New updates and improvements to Valosan. Subscribe to updates

April 8

v1.88.0 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Add all available analytics columns and campaign embargo date into Media hit export (Report => Publications => Export)
• Fix getting media type and industry automatically when adding media hit (fixes incorrect configuration for Anthropic AI which is used for that)
• Annual audit fixes and updates to the dependencies
• Other small backend fixes

January 13

v1.86.0 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Improve analytics - properly detect media type, detect PR Newswrite mediahits
• Add new analytics graphs - Top media, Most active publishers
• Filter publication in the campaign by media type, also allow to change media type on publication page

December 10

v1.84.0 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Optional analytics for account and campaign reporting
• Experimental: Fetch media hit location, tier, type, and industry using Anthropic AI

💅 All improvements and updates

• Fix bounce email detection and properly save the email address of the recipient who bounced.
• Add to the contact sidebar menu to delete contact from the campaign

November 6

v1.83.0 App and Gmail extension was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Show pinned contact notes in Gmail extension
• Fix opening conversations in the same Gmail window (particularly when you have 2 google accounts in the same window)
• Filter publications by added date not a date of publication (because it can be missing sometimes)
• Properly export CSV with publications

October 28

v1.81.0 App and Gmail extension was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Fix publication highlight images not showing in the reports
• Fix how Valosan and extension calculate next step for a pitching contact and when to do it (i.e. Send a follow-up in X days)
• Show the same recommendation on the sidebar in the pitching tab in the campaign in Valosan
• Show typical reply hours for select journalists (across all campaigns)
• Experimental: Compose button which opens gmail with a contact focused and email ready to be written
• Extension: fixed to how Gmail extension detects incoming emails to your pitches and records them to Valosan

October 16

v1.78.0 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Visual improvements to the contact sidebar in the campaign, contact tabs in CRM
• Old way of managing the contacts in Valosan are finally deprecated. All management happens with contacts in the main CRM view.
• Fixes to import contacts in CRM view
• Delete contact at the CRM level: this deletes contact also from all campaigns
• Make account description a textarea, which supports markdown when showing it on the accounts list
• Fix publication reports links
• Properly update contact data in the campaigns when you change it on the crm level

September 17

v1.77.0 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• If you select journalist during adding a publication as a media hit to Valosan Campaign, you will find new 3 campaign-level metric cards useful: Pitching responses, “Pitch to publication” i.e. how many mediahits have journalist attached and Pitching progress, which shows 3 numbers of pitched, responsed and published on one card.
• Fix bug which prevented Valosan to properly ignore journalists who you already send a press release.
• Update contact company and website when you connect journalist to an outlet record.
• In sendout view, show links to the contact sources (spreadsheets and tabs)

September 4

v1.76.0 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Show the mediahits in campaign report, which came from pitching

💅 All improvements and updates

• Account description is a larger field which supports markdown now
• Mark subjects dictionary as “category” and show only those at the account level

August 26

v1.75.0 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Select publications for highlight in the report by opening a pop-up

💅 All improvements and updates

• Filter added publications by manager field in account in publications
• Add Export all to publication search
• Fix time reset to 00:00 on embargo date change
• Show backlinks and account backlinks on the account report

Selecting publication for report highlight

Instead of going into posts, you can select any publication for an account or campaign by simply selecting from a list.

July 22

v1.73.0 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• For campaign sendout, if [x] Skip contacts with the status SKIPPED or PRESS RELEASE SENT is checked, also check the status of contacts in the pitching when reading the sendout contact sources. This way, you can send a press release to all contacts on the distribution date, including the ones you pitched to, who has not replied.
• Improve recent campaign cards on the dashboard
• In the campaign Pitching tab, in the table view, show all contacts, instead of wrongly limited to 10, also don’t show SKIPPED contacts
• Add campaign name and account name to CSV export from account and campaign report
• Prevent error in gmail extension when recording incoming emails
• Publication metric in report now properly calculated, by excluding deleted publications from the count
• Support chat now have the same color styling as Valosan app

June 4

v1.70.0 Extension was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• We are migrated for the new version of extension (Manifest version 3, mandatory by Google Chrome and deadline was June 2024)
• Improved how incoming emails (replies are read and recorded in Valosan), so it should be better at finding a reply to the pitch from the journalist.

May 24

v1.69.0 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Dashboard widgets. These show some total values and also your active campaigns.
• Subject search. In Valosan CRM, you now do not select from a long list of contact subjects (e.g., industries) but type and select one that matches.

💅 All improvements and updates

• Improvements to datatable styling
• Show sign up link on the sign in page
• Properly check for media list updates, prevent "Could not acquire lock” error email

Dashboard widgets

When you open the dashboard, you can see some overall values related to your activity. For the campaigns which is still in the pitching stage, we are showing when the last pitch and follow-up were done.

