When we look at evolving customer communications, we often focus on improving the experience by adding new delivery channels, improving content by adding color and variable images based on the audience or improving self-service. Some organizations focus on making the communications interactive in digital channels, adding video or improving self-serve preference management to encourage digital adoption and reduce print costs. 

Despite efforts over the years to merge transactional and promotional (marketing) communications, it’s still more common than not that these communications continue to be managed and generated in siloed systems, separating their stakeholders in name of privacy and security of the data. Marketing needs to have the freedom to explore any and all options when it comes to lead generation and customer nurturing while transactional communications need to maintain guardrails to retain trust with existing customers by protecting their sensitive data. 

Unfortunately, this approach often impacts the customer experience. Inconsistencies in communication look and feel, silos by line of business, disconnected or limited integration between systems ultimately leaves gaps in the customer’s ability to navigate the vast web pages and content available through self-serve. This causes them to turn to support channels such as the contact center, customer service, agents, chats, etc. More often than not, these employees in the front lines of customer support often request patience from the customer as they need to navigate several internal systems in an effort to find the desired information or answers. 

While many strategies look to new software, business process automation or to redesign communications as a way to improve the overall experience, the goldmine at the root of every experience is the customer data. 

Customer data management is done in a variety of ways within an organization, even within individual lines of business. CRMs are often used to capture information for preference management, CDPs (customer data platforms) are used for website tracking and personalization, often missing the full omnichannel experience tracking. Marketing automation has included lightweight CRMs which are evolving to CDPs but are sometimes just their own database specific to their content-focused used cases. Campaign management is often separate as well, holding its own set of data used for personalizing campaigns and understanding customer behavior within them. Journey management solutions also have a unique set of data not stored elsewhere around the events, actions and behaviors, both planned and reality, that reflect customer interactions. Segmentation is another function that is often solved through custom scripting or home-grown systems or is embedded within other marketing systems but holds valuable insights. 

The result is a vast system of siloed data sources that customer experience executives and communication centers of excellence (COE) see a need to address, but it requires a level of attention and effort to sort through. At best, go forward efforts such as zero copy policies helps reduce complexity, but can slow down adoption of new technologies. 

Adding more complexity are AI and LLMs. Generative or Content AI is really where many communications and data tools have focused to generate or tweak content. However, concerns around intellectual property can limit how organizations want to use these tools. In communications management, assisting content creators to craft messages has shown some value, but is only the tip of the iceberg of the potential value AI can provide to communications experiences. The more data available to be fed into an LLM, the more we can leverage other AI variations such as Insights AI and Responsive AI, which have the potential to analyze the vast amount of data available in these siloed systems and make recommendations for improving customer experiences from individual touch points to the overall sentiment of the business relationship. 

Knowing that this data exists today within organizations but in disparate systems is a good problem to start with. Many have attempted to solve this through business process management/automation and integration, but that approach can create complexities of its own. Aggregating all of this data to persist in a single, centralized database is an unrealistic effort that will get shut down by every CIO and IT department. So, how can we address this? 

The first step is understanding where this data exists today. A few questions to ask… What systems exist and where? What type of data is stored in these systems? Is it usable? Is it actionable? Where and when is it used and to what extent? For example, can it be used for personalization of content within a communication, personalization of an experience touchpoint or automating orchestration follow ups? 

Once you begin to understand the complexity of your organization’s data infrastructure and the valuable data it holds, you open the door to the opportunity to connect these systems with a customer data solution that can provide a powerful, complete view of the customer that is both actionable and insightful. 

The work is not done yet. Understanding the personas who need to use this data, creating a data governance strategy and aligning key stakeholders are also critical steps to success. What are the desired outcomes and their respective priorities of this data once it’s aggregated, normalized, analyzed and able to provide a more complete view of your customers and their behaviors? This goldmine of data is powerful and desirable, so having clear priorities is key. 

As we know in customer communications, data is sensitive and must be protected but can provide powerful insights that can improve business outcomes and enhance personalized experiences when used correctly. New solutions are becoming readily available that are approaching disparate enterprise data systems with a different approach that does not require ripping out the existing infrastructure. It is important to remember that the software and solutions are only as good as the strategy that is driving the ROI and outcomes of centralizing customer data. 

The post Is your customer data ready for CX transformation? appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

May 2025: What's new in DAM 25.2

Digital asset management is having a moment. Industries that traditionally create high volumes of rich media enjoy the productivity advantages of AI-led innovation in usability and automation. At the same time, new use cases for images, video, audio, 3D models, and other rich media formats have emerged in industry verticals such as manufacturing, transportation, and utilities, adding to the need in the market for both specialized and versatile DAM solutions.

OpenText™ Digital Asset Management is a leading Enterprise DAM solution that excels in securely handling multiple use cases and user communities across any organization. One of the pillars of the OpenText DAM team is relentless innovation. Let’s look at the top capabilities unlocked in the latest updates.

Generative AI Search

Helping colleagues find the perfect assets for their project is one of the biggest benefits of digital asset management. A skilled user can craft the ideal search query for any situation with OpenText DAM’s industry-leading Advanced Search. However, Generative AI search using RAG (retrieval augmented generation) is a powerful asset discovery assistant for occasional DAM users, releasing super-users to focus on higher-value tasks.

By leveraging the exceptional power of OpenText™ Knowledge Discovery, OpenText Digital Asset Management 25.2 now offers Aviator Search, including:

• Natural Language Search enables users to find assets using their own words
• Reverse Image Search enables users to find assets using a local or online image
• AI Asset Summary adds natural language descriptive metadata, ideal for SEO and GEO

Unlike most alternatives, OpenText Knowledge Discovery is available as a Private Cloud or on-premises solution, so all your data stays securely under your control in the same location as OpenText Digital Asset Management.

Video and 3D model enhancements

Recent releases have further improved the video and 3D model management capabilities of OpenText Digital Asset Management.

