July Product Update

Starting this month, we'll be writing monthly updates. Why? Because we release new features and make small improvements to Clearstream every week, but have been admittedly terrible at communicating lately. 😬 This year we’ve been consumed with launching the new version of Clearstream (a nearly two-year undertaking), as well as helping our customers navigate their church communication through COVID-19.  That dust has settled some, so it’s a good time to put some things in order. Things like, hmmm, I dunno, better customer communication.

Here are some of the larger or more interesting product updates over the past couple months:

New mobile app for iOS

The new Clearstream iOS app reflects the new Clearstream web app. Android users, fret not, an update will come in the next couple months. 😉 The new app gives better metrics on your dashboard and easier account switching for those who use subaccounts. You can also now view your keywords and their corresponding workflows in the app, which should be helpful if you need to reference a keyword on a Sunday morning ("Wait, what's our first-time guest keyword again???") but can’t get to a computer. Last but not least, the Clearstream app will inherit Dark Mode in iOS if enabled on your device. It's quite pretty.

New Church Community Builder integration

Those of you who use CCB have been asking us for a direct integration with CCB for a very long time. Well, it's finally here! Now you can automatically sync your CCB groups into Clearstream.

New Bitly integration

We've always used Bitly for link shortening in the Clearstream platform, but we decided to build a direct integration, which gives you more control over your link tracking when sending a text through Clearstream. You can view detailed stats about your links, and even use a custom domain if you have a paid Bitly account.

Handle incoming replies on the message details page

You can now see incoming replies for every sent message on the message details page. This is separate from your main Inbox which contains account-wide incoming messages. 

Increased character limit

We’ve increased the inbox reply and keyword auto-response character limit from 160 to 320 characters. 

Decreased call-forwarding cost

The cost to enable call-forwarding from your Clearstream long code to your church line (or any number) has been lowered from $15/mo to $10/mo. 

Planning Center integration updates

If you use Planning Center, you can now sync lists right from the subscribers page. This is helpful if you just need to sync a single list. You can also now see category and campus information for each list in your Planning Center integration details. 

Slack integration updates

If you use our Slack integration, we’ve fixed an issue with long incoming messages from Clearstream creating multiple threads in Slack. 

API updates

For those of you using the Clearstream API, we’ve made a number of updates recently. You can track API updates in our new changelog as well. 

• Rate limits for most endpoints increased to 120 requests/minute.

• API keys can now (optionally) access subaccounts.

• New endpoint added for sending one-off text messages to phone numbers that may or may not be subscribed.

• Two new webhooks added for incoming text and failed outgoing text notifications.

• New endpoint added to get statistics about replies to a specific message.

• Two new endpoints added for adding/removing subscribers to/from lists.

• Added a [lists] parameter to the update subscriber endpoint to allow updating a subscriber's lists.

Company News

Lizzie

Customer Success

We’re excited to welcome Lizzie to the Customer Success team at Clearstream! Lizzie hails from Chicago. Being an outdoors and beach lover, she’s happy to be living in Pensacola, Florida with its' beautiful beaches.

We're hiring!

We’re hiring a full-time full-stack developer and front-end developer intern. If you think you or someone you know would be a great fit for either of these positions, apply here. We’re a bit biased, but Clearstream is an awesome place to work and Pensacola, Florida a great place to live. You can learn about Clearstream as a company and team here.

That wraps up this month's update! Have a warm and wonderful July!