UPDATE: We are excited to announce that as of April 13th, 2021 Facebook has restored the features that impacted Khoros customers as a result of the changes made to the Messenger API in December 2020. Please read our change log for more information. ___________________________________
Facebook announced that they will be making updates to their Messaging platforms as part of their continuing efforts to comply with new privacy rules in Europe.
Beginning December 16, several Messenger and IG DM API features will no longer be available for businesses in Europe, or for people in Europe who connect with businesses globally. These API updates impact all Facebook developers and partners working with Messaging APIs.
Please bookmark this Atlas post to stay up to date on how Khoros will be impacted as a result of these Facebook API changes. We will keep the blog updated with the latest information from our partners at Facebook as we have it.
Please note that Khoros is working closely with Facebook to outline exactly how these changes will impact Khoros products, and leading up to December 16, we will keep this blog post regularly updated as we learn more.
______________________________________
Which conversations are impacted?
- ALL conversations will be impacted for:
- Business pages in all 27 European Union member states, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and the United Kingdom
- Any page with an admin in Europe
- SOME conversations will be impacted for:
- Any non-EU page (when messaging with an EU User)
- If you are experiencing impacts as an EU page, but believe you shouldn’t be based on your business’ location, please contact support@khoros.com and we can help troubleshoot with Facebook.
What this means for your usage of Khoros:
At this time, we anticipate Facebook’s API changes will primarily impact the following features for both Khoros Care and Khoros Marketing customers:
Messenger will be impacted in the following ways:
- User profile information, including name and avatar, may be unavailable for impacted conversations. There will be no impact to Khoros’ current ability to display threaded conversation history for customer care purposes. Now that Facebook’s changes are rolling out (as of December 16), we are continuing to investigate the full impact to user profile information, and will update this post with any new information.
- Impacted conversations will only display images. No other attachment types (audio, video, files, etc.) sent by the user will be displayed.
- Pages can continue to send images and some message templates (see list below) for impacted conversations but the templates may render only on iOS and Android mobile devices for the end user. This applies to messages sent both via automation (bots) and via human agents through Khoros.
- Generic Template, Button Template and Media Template will keep working as currently on Android and iOS, only web clients will be affected by the upcoming changes.
- URL Buttons, Postback Buttons, Call Buttons will keep working as currently on Android and iOS, only web clients will be affected by the upcoming changes.
- For Pages integrated with a bot using Messenger Platform’s Handover Protocol (HOP), any non text or image messages sent by the bot for an impacted conversation will not be displayed in Khoros Care or Khoros Marketing (Social Inbox) UIs.
Instagram Direct will be impacted in the following ways:
- Impacted conversations will be able to receive only text content in direct messages. As such, story mentions, shared media messages, and any other media types sent by the user will not be available.
- Impacted conversations will not be able to send rich content (including media, file, like heart, etc.). Also, the ability to like a specific user message will not be possible.
Change Log (updated 4.14.21):
- In our original assessment of the impact, we stated that User profile data on Public Facebook Page Content (visitor posts, comments, replies) would not be available for EU users. However after further clarification from Facebook, we have determined that this will not be the case. There will be no changes to our ability to display the User’s name and avatar on these public items where they are currently being shown.
- In their initial announcement, Facebook previously indicated that pages integrated with a bot using Messenger Platform’s Handover Protocol (HOP) would not be able to have bots pass control of the conversation to a human agent or vice versa via HOP. As of December 3rd, Facebook announced that this is no longer the case, and conversations WILL continue to be passed between a bot and a human agent via HOP. Note, HOP restrictions around any non text or image message being captured by Khoros Care and Khoros Marketing still apply (see above).
- In our original assessment of the impact, we stated that User profile names and avatars would not be available for impacted Messenger conversations. However, after further testing and clarification from Facebook, we have determined that user profile information may remain available. As previously stated, there will also be no impact to Khoros’ current ability to display threaded conversation history for customer care purposes. We will continue to update this post as we learn more about the availability of User profile information in Messenger (see above).
- Since these changes took effect, Facebook has been working to restore impacted features to full functionality. We are excited to share that Facebook is targeting to restore the main features that impact our platform within Q1 of this year. This includes bringing back IG DM functionality to receive and reply to story mentions, shared media messages, and other non-text media types. Exact timing for feature restoration is still TBD; for details on feature restoration and estimated timelines, please refer to Facebook's developer documentation.
- As of April 13, 2021, Facebook announced that they have restored many of the features in the Messenger API that weren’t available to businesses located or with page admins in Europe and Japan, and for people in Europe and Japan trying to connect with businesses globally. The current list of restored features should remove all privacy policy error messages from showing within Khoros, effective immediately. Based on our initial testing, we believe all features that impacted Khoros and our customers should be fully functioning. Facebook does still have additional features to restore, and will continue working on those throughout Q2. If you continue to experience any issues related to this topic, please contact support@khoros.com. For details on feature restoration and estimated timelines, please refer to Facebook's developer documentation.
Please continue to check this blog post for updates, and please don’t hesitate to reach out to your Khoros team or support@khoros.com to discuss; we’re here to help you navigate these upcoming API changes from Facebook as smoothly as possible.