• Use AI auto-tagging to analyze 3D model previews, improving discoverability
• Export video transcripts in VTT format, providing more options for translation and subtitles
• Improved video and audio analysis when using OpenText Knowledge Discovery for AI Media Analysis

Continual improvement

While those are the top highlights, every update keeps OpenText Digital Asset Management at the leading edge of usability and security. Recent versions have included improvements  in accessibility, watermarking, asset linking, project management, API functionality and many other areas. With an exciting roadmap and a powerful vision, OpenText continues to lead the market for Enterprise DAM.

February 2024: Product content integrations, new file formats, AI and more

For a category that has been around for over 30 years, digital asset management (DAM) is surprisingly dynamic. However, it remains challenging to manage the increasing volume and complexity of rich media that organizations and individuals create and consume. Whether it is new formats, like 3D models, new channels, like social short-form video, or new technologies like Generative AI, DAM innovation must keep up the pace.

At OpenText™, we are proud of our track-record of relentless innovation. But we spend so much time looking forward that we are sometimes guilty of not considering the milestones we have achieved. So this is a look at the highlights that were achieved over the last year in digital asset management.

Product content integrations

For many online retailers, DAM and product information management (PIM) have been a power-couple for years. We have integrated OpenText DAM with leaders like SAP, Stibo, Riversand, and Salsify. But as more brands market their products directly, the PIM market has expanded rapidly. That’s why we introduced a PIM Integration Framework to OpenText DAM in 2023, making it easy and fast to integrate with (almost) any PIM.

More file format support

As is typical with emerging content types, the number of file formats for 3D assets continues to grow. In 2023, OpenText added support for GLB/GLTF, WRL/VRML, and 3DS. This is in addition to the existing support for PLY, FBX, STL, DAE and OBJ file formats. Our objective is to eliminate the need for dedicated 3D editing software when it is only necessary to view and rotate the object.

Also in 2023, we introduced support for viewing animated GIFs in the user interface and delivery through Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD). In addition, we won’t disagree with how you pronounce GIF.

Dynamic search experience

Keyword search now dynamically displays thumbnails of top results. This accelerates the discovery of key resources and reduces the friction that decreases user engagement.

Automated workflows

Automation is more than a way to increase productivity, it also drives compliance and consistency. The workflow engine in OpenText DAM was improved to allow easy scheduling and recurrence of automated jobs. New actions were added including watermarking and unpublishing from collections. A sample expiration workflow, developed in collaboration with our customers, is now provided to show how to use the new capabilities.

AI and ML

OpenText completed the acquisition of Micro Focus in February 2023, and that included the powerful and flexible IDOL Media Analysis. We wasted no time in adding support for IDOL into OpenText DAM, adding to the options available to customers looking for world-class AI image and video analysis. Key to some customers, IDOL can be installed as a private service for security-conscious organizations, so training sets and assets needing analysis do not need to be sent outside the organization.

But the big buzz of 2023 was generative AI (GenAI). We partnered with Google Vertex Imagen to add this exciting new capability into the creative request workflow as inspiration images that clarify the requirement. Listening to the needs and concerns of our customers, we added governance options such as automatic tagging, watermarking, and clean-up of images, to avoid accidental or unapproved use of assets created by AI.

A big year

It has been a big year for OpenText DAM innovation, and these were just the highlights. We’ve continued to improve usability, security, and connectivity in ways that deliver success for our customers and help them deliver success to their customers.

2024 is set to be even bigger, so stay tuned for more!

The post What’s new in OpenText Digital Asset Management appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

Websites have become mission-critical business assets, growing from just 17.1 million in 2000 to an astounding 1.7 billion today. Web experiences have rapidly changed and become increasingly more interactive, more dynamic with a dramatic rise in mobile traffic. With so much usage, engagement remains a paradox. Users are quick to move away when experiences do not keep their interest or engage them. According to Forbes, click-through rates (CTRs) are only 4.23% - meaning only 4.23 people out of 100 will click on a call to action. As web presence evolves, so must the systems that power them.  

Check out the latest updates to OpenText™ Web CMS (TeamSite):

Introducing OpenText Web CMS

OpenText™ Experience Cloud Edition 24.2 was a big milestone for our web content management system with the release of OpenText™ Web CMS. The evolved and expanded product is the next generation from the previous flagship OpenText TeamSite. TeamSite had greatly changed over 25 years and was a pioneer and innovator in the industry. To better reflect changes in the market and the new technologies, OpenText Web CMS marks a new era with expanded use cases and new capabilities.

Beyond traditional content management

OpenText Web CMS transcends traditional content management by delivering:

• AI-powered experiences that dynamically adapt to user needs
• Interactive experience applications including HTML5 calculators, wizards, and data visualizations
• Customer journey mapping with robust data foundations
• Flexible deployment options with enhanced hybrid and headless capabilities
• Embedded Digital Asset Management (DAM) for seamless media integration
• Extensive integration platform supporting diverse business systems

Focusing on customer success

The most significant shift? Using web experiences to drive the complete customer lifecycle—from purchase through onboarding to retention and loyalty. While many companies focus primarily on acquisition, research shows existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new customers. OpenText Web CMS excels at nurturing these valuable relationships.

April 2025: Power-packed 25.2 release - Titanium X

The Experience Cloud's 25.2 release delivers Titanium X, helping organizations win in today's experience economy. This release builds on innovations from CE 23.1 through CE 25.2, empowering companies to modernize their customer experience platforms. Users crave interactive experiences. Adding just one video increases average time-on-page by 88%. All industries are witnessing rapid adoption of progressive web applications (PWAs), single page applications (SPAs), and dynamic experiences built with modern frameworks like HTML5, React, and Angular.

