What’s new

Learn about our latest feature releases, product improvements, and bug fixes.

May 2022

The Studio 💫

  • Ever wondered who exactly belongs to a specific segment or if a newly created segment is targeting the right users? Well, now you can export segments to get a full list of every user that qualifies!
  • The Flow analytics export screen has been redesigned so now it is more obvious on how you can get survey responses for any one of your Flows. Sorry we promise we weren’t trying to be tricky before. 😕
before and after on export options
  • Date values in user profiles are now all converted from unix timestamps to a human-readable format.

The Builder 🔧

  • You can now refine the Pin selectors to adjust the position of your Pin, making sure it’s placed exactly where you want it!
refine pin selectors
  • When positioning your Pin inline, select whether you want it on the right or left of the selected element.
inline pin positioning
  • Inline positioning now allows Pins to overlap existing content.
  • Typically inline positioning will "make space" for the icon and expand the selected element. Enabling this toggle will remove the space and place the icon on top of selected element. Allowing content overlap is great when you want to place a Pin on a button without expanding the size of the button. (Only available for inline right/left embedding)
  • Depending on the element you anchor the Pin to, Appcues will try to choose the best default for this toggle. If your Pin is not being placed where you expected, consider toggling this on/off as needed.
  • Pins can now be resized and repositioned via the icon minibar
pins minibar resize
  • Appcues can now auto-detect page changes (single-page apps rejoice 🥳 )
  • This option has been the default setting in all installation snippets starting 5/23/2022
  • Existing installations are unaffected, but can take advantage of the new feature by following the instructions here.

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

  • Localization: Added messaging in the localization settings to make it clear how to add a name for your language groupings.
  • Flows: Fixed a problem where sometimes the Last updated date for Flows would actually show the Last published date.
  • Pins: The Pins list page would crash during a hard browser refresh of the page, this is thankfully no longer the case!

Builder

  • Accessibility: Launchpad is now following the proper tab order of the page.
  • Accessibility: Launchpad is now accessible with arrow keys instead of relying on Tab presses.
  • Design: Fixed an issue with our color picker where certain inputs were not being recognized.
  • Pins: Improved the Z-index calculation for Pins so it should require less manual adjustments.
  • Analytics: Track Events created from buttons within Pins will now show in Studio under Application Events in the Events Explorer (just like Track Events created from buttons within Flows do today).

April 2022

The Studio 💫

  • The Flows list page has a new look! Check out the new filter design (including a brand new option for filtering by targeted Domain):
new Flows list page
  • The “Request an integration” form on the integration settings page has been improved. Let us know about your integration needs!

The Builder 🔧

  • Guess what? You now have access to a brand new experience type, Pins! Use Pins, like persistent tooltips, to provide contextual, always-available support and help to your users—whether that’s best practice tips, a link to a help article, or a way to trigger an in-app walkthrough. Learn more about Pins.
pins in action

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

  • Improved the look-and-feel of the publish preview modal for Flows with navigation steps
  • Fixed sideways scrolling problems in the publish preview modal for Flows with many steps
  • Fixed a UI issue where the NPS preview section sometimes blocked the publish button on small screens
  • Deleting Segments would result in a failure message, even though the Segment was successfully deleted

Builder

  • Fixed an issue where certain fonts would block NPS surveys from loading
  • Fixed an issue where duplicated survey steps would break flows
  • Fixed an issue where saved templates without a Next button, were still having a Next button added

March 2022

The Studio 💫

  • Is there a feature you’d like to see in Appcues? Well, you can now request new features right in Studio by clicking Help → Suggest a Feature. See suggestions from other users, upvote ones you also agree with, and add new requests if what you want is not already listed.
new feature request form

The Builder 🔧

  • We announced Pins at The Appcues Experience 2022. Soon, you’ll be able to create completely new, persistent experiences on your web product! We are collecting early access requests here.

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

  • Localization: Fixed an issue where custom language groupings could not be set up until users with those targeting properties were first seen by Appcues.
  • Localization: Improved the error messaging when unsupported translation file formats are uploaded.
  • Users page: Users with special characters in their UserIds could sometimes break the page, which is not a great experience. It’s cool, we resolved that!
  • Segments: A failure message was appearing when deleting Segments, even though the deletion was successful. That’s annoying so we fixed it!
  • Publishing Flows: Improved the design of the Publish modal, making it easier to scroll horizontally across the preview images when you have multiple steps in a Flow.
  • Publishing Flows: Navigate and redirect steps were not always previewing properly in the Publish modal, so we got that cleaned up.
  • NPS: Opening the preview pane was sometimes blocking the Publish button, even after the preview was dismissed. You did want to publish that NPS, right? Well, now you can.

Builder

  • Forms: Corrected an error where a “This field is required” message would appear even if the user had not entered any information yet. We don’t want to spook your users.
  • Builder: Fixed an issue where Tooltips and Hotspots that were being covered by the bottom bar in the Builder would remain hidden in your preview, even after hiding the bottom bar.
  • Event Triggering: Fixed an edge case where certain Flows that were triggered by the Event Triggering feature were not showing up as expected.
  • Flows: Fixed an issue with ‘Let Them Navigate’ navigation steps that would prevent a Flow from continuing.
  • Surveys: Corrected an issue where cloned survey steps would duplicate the step ID and therefore break for end-users.
  • Buttons: Fixed an issue where adding an emoji to a button would then result in the button becoming a clone of a different button. It was all a little weird but all we know is that emojis are back and that’s what matters!

February 2022

The Studio 💫

  • Reset your Flow history in order to quickly retest published Flows that have frequency limit settings. Flow view history can now be reset on the Users page! More information here.
reset flow history

The Builder 🔧

  • We announced Pins at The Appcues Experience 2022. Soon, you’ll be able to create completely new, persistent experiences on your web product! We are collecting early access requests here.

Mobile 📱

  • That’s right, we announced Appcues Mobile at The Appcues Experience 2022. Soon, you’ll be able to create engaging in-app experiences across both web and native mobile. We are collecting early access requests here.
Appcues is going mobile!

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

  • We released an improvement to make sure newly created segments always get an accurate estimate, including segments using properties received from server-to-server integrations
  • Fixed a data issue where property values with special characters might not appear on the Users list page
  • Fixed a data issue where IDs of users sent to Appcues from a server-to-server integration might not appear in the Users list page if they haven’t been seen on the customer’s app yet
  • Fixed a UI issue where hitting the browser Back button from the User profile page to the Users list page could break the styling of the Users list table

Builder

  • Fixed an accessibility issue to ensure that modals can be read correctly by the NVDA screen reader
  • Corrected an issue to make sure that tooltip widths remain proportionate to the amount of content within them

January 2022

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

  • Fixed an issue where doing back-to-back searches on the same dropdown would well, not work—it was less than ideal
  • Fixed some grammatical errors on event-based condition labels in the audience targeting section

Builder

  • Adding an emoji to a button no longer reverts the button’s content because emojis are about happiness, not frustration
  • Fixed an issue where “Underline” was still appearing on buttons that removed the “Underline” style
  • Fixed an issue so that text in checklist buttons doesn’t hang out of the buttons—they’re not dogs enjoying the sweet, sweet wind during a car ride

December 2021

The Studio 💫

  • SAML SSO is now available for Enterprise customers as part of their subscription and available as an add-on for any Growth customer.
  1. Single sign-on (SSO) is an authentication scheme that allows a user to sign in to independent software systems using a single ID and password managed by a centralized identity provider (IdP), like Okta, OneLogin, and more.
  2. Contact us if you're interested in adding SSO to your account.
Appcues SSO
  • The Google Analytics integration now supports accounts using Google Analytics 4 and the "global tag" install.
  • Checklist events can now be used for targeting on Essentials, Growth and Enterprise plans. For example, you could create a Flow that only shows when a Checklist has been completed, to congratulate the user and take them to the next phase of onboarding. Or, you could check if a Checklist has been skipped and have a Flow that asks the user if they need any help.
Appcues Checklist events
  • Next week we will be opening access to user profiles, which brings together user experience data being tracked by Appcues into a single place, including:
  1. Flow interaction
  2. Checklist completion
  3. NPS responses
  4. Goal conversion
  5. Events received via the Appcues SDK and integrations
  6. Click-to-track events
  7. All current user properties
  8. Segment membership
  9. Experience eligibility

Use the User profile page to:

  1. Track a user's onboarding journey through your app.
  2. Verify that your Appcues integration is sending user properties as you'd expect.
  3. Test segment criteria and overlap for a given user.
  4. Diagnose a user's eligibility for Appcues experiences right in your app.

