Orchestration) and Step (Underlying plugin causing the log) are now shown in the Logging Screen not just in the logging download.

Insert a Tile between to existing tiles

You can now insert a Tile between two existing Tiles in a Rule.

Copy Rule to new Target

As you develop your Rules you will copy them between Production, Test and Development as part of your testing process. Previously Rules could only be copied to other Targets from the Rules Screen. You are now able to do this through a new Copyto function on the Rule Designer ribbon bar.

Data Grid Upload and Download

Previously Data Grid Upload and download functionality was only available in the Rules screen. This is now available in the Data Grid screen in Rule Designer.

Rule changed Indicator

As users make changes to their Rules it’s easy to forget the last time you saved the changes. If you are testing in another screen you may see results that appear odd because your changes have not been saved. Rule Designer now has an indicator that highlights changes have been made but the Rule has not been saved. Where changes have been made and not saved an asterisk is prepended to the Rule name.

Where no changes have been made to the Rule the save button is now disabled.

Improvements to Template Upgrade proccess

Previously on Template upgrade you had the options of Keep Existing values or Overwrite from newer values.

Now when you choose to upgrade you are offered three upgrade options:

Keep Existing Values - Existing

Any existing values will be maintained. The new Template will not receive any new default values.

Overwrite from newer version - Existing

Removes the current Template and fully replaces it with the new version. Any changed values in the Rule version will be lost as all the Defaults for the Live Template will be applied.

Merge values from exiting and newer version

This will identify any existing values and these will be retained. Any new values found in the updated version will be merged with these.

Cache Information Reports

Easily Filter by CXID

When you are testing your Rules you need to be certain that they are creating or using the correct information. Journey Orchestration creates a lot of information that you may want to examine. In many cases Journey Orchestration uses the CXID as the key.

As the CXID can be obscured from a user, it can be difficult to view the required information. To make this process easier the user can add a known Channelagentid into the keyfield. It will now lookup the CXID linked to this Channelagentid and provide this in the CXID field. Clicking on the CXID radio button will then filter the fields below by this CXID. This should allow our customers to easily find information linked to this commonly used key.

Public Templates

Get CXID - Control Groups

For each Rule, Initiative and Business Goal it is important to measure the impact they have on your customers decisions. In some cases asking for feedback will provide answers, but this feedback can prove difficult to quantify. You need a measure that can be simply and consistently gathered and is readily comparable over time.

To provide this in Alterian CX the Opportunity Matrix allows the creation of Control Groups.

Control Groups are set at a Rule level by the CXID, but are turned on at an Initiative level in the Opportunity Matrix.

Changes in this release now allow a Control Group to have a Test Iteration and a Control Group Lifespan as optional features.

Test Iteration

Where significant changes are made to a Rule, the previous results gathered for that Rule are no longer relevant when measuring current success. The Get CXID Public Template in each Rule now allows the setting of a “Test Iteration”. Test Iterations are optional, they restart the Control Group for this specific rule. Anyone who was in the Control Group for the previous Test Iteration is removed from the Control Group. Everyone who is exposed to the Rule moving forwards is retested to see if they should now fall into the Control Group for the new Test Iteration.

Control Group Lifespan

By default, individuals remain within a Control Group for 180 days. After this they are automatically removed. This Control Group lifespan can be changed on a Rule by Rule basis by changing the Control Group Lifespan Parameter within the Get CXID within each Rule. This parameter is based on days to remain in the Control Group and will apply to those individuals added to the Control Group after the change is made.

Read CXID deprecated

With the new Cache Information Reports the requirement for the Read CXID public template has diminished.

We have deprecated this public template to standardise the process to obtain information from the cache into the Cache Information Reports. 

Moving forward when you are looking at Control groups the information can be gathered by using the process below.

 How to effectively use the Cache Information Reports

Opportunity Matrix

Rule Health

Rule Health now shows against the Rules in the Opportunity Matrix.

Idealised Journey

Mapping Steps to Rules

Navigation and look and feel

We have made comprehensive improvements to Alterian CX to allow our users to use it in a more natural and productive manner.