Bridging developer-business silos

Success today requires bridging silos between developers, business users, and creative teams. OpenText Web CMS delivers this through:

• Developer flexibility: Use any language (React, Angular) beyond traditional SPAs
• Component collaboration: Multiple components working together with CI/CD pipeline management
• Connected data sources: External data integration through component properties
• Business user empowerment: No-code/low-code editing for non-technical teams
• Inter-component communication: Creating cohesive experiences across components

New 25.2 capabilities

The latest release introduces:

• Flexible Component Layout framework with table component integration
• XML file format support for both data sources and business user modifications
• Streamlined development with improved team collaboration
• Enhanced consistency and workflow efficiency

Look back and look forward

The release builds on years of innovation across five key areas:

1. Dynamic experiences and experience application management
2. AI capabilities including GenAI and intelligent content tools
3. Integrated customer journeys and customer data
4. Modernizing on a cloud platform with Kubernetes for scale, performance and high availability

Stay tuned for more innovations as we continue helping businesses thrive in the experience economy.

November 2023: What's new in TeamSite 23.4

The rise of app-like web experiences

Part of the answer is interactive content – applications and videos. By including a video, the average time on page goes up by 88%. All industries are seeing a dramatic rise in the use of progressive web applications (PWAs), single page applications (SPAs), and dynamic web experience development using modern IDEs like HTML 5, React, WebAssembly, Angular and many others. Businesses can’t thrive with just content management in a CMS or WCM system today, their future needs to bridge the new silos between developers, business users and creative teams to succeed.  The rise of headless is just one example of the trend, however it doesn’t need to be a developer centric versus business user only workspace.  Hybrid headless collaboration serves both and is always a win-win scenario. Let's see how OpenText^TM TeamSite delivers on the promise.

Introducing OpenText TeamSite 23.4

The 23.4 release delivers a new framework expanding our unique hybrid headless approach designed to help bridge the gap between the developer and business user personas.  These features reduce the friction of the development cycle, managing and deploying dynamic application experiences using modern languages and IDE tools while empowering the business with flexible design and creative tools.

• Marketers can now edit or change variables directly on the glass, enabling rich dynamic experiences. This brings design flexibility and creativity back into the hands of the business owner, while reducing the need for follow-on development work.

• Composable experiences are easier to create, use and modify.  Low-code components can be connected to data sources where business users can directly leverage their content.  They can be defined with event-driven actions to establish communications and initiate changes between components to build endless dynamic possibilities. Components are built around functionality, then easily repurposed and connected to a different data source to satisfy a completely new use case, saving valuable developer cycles.
• Manage and govern the entire process of development to deployment, including your live Web performance, including options for hybrid headless, high availability and Content Delivery Network (CDN).

• Built-in governance of applications and development projects.  Teams work together with the right privileges and libraries of components are available for drag-and-drop use or modification.  Know where the components are used, version-control them, or create new ones.
• Sample Web experiences are provided in this release for teams to demo, test and use various features out of the box (OOTB). The experiences contain: modern page and template layouts, forms, localization, working search, targeting and much, much more.  Check out the new site for a fantastic hands-on experience.

What else in 23.4? 

As part of the OpenText Experience Cloud, TeamSite works seamlessly with other key experience technologies: customer communications, digital asset management, personalization, customer data, A/B testing, notifications, and voice analytics. Read more about the Experience Cloud 23.4 release, including powerful new AI, Experience Aviator, enhancements in unified UX, and other foundational services.

May 2023: What's new in TeamSite 23.2

OpenText™ TeamSite^™ 23.2 makes it super simple for developers and marketing to work together on creating highly personalized and interactive experiences. The new TeamSite release extends current developer frameworks to be agnostic and integrate with your choice of IDE (Independent Development Environment) to create, edit and deploy interactive applications using languages and tools such as React, Angular and other JavaScript apps and front-end user experiences. These experiences could extend to interactive online calculators, forms, UX experiences like sliders or accordions, embedded video and many more, literally anything developers and marketing can dream-up and innovate with.

Savvy marketers know that providing a great content experience helps boost customer engagement and conversion rates. Research shows 93% of marketers believe that interactive content is more effective at educating the buyer compared to static content. It also generates four to five times more page views and two times more conversions.

Powerful interactive experiences are unleashed with this release, making this content type easily available to business users to drag, drop, edit available properties, and preview all in-context of the page and the specific component. And we are not stopping there, new frameworks and tools for DevOps and CI/CD are also available for implementation, encouraging reuse of development efforts. Take a holistic approach to how these compelling interactive experiences are managed and deployed. 

Extending to more data sources plus generative AI

For 23.2, TeamSite also tapped into the power of combining marketing, data analysis and development.  The TeamSite CMS platform can now be extended to more data sources for A/B testing, rich media management for videos, and utilizing Generative AI for Assisted Authoring.

Using a composability approach, the new release reinforces TeamSite as a single CMS platform to be used for websites, portals and a number of other omnichannel digital experiences. The CMS platform utilizes a component, template and hybrid headless architecture that can meet a variety of business and IT needs for flexibility, performance and security.

As part of the OpenText Experience Cloud, TeamSite works seamlessly with other key experience technologies: customer communications, digital asset management, personalization, customer data, A/B testing, notifications, and voice analytics. Read more about the 23.2 Experience Cloud release, the new unified UX, and foundational services, and how they are both extended and powered by TeamSite.

The post What’s new in OpenText Web CMS appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

At the core of every modern customer experience is personalized information delivered in the most optimal and timely way. Years of legacy communication systems and siloed business processes create a bounty of challenges for organizations looking to create impactful customer experiences that achieve the desired outcome. What if you could use it to go beyond just the 'status quo' of customer communications to make smarter, engaging experiences your competitive advantage? OpenText™ Communications (Exstream) helps businesses:

• Engage customers through highly personalized content across their customer journey. 
• Deliver targeted communications across all channels and devices. 
• Use data analytics to optimize business decisions. 
• Run anywhere and scale globally in the public cloud of your choice, hybrid or off-cloud

Discover the latest new features in the most-recent cloud native version of OpenText Communications.