User profiles can be accessed from any analytics page. Or, use the new All users page to lookup any user Appcues has tracked in your app.

Next week, we will also be releasing a new Segments page, which will allow you to browse your account's Segments more easily.

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

  • Event names with some special characters were causing the Events Explorer page to crash and that was no bueno, so we resolved that.
  • In some cases, the "Created by" name for Flows was not correct. We fixed this so now the creators can get the rightful credit they deserve.
  • Changing the time range too many times on the NPS Analytics screen could sometimes crash the page but now you can time travel to your heart's content.

Builder

  • Fixed an issue where auto-play videos would play two audio tracks. Too bad the tracks weren't harmonized.

November 2021

The Studio 💫

  • We updated the navigation bar within Studio to include a consolidated Help menu and a dedicated Overview tab.
new Appcues navigation

The Builder 🔧

  • No major updates here just yet, but the team is heads-down building a brand new experience type! 🤫

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

  • We resolved an issue where some customers were unable to invite teammates and give them 'Editor' permissions—because everything is better with friends!
  • Various analytics pages were not showing proper date range options, but that issue has now been resolved.
  • We fixed an issue that prevented Custom Property descriptions from saving correctly.

Builder

  • We resolved an issue where an extra button was being added to steps when they were created from a custom-made template.

October 2021

The Studio 💫

  • We're getting ready for a Beta launch of our new User Profiles page. With all your user data  in one place, you'll be able to:
  1. Track a user's onboarding journey through your app
  2. Verify that your Appcues integration is sending user properties as you'd expect
  3. Diagnose a user's eligibility for Appcues experiences live in your app
Appcues User Profile
Stay tuned for more information on User Profiles.
  • It's now easier than ever to compare events in the Events Explorer.
Event Source comparison

The Builder 🔧

  • We heard you wanted more customization options, so we got to work!
  1. Everyone loves a good hover state on a button. Now you can choose your own border color and width.
customization options
  1. You'll notice a new section dedicated to buttons in your Themes. Go ahead and establish your on-brand button default.
buttons in themes

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

  • The Diagnostics page incorrectly included an account's NPS survey in the Flows eligibility list with a broken link. We got rid of that. 😅
  • The NPS survey was eligible to be shown to users ahead of Flows with a negative weight. This is no longer the case.
  • We took care of an issue in the Events Broadcaster that prevented Click-to-track events from getting sent to Google Analytics.

Builder

  • We squashed a bug where occasionally a flow would stop showing next steps if there was a "Wait for them to navigate" redirect step before it.
  • We fixed an issue where a button on a tooltip that was set to "dismiss flow" with the setting of "mark flow complete" would not dismiss anything.

September 2021

The Studio 💫

  • Flow and NPS Frequency limits
  1. You can now set a maximum number of Flows and NPS surveys a user will see in a given period of time, ensuring your users don’t get overloaded with too much Appcues content.
  • User Profile Link Styling
  1. All links to user profile data in Studio are now styled so that they are obviously clickable.
  • Appcues Public API (Beta)
  1. Appcues offers an API that can be used to perform a variety of tasks that can make using Appcues more versatile. The API is able to access flow information, update segments & user profiles, and bulk import & export data.
  2. The Appcues Public API is not available on legacy subscription tiers (Starter, Standard). Please reach out to sales@appcues.com if you'd like to upgrade your plan.
  3. Learn more
  • Access to custom date ranges in Flow Analytics & Events Explorer

The Builder 🔧

  • More Button customizations!
  1. You can now add drop shadows to Buttons via the Builder.
  1. You can now add fill and shadow hover states to Buttons via the Builder.
  1. When triggering a flow "On another URL", you can now easily add profile attributes to help with dynamic URLs.
  1. The color picker throughout the Builder now remembers your 6 most recently used colors.

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

  • Fixed an issue where Tags that had a space at the end of their name would reappear even after they were deleted
  • Fixed a count discrepancy so that the modal showing all the flows using a particular theme will include archived & draft flows, as well as live flows, to ensure the theme card and modal match for flow count
  • Fix an issue that would cut of Domain lists on the Flow Settings page
  • Fixed an issue to make sure the correct thumbnails are shown on the Flow List page

Builder

  • Events Explorer element text box will now appropriately change cursor types when scrolling
  • Non-Appcues tooltips that appear in the Builder will now close when the menu is open
  • Fixed an issue in the Builder where the Appcues pattern container would have outline that exceeded the pattern size
  • Keyboard shortcuts for paragraph text styling will now work in the Hero Content Block
  • Fixed an issue that prevented steps to be reordered within the same group
  • Fixed an issue that prevented width adjustments for images that were dragged into the Builder
  • Newly created flows will now appear for use immediately in the Builder without needing a page refresh
  • Fixed an issue that prevented flows from showing text in form fields if the form field text included quotes
  • The personalization search text box is now working appropriately
  • Checklist skipped events are now correctly passing into our premium integrations
  • Corrected the description text in the Builder for our full screen modal experience
  • When uploading an image into the image content block, we now show the image uploading interstitial state
  • The middle position for slideout experiences is now working correctly

September 2021

The Studio 💫

  • Flow and NPS Frequency limits
  1. You can now set a maximum number of Flows and NPS surveys a user will see in a given period of time, ensuring your users don’t get overloaded with too much Appcues content.
  • User Profile Link Styling
  1. All links to user profile data in Studio are now styled so that they are obviously clickable.
  • Appcues Public API (Beta)
  1. Appcues offers an API that can be used to perform a variety of tasks that can make using Appcues more versatile. The API is able to access flow information, update segments & user profiles, and bulk import & export data.
  2. The Appcues Public API is not available on legacy subscription tiers (Starter, Standard). Please reach out to sales@appcues.com if you'd like to upgrade your plan.
  3. Learn more
  • Access to custom date ranges in Flow Analytics & Events Explorer

The Builder 🔧

  • More Button customizations!
  1. You can now add drop shadows to Buttons via the Builder.
  1. You can now add fill and shadow hover states to Buttons via the Builder.
  1. When triggering a flow "On another URL", you can now easily add profile attributes to help with dynamic URLs.
  1. The color picker throughout the Builder now remembers your 6 most recently used colors.

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

  • Fixed an issue where Tags that had a space at the end of their name would reappear even after they were deleted
  • Fixed a count discrepancy so that the modal showing all the flows using a particular theme will include archived & draft flows, as well as live flows, to ensure the theme card and modal match for flow count
  • Fix an issue that would cut of Domain lists on the Flow Settings page
  • Fixed an issue to make sure the correct thumbnails are shown on the Flow List page

Builder

  • Events Explorer element text box will now appropriately change cursor types when scrolling
  • Non-Appcues tooltips that appear in the Builder will now close when the menu is open
  • Fixed an issue in the Builder where the Appcues pattern container would have outline that exceeded the pattern size
  • Keyboard shortcuts for paragraph text styling will now work in the Hero Content Block
  • Fixed an issue that prevented steps to be reordered within the same group
  • Fixed an issue that prevented width adjustments for images that were dragged into the Builder
  • Newly created flows will now appear for use immediately in the Builder without needing a page refresh
  • Fixed an issue that prevented flows from showing text in form fields if the form field text included quotes
  • The personalization search text box is now working appropriately
  • Checklist skipped events are now correctly passing into our premium integrations
  • Corrected the description text in the Builder for our full screen modal experience
  • When uploading an image into the image content block, we now show the image uploading interstitial state
  • The middle position for slideout experiences is now working correctly

August 2021

The Studio 💫

  • The new two-way Marketo integration is now available on Growth and Enterprise plans (learn more).
  • Send Marketo Lead Contact properties to Appcues for targeting, segmentation, and personalization.
  • Send Flow, Checklists, NPS, and Track Event data to the Marketo Lead Contact Activity Log.
  • You can more easily adjust the year and month in the Appcues NPS date picker.
  • There are shiny, new flow priority controls on the Flow Settings page (learn more).
  • Use flow priority to define the relative priority of your key flows.
  • When a user qualifies for multiple flows on a single page of your application, flow priority will ensure the highest priority flow is delivered first

The Builder 🔧

  • Buttons are now easier to use and far more powerful! (learn more)
  • Tooltips and hotspots can now utilize custom buttons.
  • Custom buttons offer a complete list of actions you can choose to trigger when clicked.
  • Adjust button colors and borders in the Builder itself!
  • Customize "dismiss links" as you would any other text block.
  • All buttons are now standardized across the Appcues building experience (no more buttons in the sidebar with limited options!).