Subject search

In Valosan CRM, it is now much easier to select from a long list of contact subjects (e.g., industries). You just type and select one that matches.

May 13

v1.67.0 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Add notes to CRM contacts
• Alternate table view of campaign pitching contacts

💅 All improvements and updates

• The proper list of years on the dashboard (include current one also)
• Upload screenshot for publication manually, if it can’t be possible due to region/protection restrictions
• Fix account reporting access for guests - display account reports they have access to
• Fixed thje bug when creating the contact in CRM - focus hijacking were preventing the creating the contact
• No need to enter the email to login with Google

Add notes to contacts

The first initial version of adding notes to the contact is added to Valosan. You can add multiple notes and also you can pin them to the main contact view. In the upcoming releases, we will add showing them in the Gmail extension and in the campaign and contact list view.

Alternate table view of contacts in the campaign

Now, you can see contacts as a list in the campaign Pitching tab.

April 29

v1.65.0 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Add “Update previews” to the campaign report and reporting tab to quickly update screenshots and article data for all media hits
• You can select contacts from a contact list and add them to the campaign
• The previously visited campaign is default when you selecting contacts to add
• Detect outlet logo capability (Press Edit ⇒ Logo ⇒ Detect)

April 25

v1.64.0 App and extension was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Extension: prevent the Gmail popups from being obscured by the extension
• Extension: reduce the number of open analytics false positives
• Configurable highlight cards in the reports (account, campaign, publication)
• Show the account logo as a link preview image, not Valosan, if it was set in account settings
• Filter accounts by name and keep it persistent
• All accounts tab

March 26

v1.57.0 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• CRM capabilities

💅 All improvements and updates

• Improve reliability in pixel and spreadsheet updates based on the regressions introduced in the previous release
• Security updates to the dependencies

CRM capabilities

This update brings fundamental change to how you manage your contacts. Instead of having them defined on a per-campaign level, you can now manage journalists’ contact information and outlets across all accounts and campaigns. Now you can see your relationship and activities with the journalist in one single place.

Additionally, you can import contacts into Valosan, define lists, and use them in a particular campaign.

March 5 2024

v1.55 App and Gmail extension was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Extension: Support for upcoming security changes in Gmail (Trusted Types)
• Bug fixes, updates and security improvements

November 22

v1.53 App and Gmail extension was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Extension: Fix sidebar placement so it will not cover the content
• Account, campaign and publication report header improved to better align logo and title
• Publication reporting is out of early access and available to all users
• Fix showing Slack settings in the campaign - show channel and workspace name
• Improve screenshot capabilities, fixing some problems with getting screenshot done of certain online media
• When using CSV files with contacts, properly show CSV file name in sendouts to distinguish the source used
• Settings ⇒ Members were improved to show properly guests at the company level

October 10

v1.49 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Publication reporting search now allows to select multiple account categories (all they are required to be present on the account to select the articles)

October 3

v1.48 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Allow to share a link to a content block in the campaign
• Prevent discarding edits by asking confirmation when trying to cancel, leave content editing
• Allow restrict hours during the day when the sendout will be sent, how many message will go out per day, hour, minute.
• Improved publication report table, allows filtering by domain authority, and category

September 14

v1.47 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Fix block level markdown element handling in editor - avoid adding unnecessary newlines
• Properly calculate and show okr score for campaign
• Improve page layout (header padding)

August 30

v1.45 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• OKR score tracking

💅 All improvements and updates

• Also allow for campaign report to switch between 5 or 8 metrics per summary section
• When creating a campaign, Valosan does not populate default objective and key result anymore

OKR score tracking

Valosan allows you to track progress of your PR activities using overall metric, known as OKR score (Read more here). All account level (or campaign level) key results are combined, using an optional weight value to produce a single score of your progress.

August 14

v1.44 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• consitently use dd.MM.yyyy format
• improve how publication card looks, show screenshot if no cover, min height
• fix regression with duplicated metrics

August 9

v1.43 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• add campaigns in OKR period metric
• add metric publications in okr period
• show sendout/open event properly

August 8

v1.42 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Select multiple key results when adding media hit to the campaign
• Show media hits in OKR period even if publication date are not known (uses date of being added to the campaign)
• Improve publication reporting (delete mediahit implemented, selecting account/campaign properly)
• Fixes for user timezone when creating a campaign

June 12

v1.40 New version of the platform were released

💅 All improvements and updates

• Improve screenshot function (Chrome v.113, better popup blocking)
• Fix Google Docs export with embedded images
• Fix publication counters on dashboard
• Improve account report - you can choose to see all campaigns / campaigns in OKR period
• Improve account report - choose 5 or 8 metrics to see

