New Features

Direct WhatsApp Connections

This simplifies the use of WhatsApp conversations to open and resolve a case. You won’t need to use Vonage or other third-party gateways, although you still can if that adds value. So one less account to set up, one less bill to pay, and one less thing to break in your case management system.

This release also shows conversations in WebForms and FieldTask. This makes it easier to create a form that transfers information from a conversation into a record.

This feature is part of a long-running goal for Smap. We want case management systems that can engage directly with local communities, however remote they are. WhatsApp is often the channel people already use every day, including in places where other infrastructure is thin. Now community members can send reports, get updates, provide feedback and respond to follow-ups on WhatsApp, and the conversation is included in the case record.

Migration of Organisational Settings to Settings page

Many settings for an organisation used to be set in the organisations tab of the user page. This made some sense in that only an organisation owner or organisation administrator could change them and access to this tab was restricted to users with those permissions. However some of these settings were duplicated on the settings page.

The setup has now been simplified. All settings are now managed through the settings page. If you have organisational administration privilege then you will be able see an organisation tab for those settings. This means that if you are an organisational administrator and want to change the settings on some random organisation you will now need to switch to that organisation first.

Other

• Updates to the documentation to match the code. This had drifted over time but now the documentation should be fully up to date
• Data Subject Access and Right to be Forgotten need the Data Protection Officer(DPO) security group; Analyst access has been removed. Ask your security manager or organisational administrator to grant DPO to anyone who uses these tools.
• Importing campaign emails from a spreadsheet no longer fails when it has no settings sheet
• Rate limited API requests now get a 429 error (Too many requests) so they can respond appropriately
• WhatsApp messages are shown in the record history with a WhatsApp icon
• Webhook URLs with a port number now work