April 2025: OpenText Communications (Exstream) CE 25.2

Unleash knowledge-driven GenAI to accelerate authoring

OpenText Communications (Exstream) CE 25.2 introduces the first knowledge-driven GenAI, driven by the collaboration between OpenText™ Experience Aviator and OpenText™ Content Aviator. This powerful combination allows businesses to create content faster, leveraging trusted content workspaces and focusing AI generation on specific, curated knowledge collections.

Accelerate your StreamServe migration to OpenText Communications

CE 25.2 offers many tools to help you to modernize your OpenText™ StreamServe, OpenText™ xPression, or Exstream solution, and reap the benefits of the latest cloud-native OpenText Communications (Exstream) release without having to rebuild existing communications from scratch.

These enhancements extend our capabilities and can be used alongside existing migration options, which include:

• Capabilities to export components and page design objects from Design and Production and import them into the Design Asset Service (DAS). This includes language layers, graphic and text frames, complex rule management, and sections and paragraphs (to sections/clauses) for Communications Designer.
• Design accelerators (DocX Import and PDF Design Import) can select PDFs and migrate required content, or import .docx files directly to create an entire communication from existing Microsoft® Word® templates.
• The Rationalization tool reduces redundancy by ensuring only the most critical content is extracted and consolidated on your new platform. This tool has seen many improvements in this release.
• Custom converters transform structured data design formats and use existing APIs to import formatted designs directly into the OpenText Communications database from any source format. For more information, please contact OpenText Professional Services.

Streamline the creation of compliant communications from Guidewire ClaimCenter

Using OpenText Communications with Guidewire ClaimCenter in the Guidewire Cloud will help to resolve claims faster by automating the design and delivery of highly personalized policyholder communications.

• Deliver consistent and professional communications compliant with corporate standards
• Ensure uniform layout, branding, headers and footers in all communications
• Generate communications based on communication templates and Guidewire data
• Enable users to generate communications on-demand from within Guidewire ClaimCenter
• Enable users to edit generated communications using the Interactive editor prior to saving
• Support review-edit-approval workflows within Guidewire ClaimCenter before communications are saved
• Automate communication generation from Guidewire ClaimCenter events and workflows

Communications orchestration job logging

Enhancements in CE 25.2 extend operations users’ ability to effectively monitor and troubleshoot communications orchestration activity with integrated access to orchestration job logs. Located within the job monitor UX, users can quickly review error information in the context of the job for faster troubleshooting including detailed time scripts, simplified flow scripts debugging, and view log files within the same user interface as other job-related assets.

January 2025 and November 2024: What's new in OpenText Communications (Exstream) 25.1 and 24.4

Streamline migration, worry-free

Are you looking to modernize your CCM solution and reap the benefits of the latest cloud-native OpenText Communications™ (Exstream) release without having to rebuild existing communications from scratch? OpenText™ Communications (Exstream) offers many tools to simplify the process.  

New features align with design use cases commonly used by xPression and other communication creation tools, including the ability to combine documents and pages into a single file, automatic suppression of blank pages, and reordering of documents using logic. There is also the ability to rotate images.  In addition to these usability improvements, there are significant upgrades to our xPression xDesign migration conversion tool.   

Using the migration conversion tool, OpenText Professional Services can accelerate your move to Cloud Native. The migration conversion tool is designed to move xDesign content and restore a functional Communication design, accommodating complex requirements such as looping (repeating content) and intricate rules.  

Further new features in CE 25.1 include support for DocX files as dynamic (runtime) imports, UTF-16 encoding support for inputs and cross-reference variable support.  These enhancements extend our capabilities and can be used alongside existing migration offerings, which include: 

• Design accelerators: Quickly migrate content from PDFs and Microsoft® Word® (.docx) templates to create polished communications. 
• Component export/import: Seamlessly transfer language layers, graphic/text frames, complex rule management, sections and paragraphs to the Communications Designer with the Design Asset Service (DAS). 
• Rationalization tool: Minimize redundancy by extracting and consolidating only the most critical content  
• Customer starter converters: OpenText Professional Services and Partners offers customer starter convertors that transform structured data design formats and uses existing APIs to import formatted designs directly into the OpenText Communications database. 

Enabling operational efficiency with enhanced orchestration in the cloud 

Tailored for customer success leaders seeking to optimize positive customer interactions, enhancements to orchestration include the sorting and bundling of communication set outputs, multi-condition support with flow model deciders, and introduction of the processor “logical input split”, and new with CE 25.1 is the output review and approve widget. 

Ready to simplify your CCM? Upgrade today  

Whether on-premises, cloud-based, or hybrid, our OpenText Consulting Services can help assess and optimize your upgrade journey. Transform your customer communications experience – start modernizing today! Explore more about OpenText Communications.  

June 2024: What's new in Exstream 24.2

Exstream 24.2 includes innovations to help accelerate customer communications management (CCM) migration, generative AI, high-output print capabilities, a new user experience (UX) to help manage your customer journey and design tool performance enhancements.

Speed CCM migration to Exstream Cloud Native

Exstream 24.2 helps accelerate design migration and optimization to the cloud:

• Export components and page designs from Design & Production and import into the Design Asset Service (DAS)
• Import DocX content into the Design environment
• Experience an updated PDF Design Import: Enhanced font format handling, clause creation and UX
• Preserve the formatting of fragments with the help of enhanced rationalization features and UX

Leverage GenAI to personalize content with ease

With OpenText Experience Aviator, users can easily create personalized content using generative AI to rapidly generate relevant material that can enhance content development productivity. With interactive editing, users can take advantage of GenAI for content creation during the editing experience.

High output print capabilities optimize the production of personalized documents

Streamlined customer printing processes and accelerated production of complex documents (at speeds of up to 10 million pages per hour), enables high output production of personalized documents. File formats supported include AFP, Postscript and DocX.

New UX provides a comprehensive view of your customer journey

To optimize positive customer interactions, the OpenText Core Journey integration with Exstream, available separately, offers a comprehensive, insight-driven customer journey interface. This empowers users to seamlessly create, monitor, and analyze diverse customer journeys, while generating insights and orchestrating follow-up actions based on customers’ previous behavior or status. It’s an invaluable tool for leaders who aim to address unique customer needs and offer personalized actions, unconstrained by traditional linear approaches.