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

  • Ensured that pressing "Enter" works on our NPS Date Picker.

Builder

  • Fixed an issue where invalid image formats would "upload forever," cause forever is a long time.
  • Fixed an accessibility issue—zoomed in users will no longer see overlapping buttons.
  • Fixed an issue where certain menus would get cut off when they were nearing the edge of the screen.
  • We're now ensuring that multiple Click-to-track Event URL entries are following correct formatting.
  • Fixed an issue where custom buttons were not applying the appropriate theme styles.
  • Click-to-track Event URL settings will now accept wildcard distinctions in the domain part of the URL structure.

July 2021

The Studio 💫

  • Appcues' NPS just got a big upgrade, including our all-new NPS analytics! 🎉
  • The NPS page now has a customizable date range. In other words, you’re no longer limited to the last 30 days. You can see NPS, respondents, viewers, and response rates all filtered by date. Note: each plan has its own limit for historical data.
  • Our NPS chart now shows a day-by-day view of rolling 30-day NPS within your specified date range.
  • NPS can now be filtered by segment. That means you can see NPS for users on a specific plan tier, owned by a specific customer success or account manager, or any other Appcues segment you can dream up.
  • You can filter responses in real-time. Show only the folks that have feedback, only the detractor scores that include feedback, only the promoters and detractors… we could go on, but you probably get it by now.
  • The NPS page now shows ALL RESPONSES in a given date range, whereas you were previously limited to seeing the most recent 25.
  • NPS data exports can now be filtered by date range. Now when you export NPS data, the export will respect the time frame you selected instead of defaulting to include all-time data.
  • Use the new "Print" functionality to quickly produce a PDF including data visualizations and details.

The Builder 🔧

  • Accessibility improvement for live flows - now screen readers will immediately read the pattern’s headers automatically once opened, if the pattern has a header.
  • Custom buttons now have native font styling options.
  • It's now easier to adjust margins, padding, and border radius in all custom buttons.

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

  • Corrected a visual issue on the billing page to ensure icons are the correct size.

Builder

  • Fixed an NPS accessibility issue that prevented the Ask Me Later option from getting focus.

June 2021

The Studio 💫

  • Added a point-in-time column to the User Details modal on the Individual Event page
  • User session counts are now available on the Events Explorer overview page (see image)

The Builder 🔧

  • The Trigger Flow action on buttons will now allow you to enter a new URL
  • The Trigger Flow action allows you to select from your list of Flows (rather than having to enter a Flow ID)
  • The button minibar has been restyled, including an easy way to enter user properties on button actions

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

  • Adding and editing tags works consistently for all users
  • Empty custom fonts will no longer break your theme

Builder

  • Preview mode will now always reflect the Flow's theme
  • Default fonts are now visible in the Builder

May 2021

The Studio 💫

  • You can now dig even deeper into your event data with our single metric details page! Simply click on any event in Events Explorer to see more data, including a list of users who fired the event, and when and where it happened.
  • You can now search on the events by user table on a saved chart or single metric page. You can use this to see if a single user started a flow, fired an event, or clicked on an element in your product.
  • Added 'Checklist skipped' to the options for Checklist events within Events Explorer.

The Builder 🔧

  • Send click-to-track events to our integration partners with Events Broadcaster.
  • Multi-account users can now see which account you're logged into when you click Choose Flow or view your Event Sidebar in our Builder.
  • Gave the Builder a subtle facelift to ensure you have the most consistent and delightful Appcues experience possible!

Bug fixes 🐛💥

Studio

Your Appcues experience just got an upgrade. Our team squashed a record number of pesky bugs during our latest bug bash. Here's a look:

  • When exporting CSVs, you will now longer need to enter your email address so you can export your data faster.
  • Segments no longer display as un-configured when using the 'doesn't exist' targeting condition.
  • When searching for user properties to target, if you typed more than 3 characters into the dropdown, the page would crash - yikes! We fixed that so you can search to your heart's content.
  • Fixed an issue which allowed long data items on tables to run out of the container and off the page.
  • Removed the checklist preview on the Diagnostics page, so you can easily focus on diagnostic data.
  • Adjusted the copy on our NPS targeting page to clearly articulate who you will be showing the NPS survey to.
  • Created an easier way to add, manage and delete tags on a flow.
  • Fixed an issue which blocked you from adding tags to older flows.
  • The template on our Installation guide now brings you to the correct page, rather than a broken one.
  • Updated the Segment detail page to correctly count the number of associated Appcues patterns associated, as well as link correctly to those patterns.
  • Duplicate checklist items are no longer created when re-arranging the items in your checklist. Also when you delete an item it is immediately reflected on the page, rather than after refresh.
  • Fixed an issue where the Salesforce integration card would close before you had a chance to enter your details.
  • Removed an empty, but selectable option on the Themes' font options dropdown, which when selected returned an error.
  • Updated the build URL section of the targeting page to gracefully handle incorrect URLs.
  • You can now save a Segment within the targeting section of a flow.
  • Sometimes, in a rare edge case, the same flow would open on top of itself. This no longer happens.
  • Fixed an issue where anchored content would not stay in the anchored to the correct element.
  • When editing text, link colors are no longer cleared.
  • Long URLs in the Event Builder sidebar will no longer cause a horizontal scroll.
  • Long text blocks will now wrap appropriately, every time.
  • SVG images can now be uploaded in the Builder.
  • The Builder now loads properly even if your account does not have any themes.
  • Fixed an issue that caused various Builder menus to open off-screen.
  • Adjusted the Checklist shadow to be less sharp
  • Fixed an issue where the "Element Not Found" warning message was not disappearing even after the element appeared on the page
  • Ensured that the Cancel & Action Step buttons are always at the bottom of the sidebar
  • Fixed an issue that caused "Back" buttons not to appear in the Builder until they were disabled and re-enabled again.
  • Fixed an issue where a button row would appear in Preview mode even though there were no buttons enabled.
  • Fixed the Checklist so that when it's closed, you can't click the last checklist item.
  • Updated the Builder so localized flows can be previewed.

April 2021

Over the last seven years, thousands of businesses have used Appcues to onboard new users, drive feature discovery, and increase engagement throughout the user lifecycle—all without writing any code. But Appcues has been missing a critical piece of the product adoption puzzle: measurement. Understanding who users are and what they are doing inside of your product is mission critical to driving deeper product adoption.

That’s why we’re thrilled to announce the full release of our two new features click-to-track and Events Explorer!

Click-to-track

Anyone can create custom events to track without writing any code. You can define custom events when someone clicks/ hovers/ types, by just clicking on the desired web page element. You can use click-to-track events just like custom events today, including targeting, segmentation, goal tracking, and analyzing product and user activity with Event analytics. Learn more.

Event Analytics

You can browse to see insights and trends into all user activity with your Appcues’ experiences and product, and save them to a dashboard for quick reference. You can select one or more events that interest you, and their activity is automatically graphed over time within any segment. You can also see which users generated the activity you are browsing. For example, you can compare a Flow’s shown and Checklist’s completed events to a click-to-track event such as “clicked upgrade button.” Armed with these tools, you can improve your most important metrics through new insights into product activation, conversion, upgrades, and retention. Like everything else about Appcues, anyone can do it, even if you aren’t a data wiz. If you need to go deeper, Appcues continues to integrate with your existing analytics products like Amplitude, Heap, and Mixpanel. By having these analytics and insights within Appcues, you can make faster, more informed decisions to drive your business’ growth. Learn more.

February 2021

Thankfully (especially for those of us experiencing a bitter winter season), spring is right around the corner. But that's not all we're looking forward to... 😄

Since we first announced our new click-to-track events and event analytics capabilities a few months ago, over 75 customers have joined the beta program. Using these new features, they’ve realized even more speed and autonomy, gained insights into how users are adopting their products, and enabled innovative new use cases.

