As promised, we have another customer-driven update to make to Textline! Today we have released a slew of updates to Announcements to make them easier to use and control. Without further ado, let's get to what they are:

The first thing you'll notice when sending an announcement is that we have changed the workflow. Instead of having everything on one page, we have split the steps into a series of screens. This helps prevent Agents from mixing up the different steps, but it also allows us to add in a screen covering the new step for Announcement Settings (more on that next) as well as a final screen to preview your Announcement. On the preview screen you can review your Announcement before sending it and edit it if you need to.

Previously, sending an Announcement to Contacts who you have messaged before, a new, open Conversation is created. Now we're allowing agents to control what to do with these Conversations. You can continue to keep them open or now choose to resolve the Conversations. An important note is that this will not affect any Conversations that were open before sending the Announcement.

We are also giving you control over Conversation assignments. If you send an Announcement, you'll now have control over who the Conversation is assigned to. This is in contrast to the Status setting in that this will overwrite any assignments on currently open Conversations.

The last setting we've added is in relation to Announcement Replies. We are now allowing Agents to set timelines for how long to be on the lookout for replies to Announcements. This is a great update because now you'll be able to track how your Announcement is performing!

You can read more on these advanced Announcement settings here.

Perhaps the biggest update is the addition of Announcement Stats. Up to now, you could only keep track of Announcement performance manually, counting the conversations and manually tracking who replied. When sending an Announcement, you'll know how many went out, how many replied within the timeframe you set up, and even how many unsubscribed within that same timeframe. You can view all of these stats from within the Announcement Details page. Read more on this feature here.

When viewing past Announcements, you can now use their settings to start a new Announcement. This is a great way to re-send Announcements to the same Contact group or a different group but with the same message and settings. You can read a step by step and get more details here.

Finally, a small change when sending to Tags. When scheduling an Announcement to Contacts based on their tag, we formerly pulled the list of Contacts at the time the Announcement was scheduled. After much feedback, we decided to switch this to pull the list of Contacts at the time the Announcement is to be sent.