For the most recent release notes, see What's new in Hustle?
June 2019
06/19/2019
06/05/2019
May 2019
05/15/2019
April 2019
04/03/2019
04/11/2019
04/18/2019
04/30/2019
06/19/2019
Script Library GA
At long last, Admins have the ability to save scripts and utilize them across Goals which allows users to create a script library! Users have the ability to create and name their scripts, as well as delete and edit scripts currently in the library. Once created, users can apply the scripts to any Goals that they create in the future or have their script be included automatically in all future Goals! These saved scripts can be used in all parts of Hustle such as initial scripts, reply scripts and additional response scripts. What a treat and a huge time saver!
06/05/2019
Link Tracking, V3
Admins now have the ability to add their own GIFs, images and videos to a custom link when they are creating their goals while using the link tracking feature! This means that users have the ability to customize the preview links while tracking clicks on the link. How cool is that!
Account-level Organization Insights Dashboard
Account-level Admins now have the ability to see a high level view of the activity for each individual Organization within the larger Account. This feature will assist our Account-level Admins in being able to pull data on their organizations and take action where needed!
05/15/2019
Duplicating Draft Goals
Admins can now duplicate the draft goals they duplicate both within the same group or across different groups! This will be a huge time saver and allows admins to create a template goal and duplicate it across multiple groups before launch!
Deleting Goal Drafts
You read that right! Admins have the ability to delete draft goals. Say goodbye to the days of having erroneous draft goals sitting in your drafts page in the Admin panel. Talk about spring cleaning!
Opt Out Rates in Activity Page
Admins now have the ability to see the opt out rate of their goals in the Activity page! This new feature gives you even more insight into the success of your goals without having to drill down into each individual goal.
04/30/2019
Organization Activity Overview Page
We want to make Hustle management much easier over the next year and have already invested in better signup flows, overview pages and admin service controls. This week, we're gearing up to add to this experience with a new landing page for organization admins. The activity page will display recent activity in the org, such a in-progress or upcoming goals and opt out rates. This report will help guide admins on where to take action or dive in to learn more about how their organization is using text.
04/18/2019
Goal Drafts GA
Admins now have the ability to create a goal and all of it's corresponding parts (targeting, scripts, reminders etc.) and put it in a "Draft" state. This will allow for more flexibility in creating your Goals and editing them before they are launched!
You will now have access to your draft goals under the Goals Tab where you can launch once the goal is ready to go!
Goal Messaging Preview
Admins can now see a live script preview! With the ability to preview, in addition to useful tips from script analysis, our script editor now provides much more support for admins so that they can create effective and well-received scripts for their goals.
Additional Changes:
- Test Send Scripts
- Goal Drafts Beta
04/11/2019
Admin Nav Redesign For All
Today we turned on the new admin nav redesign for all clients. Beta testing generated a great response from clients and early feedback from the General Release has been positive.
Using shortcodes for Invite
On 4/8 we began using our shortcode 487853 (HUSTLE) for agent invites and have been phasing out the toll-free numbers in batches this week. Shortcodes are best used for delivery of these types of application to person messages and bring an improved delivery rate as a bonus.
Improvements to Tag Reporting
Another improvement to the Tag Report - bringing the date the tag was created into a report on this dashboard helps organizations audit older tags that are no longer needed.
Profile Page Role & Edit Capability
As part of ongoing work to help people manage their Hustle Account, we are adding a 'My Roles' feature that lets users see all Organization and Account Types they hold. Additionally, you can edit this role right on the same page.
04/03/2019
Auth0 Signup on Mobile, Admin and Web
Now all Hustle users are using Auth0 for login!
We're excited about this because we now have a more stream-lined and secure authorization experience for all users. This will also enable us to scale our login process and password management experience. Security and speed, what more could you ask for?
Tag Report Improvements
The tag report has the potential to be used to slice and dice data that client will then upload back into the system. To make it so this is easier, we made a change to split out the firstname and lastname of contacts so you can easily use the downloaded CSV.
Android Notifications Updated
Android users will need to update their app (the latest version is now on the Play Store) and confirm they have notifications enabled in their Settings. This will download the most recent update of our Android app and will level up our Android users!
Top Highlights from Q1
Multi Contact Select Bulk Actions
In order to help clients manage their contact list more effectively with improvements to search and filtering, we now offer the ability for users to deactivate, reactivate, and opt out multiple contacts at once! Our filters now allow you to filter on multiple data points in your Contact list. Once you have narrowed down your search for your Contacts through filtering or search, you can multi-select Contacts to complete the same action in bulk. You even have the ability to select all of the Contacts in your Group to complete any bulk actions as well!