At this month's Customer Hangout, Appcues CEO, Jackson Noel, will be joined by a few of those customers to discuss their experiences and early success stories. Jackson will also share the latest updates (including components just added to beta this week) and tell you when you'll get access (hint: very soon).

Bonus: attendees of this month’s Hangout will be provided a special link to apply for early-access (our final stage before launch)! If you've never attended one of Appcues' Customer Hangouts, there's never been a better time. Register now!

January 2021

We know what you're thinking—this month doesn't look like the others. That's because we've been all hands on deck, working on some exciting new features... think detailed event analytics, a sleek new builder, and a super simple new way to track key user behaviors in your product.

We don’t want to spoil the big launch, so we’re going to leave it at that. 🤭

December 2020

Studio 💫

  • Customers with multiple Appcues accounts can now easily switch between their accounts with one Appcues login! If you want to use Appcues for multiple products and would like to set up a second Appcues account, reach out to Support@appcues.com. We'd be happy to help.
Appcues account switcher
  • We're still heads down working on our new event analytics feature! If you're scratching your head, go check out the presentation from the Appcues Experience last month to learn all about it.

The Flow Builder 🔧

  • We've entered beta for our Click To Track feature, and the full release will be out in early Q1, so stay tuned. If you're looking to learn more about it, this presentation from our team will get you up to speed.

Other

  • We now have two-way integrations with Zendesk Support and Zendesk Sell! Both allow for user contact properties from Zendesk to be sent to Appcues for targeting, segmenting, goals, etc. On the flip side, both Zendesk products can receive events from Appcues. You can read more about how these integrations work in our docs: Zendesk Support and Zendesk Sell.

Bug fixes 🐛💥

  • We've made it so flows will still appear even if the selector uses the ":contains jQuery" field.
  • Occasionally, in the past, two modals would appear at the same time. We've fixed that.
  • When viewing the Team page, you will now always see the names and emails of invited users.
  • We squashed a bug where the flow frequency settings would sometimes not appear.

November 2020

Studio 💫

  • If you’ve got lots of flows in your account, you might notice that your next flow publishes lickety-split. Performance improvements FTW.

The Flow Builder

  • Hold onto your hats . We’ve got nothing new to report here, because we’re announcing a HUGE new feature at the Appcues Experience on December 10th. Come join us for free!

Bug fixes 🐛💥

  • There once was a bug in the NPS Survey UI that made it look like your survey was published when it wasn’t. That bug has been squashed. The end.
  • When you clone a theme, you can now rest assured that it will have the correct Theme ID.
  • We solved an issue with Flow Analytics, so that you always see the most recent flow data.
  • Sometimes your checklists didn’t show when they should. Now they’re as predictable as the sunrise.

October 2020

Studio 💫

  • We migrated the source of our NPS data to a new database, making it faster, more reliable, and enabling us to fix a few bugs along the way!

The Flow Builder

  • As a part of our commitment to Accessibility, the Appcues Launchpad and Checklists are now readable by screen readers and accessible via keyboard commands. Note: to ensure Launchpad is accessible for users, you'll need to make sure you upgrade to the newest version. For more info on upgrading Launchpad, check out this doc.

Other

  • CSV exports now include button text so you can track which button a user clicked. The button's text will show up with the "appcues:step_interacted" event as "interaction.text".
  • Improved the performance of our CSV exports and reduced the time to prepare nightly files for customers with S3 access.
  • Updated our Privacy Shield certification in accordance with guidance from the United States Department of Commerce. You can find the full details in our Privacy Policy.

Bug fixes 🐛💥

  • Occasionally the Flow Builder would crash if you logged out of Studio, requiring a re-install to get back up and running. The issue has been identified and resolved!
  • The NPS feedback tab only blocks page clicks on the tab itself, rather than the entire width of the page.
  • When previewing a flow that has a "Let Them Navigate" step, the flow would stop showing. We've fixed that so you can now view the flow end to end.
  • In our targeting UI, there is an "is one of" option where you can add a list of properties, like a list of email addresses. When this list exceeds 1,000 values, it can cause delays or lags in Studio. We now limit your entries to 1,000 and inform you when you are close to the limit.
  • If you tried to add a custom image to a Checklist's "Congratulation Content" it would sometimes display improperly. We've fixed that so all images display as expected.
  • At times the NPS qualitative feedback or User Properties would inconsistently show on the  reporting page. We've fixed that issue, so all data now displays as expected.

September 2020

Our teams have been heads down on a few very exciting product milestones. We can't wait to share them with you. Ok, fine, we'll share the one that's right around the corner. Soon, folks that use Appcues on multiple products will be able to log into Appcues with a single email address and switch between their accounts within Appcues Studio! Stay tuned.

The team also continued to improve Appcues' accessibility last month (see below) and will be sharing even more accessibility updates throughout Q4. Read on for the full run-down!

Studio 💫

  • Made accessing our Resources & Help System easier
    - Get Help will open links to our Help Docs or allow you to contact Support with questions.
    - Resources gives you on-demand access to Appcues guides and training, as well as other new resources as they're made available. By the way, we made this with Appcues' Launchpad feature!
Launchpad

Experiences

Accessibility

  • NPS Surveys are now recognized by screen readers and can now be interacted with via the keyboard.
nps accessibility

Bug fixes 🐛💥

  • We resolved an issue with our Heap Integration, so that we are now sending Form Field Submissions correctly.
  • Regional specific localized flows will now translate correctly.
  • Right Margin adjustments on custom buttons now works.
  • NPS Totals would occasionally not get updated appropriately, but now they will be always be accurate.

August 2020

The Studio 💫

  • Our HubSpot integration is now bi-directional! This means you can now send HubSpot Contact Record properties to Appcues and Appcues event and survey data to the HubSpot Contact Profile Timeline. The integration is now available on all Growth and Enterprise plans.
  • In case you missed it, earlier in the month we release a brand new flow analytics page! Log in to check it out and head here to read more about the why behind the feature.
  • While your NPS survey has always been calculated on a rolling 30 day window, we now include the time period on the page for easy reference.
  • In addition to speeding up the overall performance of the Segments page, we've also added an 'update stats' button so you can calculate segment membership on-demand for the most up to date stats.
  • Our flow settings page has always auto-saved, but we've added a new 'saved' toast every time you make a change to reinforce that.

The Flow Builder 🔧

Accessibility

  • Tooltips and Hotspots are now recognized by screen readers and can now be interacted with via keyboard presses.
  • Modals and Slideouts now trap focus for users interacting with keyboard presses.
  • Pressing the escape key will close flows if the flow is designated as "Skippable."

Bug fixes 🐛💥

  • Previously, when previewing a flow in the builder, we'd occasionally display the wrong theme. We fixed that, so you'll always see an accurate representation when previewing.
  • Last month we introduced shortcuts in the builder! We discovered an issue where this did not work for Macs using the number row. This has been fixed so short-cut away!
  • Our "Show example data" button for user properties was not working, but now it is! 🎉
  • On a goal's page, we have a list of "Flows using this goal" which wasn't displaying for some folks. Now everyone can see them!
  • Various Checklist improvements and fixes related to an occasional flicker, targeting, and completion events were resolved.
  • Fixed an issue that occasionally prevented users from qualifying for certain flows correctly.
  • From time to time, hotspots would show on a page that they shouldn't have. We’ve fixed that so they are always showing (or hiding) as expected.

July 2020

The Studio 💫

  • We're continuing to improve the performance and reliability of the Studio. This month we dropped the overall load times by 20%!
  • Placeholder text in forms is now available for translation using localization.
  • We have a new analytics page for your flows! You can now view your data over time, and get actionable insights into flow performance, engagement, issues, and goal attainment. Log into your account to see it in action!
  • On the new page, you'll also find the Issues Report which details any issues experienced, so you can take action on them and ensure everyone sees your content!

The Flow Builder 🔧

  • Appcues modal and slideout content will now be picked up by screen readers. We're continuing to invest in accessibility initiatives, so keep an eye out for more updates here!
  • Font size selections can be custom, (for all those who prefer their text in size 13.25).
  • You can now use keyboard shortcuts in the builder to easily style your content, for both paragraph and header styles.
keyboard shortcuts

Bug fixes 🐛💥

This month was our quarterly bug bash, allowing the team to stomp out some annoying bugs!

