Winter '21 Release Notes

Yext’s new Authorized Search provides brands the ability to build a search experience where each user can see different results for the same query based on which entities or documents they have access to.

Authorized Search is very powerful for those looking to build an Answers experience for internal users. For example, you might want to make your Help Center documentation or intranet searchable with powerful AI Search technology. For these internal use cases, it is important to ensure users only see the results they have access to.

If you are looking to implement Authorized Search, you have a few options to manage user access rules. Knowledge Graph entities can now support allowed and blocked users, which you have the option of defining via external permissions. For example, if you wanted to make Google Drive documents searchable, you could pull in the permissioned users based on who has access to each document in Google Drive.

Alternatively, you have the option of leveraging Yext Auth, which allows you to take advantage of Yext’s robust system for authenticating users and managing their access to entities.

If you are an existing Answers customer and are interested in Yext Auth or Authenticated Sites please reach out to your CSM.

Looking to build an Authorized Search experience? Check out this guide for more details, and post any questions in the community!

Answers Headless React is a new tool for developers building custom Answers frontend experiences. The Answers Headless React library incorporates the business logic needed to power a search experience, plus a series of React bindings that make it easier to create a search experience in React . It’s an excellent option for those looking for more flexibility in how they present their Answers experience, React developers, and anyone hoping to take advantage of pre-built business logic and state management on top of the Answers API.

Alternatively, for those looking to get up and running with an out-of-the-box frontend quickly, the Hitchhikers Theme will still be available.

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

With the new Answers Hitchhikers Theme 1.27, we’ve added support for consumer auth, UI updates, bug fixes, and more.

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

• Direct Answers on Vertical Search: You now have the ability to add Direct Answers on vertical search using the theme.
• Additional Support for Consumer Auth:
  • Consumer Auth in Sandbox is now supported
  • Functionality to Call AnswersExperience.init(); in on-document-load partial
• Photo Formatter Update: Our photo formatter now prefers the Dynamic URL over the standard thumbnails (see related Serving Photos Guide).
• Spell Check Moved Above Result Count: We have moved the spell check component on vertical results pages above the result count to place the result count next to the results.
• Update Default Universal Limit on Vertical Pages: We have updated the default universal limit to four on all vertical page templates for a better UI.
  
• Bug Fixes

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

In case you missed it, we have also released Hitchhikers Theme v1.24, v1.25, and v.1.26 since the Summer Release, which included the following features. The good news is that each theme builds on top of the previous theme, so you’ll be able to access all of these helpful features when you upgrade to Theme v1.27.

To learn more about how to do a theme upgrade, check out the Upgrading Your Experience Theme and SDK module.

The Semantic Text Search algorithm and Extractive QA are now supported for Answers experiences in Japanese.

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

With Visual Autocomplete, you can now surface rich entity results as a user types in your search bar, before they’ve even run their search.

For example, madlibs-style prompts can direct users to a specific vertical that may be most relevant to their search query, such as directing users searching for “iphone 12” towards the “Cell Phones” or “Sales” verticals.

Additionally, you can surface individual entities that may be of interest in autocomplete, like including FAQs or previews of products in the drop down.

Plus, included in the component is the ability to surface recent searches so users can re-run queries they have searched for in the past. And of course, the standard text Query Suggestions will also continue to be available.

Visual Autocomplete is currently only available when building AI Search via Answers Headless React and Answers Headless. Support for Visual Autocomplete within other methods of building the frontend, such as the Answers Hitchhikers Theme, is planned for future releases, so stay tuned.

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

We’ve updated the UI for writing query rules to make it even easier to encode business logic into your Answers search results. Now you can define the criteria that triggers a rule as well as the action taken via a convenient point-and-click interface instead of having to write out the logic in JSON.

For example, when creating a rule to boost entities under specific conditions, you can now select the entities from a helpful drop-down widget instead of coding in the entity IDs.

For those preferring to write out the code for Query Rules, you will still have the option of editing in JSON.

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

We have revamped our tools for debugging searches . Within the Yext platform, we have now exposed more data within the Search Logs, including query rules, semantic similarities, dynamic reranking and vertical ranking factors. This additional information makes it clearer why results were shown in response to queries so you can more efficiently improve your Answers experience.

