Changelog

Reference dynamic object, user, and tenant data in templates

Today we're announcing support for referencing objects, users, and tenants dynamically in templates. While we've always exposed properties on the template such as the recipient, actor, and tenant, if you needed to reference other object or user data stored within your Knock environment, you had no access to that within your workflow scope.

Now, with template references, you can load arbitrary objects, users, and tenants into your template context. This allows you to reference any data stored within your Knock environment, such as a different user's profile, a tenant's settings, or an object's properties. Using template references brings access to any kind of third-party object data that you might want to store in Knock, without needing to pass it into your workflow data.

Here's an example. Let's say you're a collaboration product, and you want to show the current project's most up to date title and description in an update email for things happening on that project. With template references, you can load the project object dynamically at execution time by passing in a project_id into your workflow trigger, and then loading the project object into your template context.

{% assign project = data.project_id | object: "projects" %}

# {{ project.title }}: new updates

> {{ project.description }}

There have been {{ total_activities }} updates on this project in the last 24 hours.

This feature is available now to all Knock customers. You can read more about the feature in our template references documentation.

Fixes and improvements

• 🐛 We fixed an issue with the workflow canvas where it would no longer center correctly.
• 🐛 We fixed an issue with channel steps in the workflow builder, where it appeared you could change the selected channel in non-development environments.
• 🐛 We fixed an issue where cleaning up message history on the deletion of a user would sometimes fail.

Override the recipient of an email

Today we're adding support for overriding the recipient of an email generated in Knock. Previously, emails were always sent to the email address associated with the recipient.

With the new to email override, you can now specify either a static or dynamic value via liquid for the recipient of an email. For example, you might be sending a change email confirmation to the user, but be sending it to the new email address they entered and stored on the recipient profile as recipient.new_email.

You can read more about the feature in our email overrides documentation.

Immediately flush the first item in a batch

Today we're excited to extend our batch step with support for immediately flushing the first item in the batch. Previously, our batch step would collect all triggers across the batch window, and flush those as a single batch once the window closed.

With immediate flushing, your batch will always flush the first item before accumulating subsequent triggers across the batch window. If you're a developer, you might be familiar with this concept as a "leading debounce". This can be useful when you want to immediately notify your users about some action occurring, while still batching any additional information across a window of time to reduce the number of notifications your users receive.

You'll find the option to immediately flush the first item in the batch under the advanced options in the batch step settings. You can read more about the feature in our batch step documentation.

Fixes and improvements

• 👀 We added support for sending multiple tags to Mailgun via overrides.
• 🐛 We moved our OneSignal integration to use the v11.6 API.
• 🐛 We added a role="none" attribute to any open tracking pixels included in emails.
• 🐛 We fixed an issue where identify events sent to Segment would override properties set on the user being identified.

Bot framework support for Microsoft Teams

Today we're excited to announce that we've added support to our Microsoft Teams integration for sending notifications via bots through the Microsoft Bot Framework. While we've previously had support for Microsoft Teams as a provider in Knock, our integration only supported sending via webhooks, which was most suitable for internal or one-off use cases.

Using the Bot Framework, we can now support multi-tenant integrations that can send messages to channels and directly to users, making it possible to build richer notification experiences on top of Microsoft Teams and powered directly through Knock.

You can read more in our refreshed Microsoft Teams documentation on how to get started.

Fixes and improvements

• 👀 We've added inline step editing to the workflow builder for the step name, description, and reference fields.
• 👀 We added support for navigating the workflow builder using the keyboard. You can now use the arrow keys to easily select different steps and navigate your workflows.
• 🐛 We fixed a bug where long workflow keys would wrap in the workflow list.
• 🐛 We fixed an issue where email template setting overrides were not being saved because of invalid override JSON being provided.

Introducing in-app message types

Today we're excited to announce the beta release of in-app message types. Building on our in-app messaging components release, with today's release you can now power any UI element in your product—a banner, a carousel, a tag, anything—using Knock's workflow engine and real-time messaging infrastructure. Here's how it works.