May 16

v1.37 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Improved the Google search provider - up to 100 latest results, fixes to data retrieved
• Screenshot function updated to the latest Chrome 113
• Publication reporting are generally available
• Improve how Google Drive watch works - remove redundant subcriptions and receive updates faster

May 9

v1.35 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Publication reporting

💅 All improvements and updates

• Moved the “Add content” button at the top of the Content tab in the campaign
• Fix a bug when sometimes in the Activity tab of the campaign, mail open events were shown instead of send email events
• Fix removing mail open events by company users

April 27

v1.34 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• UI for click analytics (both in company settings and account form)
• Fix selecting OKR from standalone campaign report publication
• On the campaign level, do not show sentiment as negative if it is not known
• Disable click tracking for sendout previews

April 19

v1.32 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Experimental Google search
• Fixes for media monitoring articles which does not have article date
• Fixes how Google Drive subscription works which bring better reliability

April 6

v1.29 App and extension were updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• The extension now enabled to provide click analytics for pitched contacts
• Improved campaign card in the account report

April 3

v1.28 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Experimental monitoring sources (DuckDuckGo and Google)
• Category and manager

March 30

v1.27 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Account level OKRs: track key results for a specified period - and see a summary of period performance in the account report
• Manual key results for account and campaign
• Improved mobile views for account, campaign, and publication report
• Early preview: Sentiment analytics - for every publication added to the campaign, measure sentiment (negative…positive) and subjectivity of the article (restrictions apply - see Metrics)

March 28

v1.26 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Sendout introduction text - Google Docs support
• Categories & Managers
• Early preview: click analytics

💅 All improvements and updates

• Sendout introduction moved to a separate section in the distribution settings
• You can now save sendout without setting the content, and also sending a preview (”Send to me”) also works without selecting content.
• Fixes to media monitoring alert email content - link to the publication
• Improve media monitoring filters: date, the result type
• Fix communication center overflow for badly formatted emails
• Fix the “Add publication(s)” popup - remove previously added when you add again

Categories & Managers

Our customers grow, and Valosan grows with them! As a result, we added the ability to set categories and managers to accounts and campaigns to support your international operations.

You can now select categories for the account and filter by them.

Additionally, you can select manager(s) for accounts and campaigns and filter both.

These new features allow you quickly see an overview of managed accounts and campaigns for your big team.

Early preview: Click tracking

We are introducing an early preview of click tracking, allowing you on the company or account level to enable this feature and change all links in Markdown and Google Docs content.

All clicks will be recorded and available in the Activity tab in Campaigns.

Click tracking is an early preview, so if you want to have it enabled for your company reach out to us at hello@valosan.com

February 28

v1.23.1 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Mention.com integration to add Mention alert results to the Media monitoring in Valosan
• Deprecation of NewsCatcher results in the media monitoring

💅 All improvements and updates

• RSS search source in Media Monitoring (EXPERIMENTAL)
• Fix formatting for pitches and press-releases authored in Markdown
• Improved search UI in media monitoring
• Do not create two Slack threads if you add multiple publications at the same time
• Improve how publications links to Youtube, or upload look like in the campaign report

Deprecation of NewsCatcher

Due to low traction, we are discontinue NewsCatcher source in Media Monitoring in Valosan. Mention.com, Google News and RSS sources are available to monitor media coverage across the world. Reach out to us if you have any questions about this.

February 15

v1.21.0 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Account-level reporting
• Better Slack integration: Thread posting for added publications

💅 All improvements and updates

• Fixes and improvements to campaign reporting
• Fix scheduled search occasionaly executing more than once
• Show timestamp when the message was sent for a sendout recipient
• Improved Pipedrive support for company data

Account-level reporting

We implemented initial version of account level reporting. Report shows overview of all campaigns for one account, with ability to highlight publications and provide custom metrics.

In the upcoming releases we will also provide ability to create OKR-based report so you can track and improve campaigns on a systematic level.

Better Slack integration

We improved posting publications to Slack when you add them to the campaign. Instead of creating one message per publication, Valosan will create a thread on first publication and then add all publications to that thread.

This way, you will have a one single Slack thread on the embargo date, instead of 100+ of messages about new publications from your campaign.

January 26 2023

v1.20.0 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Campaign reporting improved - now you can change metrics, share by link and more!

💅 All improvements and updates

• Improve how website screenshots are taken, update to latest Chrome v.110
• Support to Japanese and Simplified Chinese in screenshots
• More responsive popup to add publications to the campaign, e.g. when you add multiple publications it shows visual progress
• Improve Google Team Drive support for event notification for changed (and watched) spreadsheets with contacts

December 21

v1.18.3 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Scheduled time for media monitoring can be changed now, by default 8:30am Finnish time.