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

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.

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

Sometimes, sorting by distance is too literal. For example, if one location is 500 feet closer than another location, that hardly matters to the user. Now using Bucketed Distance you can sort those two locations based on relevance instead.

For example, you might configure your distance buckets like so:

{
   "sortBys": [
     {
       "type": "ENTITY_DISTANCE",
       "buckets": [
         8046.72,    // 5 miles
         80467.20,   // 50 miles
         160934.00   // 100 miles
       ]
     },
     {
       "type": "RELEVANCE"
     },
     {
       "type": "ENTITY_DISTANCE"
     }
   ]
 }

In the UI, this would look like:

This configuration would instruct the Answers experience to first sort by which distance bucket the location falls in. That means that all locations within 5 miles would show up first sorted by relevance and then by continuous distance (if two locations within 5 miles have the same relevance). Then the locations within 50 miles would surface, sorted by relevance and then continuous distance, and so on.

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

If you have your Answers experience integrated in multiple places (say, a help site, a contact form, and a Zendesk Agent Dashboard), your users might be asking very different questions depending on where they are searching. Previously, you could create a custom report in Report Builder. Now you can analyze these trends by filtering by Referrer URL on the Search Terms page.

You can now filter down to only the search terms and associated metrics (like Searches, Sessions, and Clicks) that were searched from a particular Referrer Page. The filter accepts an exact referrer page URL or a substring that the Referrer Page URL must contain.

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

One of the most common ways to integrate an Answers experience with your website is to add JS snippets to the page. In addition to guides for the Search Bar and Search Results integration, Answers now offers an in-platform Snippet Generator.

This convenient tool walks users through the process and automatically produces the JS code snippet needed to complete integration. Users can then easily copy and paste the premade snippet into their site.

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

The Query Suggestions engine includes a typo tolerance so the search bar can surface suggestions that do not exactly match what the user is typing but are close. However, in use cases like searching for products, searchers would prefer exact matches for the product name being typed to appear at the top, not randomly in the list of suggestions. For example, a searcher typing “iPhone 11” would expect to see the suggestion “iPhone 11” at the top of the list, not “iPhone 12” even though the terms are similar. Now, we’ve updated the Query Suggestions engine so that exact matches to the query being typed surface ahead of any other suggestions.

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

We have expanded the Entity Search page to include “Card Previews,” so that entities can optionally be viewed in a grid view within Entity Search. These new Card Previews will provide a great experience for entities with a primary photo such as a product or a menu item.

Updates to the existing Previews Configuration screen support customization of these card previews on a per entity type basis.

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

With this release, we have updated where the rejection comments modal appears when an approver rejects a suggestion from the Suggestion Overview screen or Suggestions Workflow, in addition to an individual suggestion’s detail page. Previously, when turned on for an account, the rejection comments modal prompts the user for a rejection reason when a user rejects an individual suggestion from that suggestion’s detail page.

We have also added a sub-setting to the Rejection Comments suggestion setting. When the setting is turned on, users have the option to make rejection comments mandatory or optional. If set to mandatory, users will not be able to reject suggestions without providing a reason for rejection.

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

This release includes a simple UI within the Knowledge Graph Configuration tab that allows users to see the details about their labels such as the Label ID, Name, and Entity Usage. This UI will also allow users to delete labels in bulk more easily, as well as perform existing actions on labels such as adding and renaming them.

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

We generated a new model to determine which fields are associated with each entity type. A field eligibility group is a set of fields that is associated with a single entity type. Apps can now apply multiple field eligibility groups to an entity type from different namespaces, without impacting the existing fields of the entity type. This allows app developers to install new fields to pre-existing entity types in accounts with an app.

This update strictly applies to Config as Code, and will not impact how entity types are managed via UI or API.

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.

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.

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.

We are releasing two new built-in fields related to COVID vaccination requirements. The Proof of Vaccination Required field allows you to mark whether or not a Location, Restaurant, or Hotel requires proof of vaccination for entry. Additionally, the Fully Vaccinated Staff field allows you to signify whether or not your Location, Restaurant, Hotel, or Healthcare Facility staff is fully vaccinated. These fields will be sent to each listings publisher when the fields are accepted.