  • Sometimes our builder editor bar extended past your window size. We've updated that so you'll always have access to the full editor bar.
  • If you opted to use HTML on slideouts, you'd notice the entry field extended off the screen. It now stays put for full visibility.
  • Occasionally in the building experience, if you were to change the Build URL of your flow, the builder would lose the flow you were in. We now always remember!
  • We resolved an issue wherein matching URLs based on a wildcard didn't always behave as expected.
  • When creating segments, you may accidentally leave one of the conditions empty. If you did that in the past, we'd still let you save it and but then crash the page. Now, we simply let you save a segment with a missing condition, and skip the whole page crash thing entirely.
  • You can now delete custom fonts in our themes editor, and we handle reloads on that page in a much more graceful manner. We also cleaned up the experience of viewing the "flows using this theme" modal.
  • Our flow frequency section in targeting wasn't behaving nicely when you selected "show manually". They're acting as expected now.

June 2020

Key Updates 🚀

  • We completed a large database migration, which has allowed us to improve performance and reliability. This migration sets us up to deliver many feature and performance improvements in the future.
  • We released Appcues Localization, which allows you to easily support a multi-lingual audience—without needing to create multiple versions of the same flow. Learn more or schedule a demo with one of our localization experts here.
  • We improved the reliability of publishing, testing and cloning flows.

The Studio 💫

  • We're continuing to increase performance across The Studio. Our Segments page now loads ~300% faster. The Flows page is up next!
  • We've redesigned and rearchitected our Flow Analytics page to display data over time, so you can get better insights into the performance, engagement, and success of your flow. This page is now in Early Access, which you can apply for here.

The Flow Builder 🔧

We're continuing to improve the usability of our Flow Builder, so you can easily create content that looks and feels exactly how you want it to:

  • The font color picker now has new options for hue, saturation, and opacity.
  • The margin menu has a streamlined look for easy access.
  • A new text style button allows you to update font, line height, letter spacing, and letter casing.

Bug fixes 🐛💥

  • The NPS analytics page and the metric card on our overview page would sometimes display 0's. Now we display the correct NPS score (which we hope is higher than a neutral 0).
  • When customizing your NPS feedback question, the text would clear out if left for longer than 10 seconds. We no longer do that and give you all the time needed to customize this text!
  • In the Flow Builder, if you created a blank manual selector for a tooltip/hotspot, the page would crash. We now handle the empty selector state much more gracefully, sans crash.
  • Following our data migration, the flow display order was not respecting the default ordering based on the "updated_at" property. This resulted in flows showing in the wrong order in our in-app widget, which has since been resolved.

April 2020

Key Updates 🚀

  • Studio load times should now be snappier.
  • You can now underline text, change your font size, and add emojis in line in the Flow Builder.
  • We completed our data backfill. That means user counts, NPS, and flow frequency counts are now accurate for "all-time".

The Studio 💫

  • Action buttons like 'Create a Flow' and input fields got a refresh.
  • We overhauled our invites and transfers workflow to operate more smoothly and efficiently. Invite colleagues to your hearts content!
  • Our dropdown options have been expanded to accommodate a little more text, and you can now see the full text by hovering.
  • We've introduced a "stepNumber" field on all step-level analytics events, so you can determine which steps your end users are completing within your own analytics tools.

The Flow Builder 🔧

  • We're continuing to improve our Flow Builder Chrome Extension, from both a usability and stability perspective.
  • We fixed the biggest cause of the red error banner, and have seen a massive drop in builder crashes as a result.
  • "Open in Builder" functionality has changed slightly due to Chrome permission changes. When you click this button in Studio, you will be brought to the correct edit page, but will still need to re-launch the builder by clicking the extension.
  • You can now underline text, change your font size, and add emoji in-line!

Bug fixes 🐛💥

  • Last seen dates and permissions on the Team page are back to displaying the correct data.
  • Checklists no longer shake or wiggle upon collapse in certain browsers.
  • We were inconveniently auto-scrolling on our Checklist page. Now we stay put where we should be.
  • We are back to displaying 'success' upon completed installation via our installation widget.
  • If you had 2 checklists published to the same page and user, both would show making them inoperable. Now we ensure only 1 will show.
  • The NPS set up page no longer crashes when selecting certain values for targeting.
  • Goals are back to saving correctly on the Flow Analytics page, so go ahead and start tracking the impact!
  • Last month we had a brief data outage during which we weren't able to display MAUs, NPS scores, Active User counts and Flow Frequency counts. The team worked hard to restore that data, and it's now fully accurate inside the Studio.

March 2020

Key Updates 🚀

  • Publishing flows should now be snappier. (That’s more free time to spend on Tiger King memes. 🐅)
  • Fixed a timeout issue with Test Mode, making the feature significantly more reliable. If you haven't used it yet, give it a try!

Bug fixes 🐛💥

  • Squashed a bug in which changing a flow's name required a refresh for the new name to show in the Flow Builder. Now it will show right away!
  • Fixed a bug in which the Flow Builder would crash if you had multiple page changes without any steps. (We wouldn't recommend this for your flow, but if you do it, we'll maintain stability.)
  • Fixed sorting on the Team Table on your Account Settings, so you can now view your teammates alphabetically!
  • We had a brief data outage during which we weren’t able to display MAUs, NPS scores, Active User counts and Flow Frequency counts. The team has been working hard to restore that data. We’ve successfully completed the 1st phase of work and expect to be done in a matter of days.

February 2020

Key Updates 🚀

  • We sunset the "show only to my team" setting in targeting. This functionality was originally created to allow customers to test flows before publishing. With test mode now available, "show only to my team" is redundant. Any active flows using the setting will still work. For more on test mode, see our guide on testing flows.
  • Opening a flow for editing from Studio has changed. With recent Chrome permission updates, there is a new required step of explicitly opening the Chrome Extension when inside the browser. For right now, we're presenting a new screen as part of opening your flow for editing that will guide you through the steps.
  • Existing customers can now sign up for Mobile accounts! This is another big milestone in our Mobile work. If you'd like to bring beautiful, consistent onboarding experiences to your iOS app, with far less dev time, check it out.

The Studio 💫

  • Added a new settings menu in the navigation. Allows one-click access to resources like our documentation and status page. Cooking up more here soon. 👩🍳
  • New link from the domains list in your flow settings to your account settings. If you need to add a new domain for flow targeting, you can do so there.
  • We now provide an Audit Log via CSV export on request (Enterprise customers only, for now).
  • Updated rules for segment and goal percentage displays. In some cases, we would round a very small percentage to zero, which was incorrect! Now if a percentage is over 95% we will display > 95%, if it's under 5 we say < 5%.

Studio Bug fixes 🐛💥

  • Display an empty state on the Segments page, rather than the app crashing.
  • Redesign domain settings, to prevent long lists from being cut off.

The Flow Builder 🔧

  • The emoji component menu has been re-written. Better than ever, and now supports choosing skin tone!
  • Button editing completely rebuilt to be much faster - no more delays while trying to enter button text!
  • For customers using the new localization functionality, you can now open localized flows in the builder, with some limited edit functionality! For example, you are now able to reposition a tooltip, or re-order the steps in your flow. Will help maintain some flexibility for change while keeping the content locked down.

The Flow Builder Bug fixes 🐛💥

  • Fixed bug for manual tooltip placement where checking off boxes created child selectors, rather than chaining them together.
  • When a tooltip is switched to "manual placement", the selectors used for "auto placement" are properly checked off in the list.
  • Closed up issue where styling on customer sites would impact the "Add Step" menu, making the icons huge and unusable. Like Yogi the Bear, it was comical but a real problem.

More

  • Reduced the content security policy (CSP) of the Flow Builder. Fewer whitelist needs makes for happier security teams!
  • The SDK now uses Subresource Integrity tags. This feature makes code stored and delivered by a CDN more secure against third-party tampering. Basically, it means our customers can be more confident in what they install on their website from Appcues.

