Social Channels on Message Thread

Recently, when setting up the Social Channels in a new environment, I came across a distress: I was not able to respond through the same Social channel.

I reviewed my steps:

I had configured the Cloud Monitor correctly;
I had created and set up Facebook Channel correctly;
I had created and set up Twitter Channel correctly;
I was able to monitor both Social channels;
I was able to create an incident in order to respond to a tweet/post.

But on the message thread of the incident created from the post/tweet, I was not able to see the social channel option when I clicked the channel drop down list. I could only see the standard options: Phone, Fax, Post, Email, CSS Web or No Channel.

The problem was that when I clicked “Respond” or “Create Incident” on the Cloud Monitor, an Incident was being created and the default message type in the message thread was “Customer Entry” (where I could only see the channels: Phone, Fax, Post, Email, CSS Web or No Channel).

But if I changed the message type to “Response” – by clicking “Add” > “Reponse”…

… I was now able to see the Twitter (or Facebook) channel (if the Contact associated with the Incident had a Twitter or Facebook channel username).

It seemed to me that, whenever I created an incident, it was logical to be able to have the message type default to “Response” instead of “Customer Entry”. And this can be done by editing the Incident workspace:

Open the Incident workspace
Go to the “Messages” tab
Select the messages control (aka “Rich Text Incident Thread”)
Go to the “Design” tab > “Options” section
Click “Default Thread” > “Default Thread on New/Edit” and select “Response”

Now, whenever I create an incident, the default message type is “Response” and I can straightaway see the available channels through which I can respond.

Thank you to Hari Menon (Oracle Product Manager) and Luke Brennan (Oracle Pre-Sales Consultant) for the support.

Cloud Monitor: Responding through social channels

Using the cloud monitor, you can add social media posts from Facebook, Twitter, and RightNow Community to new or existing incidents so they can be processed on the agent desktop.

You cannot respond to RSS feeds or YouTube posts through RightNow CX. However, you can create incidents from them, which can be helpful for other business purposes.

When you create an incident from a social channel, the content of the post is added as a customer thread entry. By default, the incident’s subject field will contain the name of the channel and the leading text of the post. Together exceeding no more than 240 characters. However, you can customize the subject field contents by editing the CLOUD_INC_SUBJECT_TEXT setting.

The method used to associate incoming social incidents with contacts varies by channel. Incidents created from a post in RightNow Community are associated with contacts based on contact email address. Incidents created from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube posts are associated with a contact based on social media user name. If no matching contact is found, a new contact record is created and associated with the incident. Incidents created from RSS Feed or YouTube will be associated with a common generic contact.

The way you respond to social incidents also varies by channel. RightNow CX tracks each incident’s originating channel in the incidents.channel_id field and selects the same channel by default when you send a response. Each response is posted back to the contact using the unique messaging conventions of the originating media service.

Responding to Facebook posts
In Facebook, social conversations take the form of posts and comments on pages. While the cloud monitor allows you to monitor (but not respond to) posts from the public Facebook feed, you can respond to incidents created from customer posts on your organization’s Facebook fan page.

When you respond to a post on your organization’s Facebook page, the response appears as a comment beneath the post. The post is attributed to the name of the Facebook page designated by the channel account, rather than the agent’s name.

To respond to a Facebook post:
1. Perform a cloud search on a custom Facebook channel and view your search results
2. From the open cloud search report, select the post you want to create an incident from in the search results list.
3. Click the Respond button on the ribbon. A new incident opens on the content pane containing the details of the post
4. Select the Send On Save check box. The incident thread expands to reveal Facebook channel response options. The thread displays the name of the post’s originating channel and automatically selects the same channel for the response. The default channel account associated with the responding agent is also displayed
5. If your site has more than one Facebook channel account, click the Respond As dropdown menu in the header of the response thread.
6. Fill in any remaining details for the incident.
7. Click the Save and Close button on the ribbon.

Responding to Twitter posts
RightNow CX can create incidents automatically from private Twitter messages when you select the Automatically Create Incident option in the Twitter channel accounts editor.

To respond to a Twitter post:
1. Perform a cloud search on a Twitter channel and view your search results.
2. From the open cloud search report, select the post you want to create an incident from in the search results list.
3. Click the Respond button on the ribbon. A new incident opens on the content pane containing the details of the post
4. Select the Send on Save check box. The response thread header expands to reveal Twitter channel response options.
5. If your site has more than one Twitter channel account, click the Respond As drop-down menu and select the account you want to respond from.