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.

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

In this release, we have improved the experience for the process of adding data into the platform. Now, when a user clicks “Add Data,” a modal with options is presented, which keeps users on the Entity Search page and lets them choose their next action from there. Below is a list of specific improvements to the “Add Data” modal:

1. Reduced the number of clicks for adding a single entity.
2. Users can see enabled entity types in the modal and can click one to immediately enter the “Add Single Entity” flow for that entity type, without leaving the Entity Search screen.
3. Can click to “Build a Connector” or click to “Install an App.”
4. Clicking “Install an App” will bring users to a filtered view of the App Directory, which is filtered just to apps that contain a Connector.
5. The “Upload a File” option is contained in the modal as well.

These enhancements make it easier than ever for users to add data into the Yext platform.

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

When building a Connector, users can now choose the entity type on the last step before they map their fields. This allows users to preview the data from the source before needing to choose an entity type. Previously, when building a Connector, users needed to choose an entity type on the initial step, right after choosing their data source.

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

When building a new Connector for Native Sources such as Zendesk, YouTube, or Confluence, users will notice an improved user experience. After selecting the data source, users will be prompted to choose an operation if more than one exists for a given source. Examples of operations include “Fetch Pages” or “Fetch Blogs” for Confluence. Depending on the operation chosen, users will be prompted to provide custom inputs (e.g. a YouTube Channel ID for a “Fetch Videos” YouTube operation).

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

When building a new Crawler, API, or Function Connector, users need to determine if each crawled page, API response, or Function response contains data for a single entity or for a list of entities. If a user decides the crawled data is for a list of entities, they also need to provide the “base selector” so that the Connector system knows how to break their data up into multiple entities.

We have made a few improvements to this part of the Connectors flow for usability. First, we added a dedicated step for identifying the base selector. Previously, at the bottom of the Crawler Settings, API Settings, or Function Settings step, users had to fill out whether they wanted to convert the input into one or many entities (detail page vs. list page for crawler for example). Instead, we moved that to a separate step.

Second, we provide a list of predictions for a user’s base selector for API and Function sources. This will help users identify what it is, so they don’t need to type it from scratch.

Last, for API and Function sources, once a user selects a base selector (or indicates that API response or Function response contains a single entity), we will automatically identify all possible Field selectors and display them in the Preview data table. From there, users can edit or remove any unnecessary columns, so users will not need to manually add each selector that they would like to extract data from.

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

We have added new transforms to our transform library, including the following:

1. Fill in Empty Cells: Users can now provide a static value to fill any empty cells within a selected column.
2. Split into Columns: Users can now split data from one cell to two or more columns on an optional delimiter when uploading data into their Knowledge Graph.
3. Merge Columns: Users can now combine two or more columns into a new column with an optional delimiter when uploading data into their Knowledge Graph.
4. Split into Rows: Users can now split a column into one or more rows based on a specified delimiter such as a comma.

Have any feedback or questions? Leave us a note in the Community post for the relevant transform option.

In addition to the Daily, Weekly, and Monthly frequency options that we had support for already, we can now support “Hourly” as a schedule option for Connectors. Users can choose “Hourly” as their schedule option or “Custom” and select “Hour” as the unit with a custom repeat interval (as is supported for Daily, Weekly and Monthly today).

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

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.

We added support for standard Offset Pagination for “Pull from API” Connectors. Using this pagination method, users can supply the offset and limit keys to be passed as query parameters, as well as a starting offset value and limit value.

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

We added support for Link Header pagination, following RFC-5988 . Users can supply the relation label that is used to indicate the next link in the sequence (usually this is “next”), as well as if the link is a full or relative URL.

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

Crawling a specific set of pages is a commonly used function of the crawler. The Sub Pages Crawl Strategy allows admins to target a specific set of pages with a specified base domain (example: www.yext.com/blog). Sometimes, however, the base domain of the desired sub pages to crawl do not match the top level URL. Administrators can now specify an optional additional wildcard URL path to spider to in addition to pages that match the inputted URL’s base domain.

