Release Notes and Publications for 2020

Article Contents

• Release Notes and Changelog
• Published Help Center Articles

13 November 2020:
Two-Factor
Authentication
Now Available

SharpSpring now supports two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication security provides an additional layer of protection for your account.

SharpSpring's two-factor authentication works together with applicable authenticator applications to generate security tokens.

When passwords and security tokens are used together, it becomes much more difficult to lose control of an account.

02 November 2020:
Ad Attribution
Now Available

You can now make use of the information you receive when leads interact with your ads. You can use ad clicks as triggers in workflows, as a list population method, as a way to weight lead scores, and as a way to create or populate campaigns.

02 November 2020:
Audience Syncing
Now Available

You can now create audiences in Perfect Audience from existing SharpSpring lists. Additionally, you can sync information contained in these lists between SharpSpring and PerfectAudience. This is done by syncing the SharpSpring list with a site in Perfect Audience.

26 October 2020:
Recurring Action
Groups Now Available

Recurring action groups are now available. Recurring action groups let you schedule an action group to a lead that will execute on a recurring basis.

This means that you can create an action group that, on a given date, will schedule and send birthday emails, subscription reminders, and other recurring events.

13 October 2020:
Email Editor
Elements Updated

The Email Editor has been updated to include three new elements. These elements—spacers, dividers, and social media services—can each be modified to suit your needs.

SharpSpring's billing platform has been updated. The billing platform now emphasizes clarity and transparency. In addition, the billing platform's updates simplifies the billing process as a whole. 

The campaigns feature has been updated. In addition, campaign attribution methods have been expanded.

Campaign metrics, attribution data, and other information can also now be gathered in an updated campaign report.

SharpSpring's Conversion Goals feature lets you select and track custom fields. These tracked fields can then be used as a place to begin converting more leads.

With tracked custom fields and goals, you can build business-specific funnels. This can help you to better understand your marketing materials' impact and provide insight into which are closing more deals and driving sales.

SharpSpring has modified its top toolbar. The Sales and Marketing menus are now grouped together, and they are joined by the Contacts menu.

For the most part, features located under the Sales and Marketing menus with the previous iteration of the navigation bar will still be located within the two menus. Contact-based features now will be located in the Contacts menu.

Global Search, User Settings, the Launchpad, and the Client Management Console all function as they did in the previous iteration of the navigation bar. The New menu has been updated and is now represented by the    icon, but its functionality remains the same.

White label options for SharpSpring have been updated with the release of the new navigation bar.

With the previous iteration of the navigation bar, system color options were locked behind CSS coding.

That has been changed, and you can now change system color theming by manually selecting colors.

With the release of the new navigation bar, feature file paths in certain help articles may be outdated. The documentation team is working to update file paths to their new location.

Be aware that while file path location in documentation may not be updated immediately, the core information in the individual articles, including procedures, is unaffected.

The Visual Form Styler has been updated to include support for column formatting in forms.

You can drag-and-drop your fields and elements into columns in a row. 

This allows for more interesting design choices and is a way to better group certain kinds of field information. 

In the coming weeks, you will no longer see How Did You Hear About Us? functionality in the platform. This is a direct result of larger improvements being made to campaigns.

According to partner feedback and app usage data, SharpSpring has learned that most users do not make use of the How Did You Hear About Us? functionality. More than that, when it is used, other attribution methods tend to override it.

Even with the loss of How Did You Hear About Us? functionality, you will not lose any valuable data about your campaigns. That will still be available with visual workflows and custom fields.

Although How Did You Hear About Us? functionality is going away, SharpSpring is laying the groundwork for new improvements to campaigns and attribution reporting in the platform. These improvements and features will be released soon.

SharpSpring's email preview feature has been updated. Preview emails allow you to see how an email will appear to a recipient who is viewing the email in your email client.

While preview emails are not actually sent to recipients, you will be able to view the sent email in the same way that the recipient would.

The My Stuff dashboard is now available. With the My Stuff dashboard in the Launchpad, you can quickly manage and view notifications and preferences in your instance.

