Creating a Custom channel

1. Create a custom service adapter communicate between the service and Medallia Conversations. See Custom channel adapter for details about the adapter.

2. Open the Channels list: click the Channels tab.

3. Click New Channel.

   

4. In the Add Channel panel, select:

   • Custom

5. Provide:

   • Name — descriptive name of the channel.

   • Description — a description of the channel, including its purpose and the name of the channel it is targeting.

6. In the Auth section, enter

   • Custom send message URL — URL on the custom server that Medallia Conversations uses to connect to the service.

   • Page ID — Page or segment ID provided by the custom channel service to identify the application service.

   • App ID — Application ID provided by the custom channel service to identify the application.

   • Inbound auth settings — The mechanism and its settings that authenticate the custom channel when it sends requests to Medallia Conversations. See Authentication settings for details.

   • Outbound auth settings — The mechanism and its settings that authenticate Medallia Conversations when it sends requests to the custom channel. See Authentication settings for details.

7. Click Save.

The channel is now ready to communicate with the custom channel.

Custom channel properties

Category

Custom

Channel name

(required) Unique name of the channel. For usability, make the name descriptive and include the category in the name to differentiate the channel from similar channels.

For example, here are two channels for Orion Retail: one for SMS and one for Facebook:

Channel description

Text description of the purpose of the channel. Mention any restrictions like blackout dates and availability windows.

Availability windows

Availability windows identify when the channel is available to send feed-based invitations. Use the availability windows to pause the channel during times when people might not be receptive to the invitation, such as on weekends or at night. Note, this does not affect feedless surveys, which can be taken at any time.

The day and time are based on the respondent's timezone, as specified in the timezone information included in the raw invitation provided by the company, and processed by the import specification. See Import specifications for details about the import process.

When a window opens, messages are sent at random times within the next hour; they do not all go at at the opening of the window.

Important: Select a window that is greater than 1 hour/60 minutes. Selecting a window that is less than 1 hour can cause invitations to be sent during the restricted window.

Tip: Use availability windows for channels that contact or push the conversation to respondents. For passive channels — like web pages or social media — use them as needed by your company.

This example disables the channel on weekends, and between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 a.m.

Blackout dates

Blackout dates are specific days of a year when the channel does not send feed-based invitations. Use the dates to pause invitations to the channel on days when respondents might not be receptive, such as holidays. Messages scheduled to be sent on blackout dates are sent after the blackout expires. Note, this does not affect feedless surveys, which can be taken at any time.

Tip: Use availability windows for channels that contact or push the conversation to respondents. For passive channels — like web pages or social media — use them as needed by your company.

This example disables the channel on the U.S. holidays of the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving in 2018.

Opt-out keywords

Words or phrases respondents may send requesting their intention to opt-out of receiving future conversations from the company, on all channels. After receiving the opt-out instruction, the channel sends a message to the respondent acknowledging the request.

Note: A channel must have at least one opt-out keyword. The default keyword is 'stop'.

Each entry may be a single word, such as 'stop', or a multi-word phrase such as 'opt me out'. The text is case-insensitive: 'stop', 'STOP', and 'Stop' are all recognized when the word is 'stop'.

Opt-out message

Text message to send to the respondent after the channel receives an Opt-out keyword from the respondent.

Authentication settings

Inbound and outbound settings define the authentication mechanism to use when connecting to the channel. The mechanism can be the same or different for inbound (channel → Conversations) and outbound (Conversations → channel) communications. The mechanisms are:

• OAuth2 uses a client ID and secret to form a request for a temporary access token from an authentication service. The requester then includes that token in requests from the resource service.

• API-Token a token is sent as an HTTP Authorization header with Bearer token, or as query parameter in API call. The receiving service is responsible for accepting or rejecting the token value.

• Custom signature or SignedRequest (inbound only). The HTTP post request contains an X-Hub-Signature header with the SHA1 signature of the post payload. The signature is calculated using the keyed-hash message authentication code (HMAC) where the key is the secret property in the channel definition. The signature is then prefixed with sha1=.

These mechanisms are available as follows:

OAuth2 authentication settings

API-Token authentication settings

SignedRequest authentication settings

Settings available when the Auth type is Signed Request.

Default Conversation Throttle

The conversation throttle limits how many Default conversation messages, for a specific Conversation, can be sent to the same recipient within a time window. This prevents infinite "ping-pong" loops with auto-responders or answering machines, thereby reducing accidental spam, controlling costs, and protecting customer trust.

For example, by default Medallia Conversations sends no more than 3 Default Conversations to the same recipient with a 90-second time period. Instead of making a 4th attempt, the recipient is blocked for 24 hours from receiving a Default Conversation. After 24 hours, Medallia Conversations again tries to send default Conversations to the recipient.

To view a list of the blocked recipients, see Blocked Records.

Channel settings

Channel settings are custom configuration options to pass to the channel or channel service. Each setting is a key/value pair.

By default, each setting is passed to the channel service as a header field in the HTTP message sent to the service. For example, a curl command would include the setting above similar to this this:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H 'account: MEDALLIA' \
  -d '{ … }'

When Configuration is enabled, the setting is NOT included in the HTTP request, and is instead assumed to be an advanced channel configuration not included in the list of channel options.