For example, imagine a brand is interested in crawling all of their blogs. Most posts live on URLs with the structure yext.com/blog/*, but some live on URLs with the structure yext.com/products/blog/*. Because the base URLs do not match exactly, some pages will be left out of the crawl. Now users can specify the sub page structure to include yext.com/products/blog/* allowing the crawler to crawl all desired pages.

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

Administrators now have the ability to view the raw HTML of crawled pages, so they can see exactly which data was crawled. This can help understand if the crawler successfully accessed the content they are looking for. Users can view this feature by clicking the View HTML button on the pages tab for a crawler.

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

Administrators now can better troubleshoot Crawler errors by viewing error details in the new Status Details column. For example, if the crawler was blocked from crawling a page, users will see crawler blocked in Status Details. Users will then know to ensure that both the Crawler’s user agent and IP addresses are whitelisted.

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

In the Crawler, users can now search the table by page URL to quickly find the results of crawling that page.

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

We made changes to our API Rate limiting methodology to better even out traffic for increased uptime. This feature will be turned on for all users for General Access.

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

Users can now assign other users access to any entity regardless of the entity type. Previously, users could only assign access for select entity types.

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

For the Winter ‘21 Release, we have added the ability to:

• View, add, delete, and update External Identities with Yext Users via the Knowledge API.
• View External Identities with Yext Users in the User Management UI.
• Fire an event when a user’s External Identities change, so that downstream systems can make changes accordingly.

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

To improve the discoverability of Apps in the App Directory, we’ve added additional filter granularity so that users can now filter by industry and use case when searching for an App.

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

We have created a new Admin API endpoint allowing partners to apply an account template to a sub account. Users can configure their sub accounts via API to fit into their usual workflow.

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

For increased security, we have updated the user password reset flow so that admins will no longer be able to reset the password of another user. Users will still be able to reset their own passwords in the Yext platform. Admins will still be able to both set an initial password when adding new users and trigger password reset emails for existing users.

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

An API Credentials tab has been added to the Developer Console, which is replacing the API Keys tab. We have also added an OAuth tab to consolidate all the fields needed for implementing OAuth for your app.

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

With this release, a few key updates will make managing user roles easier than ever. Users can now copy permissions from an existing role when creating a new custom role, and can delete custom roles in the platform via Role Management. Also, we created a Role View page to allow users to view permissions on built-in roles and provide additional visibility.

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

The Developer Console’s UI and UX has been redesigned. The new UI is organized in tabs, which makes it easier for users to find the fields they need. It is now easier to build an app and to recognize which fields are relevant to a user’s use case. For example, fields that are relevant to app distribution are only revealed if someone intends to distribute their app.

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

We implemented a Developer Console Logs UI refresh. Users can now view all API logs in one table with separate tabs to filter by the type of request including Knowledge & Admin API and Webhooks. Now users have more filtering flexibility than ever before.

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

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.

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

With Visitor Analytics, Answers and Pages customers can now attribute engagement, e.g searches, articles viewed, clicked links, etc, on their experiences with individual visitors and view this data in Report Builder and the Analytics API to better understand how their users search.

For customers using Yext Auth, this attribution will come out of the box attributing any engagement a visitor has on your experiences with their Yext user.

For customers using their own IdP (Identity Provider) or with any other way of identifying users, a unique ID can be provided by the customer with any analytics events on their experiences to better attribute engagement with users.

Analyzing individual user traffic is a huge step forward that helps you optimize your experiences, understand your user base, and make informed decisions about how to best serve your users.

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

The Integration Source Dimension / Filter in Report Builder is a great way to track differences in search trends for experiences that are integrated in multiple places.

For example, you might have both a traditional search results page as well as an overlay. Historically the Integration Source Dimension / Filter in Answers would only support the values STANDARD or OVERLAY.

However, Answers customers have begun building powerful AI Search in even more creative places and use cases, such as within a support ticket form as a means of case deflection . That’s why Answers now supports any value for the source. This will allow customers to designate when searches are initiated from Integration types outside of Standard and Overlay.

For example, a customer can set “source = Support Search” for Support Search integrations, allowing them to understand how many searches from Support Search versus a Standard Integration.

