Flex UI 2.x.x updates that can affect your customizations

This page describes Flex UI updates that you should be aware of when migrating to Flex UI 2.x.x. Review this information to determine if you need to make updates to your customizations to be compatible with Flex UI 2.x.x.

For more information about the entire migration process, see Migrate from Flex UI 1.x.x to 2.x.x.

This page describes Flex UI updates that you should be aware of when migrating to Flex UI 2.x.x. Review this information to determine if you need to make updates to your customizations to be compatible with Flex UI 2.x.

For more information about the entire migration process, see Migrate from Flex UI 1.x.x to 2.x.x.

Degraded mode

We have introduced a Degraded mode for Flex UI - now Flex UI will initialize with limited capabilities, even if some of the components like SDKs (TaskRouter, Conversations, Voice, or Sync) are down. In case of disruptions to Twilio's services, Flex users can still log in to Flex and perform certain tasks related to operational services. For example, in the case of Twilio Voice experiencing an incident, your agent will still be able to handle messaging tasks.

Users will see a notification informing them of a possible disruption in the normal work of Flex UI and they will be able to download a thorough report with error details and logs.

For more on error handling and reporting, check out our Troubleshooting the Flex UI guide.

Conversations SDK

Currently, the Flex UI uses the Programmable Chat SDK to handle messaging channels. In 2.x.x, the Flex UI uses the Conversations SDK to replicate this functionality.

To ease migration of plugins from Flex UI 1.x.x to 2.x.x, we want to create a virtual bridge to also export Chat SDK-compatible constructs. Therefore, you can still use your Chat-based customizations with fewer changes. This bridge logic will render a warning highlighting that the accessed methods and properties are actually deprecated.

Identified differences between the Chat and Conversation libraries

Here are the properties and methods that have been changed or removed.

Chat Client

Channel vs Conversations

ChannelDescriptor

No parallel in the Conversations SDK, we fall back to Conversation.

UserDescriptor

No parallel in the Conversations SDK, we fall back to User.

Chat User vs Conversation User

Chat Message vs Conversation Message

Chat Member vs Conversation Participant

Chat SDK methods and concepts dropped in the Conversations SDK

1. There’s no concept of a public channel. All the conversations are private.
2. Descriptors have been removed. They used to be a “snapshot” of the described entity. This is easily replaceable by returning the actual entity and unsubscribing from its changes.
3. There is no invite method anymore on conversations. We fall back to the add method as their functionalities are very similar.

Flex UI changes

Deprecated reducers

• channels
• channelInput

Deprecated props

• channel
• channelSid
• isMemberOfChannel
• member
• autoInitChannel
• activeChatChannel
• chatChannel (on taskContext)

Deprecated Helpers

• ChatChannelHelper - replaced by ConversationHelper

Deprecated methods

• TaskHelper.getTaskChannelSid

Deprecated notifications ID

• ChatOrchestrationAddToConversationFailed
• ChatOrchestrationDeactivateConversationFailed
• ChatOrchestrationLeaveConversationFailed

Voice SDK

The Flex UI 1.x.x uses the twilio-client SDK for voice communications. In 2.x.x, it uses the twilio-voice SDK for this functionality since the twilio-client is now deprecated. Functionality and usage of the new Voice SDK remains largely the same with a few exceptions:

• The events Connect, Disconnect, and Cancel which used to apply to the Device instance now applies to the Call instance instead.
• The Device ready event has been replaced with a registered event. Likewise for online which is now unregistered.
• The structure of the Device state has changed to:

   namespace Device {
   isBusy: boolean;
   enum State {
     Unregistered = 'unregistered';
     Registering = 'registering';
     Registered = 'registered';
     Destroyed = 'destroyed';
   }
 }

Listen for a running call on Flex UI 2.x.x

To detect a running call within the Flex UI 2.x.x, you can listen for an incoming Voice event through the Flex Manager. For detecting a call using UI actions, see "Common use cases and examples" on Use UI Actions.

const manager = Flex.Manager.getInstance();
manager.voiceClient.on('incoming', onVoiceClientConnectListener);

// Listener function
function onVoiceClientConnectListener (){  
  console.log("Call detected");
  // Do something
}   

For more details on the changes from the twilio-client to the twilio-voice SDK, see this migration guide. Also refer to the Twilio.Device and Twilio.Call pages for more details on the Device and Call objects of the Twilio Voice JavaScript SDK.

