20.08 enhancements

Review the Live Chat 20.08 enhancements for features that will benefit your organization and to understand changes that might impact your users.

The Live Chat version 20.08 is available only to BMC Helix subscribers (SaaS).

Related topics

Known and corrected issues

Release notes and notices

Deprecated and unavailable features

The following video (2:06) provides a summary of some of the new features and enhancements in Live Chat version 20.08:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/CsBnNRoTZAw

Automatically assign tickets created from Live Chat

Incidents or work orders in Smart IT that are created from Live Chat can be automatically assigned to the agent who last handled that chat conversation. This eliminates the support agents' manual efforts to assign tickets to themselves.

To learn how auto assignment works with tickets created from Live Chat conversations, see Auto assigning Live Chat tickets Open link .

To learn how to enable automatic assignment of Live Chat tickets to the logged in agent, see Configuring automatic ticket assignments Open link .

To learn how to set the default support group for a company, see Setting the default support group for a company.

Automatic assignment of tickets is supported with Smart IT and Remedy IT Service Management Suite

(Remedy ITSM) version 20.08 or later.

Dashboard for monitoring live chat activity

Live Chat administrators and supervisors can view information about support agents and the chats assigned to them from the Monitoring Dashboard.

In the dashboard, you can view information such as:

Open chats per agent.
Average time an agent spends on a chat session, Average queue time, and Average session time.
Agent assigned to a particular chat session.
How long a chat was in queue before it was accepted by a support agent.
Name of the customer who initiated a chat.

For more information about the Monitoring Dashboard, see Viewing support agents and assignments on Monitoring Dashboard.

Live Chat Monitoring Dashboard is supported with Smart IT and Remedy ITSM version 20.08 or later, and Remedy Action Request System (Remedy AR System) version 19.11 .

Access desktops remotely to solve issues during a chat

Support agents can access an end user's desktop through a remote-control screen sharing session from Live Chat to resolve the issue raised by the user. To learn how to connect to an end user's desktop, see To remotely access a desktop to solve issues during a chat.

To access end user's desktop you must have installed BMC Client Management version 20.08 and Smart IT version 19.08 or later.

Agents can set their screen name to be displayed to end users

By default, a support agent's full name is displayed to end users.

In Smart IT, support agents can set their screen name to be displayed to end users.

In BMC Helix Business Workflows, administrator can set the screen name for agents, which cannot be changed by the agents. Agents can set their screen name only if the administrator has not set it for agents.

Learn how to set your screen name at Accessing and navigating the agent console.

To set you screen name, you must have installed with Smart IT, and Remedy ITSM version 19.08 or later, and Remedy AR System version 19.11.

Improved chat transcript

The chat transcript email sent by end users has an improved subject and email body.

Email subject when the agent creates a service request on behalf of the user—Chat Transcript of Service Request ID started on chat start timestamp with timezone
Email subject when service request is not created—Chat Transcript of conversation started on chat start timestamp with timezone
Email body—An improved email body without the dash lines and appropriate spacing in the text.

The chat transcript enhancement is supported with Smart IT and Remedy ITSM version 19.08 or later and Remedy AR System version 19.11.

Open incidents and work orders In Progressive View in Smart IT

Smart IT uses the industry standard Progressive Web App technology for incidents and work orders. As a support agent, you can open incidents and work orders in Progressive View when you view them from the Smart IT live chat console.

For information about enabling the Progressive View in Smart IT, see Enabling the Progressive Web Apps screens for work orders and incidents Open link .

For more information about Progressive Views, see Progressive Views Open link in Remedy AR System documentation.

What else changed in this release

From this release, note the following significant changes in the product behavior:

Update	Product behavior in versions earlier than 20.08	Product behavior from version 20.08
Automatically assign chats to agents	The Agent Auto Accept setting did not distribute the chats evenly between agents.	The Agent Auto Accept setting is enhanced so that the incoming chats are evenly distributed between the support agents. To learn how auto-assignment works, see Automatic assignment of incoming chats.
Opening all the links to the tickets in a new tab	The links to the tickets or customer name on the Customer Information and Resources tab opened in the same tab.	All the links to the tickets or customer name on the Customer Information and Resources tab, or link displayed in the confirmation messages when a new ticket is created, now open in a new tab. This functionality ensures that the agents do not lose the context of the chat that they are working on.
Updating the Reported Source option to Chat	The Reported Source option is selected as Email when a ticket is created.	The Reported Source option is updated to Chat when an incident or work order ticket is created during a chat session. Important: The Reported Source option is supported with Smart IT version 20.08 and Remedy ITSM version 20.08.
Changing the association of a chat from one ticket to another	Support agents could not modify the association between a chat and a ticket.	Support agents can remove the association of a chat to a ticket and re-associate the chat to another ticket in an ongoing live chat session. For more information, see To remove the association of a chat to a ticket.
Chat logs are created for the Chat event.	Call logs are created if a live chat session is ended or abandoned and work orders or incidents are not created from the live chat session.	An additional Call Log Event Type called Chat is added in the SYS:Menu Items form. When a call log is created from Smart IT, an entry is made in the SMT:Smart Recorder Call Log form with Chat as the event type. Call logs are created only when the Centralized Configuration Setting parameter enableSmartRecorderCallLog is set to true. To learn how to change the value of this setting, see Centralized configuration . As an administrator, you can use this event type to generate a report of the call logs created via Live Chat.
Hiding the wait time and ticket creation messages for VIP users	There was no option to hide the wait time and ticket creation messages for VIP users.	Administrators can hide these messages from the VIP end users. However, the end users will continue to see the Service Request ID if a service request is created.