It's turkey (or your chosen plant-based substitute!) season again! That means it's time to gather together with friends and family and stuff yourselves silly, and Centercode has a new friend we'd like to introduce you to who has a lot to bring to the (proverbial Thanksgiving) table. 

We've hinted at it before, and this month we're finally ready to let Ted AI out into the world to show you what he can do! Ted AI marks Centercode's entry into the intelligent tools space, with a new family of smart agents expanding Ted's reach far beyond tester engagement.

In the first (of many to come) batch of Ted AI agents we've got a brand new way to generate actionable test plans for your project that you're going to love. And if that's not enough to whet your appetite, we've got the usual spread of improvements and bug fixes to make sure you leave satisfied. And if you happen to leave some room for dessert, we've got yet another tantalizing set of upcoming AI features in our GoEarly program that you won't want to miss! Sign up here, and get a slice of the action.

 new features

✨ New Features ✨  

Let Ted AI take care of your test planning!

The main course for this November's release is a whole new way to generate test plans in a flash! You provide the ingredients, and Ted AI will do the cooking! Centercode's AI test plan generation allows you to use your basic product info, existing product documentation, or a set of custom instructions to instantly create a full set of features and phases, a short focused one-week test, or a set of features you can schedule yourself. Generate a fully featured test plan, complete with a balanced set of features and phases, to help get your project off of the ground, or use what Ted AI whips up as a starting point for a more customized test plan!

Once you've enabled test plan AI generation in your Community AI settings (learn more here!), simply navigate to the new AI test plan generation tool via a new button located on your test plan management page!

From here you just need to give Ted a few starting parameters, and then as much information as you would like for him to work with (more is better, but you'll be surprised what he can put together with just a few basic details!), and any custom instructions you'd like incorporated into your test plan. After that, simply select the default team access you'd like for your features and phases, hit submit, and let Ted work his magic!

And, voila, a fully featured test plan ready for testing! Simply follow the new test planning infobox prompts (added with last month's release!) and you'll have your test up and running faster than ever before!

improvements

📈  Improvements 📈 

Making it feel like home

And if all that wasn't exciting enough, we've also got a few additional options and improvements for your project home! A new set of checkboxes in the Feedback properties page of each feedback type lets you individually control which feedback buttons appear at the top of your project home, as well as which feedback buttons are presented on the page shown to testers after they complete an activity. Got a feedback type that doesn't need to be in the limelight, or one you'd particularly like your testers to see after completing an activity? These new checkboxes have got you covered! Additionally, we've removed the percent of activities completed bar from the project home to keep your testers' attention focused on the more information rich list of complete and incomplete features below.

💡 Centercode GoEarly features 💡 

Ted AI is ready for seconds with AI survey generation!

Not one to rest on his laurels (even after a healthy dose of turkey-delivered tryptophan), Ted AI is ready and rarin' to go with his second set of AI tools, this time focused on AI survey generation. Just tell Ted what sort of survey you want to create, and provide a few quick details or specific question you want included and he'll have something ready before you can say "Another slice of pie, please!" Not a member of our GoEarly program yet? There's always room at the table, so sign up now!

fixes  

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Data Engine & Custom Reports

• Cloning Project Reports was being incorrectly gated by Community access in addition to Project access
• Feedback comments now return from the data engine sorted oldest to newest (instead of alphabetical)

Test Planning

• Test Plan imports will now properly respect the initial Survey selection value

📈  Improvements 📈 

Form Engine & Custom Surveys

• Feedback choice element impact is now available on initial element creation

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Miscellaneous

• An issue with feature flow submission related to prior Praise completion on that same feature was corrected.

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Miscellaneous

• Resolved issue related to video recording upload/playback

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Localization & Strings

• Added the ability to customize some strings on the project invite account settings page variant.

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Miscellaneous

• An issue with video file playback related to our wide media rollout was corrected.

Double, double toil and trouble! Spoooky season is upon us once again, and Centercode has a bubbling cauldron of new features and improvements to serve up in October's release (and don't worry we left out the toil and trouble). It's all treats and no tricks here with a brand new set of first-class video and screen recording tools! And that's not all, we dusted the cobwebs off of (before re-adding them for decorative purposes) our test planning interface and added a load of new functionality and information you're sure to find a treat. Bite a little harder into test planning and you'll find a nougaty center of new feature creation options! And, lurking just out of sight, we have some truly frightening(ly useful!) GoEarly features waiting for those brave enough to seek them out. Click here to sign up now!

✨ New Features ✨  

Video and screen recording (no jumpscares please!)

First up, we've got an amazing new first-class suite of media tools that will redefine how you can interact and engage with your testers. These new tools enable you to natively record and share video or screen recordings with your testers in any resource (features, content, and releases). Now you can give precise, in-depth instructions or product descriptions to your testers without ever leaving the Centercode interface.

Once you've recorded these videos, Centercode now includes a powerful suite of video editing and review tools to enrich the functionality of your recorded videos, including automatic video transcription, and built-in video annotation options!