Reports Landing Page
As part of making Hustle easier to use and look great, we improving how users navigate to our ever growing list of reports. In place of the sidebar, we now have stylized icons representing each report alongside a report description. This is represents an improvement in messaging, UI and UX.
Account-level Reporting
We previously launched a new Reporting screen at the organization level that displayed snazzy tiles for each new report and now we feature the same interface for Account-level reports!
Timing Report
P2P texting is still a new communications channel, and our clients often ask us for insight on what works and what doesn’t. One of their main questions is around when the best time is to message their users. We’ve now provided a new report that will answer exactly that! This is another example of using reporting to provide customized data insights that aren’t available anywhere else.
Agent Report
Our clients have long asked for help understanding their agents -- such as which are the most effective and the most productive. We now have in-product reporting that will help admins answer those questions; alongside the ability to filter by date, group and down to a single agent. And you can download the data for offline slicing and dicing!
Opt-out Report
A common request from clients has been (a) to be able understand opt-outs to a greater degree and (b) to be able easily export contacts who have opted-out via download. The export functionality in particular is long-requested as it helps clients upload Hustle opt-outs to other channels to ensure they don’t continue to contact them.
To deliver on these asks, we are shipping a new report to help clients understand opt-outs and to export the opt-outs. Additionally, we have provided filters to choose a date range, as well as being able to search the contact table view to confirm whether specifics contacts or phone numbers are opted-out.
Tag Report
It’s critical for Hustle that we provide a great return on any data that users put into our product. Tags are one area where agents input lots of context about their leads but we don’t provide any easy summaries or opportunities to act on this information. We’ve added the tag report, which provides in-product reporting on which tags are being applied and who they are being applied to (including the ability to download all leads who have been tagged with a given tag!).
Organization Duplication
Account Admins can now duplicate an organization from the Account Overview page in their Account! They can create a new organization and bring over the following settings from an existing organization:
- General settings
- Administrators
- Hours of Operation
- Tags
- Custom Fields
Link Tracking v2 - Variable Domains
We have released Link Tracking v2 where clients now have use-case specific domains available for shortening.
We think these domains are great for the following example use cases:
-
attend.events: for RSVP links or volunteering sign-ups
-
donates.us: for links to fundraising pages
-
membershp.co: for links to membership sign-up and renewal pages
-
sms.gives: also for links to fundraising pages, but uses “gives” nomenclature instead of “donates” (which is a better fit for some organizations)
You can read more about this on our blog post here: Get Valuable Data with Hustle Link Tracking
Link Tracking v2 - Custom Link Support
As part of our continuing work in link tracking, we've added the ability to track clicks on links that come from a custom field value on the contact. Customers who use a customized link per lead can still take advantage of Hustle click tracking as well!
In the past you could only track the same link for everyone in the goal. We added the ability for clients to track clicks on links that come from a custom field value on the contact. This means that customers who use a customized link per lead can use Hustle tracking and detect if someone has clicked on their customized link.
To use it, admins would first need to generate their own customized links for the leads and include that in their CSV upload as a custom field. Then, using the Share A Link goal type, select to use that custom field as the source of the link for each lead in the text and also turn on tracking. The admin can then select which domain they want to use (sms.gives or donates.us for example). Lastly, the admin would then need to add the link variable in their script.
Hustle will send a short link to the lead in the format of the domain that was selected and when a lead clicks on this link in the text, they will be redirected to their customized link.
Also, please note, if an organization does not have at least 1 custom field, this option will not appear on that section of the goal form.
For more information on the Share a Link goal type, check out: Goal type: Share a Link
Speedy Messages (Mobile and Web)
Anyone who has sent messages as a Hustle agent knows that 1) it’s a unique and exciting experience 2) our apps could be more pleasant to use. In particular, sending the initial messages in a workflow can feel painfully slow. This can lead to poor first impressions of Hustle (including in first-time trainings!).