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

Answers Search Terms in Analytics normalizes query strings (for things like capitalization, leading and trailing whitespace, and punctuation) into a list of truly unique search terms to see what users are really searching for. Historically this varied slightly from the way the algorithm normalized query strings for searches but going forward, Search Term Normalization in Analytics will use the same method that the Answers algorithm uses to understand the Search Term and generate results.

For example, both Analytics and the Answers algorithm will now use the same logic for determining whether punctuation is removed or replaced with a space. This minor change will create more consistency between the Answers algorithm and Analytics. For those who would like to compare the impact of this change and / or export search term data using our legacy method we will be creating a new Legacy Search Term Normalized Dimension / Filter in Report Builder and the Analytics API.

This update will be enabled for General Availability of the Winter ‘21 Release.

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

To help improve Cluster Performance, we have made updates to the logic used to identify clusters and bucket them by size and performance. Users should now see fewer clusters that span multiple topics, providing more actionable insights.

We’ve also made changes to how Cluster Performance is being calculated to more accurately reflect both the performance and size of clusters. This should make evaluating how your experiences are doing even easier.

Additionally, the Search Term Clusters screen will now be sorted by Searches descending so Clusters with the largest amount of Searches will appear first when visiting the page. This will help make your most important clusters front and center by default.

This update will be enabled for General Availability of the Winter ‘21 Release.

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

We’ve added some new metrics, dimensions and filters to Report Builder and the Analytics API to make it even easier to analyze the performance of your experiences.

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

These new dimensions / filters help you better understand how filtering impacts search.

From what are the most frequent facet filters being used to what values are being filtered to the most, these new filter fields let you dive even deeper into how people engage with search using filters.

• 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
• Has Voice Search: Includes only searches made using voice search

Direct Answers

These new dimensions / filters help you better understand when and what type of Direct Answers are getting returned on your experience:

• Direct Answer Type: Type of Direct Answer returned for a Search
• Direct Answer Field Type: Type of Field used for Direct Answer returned for a Search

Other Dimensions / Filters

In addition, we’ve added the following dimensions / filters which make it easier for you to understand where your users are searching from, what verticals are getting returned and how support search is doing in case deflection.

• User Region: Region of user running Search
• User Postal Code: Postal Code of user running Search
• Browser: Browser of user running Search
• Vertical Returned: Vertical returned in results for a Search
• Has Case Start: Indicates the first search in the case creation process
• Has Case Submit: Indicates the last search in the case creation process

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

Users now have the ability to customize URL paths for pages built using Page Builder. This gives clients more control and flexibility of how their URL is generated instead of using an auto-generated URL. Having a custom URL allows customers to better align their website with their brand.

By default, Page Builder leverages the name field of an entity to generate URLs:

• Example: [domain-name].com/[name]-[numeric-hash]

With the Vanity URLs feature, users can select a field of their choice from the Knowledge Graph to use in place of the name.

For example, if a user were to select a field containing the [[name]-[geomodifier]] - this would result in the following URL:

• [domain-name].com/[[name]-[geomodifier]]-[numeric-hash]

Note:

• Published URLs will still contain the numeric hash at the end of URLs
• This feature is intended to be used for net-new pages. This feature will not impact the structure of live published URLs.

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

We have added an all new Publishers tab replacing the existing Listings Overview screen. The Publishers tab gives users a high level view of their listings statuses, showcases all of the places we are syncing their data to, and more!

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

Clicking into any publisher now takes users to a dedicated page for that publisher. On these pages, users will find useful information including an overview of important details for the publisher as well as a table of all their listings on that publisher.

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

In addition to an overview of important details, select publishers pages also support a configuration tab. For Google My Business, Facebook, and Yelp, you can both enable or disable the sync of certain fields and change the default mapped Knowledge Graph field for a given publisher field. For example, if you don’t want to sync photos to Facebook, simply turn sync off for this field. Or, if you want to send an alternate business description or website to Google, select a new Knowledge Graph Mapped field.

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

Stay up to date on any major announcements from publishers with the new Alerts feature. Users will see messages displayed in the platform when a publisher is experiencing an outage or another widespread technical problem.

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

To improve the speed and reliability of partner scans, we will be deprecating the has_hours and has_categories fields that returned in the Scans: Get Scan Result (API v2) endpoint when using a version (‘v’) param greater than ‘20190508’.

