Product changelog and announcements

We have updated all Flex projects that use Automatic Updates to Flex UI 1.14.

This Flex UI release brings a number of usability improvements and new features to Flex Messaging:

• Browser Notifications: Flex now sends a browser notification when the Flex window is not in focus and the agent is assigned a new task or receives a new message.
• Markdown: Added support for markdown markup language for WebChat.
• WebChat Customer Presence: Indicator for WebChat tasks signaling whether the customer is still online.
• Typing Indicator in Task List: Added typing indicators in the Task List specific for WebChat.

For a full changelog, visit the Flex UI release notes.

Reminder: You can pin to individual versions of the Flex UI or manage your Automatic Updates within the Flex Admin UI.

The Real-Time Queues View is now available within Flex. Available to Flex supervisors and admins, this view displays real-time task and agent activity per queue. You can monitor the number of pending tasks, longest wait times, and available agents to track your contact center activity.

For more details, visit our user documentation. Our programmability guide details how to enable and customize the dashboard.

Single Sign-On (SSO) for Flex is now Generally Available. Flex SSO is used to login each user into the Flex UI and it handles the authentication and authorization of all requests from Flex to Twilio's APIs.

Breaking Change: We have now deprecated our original SSO Login URL (preview.twilio.com/iam), and we recommend all users update their SSO configuration. Details on the required configuration changes are available in our migration guide.

Note: An earlier version of this update indicated the deprecated login URL would be disabled on April 1, 2020.

Flex now supports Single Sign-On Identity Providers that disallow iframed logins. For enhanced security, some services prevent accessing their login forms if they are loaded from within another webpage. If you embed Flex within another application, you can now safely launch your SSO login from a dedicated popup window and avoid iframe restrictions.

You can enable the 'Login Using Popup' feature and set your Single Sign-On configuration within the Twilio Console.

You can now use Flex Plugin Builder from within the Twilio CLI. The Twilio CLI allows you to manage your Twilio resources from your terminal or command prompt, and now it can trigger commands from the Flex Plugin Builder to create, test, and deploy your Flex plugins.

Visit our docs to get started with the CLI's Flex integration.

Flex Administrators can now enable pilot and beta features within their Flex instance through the new Pre-Release Features Page in the Flex administrator view. Most Flex UI releases include a number of features and improvements that are enabled for all customers. This page lets you try out new features in Flex before they are Generally Available.

Pilot and Beta features are not covered by Twilio Support Plans or SLAs. You can learn more about support for pre-release features in our Help Center. Details on how to enable these features are available in our Pre-Release Features Guide.

This release of Flex UI and WebChat UI bring a number of usability improvements and new features to Flex Messaging:

• Browser Notifications: Flex now sends a browser notification when the Flex window is not in focus and the agent is assigned a new task or receives a new message.
• Markdown: Added support for markdown markup language for WebChat.
• WebChat Customer Presence: Indicator for WebChat tasks signaling whether the customer is still online.
• Typing Indicator in Task List: Added typing indicators in the Task List specific for WebChat.

Other notable changes in this release include:

• Improved Notifications API with browser notifications and actions support
• Support for double-byte characters (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) for WebChat message input

For a full changelog, visit our Flex UI release notes and WebChat UI release notes

The Flex Plugin Builder v3 is now Generally Available. This release enables you to build and deploy your plugins directly from the command line interface by leveraging the Functions & Assets API. This allows you to integrate your plugin development within a CI/CD pipeline.

You must update existing plugin repositories to take advantage of the new deployment options. These details can be found within our migration guide.

We have updated all Flex projects that use Automatic Updates to Flex UI 1.13.

This Flex UI release introduces new notifications for call transfer failures, minor fixes to how we handle custom chat tasks, and UI performance improvements.

For a full changelog, visit the Flex UI release notes.

Reminder: You can pin to individual versions of the Flex UI or manage your Automatic Updates within the Flex Admin UI.

You can now configure Flex Flows message handling within the Twilio Console with two new behaviors:

• Direct to TaskRouter
• External Webhook

You can use these behaviors to setup outbound messaging use cases or to handle your messages outside of Studio. Learn more about managing your messaging configuration in our Flex Messaging Developer Guides.