November 2023: What's new in Exstream 23.4

Experience Aviator for Gen-AI powered marketing

Exstream 23.4 offers Experience Aviator to help authors tap into generative AI to produce unique content to cover all touchpoints in the customer journey. Experience Aviators helps users create new communication content for customers and improve existing messages for greater simplicity, understanding, and empathy with customers.

Soar to new heights with Experience Aviator, an AI customer experience foundation ->

Unleash creativity and remove technical barriers with HTML5

Low-code HTML5 design empowers businesses to craft captivating, digital-first communications without the need for complex coding expertise.

Optimize your communication designs with many new ease-of-use features

Exstream 23.4 now supports Design Layouts, which allows for shared templates across multiple pages. Sections and Clauses can be used in the design tool to provide easier use of content layout for insurance or contract communications. You can also change the look and feel of your communications at runtime with dynamic switching of styles sheets to enable one design to be delivered in many formats.

Accelerate decision making with real-time job visualization and dashboards

Consolidated dashboards provide operations managers with real time status of Exstream jobs and provides an overview of information that will help organizations make data-driven decisions. The addition of job list widgets allows users to see a running list of jobs in progress and their status. Jobs in the list widget link directly to its status in the Job Monitor, allowing for quick access to any job that may need to be addressed. Filters allow for saving quick views of the most critical status types, such as jobs with errors.

Operations managers can now quickly troubleshoot and take action on jobs in progress using visual flow model references in the job monitor. The interactive flow model allows users to click on orchestration nodes in the flow model to quickly drill down to which steps have errors that need to be addressed and take the appropriate action. Status counters on each node give users an additional layer of job monitoring.

May 2023: What's new in Exstream 23.2

PDF Design Import Tool

Whether running an older version of any OpenText CCM technology or looking to migrate from a competitive CCM solution, the PDF Design Import Tool can help reduce the scope, time, and cost of moving to Exstream Cloud-Native. It can:   

• Assist in migrating from another system, quickly and easily into Exstream Communications Designer. 
• Convert PDF into Exstream design editable pages/content. 
• Allow for design contributions from alternate sources. 

Watch a quick demo of the PDF Design Import Tool. 

Operational dashboards

Speed up data-driven decisions with operational dashboards to help visualize and analyze communications performance. Quickly see what’s working, what’s not, and empower your operations team with data to inform content creation. This visibility allows for quicker awareness of issues, troubleshooting and faster time to resolution.   

Advanced approval workflows

Customers with more complex business approval processes for communications content can make use of enhanced workflows. We’ve expanded content author capabilities to better support the business user. Users can now define multiple approver workflows for greater regulatory control of business content and reduced errors. Multiple approver stages, different approving groups and variable approving users can be part of custom-designed workflows in a serial or parallel process.  

See how OpenText Exstream can help you deliver smarter experiences.

The post What’s new in OpenText Communications (Exstream) appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

OpenText Aviator Search, powered by AI and natural language processing (NLP), offers a unique way to access and read data seamlessly, regardless of format. Its conversational interface makes it easy for users to interact with their enterprise data, enhancing their roles with the skills of knowledge workers or search analysts. The real-time cloud-based data analysis enables users to quickly find answers, gain insights, and make better decisions.

April 2025: What's new in OpenText Aviator Search CE 25.2

The Aviator Search CE 25.2 release extends the admin capabilities and performance improvements, new usability improvements, and many other additions. The main improvements in version CE 25.2 are listed below:

User enhancements to ease retrieving insight

• Crossing the unhighlighted content to visit the next relevant section in the referenced document: Jumping between relevant chunks within a reference document allows end users to quickly identify and navigate between the highlighted chunks within a reference document, improving speed of reference reading and usability.

Admin UI enhancements

• Continuing enhancements to bring ongoing improvements for the admin user:
  • Admin screens for enrichment module - Admins can now turn off/ turn on speech to text component during an ingestion workflow.  This provides additional control to the customer on the use and consumption of enrichment components.
  • Ingestion time stamps and states provides information to the customer admin about recent ingestion cycle and next ingestion with the use of  time stamps.  Proving time and ingestion cycles and improving usability.

February 2025: What’s new in OpenText Aviator Search CE 25.1

The Aviator Search CE 25.1 release includes enhancements to Q&A, error log improvements for admins and many other additions. The main improvements in this release are listed below:

Identifying the in-house expert

Customers conduct Q&A as normal, now with the ability continue analysis with the best person in your organisation and return to their work better informed.

• Expert Identification added, ranking the authors of the top reference documents based on the initial search.
• Arrive informed with the list of content that gave you the answer and the details of the best person to continue the conversation.
• Add people to data by listing out the content authors in the people tab, allowing you to discover the value of your data by its author not just its location and relevance.

Identifying relevant part of a document

Customers conduct Q&A as normal, now with the ability to see the most important chunk of information used to synthesize the answer highlighted in the reference document.

• Strengthens the evidence pattern by allowing users to understand how an answer is generated.
• Benefits all user types regardless of whether a knowledge worker or a search analyst using Aviator Search.

Admin UI enhancements for error logging

Continuing enhancements to bring ongoing improvements for the admin user.

• New error log page adding a centralised location for easier error viewing and tracking.

November 2024: What’s new in OpenText Aviator Search CE 24.4

The OpenText Aviator Search CE 24.4 release includes various functional and performance improvements, new connectors, file format support and many other additions. 

The main improvements in CE 24.4 are listed below: 

Out of the box connector support

New connectors added for OpenText Content Management, OpenText Documentum Content Management, OpenText Core Content Management, Microsoft OneDrive and The Google Cloud Platform file system.

New connectors to allow customer to collect additional content from Off Cloud and On Cloud repositories, allowing organizations to take their first steps into GenAI. 