New Flex access token update behavior

In Flex UI 1.x.x, your code may have listened to Flex access token updates in the following way:

manager.store.getState().flex.session.loginHandler.on('tokenUpdated', (token) => {});

With Flex 2.x.x, loginHandler no longer supports this functionality. You can instead use the native Flex 'tokenUpdated' Event to achieve the same behavior:

import { Manager } from "@twilio/flex-ui";
const manager = Manager.getInstance();
manager.events.addListener("tokenUpdated", (tokenPayload) => {});

New Actions and Flex Events for the TaskRouter SDK

We have added new Flex actions wrapping TaskRouter:

import { Actions } from "@twilio/flex-ui";

// Set worker attributes
Actions.invokeAction("SetWorkerAttributes", { attributes: {}, mergeExisting: true });

// Update worker token
Actions.invokeAction("UpdateWorkerToken", { token: "newToken" });

// Update task attributes
Actions.invokeAction("SetTaskAttributes", { sid: "WRxxxxx", attributes: {}, mergeExisting: true });

// Issue a Call to a Worker
Actions.invokeAction("IssueCallToWorker", { callerId: "callerId", twiMLUrl: "twiMLUrl", options: {} });

// Dequeue the Reservation to the Worker.
// This will perform telephony to dequeue a Task that was enqueued using the Enqueue TwiML verb.
// A contact_uri must exist in the Worker's attributes for this call to go through.
Actions.invokeAction("DequeueTask", { options: {} })

// Redirect the active Call tied to this Reservation
Actions.invokeAction("RedirectCallTask", { callSid: "callSid", twiMLUrl: "twiMLUrl", options: {} });

// Update the Worker's leg in the Conference associated to this Reservation
Actions.invokeAction("UpdateWorkerParticipant", { options: {} });

// Update the Customer leg in the Conference associated to this Task
Actions.invokeAction("UpdateCustomerParticipant", { options: {} });

and introduced new Flex Events wrapping TaskRouter events:

import { Manager } from "@twilio/flex-ui";
const manager = Manager.getInstance();

// Emitted when a worker receives a new task
manager.events.addListener("taskReceived", (task: ITask) => {});

// Emitted when the worker's activity changes
manager.events.addListener("workerActivityUpdated", (activity: Activity, allActivities: Map<string, Activity>) => {});

// Emitted when the worker's attributes changes
manager.events.addListener("workerAttributesUpdated", (newAttributes: Record<string, any>) => {});

// Emitted when the worker's task status gets updated
manager.events.addListener("taskUpdated", (task:ITask) => {});

// Emitted when the worker's task gets set to 'accepted'
manager.events.addListener("taskAccepted", (task:ITask) => {});

// Emitted when the worker's task gets set to 'canceled'
manager.events.addListener("taskCanceled", (task:ITask) => {});

// Emitted when the worker's task gets set to 'completed'
manager.events.addListener("taskCompleted", (task:ITask) => {});

// Emitted when the worker's task gets set to 'rejected'
manager.events.addListener("taskRejected", (task:ITask) => {});

// Emitted when the worker's task gets set to 'rescinded'
manager.events.addListener("taskRescinded", (task:ITask) => {});

// Emitted when the worker's task gets set to 'timeout'
manager.events.addListener("taskTimeout", (task:ITask) => {});

// Emitted when the worker's task gets set to 'wrapup'
manager.events.addListener("taskWrapup", (task:ITask) => {});

Now you can use exclusively Flex UI Actions Framework when working with TaskRouter SDK, without needing to access its methods directly.

Visit our Flex UI API docs for more details on Actions and Events.

Theme and Branding

Flex UI 2.x.x uses a new theming structure that more closely maps to the Twilio Paste design system. This new structure is based on the concept of design tokens, a set of variables that you can modify. This structure promotes both consistency, customization and web accessibility.

Theme configuration changes

config.colorTheme is deprecated. There is a new configuration key called config.theme with the following structure:

interface ThemeConfigProps {
   isLight?: boolean; // Represents if light or dark theme
   tokens?: Tokens; // Paste tokens
   componentThemeOverrides?: Object; // Object containing styles of the component which is to be overridden.
}

config.theme.componentThemeOverrides has the same structure as deprecated config.colorTheme.overrides.

