December 13, 2022 release

News Feed is deprecated

News Feed is being deprecated. Braze recommends that customers who use our News Feed tool move over to our Content Cards messaging channel—it’s more flexible, customizable, and reliable. Check out the migration guide for more.

New API endpoints: Catalogs

Use the Braze API Catalogs endpoints to add, edit, and manage your catalogs and catalog item details. You can use the asynchronous catalog endpoints to make bulk changes to your catalog.

HTML attributes for links in the Drag & Drop Editor for Email

You can now add HTML attributes to any URL within the Image, Button, or Text editor blocks in the Drag & Drop Editor for Email. With custom attributes, you can easily append additional information to HTML tags in emails. This can be especially useful for message personalization, segmentation, and styling.

Show Heatmap toggle

You can now use the Show Heatmap toggle to bring up a visual view of your Message Analytics that shows the overall frequency and location of clicks within the lifespan of the email campaign. You can also download a copy of your heatmaps for future reference.

Updated email settings

The previous General Email Settings section has been split into two new sections: Sending Configuration and Subscription Pages and Footers. For more information about the individual settings, check out Email settings.

Generate AI images for your media library

You can generate images for your media library using DALL·E 2, an AI system from OpenAI that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language. Read more about Generating an image using AI.

Enhancements to nested custom attributes

You can use nested custom attributes to send objects as a new data type for custom attributes.

• You can trigger when a nested custom attribute object changes.
• You can also now personalize your messages using a custom attribute object and Liquid.

New Video block

A new Content Block for Video has been added to the Drag & Drop Editor for Email.

Optional Identifier for Vendor collection - Swift

In previous versions of the Braze iOS Swift SDK, the IDFV (Identifier for Vendor) field was automatically collected as the user’s device ID. Beginning in Swift SDK v5.7.0, the IDFV field can optionally be disabled, and instead, Braze will set a random UUID as the device ID. For more information, refer to Collecting IDFV.

Snowflake Reader Accounts

Snowflake Reader Accounts offer users access to the same data and functionality as Snowflake Data Sharing, all without requiring a Snowflake account or customer relationship with Snowflake. With Reader Accounts, Braze will create and share your data into an account and provide you credentials to log in and access your data. This will result in all data sharing and usage billing being handled entirely by Braze.

To learn more, reach out to your customer success manager.

Updated Shopify integration

The Shopify integration now allows you to collect email and SMS opt-ins from your Shopify store and assign them to a subscription group in Braze.

New Braze partnerships

Ada - Surveys

The Ada and Braze integration allows you to augment user profiles with data collected from your automated Ada conversations. You can set custom user attributes based on the information you collect during an Ada chat and record custom events in Braze at specified points in an Ada conversation. By connecting your Ada chatbot to Braze, you can learn more about your consumers based on what questions they ask about your brand or by proactively starting conversations with them, asking them questions that allow you to learn more about their interests and preferences.

B.Layer - Message templates

The B.Layer and Braze integration allows you to leverage the B.Layer in-app message builder to help you build on-brand in-app messages that can be exported as a zip file or inline HTML to Braze. This integration does not require additional developer resources, saving you time and budget.

Contentsquare - Analytics

The Contentsquare and Braze integration allows you to send Live Signals (fraud, frustration signals, etc.) as custom events in Braze. Leverage Contentsquare experience insights to improve your campaigns’ relevance and conversion rates by targeting messages based on your customers’ digital experience and body language.

Dynamic Yield - Dynamic content

The Dynamic Yield and Braze partnership allows you to leverage Dynamic Yield’s recommendation and segmentation engine to create Experience Blocks that can be embedded into Braze messages. Experience blocks can be made of:

• Recommendations blocks: Set algorithms and filtering to source users’ personalized content that propagates when the email is opened.
• Dynamic Content Blocks: Target different promotions and messages to different users. Targeting can be based on either affinity or audience. Dynamic Yield determines which personalized experience to serve when the email is opened.

Octolis - Analytics

The Octolis and Braze integration acts as middleware between your raw data sources and Braze, enabling you to retrieve and unify data from various sources, both online and offline.

Phrasee - AB testing

Phrasee React, powered by Phrasee X, leverages Braze Currents and Connected Content to collect click tracking information from your subscribers via webhooks. Phrasee then ties those events back to your language variants for real-time language optimization.

Sheetlabs - Dynamic content

The Sheetlabs and Braze integration allows you to leverage Connected Content to include Sheetlabs APIs inside your Braze marketing campaigns. This is commonly used to provide a bridge between a Google Spreadsheet (which is updated directly by the marketing team) and Braze’s templates. This allows you to achieve more with Braze templates, such as translations or larger sets of custom attributes.

Tellius - Analytics

The Tellius and Braze integration and Braze integration empowers users to leverage data, without relying on BI engineers, to build dashboards and generate insights to make better marketing decisions.

ThoughtSpot - Analytics

The ThoughtSpot and Braze integration leverages ThoughtSpot TML Blocks that allows Braze users to accelerate their user behavior analytics with prebuilt templates of worksheets and models. This integration enables users to limitlessly search across their Braze interaction data and uncover actionable insights.

Wunderkind - Analytics

The Wunderkind and Braze integration allows you to analyze the performance lift and identify more anonymous users, significantly scaling one-to-one messages sent via Braze and contacts added directly to Braze.

SDK updates

The following SDK updates have been released. Breaking changes are listed below; all other updates can be found by checking the corresponding SDK changelogs.

• iOS Swift SDK 5.6.3-5.7.0
• Flutter SDK 3.0.0
  • The native iOS bridge now uses the new Braze Swift SDK, version 5.6.4.The minimum iOS deployment target is 10.0.
  • During migration, update your project with the following changes:
    • To initialize Braze, follow these integration steps to create a configuration object. Then, add this code to complete the setup: let braze = BrazePlugin.initBraze(configuration)
    • To continue using SDWebImage as a dependency, add this line to your project’s /ios/Podfile: pod 'SDWebImage', :modular_headers => true. Then, follow these setup instructions.
    • For guidance around other changes such as receiving in-app message and content card data, reference our sample AppDelegate.swift.
• React Native SDK v1.41.0
• Web SDK 4.5.0

New SDK library: Segment Kotlin SDK

Segment has updated their library with a new Kotlin-first approach called Segment Kotlin. Braze has just released a new library of our own to work with this new library paradigm. Check out the initial release on GitHub.