Release of the new Content Designer 

Version 24.0 is a complete overhaul of the Email, Web, and Print content designers. This includes a brand new design, new functionalities, and an entire rewrite of the ‘behind the scenes’ engine, which has allowed us to introduce new features and many performance and stability improvements. 

Version 24.0 unifies the design language across the entire Agillic channel offering. To match the new design, we have rebuilt the Content Designers on modern new technologies. You will experience significant improvements in page loading times and general responsiveness of the user interface.

The new Content Designer in details 

Introducing a variety of new features

The new Content Designer comes with a variety of new features. All new features revolve around improving your experience when working in Agillic to ensure seamless navigation and improved productivity. 

Quality of life improvements 

We have added a search functionality allowing you to search for items across folders. This includes all content trees across the platform including for promotion content, and content/library blocks. A drag & drop functionality in the content trees has been implemented, which enables you to easily drag items and folders in order to reposition them. 

It’s now possible to discard any changes made between saves. When you have made changes to any content, you are now able to discard the changes and revert back to the last saved version. When you have made changes to the content, a button to discard your changes will appear next to the save button.

Quick format text via hotkeys to enable/disable bold/Italic/underline . This is implemented in any field where italic, bold and underline is supported.

Dynamic Content Blocks and Data 

Blocks can now be added and repositioned within the canvas by dragging and dropping them. This is an addition to moving them up and down with arrows, which is still possible. All new block indicators will show you exactly what type of block type is inserted into your canvas. This enables you to easily manage and organise the structure of the email.

We want to enable you to easily utilise your data in communication to create personalised content. The new content designer consists of an entirely no-code interface for inserting dynamic content fields, and you can easily select and insert fields from dedicated buttons. 

New Block Panel 

The new Content Designer consists of an entirely new block selector. Adding blocks or library blocks is as easy as expanding the block panel and drag-and-dropping in the block onto the canvas. To help you find exactly the content block you are looking for, we’ve added a search functionality covering both blocks and library blocks. 

The block panel will automatically close when you click anywhere outside of the panel, allowing you to focus on the canvas. In addition, when  dragging a block from the block panel, the canvas will autoscroll to the first valid drop area for the specific block, making it easy and smooth to insert the block. 

New Block Type

The new Content Designer includes a new block type called Target Group Blocks, which is a much simpler way to do block segmentation by just adding a Target Group to any block. The block will be shown to any recipient included in the Target Group. This type of blocks is separated from Variant Group blocks (the old Multi Content blocks) and are therefore an easy to use addition to blocks. 

New Condition Editor Experience 

The condition editor in the new content designer has been redesigned with a focus on user friendliness. In particular, working with dates and timestamps has been greatly simplified, featuring visual aids in the form of a date range indicator. 

New Functionality to Library Blocks 

When inserting library blocks into your content you now have the option to always detach it. This setting allows you to easily change the content of the library block to match the exact communication you are setting up. 

All saved library blocks are now moved to their own space, completely disconnected from Assets and Templates. The overall experience with working with library blocks has gotten all the new experiences and tools from the new content designer, so when you work with saved blocks, you will be familiar with the experience. 

Improved editing experience  for Text Resources

It’s now possible to change the background colour for a rich text field in text resources. As default the canvas colour is white, so in cases where you wish to use white text, you can easily change the canvas colour to black. The background colour will only change while editing, and will not be saved with the content. 

Improved experience working with Promotions 

In addition to having the ability to ‘Expand all’, switching between different Propositions in the block panel the canvas will autoscroll to the selected one. This enables you to easily see all Propositions, or focus on a specific proposition. Clicking ‘Edit content’ on a Promotion field for a Proposition will navigate you directly to the Promotion Content editor and focus the selected Promotion Field.

Promotion Fields as part of links and image sources: Links and images can now use a combination of static fields and ‘plain text’ promotion fields.

Improved Preview and Testing Tools 

We understand the importance of previewing and testing your communication before it’s sent out to customers. The preview and test tools have therefore expanded with additional features. 

Preview and test allows you to select test recipients directly from a Target group in order view your content based on a specific recipient's data. Selected recipients and test email addresses are being saved in the browser so testing and previewing multiple times is an easy and smooth process. 

When testing subject line tests you are now able to test all variants in one go. The ‘Test send’ email functionality sends an email for each of your Subject Line Test variants. The same is possible when previewing the email, as all subject line variants are visible. 

Attachments of an email are now included in test send and preview. You are able to easily verify all types of attachments by just previewing or sending a test email. The attachments will open in a new tab when clicked in preview mode. If the attachment includes dynamic data, the attachment will show the correct data from the test profile chosen. 

