This is something we are extremely excited about. Now you can create different follow-up cadences and have Agent Node change cadences based on your instruction. Want a different follow-up cadence for warm vs. cold leads? Want to stop following up within an agent node without exiting if an appointment is booked? Follow-up states now let you do that! Learn more in the updated follow-up help article HERE.

The below video shows the updated settings area where you can create different follow-up states 👇

This image shows how you can explain to your agent node when it should change the follow-up state. When the follow-up state is changed, your follow-ups will happen on the new cadence 🤩 Cool right!?

You'll notice the tools sidebar now only has your list of custom tools... no ability to enable them globally. Any tool you want enabled must be enabled on the Agent Node level. Smart FAQ is now always on for nodes that are not the agent node.

Previous to now, CloseBot had and . With this change, we now permit you to have full edit access over the global prompt, including the headings. By default, nothing changes until you come in and edit. We've also given you more space to see what you're typing here and enabled @-mentioning variables.

We put great importance into making sure updates we make don't break existing bots. This is one of those improvements... you get greater control, and nothing you have in production performs any differently.

Now it's way easier to update job flow variables on sources within the Job Flow. Previously, you had to go to the Source Settings page to update these variable values.

Similarly, if you're doing testing in a job flow where the testing source is missing variable values, you see a helpful warning (click it to fast-navigate to fill in the variable values)

You can now have default values for source variables and descriptions. Descriptions display alongside the input area to assist the users filling them out. Default values can be helpful so they don't start out as blank.

We've been working quietly on Persona split testing... something we've always planned on doing, but just now able to implement. This will likely be coming next week, allowing you to assign two personas and split test to see which one compares better against your selected comparison metric, auto-selecting the winning persona.

MCPs, both CloseBot's MCP and support for MCPs as agent node tools should also be coming next week.

With all of this work on these above items, we've fallen behind on implementation for Google Drive knowledge base integration and the reporting module... but once we release all of this stuff next week our focus will again turn to those items!

Phew! How are we doing? 😅

Previously you could only filter for and tag rules. Now we give you the power to filter however you want!

For example...

only reply to contacts who have either the tag or and doesn't have the tag

There were updates this week to the job flow builder to make it operate faster for those with larger flows, but also a big improvement to the user interface to make it easier to build, and give you greater clarity in testing by showing "placeholder nodes".

We are constantly working on speed improvements. We have larger updates coming within the next couple of weeks with our reporting update that will bring more notable speed enhancements, but improvements were still made this week nonetheless!

This week our dev team had a hackathon... which means there was A LOT of code that happened... and almost none of it got pushed. We will review the results of the hackathon and spend the earlier part of next week pushing some things that we think you'll really like! Look for upcoming things like MCPs, job flow settings revamp, follow-up settings for agent nodes and more.

Now within Agent Node settings you can unlock 3 items...

🧠 Thinking Mode -> This allows your agent to think longer, displaying its , before replying. This will improve the output.

🏆 Max Mode -> This will make it so CloseBot uses the strongest models for your AI Provider instead of our defaults which are models that are optimized for cost & quality.

♾️ Unlimited -> This allows you to use custom tools with your agent, have unlimited prompt size and use an unlimited number of tools

Unlocking any of these messages sent with that node so they no longer cost 1 message each. We calculate token costs and pass the extra cost of usage on to you. Read more about that via message segments HERE.

Now instead of referencing CloseBot's standalone as , which can sound scary, we reference it as . This Blank source type allows you to chat via our standalone Chat Widget or connect via Webhook within Settings > Channels. No CRM? No problem 😉

Seeing all of your knowleget base items, chats, job flows together can be nice. It's all in one place. But it can also be overwhelming and cluttered.

We've made an update that allows you to a source. This auto-applies appropriate source filters as you navigate the different pages. You only see data related to that source.

There were a few issues from our big push that were fixed, including some tooling issues for agent node and back to back message sending not working well within our native chat widget. These items have been cleaned up and we feel great going in to the weekend.

We are finishing up the job flow template revamp today, so you will see those within your account next week. Next week the dev team is doing an internal hackathon, so you will be slower feature releases next week as we prioritize internal creativity and ideation.

After the hackathon, focus turns again to the following:

There's so much we have in store for you! Make sure you stay updated here on our weekly progress 🙌

Agent Node has exploded in popularity. We have even updated our own home page chat widget to use a single agent node and custom tools for booking our group demos conversationally 🤯 Learn more about how you can create your own custom tools to do whatever you want, wherever you want HERE.

