May '23 Release Notes

To give businesses more confidence and to help protect against errors when launching listings, there are now certain situations when user approval is required before Yext will start publishing data to Listings. Yext will issue a warning and require the user to explicitly click the “Confirm Sync” button if any potential errors are detected.

For example, if the category in the Knowledge Graph is different from the category on the existing listing — syncing this new data could cause manual reverification, which would temporarily remove the listing. Users would need to “Confirm Sync” in this case to confirm their action was intentional and that they are aware of the potential consequences.

This feature was automatically enabled in all accounts, so you can start taking advantage of it today.

With Computed Field Values (available in Preview), users are able to populate Knowledge Graph fields dynamically, based on specific algorithms and inputs configured by the user (e.g. leveraging AI to generate a product description using fields stored on a product entity as inputs). With Improved Input Support in the May ’23 Release, users are able to leverage even more Knowledge Graph field types as inputs for Computed Field Values.

Now, users can select inputs from all built-in and custom fields that are of a primitive data type, meaning:

• numbers
• booleans (“True” or “False”)
• strings (sequences of text and/or characters)

This extends to lists and object properties that contain these primitive data types — for example, a list of integers or a string sub-property of a complex field type. For now, complex fields with multiple properties, like CTAs or photo fields will not be supported.

With this added support, the Computed Field Values framework can now utilize a broader set of data stored throughout the Knowledge Graph for more robust and effective computations.

Note: Users will not be able to see an element in the UI to select field(s) when configuring inputs. Users will need to reference fields using the Entities API path.

This feature was automatically added to the Computed Field Value feature. To turn this feature on in your account, navigate to Account Settings > Account Features and select Preview Feature: Computed Field Values.

Users can now view historical information for Categories and Google Attributes in the Entity History UI.

Note: Category Data dating back to April 25, 2023 and Google Attribute Data dating back to May 5, 2023 will be displayed. Reversions for these fields will not be supported at this time. Data will not be backfilled at this time.

This feature was automatically enabled in all accounts, so you can start taking advantage of it today.

Prior to this update, users used a singular “Save Button” that either requested an Edit or Saved based on a field’s asset state. To provide additional flexibility and consistency for users, these two permissions will now be seen as two separate buttons on the field level:

• Save an asset (if the field is in asset state)
• Request an Edit (if the field is not in asset state)

This feature was automatically enabled in all accounts, so you can start taking advantage of it today.

With the introduction of Serverless Functions, developers are now able to author custom code, which exposes HTTP endpoints served by the Yext platform. Serverless Functions are a powerful tool which liberates developers from concerns around infrastructure by abstracting away details around the networking and serving layer.

For example, an e-commerce shoe retailer can fetch data, like a table for their inventory, from an external API and tailor it for real-time load via a Serverless Function.

Serverless functions over HTTP further extend the customizability of the Yext Platform and offer virtually limitless integration pathways to external systems. When building modern-day digital experiences, Serverless Functions unlock new capabilities for the delivery of Knowledge Graph content across digital endpoints.

Within Pages, Serverless Functions can be used for two use cases:

1. The deployment of API endpoints over HTTP
2. The execution of custom code in response to lifecycle events within the Pages system

To turn on this feature in your account, navigate to Account Settings > Account Features and select Summer ‘23: Serverless Functions (early access).

The Pages Preview feature allows you to preview content from Knowledge Graph “Suggestions” before publishing them to your live production site. This release, we have added support for entity relationships as well, enabling users to preview how suggestions will look across pages that are powered by entity relationships. For example, a content editor might want to share updates to a page with a key stakeholder before publishing them. With Page Preview, this process is simple and provides users with enhanced flexibility when building their pages.

This feature was automatically enabled in all accounts, so you can start taking advantage of it today.

As of the May ’23 Monthly Release, we will be deprecating two legacy Publisher Search Term metrics:

• Search Term Phrases
• Search Term Broad Terms

These metrics were primarily used to show phrases used in publisher network search queries and were only available for select businesses to query. These metrics will no longer be supported in Report Builder and the Reports API.

If desired, users can leverage the Google Search Term Impressions metrics, dimensioned by Raw Search Term and Google Search Term Type, to create a similar type of report.