My Stuff is where information is displayed when certain events occur. These events range from wide-scale events, such as a SharpSpring feature release, to more minor events, such as a finished List Import.

You can now enable a setting that will filter out certain clicks and opens for your emails. When enabled, this setting will filter out bot and spam detection behavior from registering as email opens and clicks.

You can now automatically import leads collected from Facebook Lead Ads forms into SharpSpring. This will allow these leads to be treated like leads collected from SharpSpring forms or Native forms.

Additionally, these leads will show their form submission on the Life of the Lead. They can also be added to a campaign, making them more accessible for automation and lead scoring. 

The form editor has been updated. It is now the Visual Form Styler. The Visual Form Styler offers a way to see your design changes in real time. The Visual Form Styler deals with how you can configure your form fields, buttons, and styles.

You can now create and use chatbots in SharpSpring. Chatbots are an automated communication service that can quickly and effectively navigate users to the solutions for their problems.

They allow users to search for answers about your content, and they provide a series of answers and means of collecting data.

Given the growing need for marketing or sales teams to work remotely, SharpSpring now provides direct video communications.

Video Calls provide a quick and convenient way to initiate a peer-to-peer (P2P) call with both audio and video to leads or your team members—all directly from SharpSpring.

SharpSpring's Launchpad consolidates data from various sections of the platform and displays them in a series of dashboards.

You can customize these dashboards with custom report widgets, which can let you see lead, opportunity, and campaign data all in one location.

The Custom Reports feature has received several visual updates. These updates have been made in order to enhance your experience with creating custom reports.

Tasks have been updated. When completing a task, you can mark the task as complete and then create a new task with lead information carried over from the completed task.

You can now connect your SharpSpring account with a Perfect Audience account. Connecting the two platforms will provide you with a single sign-on (SSO) account. This account links the two platforms, and you can log into both with the single account.

Connecting SharpSpring with Perfect Audience will grant access to retargeting, lookalike audiences, and much more.

Calling features in SharpSpring have been upgraded.

The new Sales Dialer feature allows you to call contacts and record conversations.

Call information and recordings are saved to a contact's record.

SharpSpring's custom reports are designed to give you all the information you need to determine how your overall sales are progressing.

Custom reports are created using a library of widgets, each focused on a different piece of data.

These widgets can be mixed and matched as you see fit, resulting in reporting with data customized to your liking. 

December

• Using Ads Reports
• Using the Ads Dashboard
• Configuring Ads Notification Settings

November

• Syncing Audiences
• Using Ad Attribution
• Using Two-Factor Authentication
• Understanding Triggers, Filters, and Actions in Automation

October

• Using Layout and Element Blocks in Emails
• Adding Images to Emails
• Adding Text to Emails
• Adding Buttons to Emails
• Adding Space to Emails
• Adding Dividers to Emails
• Adding Social Media Services to Emails
• Connecting WPForms
• Using Recurring Action Groups

September

• Creating Campaigns
• Configuring Campaign Attribution Settings
• Creating Campaign Attribution Reports
• Using Conversion Goals

• My Stuff Overview

• Troubleshooting Failed Charge Error Messages
• Connecting Facebook Lead Ads with SharpSpring

• Creating Form Buttons
• Configuring Form Designs

• Launchpad Overview
• Using Video Calls
• Creating Chatbots
• Configuring Chatbot Workflows
• Configuring Chatbot Live Chat Settings
• Understanding Chatbot Reports
• Using Chatbot Actions
• Available Configurable Chatbot Actions

• Understanding the Billing Overview

• Adding and Managing Perfect Audience Client Accounts
• Understanding Perfect Audience Billing
• Setting Up Perfect Audience Through SharpSpring
• Using the File Manager
• Adding Auto-Responder Emails to SharpSpring Forms
• Using Custom Reports
• List of Custom Report Widgets
• Sales Dialer Overview
• Using the Sales Dialer
• Configuring Sales Dialer Settings
• Reviewing Call Recordings and Transcriptions
• Sales Dialer Activity Report Overview
• Understanding Consent and Recording Laws
• Configuring Services and Limits Settings
• Countries Eligible to Use the Billing Platform