New Features & Announcements

With the new Answers Hitchhikers Theme 1.26 and Answers Search UI SDK 1.12, we’ve added new feedback buttons, WCAG support, bug fixes, and more.

You can find this theme version’s updates below:

• Feedback Buttons on Theme Cards : You now have the ability to add thumbs up and thumbs down feedback buttons to all entity cards.
• Send New Attributes with Analytics Events on Thumbs Up / Down : We’ve added entity ID (among others) to the attributes that we pass for any thumbs up / down clicks, so you can associate clicks with a specific entity (on both Direct Answers and regular cards).
• SDK Support for Token and the Visitor : We have added support for passing a jwt in the authorization header and passing visitor information to analytics; more to come on these features with the release of Consumer Auth in our upcoming Winter Release!
• Additional WCAG Support : New pagination controls, focus states, and more have been added to improve accessibility
• Bug Fixes

Looking to upgrade to this version? It is very important to read this post for instructions and upgrade considerations.

Experience Training allows you to provide feedback on Featured Snippets produced by Document Search . Previously, you could approve or reject snippets identified by the Extractive QA algorithm. Now, you also have the ability to modify a snippet. If the AI algorithm identifies the incorrect portion of text from your entity, you can select a different portion of text to be used as the featured snippet for the query going forward. Experience Training both corrects specific queries and provides feedback so the AI can get smarter over time.

For example, Document Search recommended the featured snippet “AI Search Company” in response to “what is yext company.” If we wanted to add more detail to the snippet, we have the option to move or expand the highlighted text to select a different portion of the field. This new selection will be shown when this query is run in the future.

Each modification teaches the algorithm to make better predictions in the future. The more training data the algorithm has, the better it will be able to understand your data.

Request New Feature

To turn on this feature in your Production account, you can fill out this form here and select “Experience Training Updates” from the list of features.

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

We have added 31 new built-in fields for the Product entity type. These fields allow customers to store more specific product-related information such as sales, promotions, shipping information, pricing details, and more. A complete list of the new Product fields added can be found here .

Request New Feature

To turn on this feature in your Production account, you can fill out this form here and select “New Fields for Product Entities” from the list of features.

Users can now provide a static value to fill any empty cells within a selected column. For example, if a franchise business was uploading contact emails for their locations into the Knowledge Graph and several locations did not have specific contact emails filled out, the administrator could fill out the transform with the general contact email to fill out all blank cells in the column.

This feature was automatically enabled in Production acctions, so you can start taking advantage of this today!

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

Users can now split data from one cell to two or more columns on an optional delimiter when uploading data into their Knowledge Graph.

This feature was automatically enabled in Production acctions, so you can start taking advantage of this today!

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

For those hoping to send out recurring analytics reports more regularly, Report Builder and Dashboards now support “Daily” as a frequency option for Notifications!

Request New Feature

To turn on this feature in your Production account, you can fill out this form here and select “Daily Analytics Notifications” from the list of features.

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

Additional metrics, and dimensions/filters have been added to Report Builder so you can dive deeper into your Answers Analytics:

Metrics

• Thumbs Up Events: Number of times Thumbs Up has been clicked
• Thumbs Down Events: Number of times Thumbs Down has been clicked
• Answers Voice Searches: Number of searches made using voice search

Dimensions / Filters

• Has Voice Search: Includes only searches made using voice search
• Filter Type: Whether the filter applied is a FACET, NLP, or STATIC filter
• Filter Key: Field from the Knowledge Graph which Search filtered on
• Filter Value: Value used to filter Search
• Filter Operator: Whether the filter operator used is BETWEEN, EQUALS, EQUAL_TO, GREATER_THAN, GREATER_THAN_OR_EQUAL_TO, LESS_THAN, LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL_TO, NEAR, or OPEN_AT
• Filter Source: Whether the filter applied to the Search comes from the Algorithm, a Query Rule, or the UI

Request New Feature

To turn on this feature in your Production account, you can fill out this form here and select “New Dimensions, Metrics, and Filters (Update 2)” from the list of features.

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

Updates have been made to the widgets UI to comply with WCAG. WCAG compliance provides guidelines on accessibility for individuals with disabilities. We’ve made several structural changes, increased keyboard accessibility across the board, and much more.

This feature was automatically enabled in Production accounts, so you will see these updates reflected today!

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

Google Local Posting is now available for Hotel entities. Google Local Posts allow businesses to communicate directly with their customers through timely updates about the business such as announcements around sales, specials, events, news, and offers.

This feature was automatically enabled, so you can start taking advantage of this today for your Hotel entities!

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

Redox Engine allows health systems to connect their Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems with other systems via API. Yext built the Redox Review Generation App to help Healthcare Organizations automate their review generation workflows by allowing updates made in the EHR to trigger review invitations. Previously, this integration only supported triggering SMS invitations. Now, the integration supports both SMS and email invites, ensuring that patients can be contacted using whatever contact information is provided from Redox. Administrators can manage this new functionality through the Preferred Contact Method field in the configuration screen of the Redox App.

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

Yext now syncs the ‘Free Testing’ field for COVID-19 test sites to Google. This field lets customers specify whether they offer free COVID Testing at their Locations or Healthcare Facilities.

In order to add this field to the Knowledge Graph, you must fill out this form to turn on the ‘Free COVID Testing Field’ that was added as part of the the October Monthly Release.

Once you add that field, or if you added it already, the data will automatically sync to Google for all linked entities.

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

Mapstr is transitioning to be a submission-only publisher. Live Listings on Mapstr will now always show a status of submitted. Learn more about what submission-only publishers are in this Hitchhikers unit !

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

With the new Freshdesk Solution Article Connector, users can pull their Freshdesk articles into the Knowledge Graph with just a few clicks.

This connector was automatically added to Production accounts, so you can start taking advantage of this feature today!

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

With the new Slack Data Connector, users will be able to pull in all Slack channels from a workspace, all users in a workplace, all messages and threads from channels of your choice, and pinned messages from channels of your choice. Users can choose which data from Slack they want to pull into the Knowledge Graph.

This connector was automatically added to Production accounts, so you can start taking advantage of this feature today!

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

With the new Google Calendar Events Connector, users can now pull in Events data from Google Calendar into the Knowledge Graph.

This connector was automatically added to Production accounts, so you can start taking advantage of this feature today!

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

With the new Drupal Data Connectors, users can easily pull in built in content types from their Drupal site including articles, people, pages, places and events into the Knowledge Graph.

This connector was automatically added to Production accounts, so you can start taking advantage of this feature today!

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

We have redesigned three main components of the Hitchhikers Platform to make it even easier to find the information you need within the Hitchhikers platform.

• Simplified Home Page - Our new Home page features a prominent search bar, announcements, recommended content, latest posts, and a full calendar of Hitchhikers Exclusive events.
• Improved Profile - Now you can easily see all of your personal profile information in one place. Check your points, leaderboard status, streaks; create a playground account; or add your Title and Company to flesh out your profile.
• Accessible Learning - All learning is streamlined in this new view. Search for what you need or explore our various tracks, curriculums, and guides.

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community here .

We’ve added the ability to make a contribution to our Github repository by submitting a pull request for the Answers Search UI SDK and Yext CLI. While you’re going through, feel free to submit any and all feedback! We want to hear from you.

Navigate to the Answers Search UI SDK docs here and the Yext CLI docs here to start contributing.