As of the May ’23 Monthly Release, the Analytics endpoints belonging to the legacy v1 Resellers API will be fully deprecated and no longer supported. Users can instead query the Reports endpoint to generate an Analytics report, or any of our other v2 Analytics or Logs API endpoints.

With this feature, we expanded our system to support ANY type of delimited file (ie .csv, tsv, .txt, .psv, etc.). Previously, the Connector File Upload and SFTP/FTP Sources only supported CSV, Excel (.xlsx), and JSON file types to be ingested. Now, users can upload any delimited file, simply specify the delimiter used in their file, and proceed.

Note: This feature was automatically enabled in all accounts, so you can start taking advantage of it today.

We’ve expanded our Transform functionality to give users more flexibility and control. With the addition of this feature, users can now configure transforms to run conditionally, based on specified values in a given column for each row.

For example, users can specify that two columns should only be merged if data is not blank in both of them. While this was already achievable within our Function Transforms, users can now easily accomplish this complex logic without needing to write any code.

To turn on this feature in your account, navigate to Account Settings > Account Features and select Summer ‘23: Conditional Transform Execution (early access).

With this new status, we’ve added additional granularity to make it easier and faster to identify the result of a Connector Run. With the addition of “Aborted”, we now have 6 possible statuses that are given to a Connector run:

• In Progress
  
• Completed
  
• Completed with Errors
• Failed
• Aborted
  
• Canceled

This feature was automatically enabled in all accounts, so you can start taking advantage of it today.

Unless otherwise noted, all Publisher Network updates are effective immediately and changes will automatically be reflected in your account.

For a full list of available publishers, and additional details on the integrations, visit the Publishers vertical in our search experience.

New: InYourArea

InYourArea joins the Yext Publisher Network supporting listings in the UK.

• Territory: United Kingdom

Updated: Apple Maps

Yext’s direct integration with Apple Maps now supports Showcase Posting in the following new countries:

• Australia
• Ireland
• New Zealand
• United Kingdom

Yext’s direct integration with Apple Maps now also supports the following field:

• iOS App URL

Updated: Yalwa

The following countries will no longer be supported with Yext’s integration with Yalwa:

• Algeria
• Egypt
• Guatemala
• Saudi Arabia
• Thailand
• Vietnam

Removed: Barcoo.de

Effective May 17, 2023, Barcoo.de is no longer part of the Yext Publisher Network.

• Territory: Germany

Removed: Cured.com

Effective May 17, 2023, Cured.com is no longer part of the Yext Publisher Network.

• Territory: United States

Removed: Chillwall

Effective May 17, 2023, Chillwall is no longer part of the Yext Publisher Network.

• Territory: United States

Removed: Pointcom

Effective May 17, 2023, Pointcom is no longer part of the Yext Publisher Network.

• Territory: United States

All new Apps and App updates are automatically available in all accounts.

To view the full list of Apps that are available in your account click here .

Reviews Auto Response App v2

Users can now use the Reviews Auto Response App to respond to both positive and negative reviews. Additionally, users will be able to load multiple responses and exclude certain entities from auto-response altogether. It is typically recommended to only utilize automatic responses for reviews that do not contain content.

Apply Entity Template App

Install the Apply Entity Template App to your account to automatically apply entity templates to newly created entities.

Integrate Yext into Uniform, a vendor-agnostic Digital Experience Composition Platform

Add the Yext integration to your Uniform project to include data from your search index to Uniform Compositions. You can bypass calling your data source and pull information directly from your Yext Knowledge Graph and Search Experience.

You’ll need to create an App in your Yext Developer Platform. After provisioning the necessary permissions you can use the associate API key to add the integration to your Uniform Project.

This will allow you to either leverage your Knowledge Graph directly, or query your Search Experience to display relevant entities in your Uniform Project.

Datashake Reviews App: New Publishers Added mobile.de and autoscout24

We’ve expanded the list of publishers from which you can pull reviews using our Datashake Reviews App. Car and car dealerships accounts can now import reviews from Mobile.de and Autoscout24, two of the most popular review sites in the automotive industry. Install Datashake from our app directory today to import reviews from these sites with just a few clicks.