In-app message types enable you to map UI elements and components from your application to a message type in Knock. Once you've created a message type, you can use it to target and send native messages to that component in your own product, powered by Knock's real-time messaging infrastructure.

In-app message types are a powerful way for your engineering team to own the structure and implementation of in-app messages displayed to your users, while giving product managers and marketers the flexibility to create and manage the in-app messages sent to your users through Knock's powerful visual workflow builder.

Each in-app message type has a schema that determines the fields available to your content editors when building a new in-app message. Schemas are versioned and can be updated over time to create strong guarantees between the structure expected in your components and the messages exposed over the API.

To render components for a given message type, you use our React SDK and hooks to fetch any messages of that type for the current user. Knock owns the data layer, while your team owns the component, making it possible to create native in-app messaging that leverages your existing design system and component library. This also means that native in-app messaging powered with Knock is just as performant as the rest of your app, and won't be blocked by ad blockers. You can read more and see examples in the documentation.

In-app message types are currently in beta. If you're interested in trying them out, please contact our team.

Introducing Knock in-app messaging components

Today we're excited to announce the launch of a new set of in-app messaging components for our React SDK, making it possible to power a new set of in-app experiences with Knock.

Previously, our in-app SDK was limited to powering feed and inbox experiences, and used to integrate our SlackKit components into your application. Now with today's release, you can use our new <Modal />, <Banner />, and <Card /> components to build out a new set of in-app experiences for your users, all powered by Knock's real-time messaging infrastructure, and seamlessly integrated into our workflow builder.

Our in-app components enable your content editors to create and manage in-app messages directly within Knock's workflow builder as part of a cross-channel messaging strategy. Because in-app messages are just another channel in Knock, you can create them as part of a workflow powered by events, or even when your users enter an audience. That means you can build experiences like:

• Welcome messages: show a modal when a user signs up for your product.
• Overage banners: when a user exceeds some usage threshold on their account, show a banner to let them know.
• Upsell cards: show a persistent message within your product to upsell your users on additional features once they've onboarded.

Each of our out-of-the-box components are fully customizable, with the ability to override the CSS variables or classes associated with each component. Or you can even build your own components on top of our data layer via our hooks, making it easy to integrate Knock's messaging into your existing design system or component library.

Here's a quick look at rendering one of our components to show a banner at the top of your product:

import {
  Banner,
  KnockProvider,
  KnockInAppMessagesChannelProvider,
} from "@knocklabs/react";

const MyApplication = () => {
  const { user } = useCurrentUser();

  return (
    <MyLayout>
      <KnockProvider apiKey={process.env.KNOCK_API_KEY} userId={user.id}>
        <KnockInAppMessagesChannelProvider
          channelId={process.env.KNOCK_IAM_CHANNEL_ID}
        >
          <Banner />
          <MyHeader />
          <MyFooter />
        </KnockInAppMessagesChannelProvider>
      </KnockProvider>
    </MyLayout>
  );
};

Our in-app components are currently in private beta. If you'd like to be added to the beta experience, please reach out to our support team. You can read more about the components in our documentation.

Fixes and improvements

• 👀 We made some visual updates to the look and feel of the workflow builder, including a new improved panels architecture.
• 🐛 We fixed an issue with saving step metadata in the workflow builder.
• 🐛 We fixed a bug with the branch step in the workflow builder that was hiding a maximum depth reached error.
• 🐛 We fixed an issue with some modals that meant they were overflowing unexpectedly.
• 🐛 We fixed an issue with viewing commits and committing workflow changes on the commits page.
• 🐛 We fixed a bug where computed delay windows were showing the incorrect value in workflow run logs.

SMTP email provider support

We've added support for sending emails via SMTP through Knock. Our SMTP provider allows you to send emails through any SMTP server, giving you the flexibility to use your existing email infrastructure with Knock.

You can get started by configuring your SMTP provider in the "Integrations > Channels" page in the Knock dashboard. You can read more about the SMTP channel in our documentation.

