Affino 9.0.5 - The Affino AI Performance Update

This release sees improvements in many aspects across Affino that will benefit everyone, enhancing the speed and usability across many Affino services. 

 

Affino’s AI services are now significantly faster, better and nicer looking, and for the first time Affino’s Expert AI Service is aware of the full conversation you are having.

 

We have made some important updates to the message click stats, mailing list subscriber import, and subscriptions, amongst others. In general working with messages in Affino is now faster and more insightful than at any point.

 

We have also made some inroads into the commerce developments with updates to the Payment Gateways and Checkout with much more tabled for the next major release. We have added a number of important subscription safeguards into this release, including critical integration updates with Stripe. 

 

Altogether there are hundreds of improvements in this Affino Update, which taken together add up to a nicely improved overall experience. With the breakthrough in Affino’s AI performance we can’t wait to see all the great new AI Service Prototypes over the coming weeks and months.

 

There are also important underlying performance, analytics and security updates, making this an essential priority Affino Update which everyone needs to adopt at the earliest opportunity.

 

Upgrade Guidance

 

This is an essential update for Affino, and we strongly recommend updating as a priority.

 

NOTE - you will need a new Affino Licence Key, with the new Site Management security right. This should be in turn assigned to your key webmaster and admin security groups as many Affino Control Settings screens now use this new security clearance. The Affino team will automatically apply this new Licence Key if they are running the update. If you prefer to run the update yourself, please ensure you first request a licence key to be installed on your instance. 

 

NOTE - if you have not yet updated to the 2024 version of the Stripe API then you must do so now or you are highly likely to have issues with your subscriptions renewals and promotions. Ensure you test on your staging instance if possible, but be aware that Stripe have made a number of critical changes which require this Affino release for the best compatibility.

 

NOTE - there are a number of key Affino infrastructure updates that accompany this Update if you have not updated to the previous release, so this will need tight coordination with the Affino Team to ensure a smooth update process.

 

It is important to liaise with the support team to schedule an update window where they can be on hand to support the update. 

 

It is essential that you run through the complete update process starting with the Affino Updater, followed by the sequence of the system and design updates laid out on the Control > Update screen.

Key Features

 

New Conversational AI Services up 500% faster

This update sees the introduction of the full Affino conversational AI engine. This means you can have more complete conversations where the AI is aware of the previous questions and answers in any given conversation and will reference them in its replies. This can make for a much more natural conversation, but it also does require more AI tuning and finesse to produce the best results.

 

In the few short weeks since the initial launch of Affino’s Expert AI Services we have seen major breakthroughs in the performance and capabilities of many of the underlying aI technologies we use, such as the launch of ChatGPT 4o which we adopted within a week of launch. We have invested further with a tight focus on speeding up the overall performance of Affino’s AI services. 

 

This includes moving to a new generation of AI vector data storage in the core Affino cloud which is thousands of times faster than the previous version. We have also upgraded the entire AI tech stack to the latest generation, which has unlocked the performance gains promised by ChatGPT 4o.

 

The core Affino AI Expert Service engine sees a host of incremental improvements, making it more approachable for new users, and we have added critical new levers to support you with tuning your AI services to work best with your content. The text itself is now also better formatted and looks great on the screen.

 

Added together these make Affino’s AI services dramatically better and deliver fast, insightful and where preferred very entertaining experiences. You can experience this by using the AI services on Affino.com, and now directly linked from every screen in the updated Affino Control Centre.

 

It is time to start building your AI Prototypes for the Great Leap Forward.

 

Message Clicks

Under Messages and Message Campaigns, you’ll see we now have two new tabs providing a more granular view on message clicks. We now surface both a Bot Filtered and Identified metric by running message clicks through a number of bot filtering procedures to filter out known bots providing a more accurate picture of real clicks. Furthermore, we check which of those bot filtered clicks can be identified as a user within the CRM giving further insight to the click traffic of your messages. Note: In the next release you will see Bot Filtered and Identified clicks across other analysis areas where message clicks are being shown.

 

Payment Gateways 

We have enhanced the Stripe integration to deal with a specific scenario where Stripe creates a second default payment method for customers who initially fail a 3D Secure authentication process and subsequently doesn’t renew onto a renewal catalogue item. This occurs on products where the renewing subscription period differs such as a 3 monthly trial renewing onto a monthly subscription. 

 

We are also setting the Use Tax Rate For Subscriptions and Use Coupons For Subscriptions settings on Stripe by default and Use Renewal Catalogue Item Price And Tax setting on Stripe and GoCardless payment gateways making an easier set up journey. 

 

In addition, we have simplified the creation of a Stripe payment gateway by generating the Webhook URL at the outset so you no longer need to enter a dummy value before receiving the correct one in a later step of the setup journey.

 

Checkout

A much requested feature is the ability to re-order the address fields on the checkout page and this is now configurable on the Checkout Profile. Note: The country field remains as the first address field as this is used with the Postal Address File (PAF) functionality.