Almost all screens have been updated to our new style. Our navigation now supports multiple browser sessions at once. You can right click to open a new browser session with complimentary screens in front of you improving ease of use and speed of creation.

Deprecating usage of dde.alterian.com

With these enhancements to Alterian CX we want to encourage our customers to use our most up to date and feature rich solution. Due to this we are deprecating access to the old “DDE” functional screens found through dde.alterian.com.

Improved versions of these screens are available to all customers through a dedicated URL with the format:

customername-cx.alterian.net

Please contact Alterian support if you need a login.

Home Screen

The new Homepage and Navigation are a simple design to give easy access to your most used areas of the application. The Create New icons allow quick creation of Rules, Journey Visualisations and Idealised Journeys, while the easily accessible Application list and Quick Access list, keep all your work one click away. While not on the Homepage, the Navigation bar gives access the full application set.

Template Screen

New look and feel

New design. Right clicking on the rules now provides access to an appropriate menu. Right clicking on the options in the menu allow these to be opened in new browser windows.

Template Dialogue now supports Rich Text Descriptions. These are read only and are set when the Template is loaded into Alterian CX.

The Alterian Public templates will be updated to reference how and when they should be used and a link to appropriate help will be included.

Allow users to adjust Priority

The Priority of a Rule allows the user to control which Rule result is provided most and to whom. This control is very important for controlling the focus of the CX initiatives.

This priority can be calculated, set as a static value, or set as a parameter. Where the Priority is set as a static value the user is not currently able to change the value.

We have added functionality that will take a static priority value and it will automatically create a parameter for it on Template upload.

The value will be the same as the static value originally provided.

This ensures in most cases the user can select the priority for a rule in a Rule Groups and adjust the result to meet the business goals that provides the most value at any given time.

Rules Screen

New look and feel

New design. Right clicking on the rules now provides access to an appropriate menu. Right clicking on the options in the menu allow these to be opened in new browser sessions. With this new functionality we have removed the previous way to access the menu to provide more space for the columns.

We have also moved the invoke URL and status change functionality into the right click menu. This existing functionality is useful, but it does not require visibility at all times for the user and the right click menu allows it to be a single click away.

Rule Designer

New look and feel

New design.

Logging exports in Raw or Formatted Text

When viewing logs, you can now choose to see them in a Raw format or formatted. Download will now download the log in the format selected.

Step name in logging is now resizable.

Rule Groups

New look and feel

New design. Right clicking on the rules now provides access to an appropriate menu. Right clicking on the options in the menu allow these to be opened in new browser windows.

The Rule Group selection screen has been adapted to allow the same right click menu as the Rules screen. This allows a number of actions to Rules in Rule Groups without having to move away from the Rule Groups screen as you had to do in the past.

Rule Groups have access to Parameters and Data Grids

The Rule Group selection screen now has parameter and data grid access. This allows you to see the Parameters and Data Grids that are used by the Rules in the Rule Group.

Rule Groups Parameter Search

We have added a search box to the Rule Group screen so parameters can be gathered, compared and contrasted and changes made with clarity on how the change will impact the rules. This is a string search so searching for “priority” will bring up at any parameters with priority in the name.

Global Parameters

New look and feel

New design.

Right clicking on the rules now provides access to an appropriate menu.

Previously Business Goals could be applied to a Global Parameter. This is no longer supported so the Business Goal column has been removed.

Business Goals are now set only in the Opportunities screen.

Opportunities

New look and feel

New design.

Opportunity Matrix has been renamed Opportunities.

The Opportunity Matrix has been renamed Opportunities.

Idealised Journeys

New look and feel

New design.

Right clicking on the rules now provides access to an appropriate menu.

Access Screen Updated

The Idealized Journey access screen has been updated. A quick access bar at the top provides the last five Idealized Journeys modified.

All your journeys are shown below with a search box to aid the selection of the required one.