January 2020

Studio

  • CSV exports got a little tune-up: both the "Basic" and "Full" export types can now be filtered to only include form responses from your surveys. We're excited to better support customers using forms to learn more about their users.
  • Re-named the "Get Inspired" section of Flow Templates to "Templates", to make it more discoverable. If you've used one, let us know how it went. We're planning to add more in the future.
  • Creating a segment from the audience targeting section in flow settings wasn't working. Now it's all fixed up.
  • Resolved a bug where if a user had no tags, it would crash the flows list page. Loads like a charm now.
  • Fixed a bug with the diagnostics page where user profiles weren't loading when coming straight from the Appcues debugger. Hopefully you never need it, but when you do, it's now working as intended.
  • Improved the experience for managing events in audience targeting. Now you can click through to your events list, to see recent examples with dates. Never get confused which event is which again.

Experiences

  • Big upgrades for customizing button text in the Builder. We were seeing issues with the cursor jumping around while editing buttons, and it was causing serious headaches. To combat it, we needed to totally rebuild how buttons work. It will probably take some time to dial the details in perfectly, but we're excited to be rolling those changes out.
  • Hero images in build mode and preview mode now always match. So important that every pixel of your team photo, product screenshot, or diving corgi gif shows up correctly.
  • Fixed a bug where the Flow Builder would crash completely, rather than display the red error banner. Now you'll get a slightly better experience, and we'll get a more accurate report on errors (so we can fix those, too).
  • Updated the Appcues Dark theme for tooltips, so the header text color isn't black. Oops, that made things difficult to read. Now it's all fixed up and ready to go.
  • We also closed up a bug related to progress bar support with themes. It's now working properly.
  • Fixed bug where the dotted border that renders when editing content would remain on screen after editing until you hovered on/off of it again. No detail left unscrutinized.
  • The alignment options for text, images, buttons, and emojis now remember what you set. Another one of those small changes in building that can make a big difference.
  • Fixed a bug where the "Back" button option in step settings would render both disabled and checked.
  • Pressing enter in an input field while building no longer crashes the builder. Oops 🤦.


NPS

  • We now support custom NPS questions that stretch across two lines. Cue the duck boats! 🎉

Other

  • We spent some time researching Chrome's upcoming SameSite changes (read more). We've determined customers will not be impacted by this change, for two reasons:

1. The only time our SDK sets a cookie is when a flow redirects the user to another URL at the end of a flow.

2. That cookie is a first-party cookie that uses the domain of your site, not ours, so it isn't affected by Chromes updates to third-party cookies.

In short: all is well, and the cookies are good. Phew! 🍪

December 2019

Studio

  • Added support for multiple custom fonts in themes.
  • Text was updated across the app. We reduced size where we could, so it isn't overwhelming.
  • Tables also got a re-design. Much easier to parse now.
  • A few bugs fixed for Themes:
    1. Slideouts now respect a theme's backdrop styling (opacity and color).,
    2. Header text (H1 to H5) in tooltips/hotspots now respects a theme's tooltip/hotspot font color.
    3. "Appcues Light" theme was sometimes being applied instead of your default theme. That has been resolved.

Experiences

  • We added the ability to specify whether a custom button should inherit primary or secondary button styling from a theme. 🙌
  • Our infrastructure work continues to pay big dividends. Recent changes to the Flow Builder have led to massive speed improvements. We're seeing median load times dropping across the board by ~85%.
  • Multiple bug fixes for crashes in the Flow Builder when a tooltip/hotspot selector was incorrect.
  • Fixed a bug for fine-tuning on tooltip and hotspot positioning. Now you can go back to placing tooltips exactly where you'd like without issues.


Other

  • Fixed user estimation for user IDs were longer than 36 characters.
  • Updated the color picker for NPS building.

November 2019

Studio

  • The new Themes builder was released to all customers! 🎉
  • Some updates to our free trial language to make it even clearer.
  • Fixed the MAU counter so it tracks anonymous and logged in users appropriately.
  • Three improvements for CSVs:
    1. Better support for very large date ranges,
    2. A fix to issues that caused columns getting stuck together,
    3. And finally, if something does go wrong with an export, we notify the user.
  • Fixed a bug where having an invalid build URL would crash the Flow settings page. That was a bad situation, and now it's not!
  • Released an update to ensure segment descriptions are saved the first time. This wasn't working consistently.
  • If you create a new theme, and then decide against it (close it without saving), we'll automatically delete it for you. It wasn't bringing you joy.
  • Added zap templates directly onto the Zapier integration card on the Integrations page. An even faster way to get started automating work.
  • Fixed a bug where the goals limit for different plan tiers could appear incorrect.

Experiences

  • We added spellcheck to the building experience. Yur welcame.
  • Put some better placeholder copy into the "Create Flow" modal to hopefully reduce confusion for all!
  • The yellow "Wrong URL" banner (the one everyone loves to hate) will no longer display on login pages (those with /login or /signin in the URL).
  • Fixed a bug with user property fallback. Now Hello { user.name | friend } will properly print Hello friend.
  • Simplified the help text in the builder's tooltips. It still helps you get the point, just faster.
  • Modals now better respect the "show progress bar" setting in themes.
  • Released a fix to make sure custom z-index for steps was being saved and applied properly. This has been nagging us for a while.
  • Re-built the Help menu in the builder. We removed the announcements stream (use the What's New page for now). This small change will speed up the Builder for all.
  • Temporarily removed the preview screenshots from the Saved step templates list. We'll be bringing that back better than ever shortly. Thanks for your patience!


Other

  • Released an updated Listserv service, which manages the list of event names and user properties. This should improve loading across the Studio, and resolve any issues large customers had with loading their user properties data.
  • Added userId to the properties we send to the Heap integration automatically.
  • BUG BASH: we closed 24 issues in our first ever bug bash.

October 2019

Studio

  • Some cleanup on the Overview page: We simplified the Flywheel segments metrics display, we removed the "most viewed flows" section, and we added recently created flows in to the "recently edited" section.
  • Updates to recommended parts of installation.
  • A slew of improvements to the new Themes builder based on Early Access feedback.
  • More readable descriptions for Segments and Goals, with some nice color coding for clarity.
  • Our Salesforce integration is now live! Customers on the Growth & Enterprise plans who are interested in learning more can get started here.

Experiences

  • A slight re-design to the builder bar (where the steps go).
  • Added contextual tooltips to the actions in the settings sidebar. Now you know what all those actions are!
  • Simplified the page change modal.
  • A litany of behind-the-scenes improvement to loading different parts of the builder, so it's snappier and more consistent.
  • Updates to NPS surveys: leaving written feedback is now a smoother experience.
  • We also re-designed the empty state for the NPS page.
  • We made some changes to how flows work to resolve multi-page issues.


Other

  • More consistent user data in the Zapier integration (which is LIVE, btw). If you're interested in getting set up (cool stuff like piping NPS responses into Slack, or getting notified when a prospect completes a flow), head here.
  • Stronger caching support for our properties and events, so they'll load faster.

September 2019

Studio

  • The delta indicators for data on the Overview page have been restored! Those tiny numbers can have a huge impact on understanding flow performance. Installation got several UX improvements. Most notably, our help widget doesn't block the action button (sorry about that, we got a little eager there). And it's clearer which properties are must-have and which are recommended.
  • Analytics data will now always display as full numbers. Dividing by zero was a bad idea.
  • Dropdown menus got an update. Previously, items at the end of the list could sometimes get cut off. Now, we'll show every single item in its full glory, because with browser types—like children—it's impossible to pick a favorite.
  • We don't allow segments that use other content (like a flow, a Checklist, or another Segment) to be deleted. That's not changing. But now we tell you what other content the segment is connected to, so you can make the necessary updates.

Flow Builder

  • The help menu in the Flow Builder was updated. We simplified the options to make finding things (both for new and experienced users) a lot easier.
  • Y'all, there is a brand new icon for the Flow Builder Chrome Extension. We took the rounded corners to 11, and now it's a circle. Happy days are here at last!
  • Fixed a bug where custom HTML blocks in flows would display differently in building vs. preview mode. That was anxiety-inducing, and I'm glad it's all fixed up.

SDK

  • The new version of our SDK was rolled out, which includes a pretty dramatic improvement in load times. Absolutely nothing is required from your end, just enjoy it. Use that extra time to go grab yourself a smoothie. You earned it.