📈  Improvements 📈 

Trick-or-treat! We've got new Test Planning features!

Hope you brought the BIG plastic pumpkin bucket, we've got a lot of Test Planning treats for you! We've revamped the Test Planning page to guide you from importing a test plan to finalizing your phases and features in advance, to approve and publish them when you're ready. Additionally, the new "Quick modify" feature allows you to make changes to aspects of features, such as feature names, descriptions, instructions, and value straight from the Test Planning page. We’ve also added helpful new infoboxes to keep you informed about the status of your test and highlight any items that need your attention.

Add intent to your features!

We're excited to introduce a major overhaul of the feature creation process. The new, intuitive splash page simplifies feature creation, and a brand-new feature intent selection section guides you through defining the purpose of your activity and testing process. After selecting your intended feature intent, the platform will automatically populate the appropriate fields, including some helpful infoboxes to give you an idea of the sort of instructions you could provide to optimize testers’ engagement with your activities. These intents also include three options that are directly tied to the new media tools, allowing you to collect video interviews, screen recordings, or live experiences via webcams or mobile phone cameras from your testers, all from within the platform!

Nuanced control over conditional features!

We've also included several user-requested features, such as the option to make feature availability conditional on the completion of other features (to make sure your users complete features in a certain order) and following activity completion with bespoke custom surveys!

This also includes more detailed post-activity feedback collection options, such as the ability to collect star ratings independent of the full FSAT system, as well as the ability to tie a custom survey directly to an activity.

💡 Centercode GoEarly features 💡 

Something wicked this way comes!

This month's GoEarly release introduces something we here at Centercode have all been excited about for a very long time: Our first super rad AI feature (of many to come)! We don't want to say too much before you're able to get your hands on it, but trust me folks, you don't want to miss this one. In addition, we've got a few other exciting features we're continuing to improve! Want to learn more? Sign up now!

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Platform Security

• Corrected a conflict with new security settings and age verification during new account creation

It's September, and Fall is (or soon will be) upon us! That means cooler weather, falling leaves, and the smell of warm apple pie on the breeze (or more likely out of a scented candle for those of us too lazy to bake). And boy, does Centercode have some delicious new features crisping up in the oven! But all good things require patience, and they're not quite ready to be served yet. Given how big of a deal GoEarly is this month, we’ve included a candid note from Centercode CEO, Luke Freiler down below! 

Not participating in our GoEarly program? Click here to sign up now, and get your hands on these features as soon as possible!

announcements 

💡 Centercode GoEarly Features 💡 

Hi all,

Our new preview release is being handled a bit differently than usual, as we're focusing on not only new features and enhancements, but also a brand new Centercode product, which we're not quite ready to announce publicly just yet.

If you're a member of our GoEarly community you will have received an email with further details, inviting you to participate as usual. If you're not, but are curious - feel free to sign up here, and we'd be happy to add you to the test team!

Thanks,

Luke Freiler
CEO @ Centercode

new features 

✨ New Production Features ✨  

A new option to tune your engagement bot

The engagement bot (Ted by default) leverages multiple means of engagement to ensure you and your testers are well aware of what's happening in your tests. This month, we've added the ability to turn off SMS messaging from the bot. It's uncommon for the bot to resort to texting — typically only in "emergencies" — but this option will make sure that Ted sticks to email correspondence.

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Localization & Strings

• A number of project-level strings that are shown on sign-in pages were updated to ensure they appear correctly during the recruitment process

This week's patch fixes a highly impactful issue that we discovered this week. Please take a moment to consider how this issue may have affected your program's filters. Projects cloned from custom templates between June and September may be affected, so please review any automation based on user or feedback filters in projects created during this window, or contact help@centercode.com for support.

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Project Templates & Cloning

• Corrected a project cloning issue related to certain filter options retaining their selections.

The sun is beating down, things are heating up, and here at Centercode, we thought a set of cool enhancements might be just the breath of fresh air you need! The August release contains a new feature designed to help you get your project off of the ground, as well as a few pesky bugs zapped!

 new features

✨ New Features ✨  

Don't forget your NDA (and sunscreen)!

Protecting your project privacy is important (almost as important as protecting your skin!), and this brand new feature coming out of our GoEarly program adds an extra layer of protection to your program. We've added a combo of warning banners and infoboxes to let you know if you don't have a project-level NDA set up in your notice process in any project marked as private. 

A new button will take the place of your "Invite to project" button, letting you know that you're missing an NDA for your participant teams. Clicking it will take you right where you need to go to get one set up! Warning infoboxes will also show up anywhere you might add testers, such as the Invite to project interface, recruiting pages (shown below), and invite type pages. Not setting up an NDA for your project (or already have one configured at the community level), or simply don't need the reminder? No problem! Dismissing the button in the menu will return it to the "Invite to project" button, and you'll never see these warnings again in that project.

fixes  

🐞  Bug Fixes 🐞 

Data Engine & Custom Reporting

• Corrected an issue preventing the creation of label elements in custom reporting.