Today we are happy to announce the latest release to the Messenger platform. This release includes the Persona API an update to the customer chat plugin and more. Let’s get right to the details.
Sometimes, like when your bot switches between automation and a live agent, a single representation of your bot isn’t enough. The new Persona API, now in open beta, allows developers to introduce “personas” into their Messenger experiences, making it easy to switch the in-thread user icon and display name for your bot on the fly. The persona icon and name are fully customizable by you. This enables many common uses of the Messenger Platform, such as customer support, where a bot may want to visually show that the person is now chatting with a live agent. A bot may only invoke one persona at a time.
Check out the Persona API docs for full usage details.
Many of you have told us you want an easier way to integrate the customer chat plugin into WordPress sites, and in this release we’re delivering. The official customer chat WordPress plugin is now available on wordpress.org, making it simple allow visitors to chat with your Messenger bot on your WordPress site.
Before now, bots that used message tags to send messages outside the 24+1 standard messaging window were only allowed to send generic templates. After a review, we’ve lifted this restriction as of this release, so now you can send any template or just text in a tagged message. We hope this opens up new possibilities for how you send non-promotional messages via tags. Please note that all messages must continue to adhere to the specific use cases allowed for each tag and follow all relevant Messenger Platform policies.
In addition to updating the ways you can use tags, we’ve added a BUSINESS_PRODUCTIVITY tag. For full details on the allowed use cases for this tag, visit the Message Tags documentation.
In February, we changed the permission to send non-promotional content as subscription messages from an app-level to a Page-level permission. Subscription messages enable a business or developer the ability to send such messages outside of the 24+1 policy. Please remember that if your bot was granted permission at the app level, you must request and be approved for the new Page-level permission by December 31, 2018. This applies to all Pages, and we encourage you to migrate to the Page-level permission as soon as possible to avoid any disruption to your ability to send subscription messages.
For more information on how to migrate from app-level to Page-level subscription messaging permission, see Transitioning from App-level to Page-level Subscription Messaging.
Question? Comments? We’re always looking for new ideas on how we can give you everything you need to build great experiences on Messenger that people love, so let us know!
P.S. Don’t forget to join the Messenger Platform Developer Community group for answers to common questions and to chat with other developers.
Messenger Developer Blog