Support for these fields has been found to increase scan latency and occasionally causes outages in service for all partners. Removing these fields will result in more reliable scan performance going forward.

Once this update goes into effect, neither the ‘has_hours’ nor ‘has_categories’ will be returned from the Scans: Get Scan Result (API v2) endpoint when using any version parameter. This change will go into effect on May 1, 2022.

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

Yext now supports location listings on Aussieweb.com.au. This API-based integration supports duplicate suppression, real-time updates, hours, photos, business description, and more. You can take advantage of this integration from Yext with Early Access.

• Territory: Australia

Yext now supports location listings on Better Business Bureau. This submission-based integration supports NAP, business description, hours, photos, and more.

• Territory: Canada, United States

Yext now supports listings for locations and professionals on Hitta. This submission-based integration supports name, address, phone number, business description, hours, holiday hours, logo, payment methods, and more.

• Territory: Sweden

Yext now supports location listings on Instacart. This submission-based integration initially supports hours of operation and holiday hours.

• Territory: United States
• Please note: This integration is only available for Enterprise customers; it is not supported for Partner or the Small Business channel. Additionally, only businesses in the restaurant, supermarket, or consumer goods store categories are eligible to take advantage of this integration.

Yext now supports listings for Healthcare Facilities and Healthcare Professionals on Stiftung Gesundheit. This submission-based integration supports name, address, phone number, hours of operation, holiday hours, logo, specialties, and more.

• Territory: Germany
• Please note: This integration is only available for Enterprise customers; it is not supported for Partner or the Small Business channel.

Yext now supports location listings on Telephone City. This API-based integration supports duplicate suppression, real-time updates, review monitoring, hours, photos, and more.

• Territory: France

Wogibtswas.de now supports listings in Austria and Switzerland.

• Territory: Austria, Switzerland

Previously, Yext’s integration with DealerRater only supported mutual customers. Now, all car dealers are eligible to take advantage of this integration, allowing them to monitor their reviews on DealerRater through Yext.

Google Local Posting Available for Enterprise Businesses and Hotel Entity Types

Google Local Posting is available for Enterprise businesses, including Hotel entity types. That means Enterprise businesses can now leverage Google Local Posting through the Yext platform! Google has updated guidelines to allow “chain” businesses (10+ locations) access to Local Posting via API. There is no longer a restriction that local posts must be COVID-related.

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. Users can send local posts in the Post sub-tab of Listings.

Additionally, Google now supports the following new fields:

• Google ‘Free Testing’ Field for COVID Testing Locations. 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.
• Google Hotel Sustainability Fields. 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. A complete list of sustainability fields added can be found here.
• Google ‘Latino-Owned Business’ Field. 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. For questions about which business categories qualify for this field, please reach out to your Yext representative.
• Google ‘Located In’ Field. Yext now syncs the ‘Located In’ field to Google for businesses that are located within another institution. By specifying the Google Place ID of the containing entity, you can link a child entity to a parent entity on Google resulting in the ‘Located In’ experience displaying in the Knowledge Card.

Locanto now supports event listings in Algeria, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya, Paraguay, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Locanto no longer supports event listings in Jamaica, Morocco, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Mapstr is transitioning to be a submission-only publisher. Live Listings on Mapstr will now always show a status of submitted.

• Territory: Global

Tiendeo is transitioning to be a submission-only publisher. Live Listings on Tiendeo will now always show a status of submitted.

• Territory: France

Vitals now supports Review Monitoring and Review Response. In order to take advantage of this, you must be a paying customer in WedMD’s/Vitals’ Carefinder program AND have Yext Listings.

• Territory: United States

WebMD now supports Review Monitoring and Review Response. In order to take advantage of this, you must be a paying customer in WebMD’s Carefinder program AND have Yext Listings.

• Territory: United States

Yalwa now supports listings in Algeria, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya, Paraguay, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Yalwa no longer supports location listings in Jamaica, Morocco, Tanzania, and Uganda. Yalwa listings will be removed from the Listings tab in the Yext dashboard for location entities in these countries. Yalwa is a locations listings directory that helps users find information about local businesses and enables them to leave reviews.