 

Subscriptions

If a renewal order is subsequently cancelled, we now check the previous order and clear the ‘Renewed’ subscription status so that it will lapse. This is an important enhancement meaning the Subscription Expiry Report and analysis is more accurate. 

 

Mailing List Subscriber Import

Some major improvements here for bulk subscribing new and existing users to mailing lists. If a user already exists in the CRM, we simply subscribe them to the selected mailing lists. If they had previously unsubscribed, there is a new setting (Update Unsubscribed Users) on the import screen to resubscribe them. For those not in the CRM, we now create a mailing list contact record and subscribe them to the selected mailing lists.

 

Contacts

There are now four new columns that can be enabled on the contacts listing via CRM Settings, providing more insight on a contact’s Live Subscriptions, No. Logins, No. Page Views and whether they are a new registrant. Use the newly added Activity Data dropdown options on the grey bar to fine-tune the Time Frame and Zone for which you wish to view the logins, page views and registration data. We have also included corresponding settings on the User Export to output data for No. Logins, No. Page Views and New Registrations.

 

Metering Profile

We have updated the metered page views so you can select 1-6 days for a more nuanced metering setup, e.g. users can view one article per day.

 

System Security Right

A new Site Management system security right has been created to secure the following component - Google Maps Profile, Google Sitemap Profile, Recruitment Profile, SMS Provider, Data and Services Usage and Team Time Profile distinguishing this from ‘Site Editors’ and the more a generic ‘Security’ access level. Note: Please ensure you request a new licence key before upgrading and then assign this system security right to the appropriate security groups who require access to the aforementioned components.

 

Design Script

Now available is a setting on the Design Script to reload the page for each of the cookie types. This is sometimes required by scripts such as Adsense to correctly serve their ads to the users. Note: Reloading the page results in an additional page impression recorded.

 

User Export

There is a new setting in the User Export to export a list of archived users. Please note this will include archived mailing list users. To remove these from the export, use the Contact Type filter.

 

Fixes and Minor Enhancements

 

Fixes are elements which didn’t work as well as they should, and have now been made to work better. Minor enhancements provide subtle improvements that most people won’t notice (some will love), but which nonetheless improve on the overall Affino experience.

 

The fixes and enhancements highlighted here will be meaningful to a number of Affino users.

 

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Articles - added image file size next to each uploaded image; fixed a TinyMCE issue defaulting to a security setting which prevents the use of embed codes; fixed an issue not generating thumbnails where the main image is less than 600px wide.

 

Client Campaign - we have added a setting to choose to display Bot Filtered or Identified message clicks. The dashboard will be updated in the next release.

 

Contact - updated the 2FA saved devices to display the IP address and limiting the listing to 20 most recent devices and up to 90 days old; fixed an issue editing and saving a contact record; reinstated the mailing list contact type on the contact record screen.

 

Converting Articles Report - fixed an issue with the ‘More’ button loading the data.

 

Channel - fixed an issue where the Share Profile was inadvertently removed when the Show Bookmark and/or Show Bookmark Icon To Guests were selected.

 

Creatives - fixed an issue when saving creatives.

 

Directory Articles - fixed a Javascript issue with saving an article with media uploaded; added additional advisory information where a media upload file does not meet the requirements.

 

Message Template - fixed an issue with placeholder dropdown not working. Please ensure you test your templates again before sending out new messages.

 

My Profile - fixed an issue when attempting to save a profile.

 

Overlay Panel - updated an issue where the overlay panel was not displayed based on the Inclusion and Exclusion content security right settings.

 

Workflow Profile - fixed an issue displaying the Alternative Thumbnail despite the Hide Thumbnail setting being enabled.

 

Removed

 

Removed To Do Lists. There are many help guides, FAQs, support forum and the Support Chat which better provide help and advice on setting up your workflows.

 

Removed the Hide Old Content setting on Sitemap Profile as this is no longer supported. We have corrected the default value of the Hide Content Older Than setting to 730 days.

 

Removed the Include Subscriber filter on User Security and updated the Contact Type to default to Full Member and non-member. To include mailing list subscribers, simply use the Contact Type filter.

 

Integration Updates

 

There are no integration updates in this release.

 

Component Changes

 

Affino benefits from using some great frameworks, here are the updates we’ve rolled out for these frameworks in this release:

 

Chart JS updated to - v4.4.3

 

DataTables updated to - no change

 

DropzoneJS updated to - no change

 

GrapesJS updated to - no change

 

GrapesJS MJML - no change

 

JQuery updated to - no change

 

JQueryUI updated to - no change

 

JSoup updated to - no change

 

flatpickr updated to - no change

 

FontAwesome updated to - no change

 

HighCharts updated to - no change

 

TinyMCE updated to - v7.1.1

 

Video.js updated to - no change

 

Vue JS updated to - no change