Important: The channel account you respond from must include Private Message Response permissions. If the customer’s Twitter account is following your organization’s Twitter account, the Send Private check box will be visible and selected by default. You can clear this check box to post the message to the public feed. If the customer’s account is not following your organization’s account, the Send Private check box will not be shown and all sent messages will be public.

6. If your organization’s Twitter account is not yet following your customer’s Twitter account, click the Follow button.
7. Type your response in the response thread. Remember to limit each response to 140 characters, the maximum number allowed by Twitter.
8. Fill in any remaining details for the incident.
9. Click the Save and Close button on the ribbon to send the response through Twitter.

Cloud Monitor: Monitoring social channels

Monitoring social channels consists of searching the social cloud to track your organization’s reputation for the products or services it offers. You can manage your favourite cloud searches and subscriptions, schedule cloud searches, ignore or respond to posts, and create incidents from posts. You can also append posts to existing incidents as note thread entries.

By default, cloud search results that are not responded to, ignored, or added to an incident within 7 days are automatically deleted from the system. To change this frequency, modify the setting in configuration settings: PURGE_CLOUD_RESULTS.

The first step to monitoring the social cloud is to add cloud searches so you can search for posts mentioning your organization, products, services, or anything else related to your organization that you are interested in. You can also add subscriptions to monitor all content from an entire Facebook page or RSS feed.

To add a cloud search:
1. Click the Cloud Monitor button on the navigation pane.
2. Double-click Cloud Monitor in the navigation list.
3. Click Add button in the ribbon. The Add Cloud Monitor window will open.
4. Click Add New Cloud Search button and choose the channel from the drop down list.
5. Enter the word you want to search for on the Search Text field.
6. Enter the language preferred on the Language field (e.g. for English enter EN).

The search will be displayed on the Favourites report on the content pane, where the agent can drilldown on New Results or Total Results to see the detail. The Cloud Monitor by Search report opens and from there agents can respond or ignore posts as well as create incidents from posts or append them to an existent incident.

Once an incident has been created for a post, it can be assigned to a staff member from the cloud search report by selecting the post and clicking the Assign button on the ribbon.

In addition to posting public messages, agents can view and respond to private messages received by the organization’s Twitter account. Once you have enabled private message permissions in a Twitter channel account the Dbstatus utility automatically checks for private messages every 15 minutes and displays them on the cloud monitor.

Private message search results function like other cloud search results – you can create incidents from them, append them to existing incidents, mark them read, or ignore them. You can configure each Twitter channel account to automatically create incidents from all private messages it receives.

Scheduling cloud searches can save you time and help ensure that you consistently monitor the social cloud. For instance, you could set up a schedule to search once a week on a specific day or schedule a one-time search to coincide with a product release or important organizational announcement. A search cannot be scheduled unless it is marked as a favourite. To schedule a cloud search click the Edit Schedule button on the ribbon. The Cloud Scheduling window opens, where the agent can configure the schedule times.

Cloud Monitor: Configuration and Overview

Configuration
Before you can monitor the social cloud to search for information related to your organization, you need to configure your application to provide access to the RightNow Cloud Monitor.

To provide access to the RightNow Cloud Monitor it is necessary to:

Add cloud monitor to Navigation Sets
Add cloud monitor permission to Profiles

Overview
Using the cloud monitor, you can add, execute, and analyse cloud searches for any of the available social channels. As each new cloud search is added, it is listed on the content pane along with information about who added it, what social channel is searched, what text is searched for, the time it was last executed, and how many results have been returned. A search can also be designated as a favourite, which prevents it from being deleted and enables it to be scheduled on a recurring basis.

Twitter, Facebook, RightNow Community, and RSS searches can return a maximum of 100 new results per search instance, while YouTube searches are limited to 50 new results.

The social channels available for cloud searches are configured through the Channels editor. In addition, the Channels editor provides a utility for viewing and managing cloud searches that have been added for each channel. With the Cloud Search Manager, you can view and manage the list of agents who have selected each search as a favourite as well as remove searches that were entered incorrectly or are no longer needed.