Instead of referencing our standalone source as it's now referenced as . This Blank source has the chat widget channel as well as webhooks as a channel. In the future we will add more channels to this area for those who are using CloseBot standalone.

📝 Note -> CloseBot does not intend to be a CRM, but we want our users to have the power to use CloseBot by itself with a Blank source. See docs on our Blank source HERE.

Agent node is super new, and we are getting new data. We've made some changes that will deploy tonight to tweak things for improved performance. We also noticed some areas where custom tools UI felt clunky that we were able to fix as well as instances where Agent Node struggled with sending images. All fixes that will roll out tonight or over the weekend.

We have the changes ready to push for Agent Node superpower unlocking, but we want to test more before release. This will allow you to unlock greater tool count limits, prompt size, more powerful models, and thinking mode. You will be able to do this per Agent Node for fine-tuned pricing optimization.

Next week we will continue working on Reporting as well as Persona split testing, but also remain focused on watching stability of Agent Node. We have an unrivaled uptime, and we want to keep it that way 🔥

There's also work we are looking in to to get the UTM data collected by our sales pixel synced with HubSpot and HighLevel.

Long-awaited agent node is live. Flows that were prone to edge cases, required many nodes, etc. can now be converted into a single Agent Node that can handle anything you want!

... booking multiple appointments ✅

... correcting information leads change their mind on ✅

... doing multiple things simultaneously ✅

Agent Node is a massive update and it's something you should spend some time learning! Learn more about agent node by dragging it to your canvas and clicking the dropdown to see resources. Watch the Live Launch recording HERE.

Custom tools are a way for you to get your Agent Nodes to take action in external systems. Whether that's conversationally booking to Calendly and Service Titan, allowing your Agent to search for and send GIFs, or something else... custon tools allow you to build what was formerly impossible. Learn how custom tools work HERE.

Photo credit to Joey Brown who got his Agent conversationally booking in Calendly with custom tools already 👇

The send property image tool that you can use with Agent Node now has the ability to decide whether it would be most appropriate to send a street view image or aerial view. As with all of our tools, you can instruct the Agent how it should use these tools within the Agent Node itself.

Well... we just had back to back weeks of pushing huge updates. We are entering into a week of focusing on:

About the super-powers... Each agent node has a SETTINGS section where you will be able to unlock higher potential for the node. Things like limitless tools, no prompt limits, more powerful models, thinking... all of that will be able to be unlocked within the settings.

CloseBot added a Sales Intelligence Pixel, which can be added to websites of any source type to 1) track website visitor page views and 2) allow your Agents to see that information and reference it when helpful. This pixel also allows you to add Chat Widgets.

CloseBot's chat widgets win on feature depth and reliability compared to built in HighLevel and HubSpot widgets. Each widget you create for a source establishes a new . Easily route different widgets to different job flows through source filters.

To make it clearer, we've added a toggle that you can enable to edit bot allowed reply hours, changing to quiet hours. Use this, for example, if you're trying to set up a bot that is only allowed to reply overnight. Do this by setting the quiet hours within source settings.

There was a bug in our booking logic left over from our migration to the improved Agentic approach to booking that meant sometimes the AI was not pulling in enough availability slots, causing issues. This has been resolved. We also fixed an issue on our end resulting from the funny behavior of how HighLevel handles contact merging, which would break our connection and ability to reply to incoming messages after a contact merge.

We had so much fun during the launch party this week (recording here if you missed it) that we plan to do another one next week! April 23rd join us for the Live Launch of the Agent Node 😱

🚀 ->

HERE

CloseBot has now finished work necessary for HIPAA compliance! 🎉

This includes having BAAs signed with all necessary platforms that we utilize to run CloseBot. If you would like to learn more about HIPAA compliance and signed BAA for your agency, click HERE to speak with our sales team about an enterprise plan.

Logging improvements are being made across the board, but we have specific logging improvements coming that will be unique to the Agent Node (shown).

Some of you have started to notice booking issues that previously did not exist. Others that have had booking issues have had them magically resolved. Our change to a new booking architecture has shifted things, sometimes causing new issues. However, the data says this shift has improved results overall by 9%.

This new architecture is also similar to what we will be using for the new Agent Node, so it gives us a chance to slowly roll out and monitor performance of the Agent Node even before it's released.

Next week we are having a LIVE LAUNCH PARTY for the Chat Widget 👏 Register for that HERE.

