May '21 Release Notes

With the Answers Hitchhikers Theme v1.21 we’ve added several features to expand built-in card options, enhance current styling, and improve speed.

You can find the full list of features and bug fixes below, with additional details available in the Community.

• Document Search Standard Card: New card particularly suited for Document Search, formatted for a snippet to be featured on the card.*
• Overlay Integration Speed Improvement: Overlay script now loads immediately instead of waiting for the page “load” event, resulting in an overall speed improvement in overlay appearance.
• Hours Time Zone Fix on Direct Answers: Direct Answers now accurately reflect open/closed status in an entity’s local timezone, regardless of the timezone where the user may be searching.
• Separate “Hours Status” Class Names: Each hours status (“Open,” “Closed,” “Open 24 Hours”) now have its own class name to allow for individual styling on location cards and direct answers.
• CTA Alignment Fix with No Description: When there is no description on the product prominent image card, the CTA will now be fixed to the bottom of the card.
• Margin Correction on Spell Check: Improved margins when spell check is present to provide a user experience more consistent with typical spell check.
• Simplified Console Error Messaging: More concise error messages in console, especially when building new sites.
• A few minor bug fixes/improvements that may help improve your experience

Looking to upgrade to this version? Checkout this community post for some important instructions!

*Note: Document Search and the Document Search Standard Card are currently only available in English

Two new components are now available for experience training: NLP Filters and Spell Checking. When Experience Training was first introduced as a new feature in the Spring ‘21 Release, it was only available for Featured Snippets. Adding NLP Filters and Spell Checking as components extends the experience training system to allow users to approve and reject these parts of the algorithm, instantly fixing issues, and providing a valuable source of training data for our algorithm.

You can read more about Experience Training in the Spring ‘21 Release Notes.

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

We are now offering a new prediction mode for Field Value Direct Answers, similar to our Prediction Mode for Featured Snippets. This new feature allows administrators to configure how assertive the algorithm will be in showing a Field Value Direct Answer when it may not recognize a particular entity in the query.

This will especially come in handy for single-location businesses and anyone who wants to surface direct answers with more frequency. Queries like “what are your hours” or “how do I contact you” would not surface a direct answer in our default settings, but they could now by configuring Prediction Mode!

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

Introducing a new and improved Answers search bar that is faster than ever! When adding the Answers search to your home page, you will now have the option to add this new, faster search bar. This search bar will have no impact on page load time, while maintaining the look and feel of the existing search bar. You can choose to keep the classic Yext styling or apply your own customized CSS to the new search bar! You can find instructions for implementing this new search bar here.

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

In the Spring ‘21 release, we launched the Data Connectors Framework to help users easily build robust Knowledge Graphs, from a variety of their data sources. To improve usability and expand the functionality, we introduced the following improvements.

Cancel an In-Progress Run

Once you run a Connector, you can now cancel the job if needed by clicking Cancel.

Extract Additional Page Attributes

In addition to pulling text directly contained in the specified page element, you might want to select raw HTML so that it can be stored as Rich Text in the Knowledge Graph. You can select Text, Direct Text, HTML, URL, Image URL, and other attributes. This improvement makes it even quicker to pull data from your pages to populate a robust Knowledge Graph.

Connector Summary UI Updates

To simplify the Connector Summary UI, we’ve updated the Automatically Run button and Delete button.

Now to change the Automatically Run settings, you’ll select ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ from the drop-down menu. To change the settings select:

• Yes – The Connector will automatically run each time a new crawl completes (Weekly)
• No – The Connector will only run on-demand, which can be triggered by clicking, “Run Now”

And to delete a Connector, select the combo Edit Configuration button, and select Delete Connector.

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

The folder management tool is a powerful feature that enables user permissions and automated workflows. Changing an existing folder structure impacts existing integrations and users with permissions scoped to specific folders. To provide users greater accuracy managing folders and prevent users from accidentally deleting existing ones, we’re making the following minor UX improvements:

1. Removed the “Reorganize Folders” button from the main page of the Manage Folders tool when in view mode.
2. Removed the “Save Only” button in edit mode and renamed the “Save and Reorganize Folders” button to “Reorganize Folders”.
3. Updated copy within the warning modal to better communicate the impact of any changes.

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

If you’re a Yext and Google My Business power user, you’ll benefit from the new Google Account ID field. This field enables Admins to configure their GMB syncs completely independently of Yext Managed Services.

The Yext team will typically populate this field on your behalf. However, if you manage your own location adds, you can fill out this field to enable the location to sync to its GMB account location. The safest way to do so is by applying a template in which the Google Account ID field is populated. In the rare situation that you move a location between GMB accounts, you should edit this field to match the new one. If the Yext team manages your location adds, you should not edit this field.

Want to learn more about linking your Google My Business account? Visit the Google My Business training module.

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

The new Salesforce Service Cloud app syncs support content like Knowledge Articles from Service Cloud into Yext, so you can use it to power a cutting-edge search experience for your customers or support team with Yext.

