Product Updates: Public Chat Groups, Message Reactions, React UI Kit, AES256 Encryption and more ---- 5 min read

As the novel coronavirus infected millions of people across the globe, everyone from workers to party animals are being asked to substitute their office and bar tables for their home desks. Many businesses have gone out of their usual to tackle the growing health crisis.

To keep a lot of apps-driven businesses afloat in such a crisis, user-to-user conversations and video calling are emerging as major saviors, as these allow such apps to serve users better, and also keep users engaged. Also, the lockdowns implemented in cities across the world have resulted in increased activity online, which presents tremendous growth opportunities for such apps.

At Channelize.io, we’re on a mission to serve maximum possible app-driven businesses by providing easy to use Chat APIs and SDKs for Android, iOS, and Web apps. To realize this mission, we’re constantly improving our product and rolling out releases with features demanded by our customers. Here is the summary of all that we have rolled-out for you in our recent upgrades.

Public Chat Groups

Chat groups allow creating a powerful ecosystem in which users build meaningful connections with other group members. In chat groups people come together around a common purpose, issue or activity to organize, express objectives, discuss things, post photos, and share related content. 

Taking this experience to the next level, Channelize.io Chat API and SDKs now allow creating Public Chat Groups. So, we now enable 3 types of conversations:

1. 1-1 Chat
2. Private Group Chat
3. Public Group Chat

Public Chat Groups are exactly what it sounds like. They are fully visible to everyone, and can be joined by any user without being approved by any Group Admin. We will be posting a detailed article on Public Group Conversations next week, and will update its link here.

Fully Customizable React UI Kit

With a growing clientele serving multiple use-cases, we have launched our Channelize.io React UI Kit. This enables fast and easy integration of Chat features into your React Applications. 

This Chat UI Kit will provide flexibility to our customers to build chat exactly how they want, and that too unbelievably quickly. It enables achieving a beautiful chat app interface for all use-cases like online consultation & tutoring, online marketplace chat, fintech chat, dating chat, team collaboration, gaming chat and lots more. 

We also have a Fully Customizable JavaScript UI Kit. For customers who want to have a ready-to-use solution, we have a Pre-built Web UI in place too.

Message Reactions

Real-time conversations are one of the best methods to keep users engaged, and improve retention. So, any feature that makes them more interactive is bound to be very valuable. Hence, we’re rolling out this new feature: Message Reactions.

In Chat, not every message requires a response. Many times messages just require acknowledgments by way of expressive reactions.

The first use of reactions in online conversations started with Facebook replacing the “Like” action in newsfeed with multiple, emotive ‘Reactions’ such as: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry. LinkedIn has reactions such as: Like, Celebrate, Love, Insightful, and Curious. Now almost all popular conversation channels support reactions. 

Currently, Reactions have been rolled-out in our Chat API, JavaScript SDK and iOS SDK. We’ll soon be adding it in our other SDKs and UI Kits too.

We will be posting a detailed article on our Reactions feature next week, and will update its link here.

Android and iOS SDK compatibility with the latest Channelize.io API version.

For a faster chat experience and to support our new features, we had rolled out a new version of Channelize.io API and JavaScript SDK. Now our Android and iOS Chat SDKs are also compatible with the latest API version of v2.

Get our latest Android and iOS SDKs, and upgrade your Apps with the latest version, or reach out to our support team if you / your developer needs help.

File encryption using AES256

Enable your application users to share files securely using AES256 encryption. When this feature is turned on, all types of files sent in conversations will be encrypted by AES256 in storage. 

To get this enabled in your Channelize.io application, please reach out to our support team. We also have a feature add-on for End-to-End Messages Encryption to secure your messages. 

Files and Documents Sharing

Besides normal media files like Images, Videos and Audio, Channelize.io APIs, Pre-built UI and iOS UI SDK now also support sharing documents (like .pdf, .doc, .xls, .ppt, etc) and many other file formats.

Other Releases

1. Image grouping in iOS SDK to amp up image sharing and messaging experience.
2. Fixes in JavaScript UI Kit.
3. Improved the loading performance of Channelize.io Pre-built UI.
4. Open-sourced iOS UI SDK to craft chat interface of your choice.
   

What’s coming up next

1. Open Source Android UI SDKs
2. Reactions support in JavaScript UI Kit, React UI Kit, Android UI Kit.
3. Image Grouping in Android UI Kit.
4. Document Sharing in JavaScript UI Kit, React UI Kit, Android UI Kits.
5. Public Chat Groups support in Android and iOS UI SDKs
6. React Native UI Kit.
7. Amping up calling experience with Groups Calling and Live Broadcasting
8. Open Conversations

To stay updated about our news, please follow us at our below handles:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChannelizeIO 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/channelize-io/ 
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChannelizeIO 

Got questions about any of our new features, or roadmap? Please drop a note from our Live Chat, or email us at: info@channelize.io .