To address this, we’ve now dramatically improved the speed of these initial sends in our mobile and web apps! This can reduce the time it takes to do a full set of initial sends by as much as 50% -- something that we think each and every agent will notice. See for yourself:
March 2019
03/29/2019
03/21/2019
03/14/2019
03/07/2019
February 2019
02/27/2019
02/21/2019
02/13/2019
02/06/2019
January 2019
01/30/2019
01/23/2019
01/16/2019
01/09/2019
03/29/2019
Link Tracking v2 - Custom Link Support
As part of our continuing work in link tracking, this week we added the ability to track clicks on links that come from a custom field value on the contact. Customers who use a customized link per lead can still take advantage of Hustle click tracking as well!
In the past you could only track the same link for everyone in the goal. This week we added the ability for clients to track clicks on links that come from a custom field value on the contact. This means that customers who use a customized link per lead can use Hustle tracking and detect if someone has clicked on their customized link.
To use it, admins would first need to generate their own customized links for the leads and include that in their CSV upload as a custom field. Then, using the Share A Link goal type, select to use that custom field as the source of the link for each lead in the text and also turn on tracking. The admin can then select which domain they want to use (sms.gives or donates.us for example). Lastly, the admin would then need to add the link variable in their script.
Hustle will send a short link to the lead in the format of the domain that was selected and when a lead clicks on this link in the text, they will be redirected to their customized link.
Also, please note, if an organization does not have at least 1 custom field, this option will not appear on that section of the goal form.
For more information on the Share a Link goal type, check out: Goal type: Share a Link
Timing Report
P2P texting is still a new communications channel, and our clients often ask us for insight on what works and what doesn’t. One of their main questions is around when the best time is to message their users. We’ve now provided a new report that will answer exactly that! This is another example of using reporting to provide customized data insights that aren’t available anywhere else.
Warn on empty targeting when using custom fields
Adding a custom field to a script previously created some confusion for admins as it had an impact on the targeting of the goal but this was not clearly indicated in the targeting widget of the goal form. Today we are fixing this by updating the targeting count when a custom field is added to a script and displaying that custom field as part of the overall targeting spec! Users will no longer silently target zero leads just because they added the wrong custom field to their script.
03/21/2019
Case Insensitive Search on Contact Name in Conversation View
"Using conversation view to quickly find a specific contacts thread of messages previously required you use case-sensitive search, meaning that if the contact name was "Mike Smith" you had to type "Mike" to get the search results you wanted -- "mike" would return zero results.
Today, we are enhancing the search functionality in Conversation View by making contact name search matching case-insensitive. Search will also now return partial matches and matches on last name. 🎉
Link Tracking v2 - Variable Domains
Link Tracking was released to GA ~2 weeks ago and it’s had very rapid adoption. As part of the continuing focus in link tracking, we are releasing Link Tracking v2 where clients now have use-case specific domains available for shortening.
We think these domains are great for the following example use cases:
-
attend.events: for RSVP links or volunteering sign-ups
-
donates.us: for links to fundraising pages
-
membershp.co: for links to membership sign-up and renewal pages
-
sms.gives: also for links to fundraising pages, but uses “gives” nomenclature instead of “donates” (which is a better fit for some organizations)
You can read more about this on our blog post here: Get Valuable Data with Hustle Link Tracking
03/14/2009
Multi-select - select all contacts
Finishing up the multi select work, you can now bulk deactivate/reactivate or opt out all contacts in a group. Now clients can manage their own bulk opt outs!
03/07/2019
Custom Fields Sort Order
As part of ongoing work in managing contacts, we are rolling out the ability to sort the contact list on a custom field value.
Coming soon you’ll be able to “Select All” contacts to apply bulk actions.
Link Tracking GA
Link Tracking is coming out of a highly successful beta period where colleges were seeing ~6% Click-Thru on links shared in SMS (way better than email!).
The feature is currently available as part of the “Share a Link” goal and for starters clients are able to share links that’ll be replaced by the donates.us domain (with more domains coming soon!).
As leads click the link, we’ll track those clicks on the goal stats page.
We've got additional domains roadmapped. This will give Admins the ability to select shortened domains that match other use-cases besides donations such as for membership drives, general giving, and event attendance.
02/27/2019
BB Luminate Online launched!
We launched our first big new integration of 2019! Check out this great blog post on the Blackbaud Luminate Online integration on our blog!
Intelligent Script Suggestions
This feature provides feedback on scripts are doing against Hustle best practices, and the user can click each of the best practices to learn the impact of following or not following the specific best practice.
Here’s an example of a script that does a great job matching up to Hustle Best Practices:
This script breaks down all guidance on best practices and each best practice has a dropdown to give more information on why it's important!