Styled components theme props changes

Components which receive the theme as props have the following changes:

1. props.theme.calculated is deprecated.
   1. Use props.theme.isLight instead of props.theme.calculated.lightTheme
   2. Use props.theme.tokens.textColors.colorText instead of props.theme.calculated.textColor.
2. props.theme.colors is deprecated.
3. props.theme.tokens is introduced:.

interface Tokens {
   backgroundColors: BackgroundColors;
   textColors: TextColors;
   borderColors: BorderColors;
   borderWidths: typeof BorderWidth;
   radii: typeof BorderRadius;
   fontSizes: typeof FontSize;
   fontWeights: typeof FontWeight;
   lineHeights: typeof LineHeight;
   sizings: typeof Sizing;
   spacings: typeof Spacing;

}

For more on each token information, please refer to Twilio Paste.

Deprecated Predefined themes

Flex UI 2.x.x deprecates all predefined themes like DarkTheme, MediumTheme, BlueDarkTheme, BlueMediumTheme. It will now have 2 modes of Flex: Light and Dark.

List of deprecated tokens

const deprecatedTokens = [
   "errorColor",
   "errorGlow",
   "buttonHoverColor",
   "tabSelectedColor",
   "connectingColor",
   "disconnectedColor",
   "notificationBackgroundColorInformation",
   "notificationBackgroundColorSuccess",
   "notificationBackgroundColorWarning",
   "notificationBackgroundColorError",
   "notificationIconColorError",
   "notificationIconColorWarning",
   "userAvailableColor",
   "userUnavailableColor",
   "defaultButtonColor",
   "lightTextColor",
   "darkTextColor",
   "disabledColor",
   "focusColor",
   "focusGlow",
   "holdColor",
   "declineColor",
   "acceptColor",
   "declineTextColor",
   "acceptTextColor",
   "completeTaskColor",
   "flexBlueColor",
   "agentBusyColor"
];

Deprecating Channel colors

const deprecatedChannelColors = [
   "inactive",
   "call",
   "video",
   "chat",
   "sms",
   "facebook",
   "line",
   "whatsapp",
   "custom"
];

ThemeProvider

Introducing a new API, Flex.setProviders(), which can be used to load providers once at the root level. Developers won’t have to worry about wrapping again, as the context will be set correctly. Now to use Paste in Flex plugins, developers do not need to wrap the Paste ThemeProvider over all Paste components.

When using Paste, developers need to pass the CustomizationProvider from Paste to Flex using Flex.setProviders as shown in the following example. Ensure this is done before declaring any components. By doing this, we’ll wrap Flex with the passed Provider and developers don’t have to worry about fetching the right theme and passing it on.

import { CustomizationProvider } from "@twilio-paste/core/customization";
import { Button as PasteButton } from "@twilio-paste/core/button";

Flex.setProviders({
  PasteThemeProvider: CustomizationProvider
});

Flex.AgentDesktopView.Panel1.Content.add(
  <div key="A">
     <PasteButton key="A" variant="primary">
        Paste Button
     </PasteButton>
  </div>
);

Flex.setProviders() also allows developers to pass their own custom provider which is needed to be set on the root level. They can do it as below:

Flex.setProviders({
   CustomProvider: (RootComponent) => (props) => {
       return (
           <Context.Provider value={{ test: "123" }}>
               <RootComponent {...props} />
           </Context.Provider>
       );
   }
});
 
Flex.AgentDesktopView.Panel1.Content.add(
   <Context.Consumer>
       {(value) => {
           <div>{value.foo}</div> // Will print 123
       }}
   </Context.Consumer>
);

When using Material UI for styling, it is important to wrap our plugins with a StylesProvider with a classNameGenerator that sets a productionPrefix and a seed so styles classes don't clash between plugins and Flex. The below example shows how to use a custom provider for styling Material UI components:

import { StylesProvider, createGenerateClassName } from '@material-ui/core/styles';

Flex.setProviders({
      CustomProvider: (RootComponent) => (props) => {
          return (
            <StylesProvider generateClassName={createGenerateClassName({
              productionPrefix: 'pluginXYZ',
              seed: 'pluginXYZ',
            })}>
                  <RootComponent {...props} />
              </StylesProvider>
          );
      }
});