• Reduced ESG impact with no need to relocate, you can save costs and with no need to replicate, and save on any ESG expense 

• Safe for Secure verticals who cannot or do not want to place any of their content into the public cloud. 

• GenAI power to local data by allowing access to local content but with a secure index in Aviator Search with trusted link to Google’s LLM. 

Bookmarking a Question

Customers can do Q&A as normal but if interrupted they have the ability to bookmark where they are and then return to that work later. 

• Overcome the challenge of constant changes in requests and requirements in day-to-day work, leaving users half-way through many differing tasks.  

• Access to previous analysis with a streamline process to produce waypoints within work. 

• Pick up where you left off discover increased productivity with the ability to return to an enquiry at the point you left, with no need to restart.  

Admin UI enhancements for error logging 

• Trap Error messages that are exposed in the Admin UI 

July 2024: What’s new in OpenText Aviator Search CE 24.3

Business users have a growing need to rapidly obtain direct answers from their enterprise content in order to complete their work. With no natural language search available across content, they are unable to easily search all content sources and obtain accurate answers fast. Instead, they spend cycles on repetitive tasks or waste hours trying to locate the content they have already been working on. In some cases, upgrading their content platform to a recent version is not a commitment IT has made, yet the business wants to leverage GenAI now.

Aviator Search can now offer a wider reach to your existing data outside of your OpenText platform, allowing you to search through enterprise data securely and across all repositories and data types (structured or unstructured, text, social). This new GenAI solution empowers organizations to untap the rich knowledge and connections hidden in their content.

The Aviator Search 24.3 release includes various functional and performance improvements, new connectors, file format support, and many other additions.

The main improvements in version 24.3 are listed below:

OOTB connector support

• Microsoft Teams, Extended ECM, Documentum and Microsoft SharePoint Online – New connectors to allow customers to collect collaborative video meetings/chats for retrospective analysis and/or content retrieval.

Simple Admin UI for managing ingestion workflows

• Customer admins can start/stop an ingestion workflow, as well as delete a repository or define new one. 

Q&A on Teams chats and recorded meetings

• Customers can do Q&A on the transcripts of meeting recordings and chat documents. Customers can also view the recording in an in-app viewer.

• All pronouns and references in the questions are resolved and a rephrased question with resolved pronouns is shown to the end user to have more clarity on what question is being answered by Aviator Search.

Focused investigation

• Customers can focus their research or investigation within a specific individual document and quickly understand lengthy content.

Single document retrieval search

• Customers can now retrieve a single specific document. E.g. Get me the release notes of Aviator Search 24.3.

Re-direction to source system

• Users can now redirect their search back to the source repository or system for a reference document, allowing users to then use the native interfaces on that file.

Suggested follow-up questions

• To help keep the conversation going, Aviator Search suggests follow-up questions based on the active conversation.

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The customer journey has long been more than just a visualization of a customer’s ideal path through services offered. It is a powerful tool for understanding customer behavior, personalizing communication on behavioral insights, and optimizing the customer journey for the benefit of both, your customer and your organization.

Effective customer communication is crucial to the success of an organization in today's hyper-competitive business landscape. The customer journey, which describes the customer's path from the first awareness of a product or service to purchase and beyond, offers a valuable framework for optimizing this communication. By understanding the different stages of the customer journey, organizations can align their communication strategies to meet the needs and expectations of customers at every stage. 

Four ways to optimize customer journeys

Take your customer communications to a new level by considering these four aspects:  

1. Personalization: Customers expect personalized experiences tailored to their individual needs and preferences. Organizations can achieve this by collecting and analyzing behavioral data along the touchpoints to develop a detailed understanding of their customers. Use this data to create personalized messages, offers and recommendations that are relevant and engaging for the customer. Monitor with journey analytics the increase of key indicators for personalization success - such as email open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. 

2. Omnichannel communication: Customers use a variety of channels to interact with organizations, including email, social media, chat, phone and sometimes even letters and fax. Organizations need to ensure that their communications are consistent and seamless across all channels. This means that customers should be able to smoothly switch from one channel to another without losing context or having to repeat entering information. Through journey event pipelines, you integrate all communication channels into a centralized SaaS platform that ensures customer service agents can access all customer interactions, regardless of which channel the customer has chosen. Observe with journey analytics the change of key indicators for omnichannel communication – such as the positive customer satisfaction/sentiment and the decline of response times.  

3. Proactive communication: Customers appreciate when organizations proactively reach out to them, remind them, and provide them with relevant information or support. This can be in the form of emails with product updates, select notifications about special offers, or proactive customer service. Use journey analytics to identify these moments when proactive communication could be valuable and use journey orchestration to automate a follow-up with customer communications. Track with journey analytics the upturn of key indicators for successful proactive communications – such as conversion rates and strengthened the customer relationship. 

4. Continuous improvement: The customer journey is not static. Customers’ needs and expectations change over time. Organizations must therefore continuously review and improve their communication strategies to ensure they remain relevant and effective. Collect your customers’ feedback regularly with journey surveys or through the contact center. Analyze this data to identify areas for improvement and test potential journey advancements. Use journey analytics to track key indicators of improvement with different journey versions – such as time series analysis of customer satisfaction and conversions. 

Optimizing customer communication along the customer journey is an ongoing process that requires commitment and investment. By considering the above aspects, organizations can develop an effective communication strategy that strengthens customer loyalty, increases customer satisfaction and ultimately boosts customer success. 

With OpenText™ Core Journey, OpenText™ Core Messaging and OpenText™ Communications in OpenText™ Experience Cloud, journey managers can easily track the time customers spend at each stage, identify where drop-offs occur, and pinpoint the most engaging touchpoints. With these insights, your team can address weaknesses and optimize communications that drive better outcomes through journey actions directly triggering OpenText Communications. This ensures timeliness and eliminates unnecessary delays. 

Are you ready to bring your customer communication strategy to the next level? Discover the game-changing potential of OpenText Core Journey and optimize your customer communications.