Create custom fields on CSV upload
Historically, Hustle hasn’t been very forgiving when you forget to add a custom field during contact list upload. Users have had to stop whatever they’re doing, go to the custom fields page, create the field, and then re-upload the list of contacts. That’s a lot of steps!
Now we’ve made that process much simpler by enabling custom field creation directly on the contact upload page!
Bulk opt-out reasons
Users can apply an opt-out reason during the bulk opt-out in the Contacts tab -- which enhances the power of bulk actions and saves time when opting out a large number of contacts in the Admin panel!
Account-level reporting
We previously launched a new Reporting screen at the organization level that displayed snazzy tiles for each new report and now we feature the same interface for Account-level reports!
02/21/2019
Organization Duplication
Account Admins can now duplicate an organization from the Account Overview page in their Account! They can create a new organization and bring over the following settings from an existing organization:
- General settings
- Administrators
- Hours of Operation
- Tags
- Custom Fields
Removed Admin ability to change Agent name and email
This change is mostly aesthetic as the Admin's ability to change the user record did not reflect login credentials, only display. This is in preparation to allow Agents to update and manage their own information, coming soon. All email and phone number changes will still be managed by the Support team, as detailed here.
Additional Changes
- Speedy Messages (web)
- Manage Group table is now sortable by Group name
02/13/2019
Edit Multiple Contacts
In order to help clients manage their contact list more effectively with improvements to search and filtering, we now offer the ability for users to deactivate, reactivate, and opt out multiple contacts at once! Our filters now allow you to filter on multiple data points in your Contact list. Once you have narrowed down your search for your Contacts through filtering or search, you can multi-select Contacts to complete the same action in bulk.
Mobile UI Improvements
We anchored the “Send” button on mobile to make it easier send messages. Changed the progress bar changed to green for more fun! Finally, we upgraded the text message boxes for a more sleek modern look!
02/06/2019
Group details and table improvements
To help clients more easily navigate Hustle we are going to start uplevelling the many tables across the Hustle application, To begin with, we’ve included the created date and who created the Organizations at the Account Level; And we’ve done the same thing with groups.
Speedy messages (mobile)
Anyone who has sent messages as a Hustle agent knows that 1) it’s a unique and exciting experience 2) our apps could be more pleasant to use. In particular, sending the initial messages in a workflow can feel painfully slow. This can lead to poor first impressions of Hustle (including in first-time trainings!). To address this, we’ve now dramatically improved the speed of these initial sends in our mobile apps! This can reduce the time it takes to do a full set of initial sends by as much as 50% -- something that we think each and every agent will notice. See for yourself:
We’re currently working on bringing this same initial send speed to our web agent experience -- then we’ll explore extending it to replies as well.
Updated visual assets in the App Store and Google Play Store
Both mobile platforms received a facelift in the Preview images in their respective stores. Now when clients visit them, they see current screenshots, not screenshots from 3 years ago. See below for new, updated app-store assets for that one time that Dunder Mifflin used Hustle.
The above 2 launches represent the first steps in a continued investment in making the Hustle iOS/Android app faster and easier to adopt and use.
Tag Report
It’s critical for Hustle that we provide a great return on any data that users put into our product. Tags are one area where agents input lots of context about their leads but we don’t provide any easy summaries or opportunities to act on this information. Today, we’ve added the tag report, which provides in-product reporting on which tags are being applied and who they are being applied to (including the ability to download all leads who have been tagged with a given tag!).
Reports Landing Page
As part of making Hustle easier to use and look great, we improving how users navigate to our ever growing list of reports. In place of the sidebar, we now have stylized icons representing each report alongside a report description. This is represents an improvement in messaging, UI and UX.
Taken together, this new landing page + report represent another step towards making data a core differentiator for Hustle. We’ll be launching more reports, bringing a similar design pattern to the Account level and investing in delivering more value earlier in a client’s Hustle usage.
New Script Editor
We launched the improved script editor to all clients (was previously in beta)! As you can see below, the new script editor looks great, has smooth performance and includes a better emoji picker. ✌
Before:
After:
Stay tuned for more great features coming soon!
Improved error states on mobile
We’ve improved the way we handle error states on mobile! Rather than being left hanging by a spinner (or another error state), users will now see a nice error UI that prompts them with some next steps:
In order to make sure as few people see this screen as possible, we’ve also improved our error tracking. This should be invaluable to help us find new ways to make our apps more reliable.
