Messenger Platform 1.4

Since the launch of the Messenger Platform in April 2016, businesses and developers have built experiences that span a variety of use cases, from raising brand awareness to enabling transactions and providing customer service. Today, we're announcing new developer features that you've been asking for - to enable more ways for users to discover, share and engage with the meaningful experiences that our community is building.

The Messenger Platform 1.4 release offers:

A new way to communicate bot functionality to users

REDESIGNED PERSISTENT MENU

The persistent menu now allows for multiple, nested items to be built in, giving people a way to find and select from all the features that a bot offers. Developers also have the option to hide the composer and create a simple Messenger experience without having to interpret free-form input from the user. Combined with webviews, this updated feature allows developers to launch rich workflows and experiences directly from the menu. Developers will have access to the redesigned menu starting today. This feature will be visible to users over the next two weeks. Learn more.

Features to grow your audience

EXPANDED SOCIAL SHARING CAPABILITIES

To help people introduce a bot to their family and friends, we're launching enhancements to Messenger's sharing capabilities. These updates include:

• Customized message content for sharing: Until now, developers could attach the existing Share button to a message, enabling users to share the message it was attached to. Today, developers can customize the content (image, message, button) that appears when people share a message with friends from your bot and link to a website to the bot itself. This will enable developers to provide additional context to recipients about the shared content. For example, when sharing scores from your Trivia Blast game in webview, users can share their rank and challenge their friends in Messenger. Learn more.

• Sharing capabilities for webview: A 'Send in Messenger' button is now included in webviews in Messenger, allowing people to send content from the webview to their friends in Messenger. These messages include attribution to the bot so your friends can start a new conversation with the bot. Developers can also now invoke sharing capabilities in their webview as a button within their own UI. Learn more.
• Bot deep-links for custom message sharing: Developers can now link these custom shared messages directly to their bot by using their bot's m.me (http://m.me/) URL in buttons. Recipients will be able to click on the link to start a conversation with a bot. Developers can also include a ref param to track user entry points or allow the recipient of the share to invoke specific actions inside the bot. Learn more.

Updated customer matching to reach existing customers on Messenger

Launched with the original Platform announcement in April 2016, the customer matching feature offers businesses the option to send messages to people in Messenger who have provided their phone number and consent to be contacted. We are now enabling businesses to submit full names, in conjunction with customer phone numbers, to increase matching accuracy.** **Messages sent via customer matching will continue to show up as a Message Request, giving people the option to open up the incoming thread. SMS customers who previously received text-centric, limited, opt-in content can now see richer content in Messenger from the brands they already interact with once they accept the Message Request. Learn more.

...AND MORE

• Messenger Profile API: Provides a new Graph API endpoint for developers to share information on their bots such as target country, localization of greeting text and persistent menu. This is an enhancement to the thread settings API, which we are migrating to this new Messenger Profile API. We encourage all developers to transition to the Messenger Profile API to access new features (e.g., enhanced menu). Learn more.
• API for Messenger Codes: Developers can use this new API to request a Messenger code on behalf of their client. This allows developers, who may working with clients to build a Messenger experience, to easily surface their customer's Messenger codes and promote discovery. Learn more.
• Payments pre-checkout event: Developers can optionally subscribe to this pre-checkout webhook event that will notify developers of when the user is checking out. This will allow developers to make updates to their final price (e.g., including shipping costs) prior to payment (available to native payments beta developers only). Learn more.
• Addition to app-level analytics: To help developers better measure bot engagement, we're adding the ability to collect additional stats for your bot (threads, block, delete and report rates) via Graph API. Learn more.
• Generic Template Aspect ratio: Allows developers to specify "landscape" or "square" for image aspect ratio in generic template. Learn more.
• Attachment Upload API: Developers can now upload an attachment and receive an attachment_id without having to send a message to users, simplifying the overall workflow. Learn more.
• Getting list of supported features on Messenger extension: Developers can now call this method to understand what features are supported on a client where webview was called from. Learn more.
• Raised text length limit. Text limit for messages and button template has been increased from 320 to 640 characters.

For more details, see full changelog and Messenger Platform documentation for this update.