Major Release: ANA chat bots can now be designed locally.

1. ANA Conversation Studio and Simulator are now bundled together.
2. Chats can now be created and tested in the studio locally without the need of the ANA Chat Server.

Release 0.2.9 Beta 3

1. Introduced HandoffToAgent Node.
2. Added Min Length, Max Length, Default Text attributes for Get Text Button type, used for validations on the client.
3. Publish chat project support is now given in the studio under File>Tools>Publish.

Studio: Added Chat Flow Validator, updated logo and color.

1. Added ChatFlowValidator. Errors and Warnings in the chat flow are automatically found out by the Studio and are shown in the respected window.
2. Search by node id, button id and section id is added.
3. Code cleaned up by removing the unused section and button types.
4. In Fetch Chat Flow button, 'Target Project' field is now available which lists all the projects from the chat server to make it easy to configure which chat flow to fetch.
5. Added UTF-8 Characters support
6. Rebranding ANA with new logo and color
7. Connection dropping will now work on the entire target node instead of just the small connector circle.

Studio UX Improvement

1. A dockable node editor.
2. Easy access to Chat server manager and Chat flow manager
3. Fixed in the simulator: Default button's variable value not being set to the given variable name.

Docker Support Added:
To setup platform inside a docker, download 'Platform (For use with docker).zip', extract and change into the directory.
This automatically setups up mongodb.
Open terminal/cmd and run docker-compose up

Note: Download and run SimulatorEnableLocalhost.bat to enable localhost Chat Flow API in the simulator.

Studio UX Improved

1. Search nodes feature added.
2. Buttons are given to navigate to the next and previous nodes from the currently selected one.
3. Button text and the message which goes into the chat thread can now be different.
4. Start node will stand out from the other nodes. Its header color will be different from others.
5. Sticky mouse issue fixed.

Studio Setup Project Added

1. ANA Conversation Studio can now be installed using the MSI. Alternately, the standalone distribution is also available if you want to have multiple versions at a time.
2. Added Copy Project Id and Copy Project URL to Tools Menu.
3. Added Export as an image in File Menu. This will save a high-resolution snapshot image of the chat flow which can then be used for printing or sharing the flow easily.
4. ANA Conversation Platform is now updated to DotNetCore 2.0. Cors support is now added, which even handles OPTIONS pre-flight requests from browsers.
5. New Button Types(GetDate, GetTime, GetDateTime, GetLocation) added.

ANA August 2017 Update

1. Studio independent of database
2. Multiple flows in a single chat server
3. Studio Redesign - improved UX
4. Press F5 to run the flow in the simulator.
5. Simulator 'save chat as image' option, takes a long screenshot of the entire chat.

Node Type: Card Support added to the simulator

The simulator can be used to test the flow with Node Type: Card

Studio password protection, auto updates and further reduced developer dependency

Studio password protection

Connection settings and access to the chat flows is now password protected. Password has to be set for the first time, which encrypts your settings file and also prevents access to the studio.

Reduced developer dependency

When using APIs in the chat flow, the behavior of the flow(which node to go next) can now be directly manipulated from the API's response without any wrapper on top. Client(Simulator) has the capability to parse the API's JSON response and match the value of the specified key with the one provided to change the course of the flow.

Agent Chat Released

Agent Chat

The ability to switch from a predefined structured flow to a live chat agent is now part of ANA Platform. This can be used if users are stuck at some point in the chat flow due to lack of clarity or they want some manual assistance.

1. Pre-requisites:

   Rocket Chat server: Rocket Chat is a full flege open source chat application. This is used as the agent chat platform here. A running Rocket Chat Server with admin access is needed to configure Agent Chat. Follow their docs and setup your rocket chat server. Note down the server URL, admin username and password.

2. Agent Chat Setup:

   This process assumes you have already setup ANA without agent chat by following above instructions.

   Setting up agent chat involves the following steps.

   1. Setup LiveClientSockets Server:
      1. Deploy the NodeJS project 'LiveClientSocketsManager' (included in the repo) on a server. The server can be same or different than the one ANA Platform is deployed on.
      2. Note: If you are not using IISNode to host it or you are not hosting it in IIS server, make sure the variables 'auth_username' and 'auth_password' are accessible via process.env to the node js code. IISNode does that automatically as these variables are defined in web.config
      3. Once the code is deployed. Make note of two things..
         1. Server URL: http://<your-domain.com>/
         2. Basic Auth Base64:
            1. Which is the base 64 of <auth_username>:<auth_password> of the values you set as in the web.config.
            2. Default is agentchat:agentchat and its Basic Auth Base64 will be 'YWdlbnRjaGF0OmFnZW50Y2hhdA=='
   2. Configure Rocket Chat:
      1. Login to rocket chat with admin user.
      2. Goto /admin/integrations
         1. Create a new outgoing integration
            1. This is basically setting up a web hook to notify ANA about a new message sent from Rocket Chat.
         2. Set the fields of the integration as following
            1. Event Trigger: Message Sent
            2. Enabled: true
            3. Channel: all_direct_messages
            4. URLs: http://<your-ANA-domain.com>/api/AgentChat/CallbackReceivedFromRocketChatServerAsync
            5. Impersonate: False
            6. Post as: [Use any existing user]. This callback will not post anything using the call back response to this 'Post as' does not matter.
      3. Goto /admin/Layout
         1. Inside 'User Interface' section, set everything to true, mainly, 'Use Real Name' option. This will display the actual name of the user in the rocket chat threads. It is picked up from 'PERSON_NAME' variable from Memory Stack of the simulator. Make sure 'PERSON_NAME' is captured in your chat flow before switching to agent chat.
      4. Create few users in rocket chat other than admin. They will be the users which agents have to login with. ANA automatically assigns agents to new chat requests, depending on availability.
      5. Make another user account which will act as the default user to which ANA will assign new incoming agent chat requests if none of the agents are available.
   3. Configure ANA Platform:
      1. Open appsettings-sample.json
      2. Fill in all the new fields present in the json by the ones which you have noted above and move those settings to your existing appsettings.json file.
   4. Setup the simulator:
      1. Install the latest simulator app and open it.
      2. Choose the 'Update APIs' option from the top right options button (…).
      3. Enter the above noted sockets server URL in the specified field.
      4. Update the 'Chat Flow URL' to end with 'HybridChat' instead of 'Chat', which was previously the case.
      5. Click Ok to save.
   5. Trying out Agent Chat:
      1. Login to a user in rocket chat. Make sure the status is online if the user is not the default agent chat user!
      2. Open the simulator app. Assuming you have your own chat flow setup and working, the simulator will start the structured chat as usual. After completing 1-2 steps of your chat flow, to switch to an agent, click the 'Agent Chat' option in the top right options menu.
      3. If everything is working fine, the current chat flow history should come into the rocket chat thread, text input box should appear in the simulator. From now on, Simulator and Rocket Chat user can chat two ways. Whatever typed in the simulator will be sent to the rocket chat user and vice versa.
      4. Sending the chat flow user (simulator user) back to a structured flow from agent chat is a planned feature coming soon.

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Note
LiveClientSocketsManager is a node js app. It can be directly obtained from the source code and hence is not included in the release.