Eliminate partial goal creations
In the past, when admins clicked the button to create a goal, the backend would sometimes fail during creation. This would lead to lots of weird user-facing behavior (goals that only sort-of worked) that eroded user trust in our frontend and wasted hours of diagnosis by support and engineering. This would happen 10+ times a week -- an intolerably large number. We’ve now made our goal creation process more robust so that users will not see partially created goals in the UI any more.
Hiding Bulk Imports
Bulk imports have represented a pain point for our clients -- they are difficult to use and have a high error rate. We are removing Bulk Imports from the side navigation porting of Settings (please note, the bulk import URL will still resolve). The very few clients using Bulk Imports have minimal usage (only 12 orgs in the last 2 months attempted an upload) and are not sad about the functionality being deprecated in favor of more reliable CSV uploads.
Web emoji keyboard
Finally, you asked for it and you got it… we now have an emoji keyboard on web! No more memorizing awkward Mac keyboard shortcuts :)
Additional Changes
- Android SDK Update
- Link Tracking beta release
01/30/2019
Phone number releases from 60-day inactive groups
Earlier this week, we continued the process of informing clients via email and an in-product banner about deactivating groups that hadn’t sent or received a message in more than 60 days.
01/23/2019
CSV Upload Improvements
We’ve had a long-standing issue where the list upload process is unreliable and provides minimal error-messaging to clients (often clients would end up at a blank white screen). Today we are taking steps to improve this experience.
-
Firstly, we are increasing the size of files that you can upload. Previously our uploader would fail on files above 10 MB, now we are able to accept uploads as large at 50MB.
- Secondly, we are improving our error messaging, users should no longer land at a white screen when there is a failure;
- Finally, we are continuing to invest engineering resources to improve the reliability & usability of this very important flow that the majority of clients currently use (so expect to hear more about uploads!)
For context, focusing on non-profits and higher education clients, ~70% of all contacts uploaded by these clients were done via our upload tool. One final note, we are continuing to implement the limit of 100,000 for contacts in groups. Files that have more than 100,000 lines will encounter an error providing guidelines on next steps they can take.
Opt-out Report
A common request from clients has been (a) to be able understand opt-outs to a greater degree and (b) to be able easily export contacts who have opted-out via download. The export functionality in particular is long-requested as it helps clients upload Hustle opt-outs to other channels to ensure they don’t continue to contact them.
To deliver on these asks, we are shipping a new report to help clients understand opt-outs and to export the opt-outs. Additionally, we have provided filters to choose a date range, as well as being able to search the contact table view to confirm whether specifics contacts or phone numbers are opted-out.
This represents the second report we’ll launch this month, and it won’t be the last.
Removing Unused and Broken UX
- Removing Account Feedback Prompt
This prompt was in place during the beta period of the migration to Accounts. It’s no longer needed as we are well past Accounts being in beta. We are removing this prompt; but we’ll be retaining the functionality should we want to reintroduce it elsewhere in the admin application.
- Removing User Profile Email settings
We are removing two checkboxes that individual users could use to (a) Get Notifications on completion of exports; and (b) Receive weekly updates on goal progress. Why are we removing these? ...Well because they didn’t do anything at all and were likely to confuse users. We’ll be revisiting how we use email as we move through Q1.
Additional Changes
- Blackbaud Luminate beta release
01/16/2019
Fix Alignment and Styling in goal stats
Before, we had an alignment bug that was highly visible to almost anyone using the product:
After, we have a nice, clean alignment!
Fixed Export Button to be a real button
Remember when the “Start new export” wasn’t a real button, but instead was a link (that didn’t even show up as clickable when you hovered your cursor over it)?. ...No, we can’t remember that either.
01/09/2019
First come, first serve duration setting
Customers (particularly those with call centers) have long asked for flexibility in how Hustle reroutes first come, first serve (FCFS) leads that weren’t responded to. Admins now can now reroute FCFS leads as quickly as 5 min after the message is received, or as long as 24hrs after!
Agent Report
Our clients have long asked for help understanding their agents -- such as which are the most effective and the most productive. We now have in-product reporting that will help admins answer those questions; alongside the ability to filter by date, group and down to a single agent. And you can download the data for offline slicing and dicing!
Additional Changes
- Enhanced CTAs on Agent and Admin Login on Web & Mobile
- Fixed Account Dropdown UI in Agent Web
- Improved Script Editor beta release