OneDrive Drive Connector App

The OneDrive Drive Connector app uses the OneDrive Fetch Drive Items operation to pull in your OneDrive files from your specified Drive as individual Knowledge Graph entities. This app comes with a custom OneDrive File entity type and custom File Type field that will host the files directly on your entities.

OneDrive Item Connector App

Spec - OneDrive Connector Apps Spec The OneDrive Item Connector app uses the OneDrive Fetch Items operation to pull in your OneDrive files from a specified parent Item (i.e. folder) as individual Knowledge Graph entities. This app comes with a custom OneDrive File entity type and custom File Type field that will host the files directly on your entities.

Sharepoint Drive Connector App

The Sharepoint Drive Connector app uses the Sharepoint Fetch Items (from a Drive) operation to pull in files from a specified Drive in your Sharepoint Site as Knowledge Graph entities. This app comes with a custom Sharepoint File entity type and custom File Type field that will host the files directly on your entities.

Sharepoint Item Connector App

The Sharepoint Item Connector app uses the Sharepoint Fetch Items operation to pull in files from a specified parent Item (i.e. folder) in your Sharepoint Site as Knowledge Graph entities. This app comes with a custom Sharepoint File entity type and custom File Type field that will host the files directly on your entities.

Sharepoint Pages Connector App

The Sharepoint Pages Connector App uses the Sharepoint Fetch Pages (from a Site) Operation to pull in all of your Pages from your Sharepoint site. This app comes with a custom entity and fields to let you immediately pull in all your Sharepoint Pages into your Knowledge Graph.

Menu ECL to Menu Items Connector App

The Menu Items Connector App will allow you to convert Menu ECL Item data into Menu Item entities in your Knowledge Graph. These entities can then be used to power the rest of your product suite with Yext, including Search, Pages, and Chat. You can use the Menu Connector app simultaneously to pull in full menu entities as well, and link menu item entities to the menu entities using streams to represent all of your menu offerings across locations.

Menu ECL to Menu Connector App

The Menu Connector App will allow you to convert your Menus stored in Menu ECLs into Menu entities in your Knowledge Graph. These entities can then be used to power the rest of your product suite with Yext, including Search, Pages, and Chat. You can use the Menu Item Connector App simultaneously to pull in Menu Item entities, these to your full Menu entities using streams to represent all of your menu offerings across locations.

Adobe Experience Manager Native Source

This release we’ve added Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) as a native source in Connectors. Now, users can easily pull in content from AEM such as page properties, urls, and text via our Connectors framework.

To add the new Connector Source to your account, navigate to Account Settings > Account Features and select Summer ‘23: New Native Sources (early access).

Google Drive Connector Source Updates

With our new Fetch Files by Folder operation, you can pull in the metadata for all the different file types you have in any specified folder in your Google Drive account. Previously, our existing Google Drive Connector Source only allowed you to pull in content from your top-level Google Drive.

This update was automatically enabled in the Connector Source, so you can start taking advantage of it today.

In the Summer ’22 Release, we added the ability to trigger Serverless Functions in apps as a Preview feature. This functionality is now out of Preview. Developers can invoke Serverless Functions in response to account and profile events to build powerful, complex apps, all hosted and run within Yext, so users do not need worry about managing a server or runtime environment.

To turn on this feature in your account, navigate to Account Settings > Account Features and select Preview Feature: Function Hooks.

This release, admins gain a new way to manage which entities in the Knowledge Graph are assigned licenses. We now support automatic license assignments by specifying which entities qualify for licenses in the form of a saved filter. As new entities meet this criteria, they will automatically be assigned licenses and entities that do not meet this criteria will automatically lose their licenses. This removes the need for manual assignment and removal of licenses.

Additionally, admins can leverage scheduled updates along with this functionality in order to schedule future license assignments and removals.

Note: This functionality is only available to customers leveraging licenses so it is not relevant to Resellers that use SKUs to assign service.

To turn on this feature in your account, navigate to Account Settings > Account Features and select Summer ‘23: Automatic License Assignment via Saved Filters (early access).

Custom Home Screens allow users to create a personalized experience in the Yext platform with customizable modules like Quick Links. With this release, Quick Links now support MailTo links. When users click on the MailTo Quick Link in their Home Screen, their default email client will open and suggest sending an email to the address included in the MailTo link.