Public Templates

Input

The majority of Rules you build in Rule Designer will start with a Realtime Input Step. This creates an endpoint allowing you to call the Rule and allows you to understand the Fields and Field formats that need to be passed to the Rule. This Public Template can be downloaded, adjusted and re-uploaded to meet your needs.

More details can be found here.

Counter

The Counter Public Templates allow you to take a given field and count the number of different versions of the field passing through:

• Increment Counter will increment up a counter based on a given value

• Reset Counter will reset to a given number

• Read Counter allows you to read the values into a Rule.

More details can be found here.

Journey Analytics

Journey Visualisation

Save a Journey Visualisation to a New Homepage

Journey Visualisations can now be saved to be recalled as required, and the new Journey Visualisations Homepage is now a list of available saved configurations. These saved items can be private or public and also allow the ability to save a Prediction Sankey. It should be noted that this process saves the configuration of the Journey Visualisation and not the data, so a saved “Last 7 Days” flow will always be the Last 7 days and not the data at point of save.

New Journey Visualisation UI

This release sees a new intuitive UI released for the Journey Visualisation. To give more space for the Journey Flow, we have moved the Visitor Statistics to their own tab along with the Distribution and Relationship displays. The Client/Table/Key selection is now in a single selectable list and filter options are now displayed rather than being hidden by a single Filter option along with more intuitive options for width and depth.

New Path Prediction Option

Once a model has been trained and saved, it ca can then be sued used to predict next steps. The new UI now has a single click option to prepare the Journey Flow for prediction and perform the prediction process.

Enhanced Side by

Side Functionality

This feature has been enhanced to allow the analyst to decide if the second or third Journeys are placed before or after the existing, and can now be new, duplicate or drawn from the library of saved Journey Visualisations.

Horizontal Scroll Bar

When wanting to view Journey Flow’s with a high width value or when using the side-by-side feature, a new scroll bar has been introduced to avoid reducing Location seizes too small, giving better readability on this high level Journey Flow views.

Dashboards

Dashboards Homepage

Also receiving a new look for this release is the Dashboards Homepage. A simple design with large icon access to each Dashboards plus plenty of space to add our future Dashboards.

Conversation Quota Usage Report

As Alterian CX tracks Visitors through their journey or serves content, this deducts “Conversations£” “Conversations” from a License. a A new series of Reports have been created to allow the monitoring of the annual quota for early view of potential overages. These repots reports give a view of weekly and monthly usage along with an annual burn up chart showing current use in relation to allocation.

Steps

DDE

Rule

The Realtime input step previously allowed for the creation of DDE_Client, DDE_Target & DDE_Rule fields which are populated with the correct values when the rule is invoked.

As these fields are useful for all Rules these values are now automatically mapped if they are added as parameters with no changes to the RIS required.

Rules that already had DDE_Client, DDE_Target & DDE_Rule fields configured will work as before.

Fixes

DEV-399

New Templates where an Icon was added went up two versions. This has been changed so the addition of the icon does not increment the version.

Dev-4537

Adding new switch cases where the number of switch cases had expanded to the bottom of the screen was moving focus to the top of the list each time a new case was added. This required the user to scroll down to add more.

Dev-4536

The Info reports API support currently provides a textbox to type "csv" to select the export format. This has been changed to provided a prepopulated selection box.

Dev-4535

In the Opportunity Matrix all rules were showing for all clients when a specific client was selected. Now the Rules are filtered correctly by the client.

Known Issues

DEV-3607

DDE Rule step has been updated. It now provides a view of the existing fields available in the Cache and will map your fields to those that already exist.

For example if the DDE rule has a Email Address field to load into the Cache it will automatically map to the existing Email Address Field.

If your field is called Email-Address or emailaddress or email it will not match but you can scroll through the available fields in alphabetical order and pick out the Email Address Field to use.

This should limit the confusing and messy scenarios where the same data is stored in various cache tables under different names.

More details can be found here.

Fixes

Known Issues

Report Issue

To report an issue with the application not detailed here, please contact Technical Support. Please use our Service Desk to report issues.