Yelp Accepts ‘Fully Vaccinated Staff’ and ‘Proof of Vaccination Required’ Fields

Brands can now indicate on Yelp listings whether staff is fully vaccinated, or if proof of vaccination is required for entry by filling out the COVID Vaccination Requirement Fields in the Knowledge Graph.

As of November 30th, 2021, Chinese publishers that include Baidu, CK Map, Fliggy, Mafengwo, and Trip.com were removed from the Knowledge Network.

• Territory: Global

As of January 31st, 2022, VoteForTheBest will be removed from the Knowledge Network.

• Territory: United States

Yext’s new app directory integration with deqwas.MYPLACE allows mutual customers to sync basic listings information on Yahoo! Japan via Scigineer.

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

Yext’s new app directory integration with Feed It Back allows mutual customers to sync location data from Yext to their Feed It Back platform, helping to create and update listings.

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

Users can now pull Answers Analytics from their Yext account into Domo with the Domo Connector. Additionally, users can also pull in all Yext Analytics data for any date range into their Domo account.

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

Users can now pull Answers Analytics from their Yext account into Tableau with the Tableau Connector.

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

Email support for Redox Review Generation

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. You can manage this new functionality through the Preferred Contact Method field in the configuration screen of the Redox App.

Review Generation Supported for Multiple Entities per Healthcare Professional

Due to the nature of how Healthcare listings are structured, there can be multiple entities in Yext for a single Healthcare Provider. For example, a doctor that works out of 5 offices would have 5 separate Healthcare Professional entities. Previously, the Redox integration only supported the ability to send invitations when there was only a single entity in Yext for a given Healthcare Provider. Now, the integration will intelligently determine which location a patient visited, and send an invitation for the Healthcare Professional in Yext at the location of the visit! If you are using the Redox integration and are interested in taking advantage of this new feature, please reach out to your CSM.

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

With the new Clinical Trials Connector, users will be able to pull in public research studies as entities.

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

Data Connectors are a programmatic way to take data from a source and transform it into entities in the Knowledge Graph. This winter we have added an abundance of new connectors, making it easier for you to bring data into Yext from your existing data sources.

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

With the new Discourse Connector, users will be able to pull in community posts, topics and categories from their Discourse Community.

This will be released by General Availability of the Winter ‘21 Release.

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

With the five 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.

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

Our new Google Merchant Center Connector allows users to pull in product listings from their Google Merchant Center accounts. These products include a wide variety of fields native to Google Merchant Center and can therefore power vibrant e-commerce and marketing-related Answers experiences.

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

With the new Guru Data Connector, users will be able to pull in all of the Guru cards from their Guru organization into your Knowledge Graph, allowing them to surface content on relevant search experiences.

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

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

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.

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

Pull in your blogs from Hubspot CMS Hub with our new Hubspot Blog Connector! Using this connector, you can sync your Hubspot blogs to the Yext Knowledge Graph to power your Answers experiences, populate your Yext Pages, or investigate with our Analytics.

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

With the new Hubspot Tickets Connector, users can now pull in ticket data from their Hubspot Service Hub. Simply link your Hubspot account, and your tickets will be pulled in automatically at a regular cadence.

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

With the new Khoros Connector, users will be able to pull in categories, boards, conversations, and users from their Khoros Community.

This will be released by General Availability of the Winter ‘21 Release.

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

In addition to our Olo Menu Connector, users can now sync their location information into the Knowledge Graph with the Olo Restaurant Connector. This new connector allows users to pull in data like name, address, phone number, hours, delivery and pickup information, and more into their accounts with just a few clicks.

This will be released by General Availability of the Winter ‘21 Release.

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.

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

​​With the new Twitter connector users can now pull their brand’s tweets directly into their Knowledge Graph, allowing them to surface tweets on their pages as well as marketing, support, and workplace search experiences.

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

With the new Vimeo connector users can now pull their brand’s videos directly into their Knowledge Graph allowing them to add multimedia to Answers experiences with built-in video cards, embed videos onto your web pages, analyze Vimeo data using Yext Analytics and more.

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.

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

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.