The post Customer communications: how the customer journey shows the way appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

Let’s face it: plain old SMS is starting to feel... well, a little 2005. Customers today expect more from their omnichannel messaging experiences — and guess what? OpenText™ Core Messaging is stepping up in a big way. 

We’re excited to announce that rich communication channels such as WhatsApp and RCS are on the horizon — and they’re bringing with them a whole new world of interactive, secure, visually rich business messaging. 

What’s new? It’s not just text anymore 

Say goodbye to boring SMS text threads. With WhatsApp and RCS (Rich Communication Services) Business Messaging, you’ll be able to deliver: 

• Media-rich content (images, videos, maps!) 
• Location sharing 
• Quick reply buttons 
• Cards and carousels that let users browse, book, or buy — all in one chat 

It’s not just messaging. It’s an interactive experience. Whether you’re confirming an appointment, promoting a new product, or helping someone book a service — everything happens inside one sleek, seamless conversation. 

Security? It's built right in 

Worried about spam or sketchy senders? Don’t be. 

• WhatsApp Business requires strict Meta-verified registration — you have to prove you're legit before you can message at scale. 
• RCS, backed by Google, has its own vetting standards to keep bad actors out. 
• And while OpenText Core Messaging gives you seamless access to both platforms — we just make sure you're plugged into the right, verified ecosystem. 

Your messages? Safe. Your brand? Trusted. Your customers? Confident. 

Why it matters — especially to Gen Z (and the rest of us) 

Let’s be real: Gen Z doesn’t just want to receive a message — they want to interact with it. Scrollable carousels, tappable replies, media-rich previews... it’s the new standard. 

These upcoming features are purpose-built for the next generation of digital customer experiences — and businesses that adopt them early will stand out in a sea of static text. 

TL;DR: Messaging, but make it awesome 

With WhatsApp and RCS channels, OpenText Core Messaging will help you: 

• Engage customers where they are 
• Create richer, smarter, automated conversations 
• Build trust with verified, secure interactions 
• Drive better outcomes (and look really good doing it) 

So go ahead — ditch the dusty SMS templates and step into the future of omnichannel messaging. Your customers (and your ROI) will thank you. 
 
Want to be among the first to roll out rich messaging at scale? Stay tuned — the future of business messaging is arriving soon, and it’s looking very good. 

The post Messaging just got a major glow-up appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

Two years ago, soon after the public release of ChatGPT, I wrote about How AI is transforming digital asset management (DAM) solutions from passive to active. The advances in AI since then have been nothing short of astonishing. In 2025, the choice is not whether to use AI in DAM, it is which game-changing capability to incorporate first.  

It took at least five years for AI image analysis for descriptive metadata to start fulfilling early promises of increased productivity. In contrast, the impact of generative AI has been almost immediate, and the rate of improvement has exceeded expectations. In particular, text-to-image generation and AI-powered searching are business-ready capabilities, if they are implemented under the appropriate governance rules. 

Text to image generation 

Despite its problems when counting fingers, AI image generation is astonishingly powerful. Just describe the scene you envision and receive a high-quality image within seconds – what you say is what you get. While many organizations are hesitant to publish AI-generated images externally, they are ideal for providing inspiration for human creativity. Using OpenText™ Experience Aviator within a creative request process enables the requestor to attach AI-generated images to a creative brief. The designer understands exactly what is expected, which reduces the number of approval cycles needed to develop the final version.  

AI-powered searching 

A common question from DAM admins is how to improve users’ ability to find the right assets, particularly after migrating poorly-tagged files from a legacy system. A new way to enhance asset discovery is retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which uses a large language model (LLM) to allow users to search using their own words, without knowledge of tagging conventions. OpenText Knowledge Discovery™ includes advanced RAG functionality that powers natural language searching in a DAM.   

Governance  

While generative AI is undeniably powerful, it isn’t without problems. Many employees are already using some form of AI in their daily tasks, but their employers want to manage the use of AI for business processes. DAM has always offered governance tools for use of assets, and that is now extended to governing the use of AI. The best DAM solutions allow admins to establish rules for the usage of AI-generated images.  

Availability  

Text-to-image generation from OpenText Experience Aviator is available in OpenText™ Digital Asset Management (previously OpenText Media Management) and OpenText™ Core DAM. AI-powered searching from OpenText Knowledge Discovery™ is available in OpenText Digital Asset Management.  Discover why OpenText was named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Intelligent Digital Asset Management 2024 Vendor Assessment.

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Many utilities now realize that a poor customer experience (CX) can put their organizations at risk, whether it’s reputational risk, or regulatory, financial or compliance risks. Risk mitigation is often thought of as a defensive tactic, but there are opportunities for utilities to play offense—especially when it comes to experience.

In a recent webinar with Forrester, we discussed how CX can help utilities mitigate risk by increasing revenue, decreasing costs, and increasing resiliency. Specifically, we looked at how an excellent customer experience can help utilities sell more products to existing customers, acquire new customers, and reduce customer support complaints. The same focus on a total experience can create operational efficiencies and improve employee retention by automating or streamlining processes.

But today, there is no customer experience without employee experience. This means it’s not possible for utilities to create a good customer experience without first creating a similar experience for employees. Both sides of the experience need to access common content, data, and process steps across all points of interaction – web, mobile, communications, contact centers, and many others.

In other words, it’s no longer enough to focus only on CX. Delivering a great customer experience requires a shift in thinking beyond the customer to consider total experience (TX).

Bringing customer experience and employee experience together

Creating long-lasting customer experiences and relationships is contingent on the employees that directly or indirectly serve your customers. Organizational, technology, and process barriers often stand in the way.   Think of TX as an approach and strategy, and ask yourself how will a new experience or a change impact other connective points?  Did I just create another silo?

Total experience (TX) brings together employee experience, customer experience and user experience to create a superior experience across (and beyond) the business, underpinned by technology. TX can increase both customer and employee satisfaction and loyalty, while also increasing productivity.