Hopefully we've made it clear that we are working on some rather large items. The Chat Widget is one of those items. Beta users have been testing and we've been tweaking. The Agent Node is a similar big item that will be released April 22nd!

Keep coming back to the changelog to see what we are up to and go vote on features that you'd like to see prioritized!

We've been testing some of the agentic behavior that will come with the Agent Node on everyone's booking node. This was done slowly. We found a 9% increase in liklihood of booking once a lead entered the node if the new architecture was used vs. the old booking node. We also found bookings tended to happen with 30% less messages exchanged. These are the kinds of things we work on on the backend. All of our data allows us to reliably test and move forward or roll back changes like this... and we all benefit.

When leaving the test portal open for an extended period of time, the connection with it would break. We now give you a visual queue when this happens with an easy way to click to re-establish the connection. Simple things like this make the platform more reliable for everyone.

You'll notice a couple of the items in work slid on timelines. We hoped the chat widget would be ready this week. It was close, but not quite. We will have it ready for you next week 🙏 We turned focus before the widget was all the way complete over to the Agent Node...

The Agent Node, however, is ahead of schedule. We will leave the expected launch date as-is, but we will likely expand beta for the Agent Node next week. Custom Tools for Agent Node use will also be ready at this time. Learn a bit more with this 55 second review.

Custom Dashboards are a lot of work to get right... we have a ton of data. The team has been working on building the foundation for this over the past couple of weeks, but we expect work on custom dashboards to go on another 4-5 weeks (hopefully 4). There's a lot of work being put in to this to make sure the dashboards are fast to load and are able to filter the way you want 🙂

And I was wrong about SOC2... it's going to take another 7-8 weeks... not because it's hard, but because our team is focused more on the items that help our users... Agent Node, Custom Tools, Chat Widget and Dashboards. After we get those boulders done, we will finish up work needed for SOC2 Compliance.

Next week is gearing up to be a big one. Keep an eye on our updates. In the meantime, head over to G2 if you can to leave us a review if you appreciate all of this hard work! 👏

Leave a review HERE!

You'll start to notice when you're viewing a contact that an AI Agent is in the process of replying to, you'll see the "thinking dots". This is a great way to know when a bot is replying so you don't interject, and have piece of mind that your system is workinig.

There was general work done on both the front and back end for bug fixes that fix crashes, speed things up, and reduce friction.

Yes, but it's the calm before the storm.

This chat widget will work seemlessly with your HubSpot and HighLevel accounts, but will also bring standalone capabilities to CloseBot. Have clients that don't need a full blown CRM and just need a sweet widget with powerful sales AI? We have you covered.

HIPAA compliance will be available for all enterprise users starting next week. If you need HIPAA, speak with our sales team about an enterprise plan now HERE.

The CloseBot platform has been working toward SOC2 compliance, and is rounding the corner on completion. You can follow our progress on SOC2 and HIPAA HERE.

We did a short run of testing on agentic capabilities and found it worthwhile to implement a general super-node that has access to tools (both built in and custom) and follows your instructions. This will also improve the booking accuracy even further.

We know you need reporting capabilities both for you and for your clients. We are developing a replacement for the existing Home Dashboard to allow you to build your own dashboards... filter how you want... report on what you want... gain clarity and confidenc.

If you enjoy all of these updates and work we are doing, please leave us a G2 review HERE!

In addition to your custom views, we've now included source-specific views by default that are searchable. You no longer have to manually create a view for every source.

The testing portal, client demo portal and conversations page all have live updating. For the testing portal and client demo portal, this live updating sometimes gets broken when you've been idle for a period of time. In this case, there's now visual feedback letting you know whether or not the session is active... and if it's not, there is a button that allows you to restart.

Source settings have been updated to be a full page instead of pop-up. This decision was made knowing that there was a lot of information in that pop-up and it was becoming difficult to navigate. The full-page view makes it easier to navigate and gives us room to add additional functionality like our CloseBot-native chat widget editor.

We have moved the users table and add-user button to the account settings. This declutters our side-navigation to make room for the more important areas of the platform that are visited far more frequently.

Until now, the soonest follow-ups could be scheduled was 5 minutes. Even setting a value less than 5 minutes would result in follow-ups sending after 5 minutes. You can now set follow-ups as fast as 1 minute (still there may be a delay of 1-2 minutes).

We continue work on the following:

We will keep working on smaller items, of course, as we continue focus on these larger features above. Next week we have 2 key team members returning from paternal leave... we are excited to have them back! 🐣