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

Reviews Aggregate Data is now available on entity records in Streams. Reviews Aggregate Data refers to the average rating and review count for a given entity-publisher pair. Supporting Reviews Aggregate Data on entity records will provide increased flexibility for Yext consumer-facing systems. For example, Answers will soon be able to support queries like “Providers near me with 4 stars on Google”, giving your users even more ways to find exactly what they are looking for. Reviews Aggregate Data is available for Facebook, Google My Business, First Party, and External First Party source data.

In order to access reviews aggregate data on entity records, you will simply specify “ref_reviewsAgg” as a field on a Stream with the KnowledgeGraph Source. When the entity records are produced by the stream, they will have the Reviews Aggregate Data included in the aforementioned field.

    "ref_reviewsAgg": [
        {
            "publisher": "googlemybusiness",
            "averageRating": 4.6,
            "reviewCount": 25,
            "reviewsAggUid": "15495531-googlemybusiness"
        },
        {
            "publisher": "facebook",
            "averageRating": 4.3,
            "reviewCount": 22,
            "reviewsAggUid": "15495531-facebook"
        },
        {
            "publisher": "firstparty",
            "averageRating": 5.0,
            "reviewCount": 100,
            "reviewsAggUid": "15495531-firstparty"
        },
        {
            "publisher": "externalfirstparty",
            "averageRating": 4.9,
            "reviewCount": 2000,
            "reviewsAggUid": "15495531-externalfirstparty"
        }
    ]

To learn more about Streams, visit the Get Started with Streams guide.

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

Under the hood in Knowledge Graph , Option-Select (multi and single option select fields) are stored such that: Only the immutable value for each option is stored as data on a given entity, rather than display names of those values, which can be changed. Only the selected options are stored per entity, rather than all available options. However, consumers often want access to the display names and the unselected options, for example, to display both supported and unsupported payment options for a given location on a page or in Answers.

Streams has added two new transforms to ensure that consumers of Streams can access both option value display names and unselected options for Option-Select Fields included in Streams.

Streams support two separate transform types: 1. expandOptionFields: Output document includes all option fields, including unselected options. 2. replaceOptionValuesWithDisplayNames: Output document only includes selected options with display values replacing option values.

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

Streams API allows customers to query data from related entities and reviews data to build out great consumer experiences, like on a page or in a mobile app. Previously, Streams only supported exact match filtering. With the Winter ’21 Release, you can now filter Streams API results using logical operators (!=, <,> , = Null) and sort by indexed fields. Results can be sorted alphabetically, numerically, and by date, in both ascending and descending order. Supporting more filtering ensures your application can request only the data which is relevant to the end-user.

For more details on the Streams API, visit our Streams API Documentation.

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

As of the Winter ’ 21 Release, Listing URLs are now accessible in Streams. Users can now fetch listing URLs to be published from Facebook and Google My Business. Previously, Streams only supported data from Knowledge Graph and Reviews . This new feature allows Streams consumers to access not only the data stored on the entity in Knowledge Graph, but also the listing URLs for those entities, making building with Streams even easier.

 "ref_listings": [
        {
            "uid": "15495531-googlemybusiness",
            "publisher": "googlemybusiness",
            "listingUrl": "https://maps.google.com/maps?cid=17586948995805966426"
        },
        {
            "uid": "15495531-facebook",
            "publisher": "facebook",
            "listingUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/1288184197999628"
        }

For more details on Streams visit our Get Started with Streams guide.

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

Streams can now support multiple locales in a single Streams API. Users can now request documents in a specific locale, or fetch documents from multiple.

For example, if you had profiles in both English and Spanish, you could use a Streams Endpoint which includes both English and Spanish locales. When a user visits your site, you could make a request for the Streams API to only fetch the profile for the relevant locale.

This can be used for developers utilizing the Streams API when building consumer-facing applications, to ensure the content is properly localized for end-users based on the localized profiles in the Knowledge Graph!

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

The Hitchhikers Ideas board allows clients, partners, and Yext employees to add, upvote, or comment on ideas for the product roadmap and get feedback directly from the product team. The Yext team is so excited to see what you come up with and help brands around the world continue to build amazing AI search experiences.

Ideas is currently in Beta and only available to top-ranking Hitchhikers. It will be opened up to all Hitchhikers at some point during the Winter Release Early Access period.

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.