When previewing an email it’s easy to select different language versions combined with any test recipient. A new warning has been added showing whether the selected test recipient has the language version you are currently previewing. 

If a test send of an email fails we understand the importance of knowing exactly why. The error message for when a test send fails due to an invalid attachment (could be due to a wrong format) has therefore been improved. This allows you to easily fix the error and send a test again. 

When previewing your email, it’s now possible to preview it on a mobile device. This allows you to identify if column layouts shrink as intended on smaller screen sizes, or if text lengths need  to be reduced to improve the layout.

User Friendly Template Designer 

The template designer has had a major overhaul with several new features added. The new features consist of: 

• Syntax highlighting: This allows you to get an overview of your template code much easier. 
• Auto-completion of Agillic-specific attributes: This has been added along with inline documentation and links to the full documentation. 
• Source map: It's now easier for you to gauge all the lines affected by a search. 
• Code groups: This means you now have support for folding entire groups of code while editing. 
• Command Palette: This has been added with a limited set of options available (https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/userinterface#_command-palette). 
• Error indicators: This has been added to each line with an error in order to make it visible for you where changes are needed. 
• Meta data: Date, time and username will be added on the last commit. 
• Mobile preview: It’s now possible to preview the template in mobile view. 

Improvements to existing features 

Changes have been made to existing features in order to make sure everything lives up to the new standard of the content designer. 

Multi Content Blocks is now Variant Group blocks 

‘Multi Content’ has been renamed to ‘Variant Group’ that allows you to easily add a number of different variants shown to recipients based on Target Groups ensuring that only relevant blocks will be shown to the recipient. Warnings will let you know if any variants without a Target Group set exist. 

Variant Groups are required to have a minimum of two blocks contained. You can easily add blocks from the block panel to create new variants. If you wish to reorder blocks within the Variant Group block you can easily do so by dragging and dropping them. 

Subject Line Test Settings moved to Email Editor 

The subject line test settings are now visible within the email editor instead of in the flows module. Directly when you set up your subject line variants you can define how the subject line test should be evaluated. 

Easier and more user friendly linking to Web Pages 

The feature called ‘Menu items’ in the old content designer has been removed. In order to link to Web Pages you simply just link to the page itself. When creating a web page the status as ‘anonymous’ and ‘user’ are now controlled by which folder the page is located in. ‘Anonymous’ is now called ‘Unknown Visitors’ and ‘User’ are called ‘Known Visitors’. 

We have simplified the experience of working with Agillic Web Pages by moving core functionality such as the ability to define the ‘web address’ of the Agillic Web page directly into the Content Designer. 

Removed functionalities  

Some functionalities have been removed and will therefore not be a part of the 24.0 release. The following functionalities are removed: 

• Date-Based Email Test: Sending a test email based on a specific date. 
• Litmus: The Litmus integration has been removed, but users can easily send the test email directly to Litmus for testing. 
• Multiple Subject Line Test configurations: Due to the change to how Subject Line settings are made, it is no longer possible to have multiple subject line test settings for the same Email.
• Live Simulation: Live simulation for a specific Target Group of an email. 
• Highlight Editable Areas: The option to toggle “Highlight Editable Areas” has been removed. The email is in preview always shown without showing where the editable areas are. 
• No change of block layout after creation: When the Library Block has been created it’s no longer possible to replace it with a different block layout from the block selector.
• Promotion Inline Editing: Editing promotions directly through the editors has been removed.  Users will instead have to create and edit their Promotion Content in the Promotion area. The Content Designers now feature deep links to the Promotion content editor. 
• Forced Proposition: The functionality of showing a specific proposition no matter what conditions recipients have been removed. 
• Live Simulation: Presenting propositions and calculating recipients to each proposition. 
• Side-effects: The option to trigger side-effects when recipients land on an Agillic has been removed. Users can instead use side-effects through events. 
• Same page for Unknown and Known Visitors: Because we have removed menu items, it will not be possible to have the same page for known and unknown visitors. With this left out users can better tailor web page experiences to each segment.
• Continuous re-evaluation: Continuous re-evaluation when inserting a Promotion on a Web Page. 
• Worklog: Worklog throughout the platform. 
  
• Favorites: The functionality “Add to favorites”. 
• Inactive: The option to mark an item as inactive/active. 
• Creating Target Group/Person Data through the Content Designers: Creating both Target Groups and Person Data through the content designers has been removed. Users can instead create those items in their respective work areas. 

Detailed description of all new and changed functionalities 

If you want to read a more in dept description of all new and changed functionalities to the new content designer, see this article: Content Designer in details: New and Changed Functionalities  

Let us know what you think

We are excited to know what you think of the new Content Designer! Feel free to send your feedback to product.feedback@agillic.com