The Cloud Monitor dashboard is divided into 3 sections.

Favourites: Contains a list of previous cloud searches. Each time you perform a new cloud search, it is automatically marked as a favourite and added to this section.
Subscriptions: Contains a list of cloud searches that have been added on a subscription basis. Refer to Searching the social cloud.
Private Messages: Contains messages received through Twitter private messages. Refer to Responding to Twitter posts.

Cloud Monitor: Twitter Channel

Cloud Monitor allows your company to monitor and participate in conversations on the Social Networks, interacting with the customers through Facebook, Twitter and listening on YouTube, Blogs or other RSS Feeds. From the searches in the Cloud Monitor agents can create incidents to pro-actively communicate with customers and follow up customers’ issues and also identify trends or experiences.

Social Channels have to be set up in order for RightNow to be able to search the Social Networks for posts and comments related to your organization and its products/services. These channels include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and RSS feeds.

Twitter
RightNow CX provides a default Twitter channel that you can access through the cloud monitor to perform searches of Twitter’s public feed. In order to monitor the public feed, you must first create a Twitter channel account and then select it from the Twitter channel editor.

Channel accounts enable agents to monitor, automatically create incidents, and send responses publicly or privately from the RightNow Agent desktop to public tweets or private messages sent to your organization’s Twitter account.

To add a channel account for Twitter:
1. Click the Configuration button on the navigation pane.
2. Double-click Channel Accounts under Service. The Channel Accounts tree displays.
3. Click Twitter and then click the New button on the ribbon to display the editor.
4. Type a name for the Twitter channel account in field Name.
5. Define how private messages will be processed in Private Message Permissions.
6. Select a group check box to associate all staff members in the group with the channel account or expand the group to select staff members individually.
7. Click the Grant Access button on the Channel Accounts editor. The Twitter Login window displays.
8. Type the user name and password of the Twitter account.
9. Click the Authorize App button. A message informs you that you have been granted access.
10. Click the OK button.
11. Click the Save and Close button on the ribbon.

To enable the public Twitter channel for social monitoring.
1. Click the Configuration button on the navigation pane.
2. Double-click Channels under Service in the configuration list. The Channels tree displays.
3. Click the Twitter down arrow and then select the Twitter channel to display the editor.
4. Type a name for the channel in field Name.
5. Click the drop-down menu to select the channel account you want to use to authenticate cloud searches.
6. Click the Save and Close button on the ribbon.

Note: Once the channel is saved and has been used to perform cloud searches, the Search Manager button on the Channels editor ribbon will become active. This function provides access to a utility for managing cloud searches by channel.

Cloud Monitor: Facebook Channels

Facebook
RightNow CX provides a default Facebook channel that you can access through the social monitor to perform searches of Facebook’s public feed. In addition, you can add custom channels to focus your searches to specific Facebook pages. By adding a custom Facebook channel, you can perform cloud searches that are confined to the posts on your organization’s
Facebook page.

To add a custom Facebook channel:
1. Click the Configuration button on the navigation pane.
2. Double-click Channels under Service in the configuration list. The Channels tree displays.
3. Click Facebook and then click the New button on the ribbon to display the editor.
4. Type a name for the custom channel in the Name field.
5. Click the Grant Access button. The Facebook Login window displays.
6. Type the email address and password for the Facebook account associated with the page.
7. Click the Log In button to sync the account with the channel you are creating.
8. Enter the necessary field information (Fan Page, Fan Page Id, etc).

Note: Once the channel is saved and has been used to perform cloud searches, the Search Manager button on the Channels editor ribbon will become active. This function provides access to a utility for managing cloud searches by channel

If you want your staff to be able to interact with customers on Facebook, you can also define a channel account to permit specific staff members to monitor your Facebook pages and send responses (Note: when agents reply to Facebook posts, their replies appear to come from the fan page and not from individual persona).

To provide staff access to a Facebook channel account:
1. Click the Configuration button on the navigation pane.
2. Double-click Channel Accounts under Service. The Channel Accounts tree display.
3. Click the arrow next to a Facebook custom channel to expand it and then click its contained channel account to display it on the editor.
4. Type a name for the Facebook channel account in the Name field
5. Select a group check box to associate all staff members in the group with the channel account or expand the group to select staff members individually.