Fixes and improvements

• 👀 We've added support for using recipient.preferences as part of the workflow run scope. You can now target any property on recipient preference set within template variables and conditions
• 🐛 We fixed an issue where overrides for branding and logos were not showing the base versions within the dashboard
• 🐛 We fixed an issue that was preventing trigger conditions from being saved in certain cases

Introducing Audiences

Today we’re excited to announce a new way to power your notification workflows: Knock Audiences. Audiences bring the concept of user segmentation into Knock.

An audience represents a list of users you define who all share a common set of characteristics. You can build any number of segments of users that you'd like, bring those audiences into Knock, and then use them to power notification behavior.

With this release, you can bring audiences into Knock programmatically through our new Audiences API and direct integrations with reverse ETL tools like Hightouch and Census. Your audiences are then available to view and manage through the Knock dashboard.

Once you start creating audiences in Knock, you can use them to:

• Trigger workflows when new users are added to an audience. This is great for powering lifecycle messaging (such as new user signups) and transactional messaging (such as payment method updates) use cases
• Orchestrate branch and conditional logic within your workflows (e.g. if a user is in paid-users audience, opt them out of the workflow)

With today's release, we’re excited to expand the messaging use cases you can power with Knock and help our customers power a unified messaging motion across their product and lifecycle marketing.

Audiences are currently in beta. If you want to try them out, you can contact our team to request access. To learn more about what's possible with audiences, check out our documentation.

There's a lot more to come with Audiences in the future. They will form a pivotal building block for new features we're working on over the coming months, and we can't wait to share more with you soon.

Fixes and improvements

• 🐛 We fixed an issue with translations where archiving a namespaced translation would cause other translations for that locale to stop working when previewing and sending
• 🐛 We fixed an issue where using liquid in a JSON editor would sometimes cause the validation to fail

Expo SDK and React Native SDK updates

Today we've released a new @knocklabs/expo SDK that includes support for mobile and web applications built using the Expo framework. This SDK includes a new KnockExpoPushNotificationProvider component that streamlines the integration with Expo push notifications, helping you to quickly get up and running with push notifications powered by Knock and Expo.

We've also released a new version of our existing @knocklabs/react-native SDK that includes a new KnockPushNotificationProvider that exposes registerPushTokenToChannel and unregisterPushTokenFromChannel methods to support push notification token registration outside of the Expo ecosystem. You can see these in use in our new React Native example app, where we're integrating with Firebase messaging.

To get started with the Expo SDK, check out the documentation.

Fixes and improvements

• 🐛 We fixed a bug where the test runner could not be accessed in non-development environments
• 🐛 We fixed an issue with adding email template overrides with liquid variables that resolve to JSON

Workflow builder 3.0

The workflow builder is the visual interface for designing workflows in the Knock dashboard. It allows you to express complex cross-channel notification logic in an easy to reason about way.

After months of development, we're excited to announce a rebuild of the workflow builder with a new architecture, improved performance, and a more intuitive user experience. We've poured a lot of love into this update, and we're excited to share it with you today.

Here are a few of the key differences in the new workflow builder:

• 🚀 Performance: The new workflow builder has been rebuilt from the ground up with a focus on performance. You'll notice that actions like adding and removing steps now feel instant, making it a delight to use.
• 🧩 Refreshed design: We've updated the visual style of the workflow builder to use our Telegraph design system. This includes a new color palette, typography, and iconography.
• 💪 Simplified step editing: Each step panel in the workflow builder has been rebuilt from the ground up to be more intuitive and easier to use.
• 😵‍💫 Goodbye spinners: We've removed virtually all of the loading spinners from the workflow builder as a result of our new architecture, making actions feel more responsive.

Our goal at Knock is to build a powerful product that feels delightful to use, and we're confident that with our new workflow builder foundation, we're well on our way to achieving that goal. We will be making more improvements in the coming weeks, and you'll see us start to roll out these changes to the template editor next as well.

Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks, and we'd love to hear your feedback in the meantime.

Fixes and improvements

• 🐛 We fixed a bug where the test runner could not be accessed in non-development environments