Welcome to the October ‘21 Release!

Each month all Hitchhikers will get access to the latest and greatest Yext features through the Monthly Releases. You can learn more about our Release Process here and you can comment on, ask questions, or like each feature by visiting our Community.

Happy Hitchhiking!

Answers

With the new Answers Hitchhikers Theme 1.25 and Answers Search UI SDK 1.11, we’ve added support for facet order options and bug fixes. ou can find the full list of features and bug fixes below.

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

Knowledge Graph

We have made small improvements to the Entity Search UI including:

  1. Users can now save and update saved filters directly from the filter bar by using the save icon.
  2. When adding new entities through the Single Entity Add flow, users can now go directly to the Entity Edit screen to view/edit their newly created entities.
  3. Users can now include multiple options to filter for in single-line and multi-line text field filters.

saved filter button

saved filter button

This feature was automatically added to Production accounts, so can start using it today!

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

When users create new entity types in the UI, they are enabled by default. Users no longer have to take the extra step of enabling the new entity type after creation, and can now immediately add new entities of their newly created type.

This feature was automatically added to Production accounts, so can start using it today!

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

Entity Previews are now configurable via Configuration as Code, so that they can be configured with Apps or Solution Templates. To learn more, view the Entity Preview Resource documentation.

This feature was automatically added to Production accounts, so can start using it today!

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

We have added a new built-in COVID Testing field that lets customers specify if they offer free COVID Testing at their Locations or Healthcare Facilities.

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

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Request New Feature
To turn on this feature in your Production account, you can fill out this form here and select “Free COVID Testing Field” from the list of features.

Users can now write custom TypeScript functions that the Connector will invoke each time it is run to fetch data. This new feature is a powerful addition to the Connectors framework, allowing developers to build fully custom connector sources. Learn more about Functions in our Developer Guide.

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

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Request New Feature
To turn on this feature in your Production account, you can fill out this form here and select “Functions as a Source” from the list of features.

Connectors

I. Zendesk Community Post Connector

With the new Zendesk Community Posts connector, users will be able to pull in all Zendesk Community Posts into their Knowledge Graph, allowing them to surface content on relevant search experiences.

This feature was automatically added to Production accounts, so can start using it today!

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

With the new Confluence Connectors, users will be able to pull in all of the Confluence blogs and pages into your Knowledge Graph, allowing them to surface content on relevant search experiences.

This feature was automatically added to Production accounts, so can start using it today!

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

With the new WHO COVID-19 FAQ connector, support your Yext products with the most up-to-date COVID-19 information, directly from the World Health Organization. This connector supports multiple languages.

This feature was automatically added to Production accounts, so can start using it today!

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

Pages

Get Directions call-to-action (CTA) clicks can now direct page visitors to custom URLs!

Previously, this CTA button could only be powered by geo-coordinates, meaning that CTA-clicks provided directions to an entity’s coordinates rather than to the entity itself. For example: www.google.com/maps?q=40.741499300278264,-74.00510592107196.

Instead, users can power this CTA with URLs that optimize for conversions. One use case is to create a URL field based on Google Customer IDs, such as: google.com/maps/?cid=.

For example: www.google.com/maps?cid=10871368574332629051. Notice that this URL directs you to a specific Google Listing.

Pages technology is designed to capture traffic and drive your customers to take action. CTAs on your landing page are critical to getting customers to engage with your business. The updates to the Get Directions CTA can help increase foot traffic to your business.

This feature was automatically added to Production accounts, so can start using it today!

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

Integrations

Yext now syncs the ‘Latino-Owned Business’ field for locations with qualifying Google My Business categories. This can be found in the ‘Google My Business Attributes’ section of entity profiles.

latino owned business

latino owned field example

This feature was automatically added to Production accounts, so can start using it today!

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

We have added 39 new sustainability built-in fields for the Hotel entity type. These fields allow Hotels to store information that pertains to a Hotel’s Energy Efficiency, Water Conservation, Waste Reduction and Sustainable Sourcing efforts. We have also added built-in fields that allow Hotels to store data about any eco-certifications they may have received.

Yext has added 39 new sustainability built-in fields for the Hotel entity type, which can be synced to Google My Business. Once enabled for an account, fields will be available under the ‘Sustainability’ or ‘Other’ sections for Hotel entities.

sustainability fields

A complete list of sustainability fields added can be found here.

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

Yext now supports location listings on Aussiweb.com.au. The directory has over 1 million Australian businesses with high quality and accurate data. Aussieweb is regarded to be within the top 10 free listing directories in Australia.

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

Analytics

Optimizations to the Analytics API help to return your results even faster and support larger data requests. This update is especially helpful to Partners who are leveraging the /all/ parameter to return data for all of their sub-accounts.

The new Analytics API Call Performance is available in version 20211015 or greater, for example: https://api.yext.com/v2/accounts/all/analytics/reports?api_key={API_KEY}&v=20211015.

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

Platform

Updates to the Platform Usage page to make it even easier to view and monitor your capacity usage. Now the resources are consolidated into one table and viewing resource usage relative to capacity is much more intuitive. The view history buttons still link to the Usage History page.

screenshot of the platform usage screen

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

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Request New Feature
To turn on this feature in your Production account, you can fill out this form here and select “Platform Capacity Manager UX Updates” from the list of features.