Operational experience (OX) connects business operations with CX and EX to deliver a TX strategy. Without this connection, organizations face weak business outcomes and disengaged employees due to digital friction. By prioritizing OX, organizations can align business operations with business needs to improve the speed and efficiency of transactional processes which ultimately impact CX and EX.

For example, employees expect the processes and systems they use in their day-to-day activities to make their jobs easier, not hinder them. Breaking down data siloes and providing a single source of the truth can ensure your employees have access to the information they need, when and where they need it. Automating mundane processes or simplifying complex ones can let your employees spend more time on their core tasks—including delivering an excellent experience to your customers.

Sustainability and total experience

Just as there can be no customer experience without employee experience, there can also be no sustainability without social relationships.

Utilities are leading the communities they service down a sustainable path, and they have a significant role to play in helping their customers transition to a more sustainable future. This, in part, involves equipping their employees to be the guides down this path.

For example, customer support and marketing departments can play a critical role in helping customers transition to a more sustainable future. How customers navigate your website, how they interact with your call centers, how they receive personalized communications, and how they learn best practices in their energy consuming habits are all examples of how employees influence customers’ sustainable journey.

These are also all examples of unstructured information in the customer journey. Now more than ever, it is imperative that utilities have a digital experience platform to structure this information across the entire customer journey so that they can partner with, guide and even lead consumers to a sustainable future.

Guiding customers to a more sustainable future with an experience platform

The entire customer experience lifecycle—from attracting, to acquiring, to serving, to delighting and, most importantly, retaining—is cluttered with unstructured information. Utilities need customer experience technology that also prioritizes the employee experience to capture, organize, and integrate these insights—allowing them to provide an excellent TX while also helping their customers move towards a more sustainable future.

Utilities should consider a platform that is designed to modernize the entire customer journey process. This doesn’t have to be all at once. Utilities can take a modular approach in modernizing the customer experience as they—and their customers—are ready.

OpenText allows utility companies to manage experiences across the entire customer journey through all channels: websites, customer portals, personalized communications, self-service solutions, and call centers. As a modular solution, Experience Platform allows organizations to build block by block and integrate with their existing technology stack as they’re ready to modernize each step the customer will take in their journey towards sustainable energy consumption.

Learn more about how OpenText can help you develop and execute a total experience strategy.

The post The total experience imperative for utilities appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

Let's talk about relationships. No, not the kind that end with a heart-shaped box of chocolates (though we'll get to expensive gestures in a minute). We're talking about your relationship with your customers—and why ghosting them might be costing you more than a bad Tinder date.

Here's a sobering thought: businesses are losing $3.7 trillion globally each year due to poor customer experience and service.[1] That's a lot of broken hearts and empty wallets. And just like that ex who "could have made it work if only you'd tried harder," 80% of customers who walked away say they would have stayed if they'd received better treatment.[2]

The dating phase vs. the long-term commitment

We've all been there: putting our best foot forward during those early dating days. But here's where business and romance perfectly align: the honeymoon phase matters. A whopping 86% of new customers will stick around after a successful onboarding experience.[3] Think of it as nailing that crucial first impression. But here's where things get serious. Just like marriage, customer success requires:

1. Unwavering commitment

Remember those vows about "for better or worse"? In business terms, that translates to supporting your customers through their challenges and successes. And unlike your last relationship, this one comes with receipts—it costs 5-25 times more to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one.

2. Rock-solid communication

Just as "I'm fine" rarely rings true in a marriage, 78% of customers expect brands to read between the lines and understand their needs.[4] And they're not exactly patient—52% expect responses within an hour on social media.[5] No pressure, right?

3. The personal touch

Remember how impressed your partner was when you remembered their coffee order? 80% of consumers are more likely to stick with brands that offer personalized experiences.[6] It's the business equivalent of remembering anniversaries, only with better ROI.

Red flags and deal-breakers: How to lose a customer in 10 days

Want to know how to lose a customer faster than you can say "it's not you, it's me?" Here are some classic relationship killers:

• Making them jump through unnecessary hoops (nobody likes a complicated relationship)
• Sending irrelevant messages (the business equivalent of texting "hey" at 2 AM)
• Forgetting the human touch (turns out, automated responses are the cold shoulder of customer service - relevant and empathetic customer communications always win)

Despite 62% of decision-makers claiming customer success is a critical priority, only 41% have put a ring on it by integrating it into their strategy according to the OpenText^TM MarketPulse Survey for Digital Experience. And just like relationship problems, the obstacles are real:

• 41% blame it on budget constraints (the business equivalent of "I can't afford date night")
• 36% point to skill gaps (we all know that feeling of not knowing what we're doing)
• 34% struggle with poor internal communication (the corporate version of "we need to talk")

Making it last: customer love pays dividends

A satisfied customer is 91% likely to make repeat purchases and spread the good word about your brand. It's like having a whole army of admirers singing your praises.[7] And just like modern relationships, there's data to track how things are going: 73% of high-performing customer success teams use health scoring to monitor satisfaction.[8] Think of it as couples therapy, but with spreadsheets.

In a world where 64% of people value customer experience over price,[9] treating customer relationships like a casual fling is a recipe for disaster. The math is simple: invest in the relationship, reap the rewards, and avoid becoming another heartbreak statistic.
So this Valentine's Day, maybe it's time to ask yourself: are you ready to commit to your customers wellbeing? Because in both love and business, it's not just about making connections—it's about making them last.

And if you're wondering how to avoid ending up in the customer relationship doghouse, join our upcoming webinar "5 Ways to Lose a Customer." We'll show you how to turn those awkward customer moments into your competitive edge. Save your spot! Register Today!

[1] Qualtrics, 2024.
[2] Qualtrics XM Institute.
[3] Wyzowl, 2024.
[4] Salesforce.
[5] Emplifi, 2024.
[6] Epsilon.
[7] American Express.
[8] Totango.
[9] Custify, 2024.

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