August 2019

Flow builder

  • Two major updates to the building experience: the component picker (for when you add a new component) was fully rebuilt, and we also introduced the Minibar, a re-designed menu for styling components. These are just the beginning, and we are thrilled to release them to you.
  • We shipped an update to the "Building on the wrong URL" experience, which we've been iterating on over the last few months. It should reduce confusing occurrences of the "Wrong URL" banner.
  • Event triggering (for Enterprise plans) now overrides existing flows. This was consistent feedback from our customers, so thank you!
  • We released several changes related to authenticating in the Flow Builder. Customers were having trouble with infinite redirects. Those should now be fully resolved. 😃

Studio

  • We tuned up Segments and Goals, related to the work we released in July. Thanks to everyone who provided such insightful feedback. 🙏
  • New User Permissions were rolled out fully for our Enterprise customers. Enjoy!
  • Small but mighty: the images we generate for your Flows now include custom buttons (they disappeared for a bit).

July 2019

Flow building

  • Modals, slideouts, and tooltips are now more responsive, so they look great on mobile. 📱
  • Better loading experience for templates sidebar.
  • Made the build URL more lenient, so you can get started with flows quicker and easier. More time for important conference calls.
  • Screen reader improvements to Appcues hotspots and tooltips. They now announce their presence in a helpful way.
  • Brand new inspirational flows that highlight tried and true patterns you can try with a few clicks. 😎
  • A sleeker, simpler the flow preview experience. 
  • Re-design for component options menu in the Flow Builder. Moved the "button" option out of "Advanced" and near the top of the list. Much easier to find! 👓
  • We also tweaked the entrance animations for modals and slideouts.

Flow settings & management

  • Super charged segments and goals. Track how many of your users qualified to be in them, and see a sample of the most recent users. ⚡
  • Brand new Flywheel segments, displayed on the segments and overview pages, to help you track how your users are moving through the steps in the user journey. Moving customers from Evaluators to Champions is the key to healthy growth. 💪
  • For segments, after setting conditions, you can estimate how many of your users might qualify for them in the future. 🔮
  • Widened the segments dropdown, so segment names should fit better.
  • Better grouping of items in select menus, so multi-line items are easier to read.
  • Improved contrast on all action buttons across the dashboard, for accessibility and readability.
  • Added segment descriptions, so teammates can leave context for each other.
  • Created and updated by tracking for segments, to keep track of what your teammates are up to. 
  • Display the list of flows using each segment, so you can visualize what users in that segment will see.

NPS

  • Extend the maximum NPS CSV export dates to 180 days. (Oh, and a new label to make it more discoverable.)

Platform

  • Made some changes to how we parse what end users put into forms, and it's led to a dramatic reduction in time spent preparing data to be shared.
  • The qualifier got a major speed bump, so flows will show even faster. We're not nearly done on this yet.
  • Tuned up the performance on the goals page, it's loading much faster now. 🚤

June 2019

Flow Builder

  • Streamlined workflow for new flow creation. Removed several clicks, unused use case templates, and made it possible to select a flow template in the first step. It's great.
  • Updates to Saved Templates. Made them easier to differentiate for re-using.
  • Fixed an issue where < and > didn't show up properly in buttons. Was related to a previous security improvement we put in place. Security, it's hard.
  • That fun little Appcues button that followed you around the internet is now gone. We called it Floaty internally. It is no more. Bye Floaty.
  • Reduced the number of events we include in evaluating flow triggering. Everyone should now enjoy a 50ms improvement in flow display. #progress!
The updated dashboard

Dashboard

  • A complete facelift of all pages on our new design system. Every page was updated. I'm partial to the color on the overview page, it not only looks amazing but helps concentrate attention on those top-level metrics.
  • The new authentication service was rolled out to all users. This was related to logged in errors when switching back and forth between the web dashboard and flow builder, and also issues when building flows and then losing progress.
  • A redesigned subscriptions page was released, to make it easier to understand what comes with each plan. Thanks for the feedback on this!
  • Also updated: the goals empty state. This feature is really valuable, but hard to discover. We're starting with a more descriptive empty state.
  • Better navigation update inside flows, to make it faster to jump between settings and analytics pages.

May 2019

Flow Builder

  • A much faster Flow Builder: Several infrastructure changes we've been preparing for the last few months went live in April, and means the Flow Builder loads faster than ever.
  • Totally revamped step templates. To help you create great flows faster, step templates come with helpful placeholder copy and images.
  • We also created a new template for tooltips and hotspots called Iconic. Create a simple tooltip with an image fast. Simple is beautiful.
Image of a tooltip from Appcues
  • A litany of small usability changes to the sidebar behavior. While none are big, in aggregate they save whole bunches of clicks moving forward. As an example, new steps inherit the theme from previous steps. 🎉
  • Moved the "Progress on click of" setting for tooltips up in the sidebar. It was getting buried.

Dashboard

  • The Flow settings page layout was updated - it's now more understandable and makes room for planned future powers. 💥
Screenshot of the updated settings for publishing a flow on Appcues
  • More iteration on the installation experience, continuing to make that a clearer experience for new users.
  • Improved segment deletion prompt: now we tell you which flows are being targeted by a segment you're trying to remove. Sorry we made that so difficult!
  • We now detect and warn you about using ad blockers that prevent installation with Segment. Whew, that was a weird bug.
  • CSV exports of your NPS data now include every user property for every response row. Be a know it all. 🤯
  • Pretty much every modal in the app got a facelift, thanks to the hard work of Mary-Kate!
  • The sign out button is now much more visible and discoverable from your settings. Holy cow that thing was hidden! 🐮

April 2019

SDK

  • We released a change last week that restricts the use of custom javascript in your flow content. This is to prevent cross-site scripting attacks from being embedded in Appcues flows. This was already not recommended, but now it's not possible at all. Existing flows are grandfathered in, but if this is something you rely on, please reach out to our support team. This change will keep end user and Appcues data safe.

CRX

  • Improvements to "getting on the right page for building" experience, for folks with dynamic URLs or who are sharing the building across team members.
  • Small update to the buttons in the sidebar: they look much better now.

Dashboard

  • Updates to CSV Exports: we now include all properties that match "mail" and include them in the export.
  • Another update to CSV Exports: NPS exports will now include just one line per response, and only a handful of the most useful columns.
  • "Just Form Responses" exports are now only form responses: if the user didn't submit a form response, they won't be included. That will clean those exports up dramatically. One thing to note: if no users submitted a form response, you'll end up with an empty export. Which could be lonely. Hopefully someone responded.
  • Additional changes to our install flow were released. Really important people get installed right. Get in touch if you think your install could use a review 👀

March 2019

Web App

  • We rebuilt a number of pages in the dashboard, making them faster and more responsive on all screens. The account page, integrations page, and subscriptions pages are now super snappy.
  • A big update to our installation process was released. This will make it much quicker and more straightforward to get started with Appcues. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on the old one, and to everyone who refers friends to Appcues!
  • A new flow analytics engine was released. Flow performance data for accounts of all sizes is now loading much faster.
  • A brand new option for CSV exports: you can now get form responses only. This will dramatically reduce parsing time for anyone just looking for form entries.


Flow Builder

  • Step settings in the Flow Builder got a major facelift. The goal is to make them easier to understand and use.
  • We've been iterating on the banner that displays when you try to edit your flow on the wrong URL. This can happen to teams that share flows, or build them on dynamic URLs.
  • Default page targeting for flows has been updated. When you build a new flow, page targeting will be automatically set to equal the page you built the flow on. This will prevent anyone from accidentally publishing a flow to all pages (yep, it's happened to us).

Mobile

  • We made a number of improvements to the installation and app syncing process. Thanks to all the early customers who provided feedback and bug reports.
  • We improved targeting experience for placing tooltips. You can now get live feedback on uniqueness of selectors on the page.

February 2019

New tooltip placement prompt for clearer guidance

At a recent User Test Fest, we learned it’s unclear how placing a tooltip works—especially to new users. After considering larger changes, we settled on simple guidance in the bottom bar, which appears while placing a tooltip.

Better error states across the product

We know that things can still go wrong, even with all the work we’ve done to resolve issues over the last few weeks. When they do, we’re going to give you a heads up about what’s happened—and what you should do next. Both the Flow Builder and the dashboard got new error states in January. Our hope is that you’ll never be left feeling stuck or unclear about what to do next.