If you would like to gradually migrate from Material UI to Twilio Paste, you may use both in a single plugin by setting both a CustomProvider and a PasteThemeProvider:

import { StylesProvider, createGenerateClassName } from '@material-ui/core/styles';
import { CustomizationProvider } from "@twilio-paste/core/customization";

Flex.setProviders({
      CustomProvider: (RootComponent) => (props) => {
          return (
            <StylesProvider generateClassName={createGenerateClassName({
              productionPrefix: 'pluginXYZ',
              seed: 'pluginXYZ',
            })}>
                  <RootComponent {...props} />
              </StylesProvider>
          );
      },
      PasteThemeProvider: CustomizationProvider
});

Flex Messaging UI V2 changes

Moving to Flex Conversations with Flex 2.x.x has enabled us to provide an even more customizable Messaging UI, and this comes with a few of changes which you may need to adjust to.

New Dynamic Component structure - MessageInputV2

The new default input component in the messaging canvas is the dynamic component MessageInputV2 . This includes the text area component and a new dynamic component, MessageInputActions , and is structured like so:

<MessageInputV2>
    <MessageInputArea key="textarea"/>
    <MessageInputActions key="actions"/>
</MessageInputV2>

MessageInputActions contains the message send button and the file attachment button (if file attachment is enabled).

You can use custom actions for this component via the add, replace, and remove methods.

New default props

MessageInputV2 has two new default props: hideSendButton and rows. These control the rendering of the send button and row height of the text area respectively. You can use hideSendButton together with returnKeySendsMessage to enable sending message on Enter.

Combined text and media messages

The SendMessage action is now capable of sending file attachments and text in the same message. Files can be passed to the SendMessage action on the attachedFiles field of its Action payload.The SendMedia action is deprecated but is still available.

Learn more about new components in the Flex UI API docs.

User and Activity controls

The user-controls child component in Flex UI 1.x.x has been split out into two new child components for the MainHeader in Flex UI 2.x.x:

• activity shows and allows the user status to be changed.
• user-controls shows the currently logged in user and allows the user to logout.

State Management Changes

As part of the upgrades to our core APIs, Flex UI 2.x.x includes the Redux Toolkit and some new APIs for managing your internal state. These tools provide some guardrails for your state management, helping you set up boilerplate code more easily and with better defaults.

We recommend using single Redux store, either let Flex UI create its own store or pass a custom store using Manager.create() API

useFlexSelector

A wrapper around Redux's useSelector method. It exposes the same API but adds some Flex validations to ensure Flex's internal state is usable. This selector is specific for working with Flex state itself. Outside of accessing Flex state, we recommend using the default useSelector.

const MyComponent = (props) => {
   const viewState = useFlexSelector(state => state.view);
   return (
       {viewState.isSideNavOpen &&
           <div>My Custom Code</div>
       }
   )
}

The selector takes the current view state for the custom component. The selector guarantees that the state being selected is safe to read and can be used in the application without side effects. This couldn’t be guaranteed with useSelector.

useFlexDispatch

A wrapper around Redux's useDispatch method. It prevents dispatches from causing side effects to Flex's state, ensuring your changes work as expected. Use this hook for interacting with Flex's state. You can use the native useDispatch method outside of Flex’s state.

const MyComponent = (props) => {
   const viewState = useFlexSelector(state => state.view);
   const dispatch = useFlexDispatch();
   return (
       {viewState.isSideNavOpen &&
               <button onClick={() => dispatch({type: 'close_side_bar'})}>My Custom Code</button>
       }
   )
}

MessageInput.defaultProps.useSeparateInputStore

The Flex UI 2.x.x no longer uses the MessageInput.defaultProps.useSeparateInputStore flag and its behavior has been deprecated. All Flex UI development must now be done with a separate Store. You can remove the flag without any repercussions.

AppConfig changes

You need to update your AppConfig structure to utilize the new config structure’s names and capabilities.

Action changes

Download Media Attachment changes

DownloadMedia action no longer requires “message” as a part of the payload. Instead, a new property “media” of type “Media” from @twilio/conversations is required.

