Release Date: July 29, 2021

Sprint Overview

With this release, we focused on finishing the URL append feature, improved the advertiser set-up workflow to lessen confusion, and enabled features to support two pilot countries. We are currently running a few test dealers in the UK and Australia and some minor adjustments needed to be made in the front end to onboard those test clients accurately.

URL Append Enhancements

With this release, you will see additional options when creating a URL append value on a Dynamic display feed. We have had several requests to allow different vehicle-related parameters to be available as an option append value. We are excited to say this is now in production.

The difficult part of this enhancement was to prevent the use of an attribute that was not actually available for the associated feed format. This would not cause an issue, but it would allow users to use a placeholder that may not be present. To help prevent this we created a new help window that dynamically generates the list of available attributes by Feed Format.

If you are not familiar with Placeholders and how they are utilized, they work much like a placeholder inside the Search templates. The placeholder is used to generate dynamically inserted values from the feed into a section of the template or in this case into the URL. Let’s say for example the user wants to append the Condition, Make, and Model of the vehicle to the end of the URL for ease of data collection. This can now be done as an appended value much easier with the use of our append feature.

For example : Here is the VDP URL for a specific vehicle
https://www.toyotaoftampabay.com/vehicle-details/new-2021-toyota-corolla-le-JTDEPMAE2MJ189186

We want to add Condition, Make, Model to the end of that final URL
In the Append Name Field there is no required value this is free text and can be named whatever you would like we will use the values we are looking for: Condition, Make, Model
In the append Value Field you would use the following:

• [state_of_vehicle]

• [make]

• [model]

So the final URL will look like this: https://www.toyotaoftampabay.com/vehicle-details/new-2021-toyota-corolla-le-JTDEPMAE2MJ189186?Condition=New&Make=Toyota&Model=Corolla

Because we are using placeholders it allows the results to change dynamically for each vehicle and this includes an example for a used vehicle: https://www.toyotaoftampabay.com/vehicle-details/used-2015-honda-civic-sedan-lx-19XFB2F50FE088681?Condition=Used&Make=Honda&Model=Civic%20Sedan

Ref: IT-98 Using Available Feed Attributes In URL Append Feature

Enabling the Search Feature Process

Prior to today’s deployment enabling the search feature inside the Hoot platform was a bit tricky and at times failed to activate if users didn’t understand the selections they were making. We have removed the obstacles to enabling this feature to ensure it is always activated when a user opts to enable it.

When enabling the feature before today a user was asked to select one of two options. Those options were:

1. I first need to build my dynamic campaigns using campaign builder

2. My dynamic campaigns are already in place and ready for inventory updates

During training sessions, we directed the client to always use option 2 regardless of accuracy. However, clients would at times still select option 1. In doing so this action took the user to the template section and never actually enabled the feature.

We have removed the requirement of this option moving forward and instead the user will just be notified that if they have not done so they will need to create the campaigns and templates necessary to utilize the search feature.

Ref: IT-135 Search Feature: Improve Search Feature Activation Process

Minor Bugs and Tasks

Below are the general tasks and bug fixes addressed during this sprint
IT-125 Client Activity Alert Email – Add Additional fields to the email
IT-139 Evaluate the support of advertisers in the UK and Australia
IT-138 Upgrade MailChimp Account
IT-137 Client List Using the Search Feature
IT-136 Create feature status “Done(Send Email)”
IT-140 Dynamic Video – Duplicate Template Creation