Even more news

Dashboard

  • Checklist building page refactored— it’s now much, much faster to build and edit Checklists.
  • Error state handling in the dashboard. No more crashing!
  • Resolved more than 30 small issues and bugs—so many improvements, big and small.

Flow Builder

  • Improved the loading experience—it’s now even faster!
  • Improved communication about connectivity issues.
  • Refactored of all the key experiences to make them more reliable.
  • Rebranded and improved onboarding experience.
  • Squashed 12 bugs—should be a big step forward in improving the flow building experience.

SDK

Improvement to permalink resiliency—permalinks now work even in apps with fast redirects.

January 2019

Helping users understand how to build flows across pages

  • After a user makes a page change for the first time, we now render a tooltip above the action step to educate users about the new page change type
  • We have another video overlay! This one renders for new users that click Navigate for the first time. This video shows users how to make page changes.
  • We redesigned the action settings modal by eliminating all of the on-screen text and moving it into hover tooltips. Also, the modal now provides links to the page change docs and video overlay in case further clarification is needed.


Improved analytics

We updated the analytics processing and delivery system to make it faster and match accurately with the exported analytics.

Faster Test Mode

We pushed some changes that make the test mode redirect (the new page that opens and loads your test) significantly faster in most cases.

CRX bug fixes - A more resilient Flow Builder

We made tons of improvements and bug fixes to the Flow Builder this month.

  • We’re smarter about how we access steps within a page container.
  • We handle old user id’s that had malformed strings in them.
  • We better load TypeKit for our customers that use custom fonts.
  • We safely render templates even when they haven’t fully loaded yet.
  • We don’t try to add event listeners to hotspot and tooltip group frames if they don’t exist.
  • We fixed a bug that caused the CRX to crash on fine-tuning tooltips.

New SDK version

  • This version will more thoroughly close out the Action Driven Tooltip (ADTT) so that the flow can proceed to the next step.
  • If a user navigates too quickly across pages, this version saves the navigation in the SDK’s flow state in a better way. It more reliably carries that action across pages and waits for the correct one to match (or until the page check limit is reached).

December 2018

Easier testing and flow collaboration with Test mode

Appcues test mode allows you to quickly and easily test flows live on your site, just how they'll appear to end users. You can also share test mode links with collaborators, so they can see your flows live without needing an Appcues login or the Flow Builder installed.


Dashboard

Clearer button to launch the Flow Builder from the Dashboard, and it now opens in a new tab(eds note: thank you all for the feedback on this).


Better error states across the product

We know that things can still go wrong, even with all the work we’ve done to resolve issues over the last few weeks. When they do, we’re going to give you a heads up about what’s happened—and what you should do next. Both the Flow Builder and the dashboard got new error states in January. Our hope is that you’ll never be left feeling stuck or unclear about what to do next.

Flow Builder

  • New error state for the Flow Builder. When something goes ‘bump’ in the night for the Flow Builder, now you’ll be the first to know.
  • More educational content in the Flow Builder, this time for Page Changes.

November 2018

More Dashboard updates for brand alignment and usability

Following up on the October 2018 updates to our Appcues brand, we’ve continued making changes to our in-app Dashboard to make usage more consistent, increase the speed of search and filter on the Flow List, and color and style updates to better align with the brand. These changes also include a few UI bug fixes and a visual overhaul of the NPS product.


More flexible user navigation through flows

In November, we released “Let the User Navigate” functionality for page changes within flows. With Let the User Navigate, the user will be able to interact with the current page, and even navigate to a page outside the flow. If they end up back on a page that matches the expected path, the flow will continue. Let the User Navigate also introduces support for wildcards, so matching dynamic sections of URLs is a snap.


Dashboard

  • The default domain for targeting purposes will now be the domain the flow was built on. We learned this was far superior to defaulting to “Everywhere my Appcues embed script is installed”.
  • Related: if you remove the last domain in your targeting settings, “Everywhere my Appcues embed script is installed” will no longer be auto-selected. Another change to soothe anxious nerves.
  • Flows will no longer show by default in the in-app widget. This was a big headache for customers who were using this beta functionality.


Flow Builder

  • The “Add step” button is now displayed inside the current page group, alongside the steps on that page. Our goal is to make it clearer where you are adding steps, and be able to add steps into the middle of a flow.
  • Similar to the Dashboard, we made a number of branding consistency and usability updates to the Flow Builder.
  • We spotted some templates that didn’t have preview images, which made it a bit scary to add those to your flow. No more!
  • A few improvements to the reliability of the Flow Builder. No need to go into nitty-gritty details, but it should work more reliably, and more improvements are planned.


SDK

  • A user tracking bug we had with anonymous users have been resolved. This is now working as intended.
  • 4 bug fixes for Checklists, including an update to the Google Analytics integration.
  • The SDK now serves CSS from a CDN, rather than directly from the API. This should save ~100ms per request in most cases. Faster is better.

October 2018


We glowed up!

We’ve been hard at work on this one, and we’re excited to share the results! Appcues is growing quickly, and it was time for our brand to evolve as well. Both the homepage and app dashboard underwent a major re-design, which is still rolling out. You’ll start to see a lot of “blurple” around these parts and we hope you love it!

The app re-design is rolling out slowly, but you can activate it anytime by clicking the banner on your dashboard.

Custom date range for CSV export (and export re-design)

Lots of customers generate CSV exports of their flow analytics to get in-depth information on how each step of their flows are performing. We gave the export experience a fresh UX update, and added a _custom date range_ option, so you can get exactly the data you want. One more tiny change with a big impact: exports are now normal 'zip' files, rather than funky 'gzip'. Should save some time for the spreadsheet-obsessed out there.


Events & Properties re-design

Events and Properties are an important part of proper targeting. We re-designed the layout of the page, to make them more readable and easier to use. They are split out into three separate categories (Events, Custom Properties, and Auto-Properties) to make it clearer which properties you control, and which are sent in automatically by Appcues.

Page Changes now added automatically

Get excited, multi-page flow builders, the building experience is about to get much easier. A Page Change action will now get added to your Flow automatically when you navigate to and start building content on a new page. As part of this update, we also removed the modal that popped up when you navigated to new URLs. Because it was scary 👻.
This is just the start. Over the next few months, we plan to continue improving the experience of building flows. We’ve snuck a few other small adjustments already, like moving the Step Settings button over to make room. Stay tuned for more!

Other Flow Builder changes this month

  • It’s now much more straightforward to delete a single step, rather than the whole group. No more accidentally deleting your hard work.
  • We removed Record mode from the Flow Builder. In it’s place, we’re working on a brand new “Test Mode” that you’re going to love. Get in touch if you want to beta test!

September 2018


Checklist beacon offset

In addition to the left and right default positions, you can now customize the positioning and choose to place your beacon anywhere in your app.

Checklists wait for other content to finish first

Checklists don’t block other Appcues patterns anymore. The Checklist now patiently waits for flows with modals and slideouts to complete before appearing.

Checklist Appcues.show()

You can now manually trigger an Appcues checklist just like a flow. As checklists are different from flows and are inherently persistent, once manually triggered, the checklist will appear on all installed domains/subdomains regardless of targeting. To end this behavior, use Appcues.clearShow()

Other changes from this month

  • Show Step and Step Child IDs somewhere in the CRX (#426)
  • Fixed a nasty bug with flows ending prematurely after an action-driven tooltip into a page change.
  • The page targeting helper now support wild card domains
  • Share button is now 'Permalink' (better reflecting what it's for), and the Edit button has been moved down to be across from the Preview URL.
  • The "Publish Flow" confirmation modal now scrolls properly, so customers on small screens can still access the publish button.

August 2018


Checklist: All text now editable

All the text on your checklist, including button text, is now customizable.

Checklist analytics went live

You can now measure the performance of your checklists once you have published them.

Flow list tag management

Now you can assign tags to your flows. The original categories that we had earlier are now used as tags for your flows.


July 2018


Little card in the targeting page

Tells you more about events and properties, will give you data type and example values.

New subscription page went live

Customers on modern plans should be able to see their plan details, MAU info, billing details and Billing History.

Checklist: Sequential checklist support available

If there are certain steps that you want your customers to take in a specified order, you can toggle the checklist so that an item cannot be initiated until the preceding has been completed.


NPS data export went live

You can now easily export a CSV for your NPS data.