Renamed actions

These actions were renamed to follow the action naming convention:

Teams View changes

Removed

• Removed FilterData (shouldn't be needed) and TeamFiltersPanelProps (use TeamFiltersPanelChildrenProps instead) interfaces from Flex.Supervisor.
• Removed filters props from the Component properties for TeamsView. Use TeamsView.defaultProps.filters to apply a filter.
• Removed uniqueName from TaskCanvasTabsChildrenProps.
• Removed the deprecated WorkerProfile.defaultProps.details prop. Use WorkerProfile.Content to add additional details to the worker profile panel.
• Legacy filtering in TeamsView was removed. Filters from WorkersDataTable.defaultProps.filters will still be added to the new filter panel, but the support for filter factories was dropped.
• WorkersDataTable.defaultProps.initialCompareFunction was removed. Support for sorting was added to the workers table and you can now use sortWorkers, sortCalls, and sortTasks on WorkersDataTable.defaultProps to specify the compare functions used by the workers, calls and tasks columns. For initial sorting, we've introduced a new prop, defaultSortColumn, to the WorkersDataTable where it would take the key as the value. Please refer to WorkersDataTable of the Flex UI API Reference for key details.
• WorkersDataTable.defaultProps.tablePlaceholder was removed. The message displayed when the table is empty can be modified with the TeamsViewResultsSummaryNoWorkersDisplayedTitle and TeamsViewResultsSummaryNoWorkersDisplayed templates.
• Cleaned up the WorkersDataTableChildrenProps. Only workers, selectedTask, selectedWorker, and monitoredTaskSid are now available.
• WorkersDataTable no longer forces updates every second. This could be considered breaking for customers who added columns, which contain some timers (eg. task age) and which will no longer tick every second.

Other changes

We have also cleaned up our api and renamed or remove objects and interfaces. Most of the changes should not have any impact on plugins.

Removed/renamed deprecated objects and interfaces

• UserControlsImplProps has been removed. Refer to UserControlsChildrenProps instead
• call.oldHold removed from TaskContext and state.phone.connection.onHold removed from state. Use TaskHelper.isCallOnHold(task) to get the status of the call.
• DeprecatedLoginView component removed
• DeprecatedRuntimeLoginView component removed
• state.flex.phone.connections property removed. Refer to state.flex.phone.connection instead.
• Event selectedViewChanged now only receives one argument (newViewName) and it’s not triggered on view resize anymore. To listen to view resize events, please subscribe to the viewResized event.
• ActionsImpl object has been removed. Please refer to Actions instead.
• registerGlobalStyles has been removed. Please refer to registerStyles instead
• AudioManager’s ErrorCode has been renamed to AudioErrorCode
• Actions.emit has been removed - use Actions.invokeActions instead.
• Actions.removeAllListeners has been removed - please use Actions.removeListener and provide the specific listeners you want to remove.
• Removed export of Flex.ErrorManager. This functionality has been replaced with Flex.Monitor.sendDebuggerEvent
• Removed selectionStart/selectionEnd from MessageState, MessageInputArea, MessageInput, ConversationState
• Removed show and hide methods from the ModalPopupWithEntryControl
• Changed hiddenQueueFilter to queueFilter which takes a predicate function. See "Add a Worker Directory Tabs Queue Filter" on Work with Components and Props for usage details

Removed unused objects and interfaces

• ChatModule
• ChatStateCallback
• chatReducer
• registerGlobalStyles
• StateMachineCb
• StateMachine
• initWithStrings
• Version (not VERSION)
• Initialize (from flex-core)
• DeepPartial
• NotificationManager
• withDefaultPropsUpdate
• AggregatedDataTile
• ArrayInterpolation
• FunctionInterpolation
• Interpolation
• StyledOptions
• Themed
• CreateStyled
• CreateStyledOtherComponent
• CreateStyledStatelessComponent
• StyledComponent
• StyledComponentMethods
• StyledOtherComponent
• StyledStatelessComponent,
• getBackgroundWithHoverCSS
• ThemeSupport
• Utils
• CountryManager
• Animations
• SVGContainerProps
• FrameConstants
• StyledUl
• CSSProps

Component and config changes

• TaskInfoPanel inner html styles tweaked to accommodate new design
• TaskInfoPanelContent string inner html updated
• TaskCanvasTabs resets to default task when switching between tabs
• Flag file-attachments-in-chat is deprecated
• Customizing the TaskListItem color directly is no longer possible. Please refer to addwrapper() in Work with Components and Props for customizing the component