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

We’ve updated the Google Data Studio app so you can now import search data from Yext Answers — like Recent Searches, Total Searches, and Searches with Knowledge Graph Results — to Google Data Studio. The Google Data Studio app connects your Yext account with Google Data Studio so you can import analytics from Yext to create customized dashboards and reports.

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

In this release, we’re introducing support for Account-Level Services in Partner Portal. Previously, provisioning was only available on the location level. Now, users can provision services on a sub-account level and make bulk service changes to multiple sub-accounts in the Partner Portal.

In Partner Portal, users can now:

• Add services to a sub-account
• Cancel services on a sub-account
• Bulk add/remove services to/from sub-accounts
• Create a new empty sub-account (no location)

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

The Admin Console is now easier than ever to navigate. To improve usability, the top level directory now defaults to group by Resource Type, rather than by Namespace. Users who prefer to view the Admin Console by Namespace can still do so. If you’d like to change the organization back to group by Namespace, select Settings and uncheck “Resource Type Mode”.

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

The Analytics API Catalog is a new endpoint that allows users to programmatically return metadata around the metrics available in the Analytics API. This new endpoint will help users understand what they can query in the Analytics API and when complete data for each metric is available. The endpoint will show what metrics are available for their account as well as the Completed Date for each metric.

Sample GET Request:

https://api.yext.com/v2/accounts/me/analytics/catalog?api_key={YOUR_API_KEY}&v=20210415

Sample Output:

{
    "meta": {
        "uuid": "6471d2a9-a0bd-4c01-a8b9-04071d75e4a1",
        "errors": []
    },
    "response": {
        "metrics": [
            {
                "id": "FACEBOOK_POST_IMPRESSIONS",
                "completedDate": "2021-03-20"
            },
            {
                "id": "GOOGLE_SEARCH_VIEWS",
                "completedDate": "2021-03-19"
            },
            {
                "id": "ANSWERS_SEARCHES_WITH_CLICKS",
                "completedDate": "2021-03-23"
            },
            {
                "id": "ANSWERS_SEARCHES",
                "completedDate": "2021-03-23"
            },
            {
                "id": "ANSWERS_SEARCHES_WITH_KG_RESULTS",
                "completedDate": "2021-03-23"
            },
            {
                "id": "ANSWERS_CLICKS",
                "completedDate": "2021-03-23"
            },
            {
                "id": "CONVERSION_RATE",
                "completedDate": "2021-03-23"
            }
        ]
    }
}

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

Users can now query for all of the data available within the Yext platform, regardless of if it’s beyond the Completed Date, via the Analytics API!

Our goal is always to show customers the most complete and accurate data possible while still providing them with the functionality needed to perform any analysis necessary. To accomplish this, Completed Date is baked into each of the dynamic date range filters accessible within Report Builder and Dashboards.

And while we maintain that goal, we’re giving more flexibility to users who’d like to have access to their data from Yext as soon as possible, regardless of if it is complete or not.

To access this new feature, simply make a post request to the existing Analytics endpoints with a V parameter set to 20210515 or higher.

https://api.yext.com/v2/accounts/me/analytics/reports?api_key={YOUR_API_KEY}&v=20210515

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

We now support several exciting new Publisher fields in Listings.

• Across Google, Yelp, and Apple, we now can support Covid Vaccine Site Fields and Covid Testing Site Fields. Outside of reporting that the location is a vaccine or testing site, there are many specific fields supported within these categories that vary by Publisher, including “COVID Testing Drive-Thru Site,” “COVID Vaccine Information URL,” and more.

• Facebook-specific fields that are now available in Listings include: the ‘Order Now’ Call-To-Action, the ‘Follow’ Call-To-Action, and the ‘Purchase Gift Cards’ Call-To-Action.

• Lastly, we are working closely with Google’s sustainability team to support a new green initiative: Recycling Drop-off Options. These new fields will allow businesses to specify which recycling materials are available for drop-off at their locations.

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

The Reviews webhook now offers comprehensive status messages to provide even more clarity and precision than before. These logic updates will make it easy for you and your team to track the status of reviews.

We will now send REVIEW_UPDATED messages whenever a review status changes, so you can be notified as soon as a review is approved from Quarantined to Live, or if a review is recognized as Removed from the publisher and the status is updated to Removed accordingly in Yext. This update ensures any external system can stay in sync by always being aware of the correct status in Yext.

We additionally added a new webhook event type called REVIEW_DELETED. This webhook event will fire when the review is actually deleted from our system, not when a review is simply marked with the “REMOVED” status. For more information about the difference between a review with “Removed” status and a review deleted from Yext, please see the Managed Deleted Reviews help article .

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

We’re excited to introduce a new method of learning & training: Practice Packs!

These practice quizzes are a great way to review and solidify your learning. You’ll see a Practice Pack at the bottom of the page after you complete each track. Each practice quiz consists of 4-6 questions designed to help you review that specific track. Build these quick quizzes into your routine and/or take them on mobile while on the go, all to keep your knowledge fresh! You can also use Practice Packs to maintain your quiz streaks.

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