December 14

v1.18.2 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Fix font formatting for Google Doc export
• Fix drag and drop on pitching kanban view

December 13

v1.18.1 Extension was updated

Sort campaign contacts

You can sort contacts by all existing attributes in your campaign. Additionally, to help you better prioritise your message to the ones who opened or replied, we have added two dynamic attributes:

• Last Open Date - when this person opened your email.
• Last Contact Date - when you sent a message or received a reply from this person

NOTE: Open analytics might be not accurate because of mail providers (e.g. Gmail, Outlook, ProtonMail etc) safety measures to reduce user tracking on the web.

December 8

v1.18.0 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Campaign UI redesign
• Sort campaign contacts in the communication center. Support for Gmail extension coming next week!
• Improve content type selection in Valosan

Campaign UI redesign

We started improving fonts, colours, buttons, controls and general appearance of Valosan, starting with Design System, which is gradually implemented into the Valosan UI, starting with campaigns. If you are curious, take a look at our design system resources here.

Sort campaign contacts

Contacts can be sorted by any property you have in your media list. This also includes any extract columns and newly added “Last open date” and “Last contact date”.

Improve content type selection

Now you can visually select type of content to add to Valosan. On the next step, you can select whether to write it in Markdown or use existing file in Google Docs.

💅 All improvements and updates

• Improved company report on Dashboard
• Improved support for Team Drives
• Retain font from Google Docs documents used as pitch or press release message
• Properly detect paragraphs in Google Docs documents

November 1

v1.17.0 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Show Country, Rank, Likes and DA in Media Monitoring ⇒ Saved Search results
• Fix links to search results from Google News

September 28

v1.15.1 App and extension was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Receive send-out replies, including bounces, unsubscribes and SPAM reports.

💅 All improvements and updates

• Remove Google redirect links from emails, which were present when you are saving your press-release in a Google document format. This should improve deliverability as some e-mail providers might score such emails as most
• Show invites to the company (i.e. - No account -) in Settings ⇒ Members
• Improved support for Sendgrid SMTP provider

Receive send-out replies

When you are sending a press-release via campaign distribution, replies from journalists and bounces are automatically added to the campaign.

Future send-out emails will exclude those who have bounced, improving deliverability and increasing your email reputation.

September 22

v.1.14.1 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Fix sendout contact list requirements for first name, last name and status
• Show all ignored contacts in sendouts

September 20

v.1.14.0 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Redesigned membership interface in settings. You can add members, give guest access to the accounts, remove and change access level.
• Improved design of header of every page. We are working currently on improving user experience in Valosan based on feedback from you. Stay tuned for more updates.
• Experimental Hubspot integration. You can now read contacts from Hubspot contact lists.
• Media monitoring is out of early access and available to all users.

💅 All improvements and updates

• Scheduled sendouts now can be Cancelled and does not appear as being sent
• Sendout filtering by Language and Status can now be disabled (Enabled by default to prevent sending multiple messages to the same person).
• Bigger padding in emails
• Improve speed for campaign list by fetching articles only when the campaign card is in view. Same for accounts.
• Better mobile responsive support - sidebar is transformed to a top bar.

Membership interface

New membership interface allows you see all invites, add and lock members and give guest access to accounts.

Also allows giving access to company and edit guest access.

Sends e-mail notification when your access level changes.

Improving design

We are improving the design system in Valosan and going from screen to screen to give you better experience when you are using it.

Thank you for providing a feedback and let us know if you think Valosan can be improved more!

Hubspot integration

We implemented early version of Hubspot integration which allows you to read contacts from Hubspot contact lists.

Let us know if you have any ideas how we can improve it further!

September 14

v.1.13 Extension was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Fixed updating the status of contacts, reading thread information, and receiving messages to support recent internal changes made by the Gmail team.

July 25

v1.13.0 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Properly update status in Google Spreadsheet media list by ignoring case of email addresses in the spreadsheet

July 13

v1.12.0 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Hide previous message (overquote) in the communication center, click to show more
• Media search - fix error on some searches, shorter description
• Properly return after slack connect, disconnect
• Short view for article description, fix overflow
• Do not show an empty page if the campaign cannot be found
• Removing a subscription from the saved media search will suppress sending an email every day instead of sending it to the creator

June 30

v1.11.0 App was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Improved send-outs: Sending a press release to media across the world was never so easy! The Distribution step of PR campaigns in Valosan was completely redesigned and improved!

💅 All improvements and updates

• Check for the appropriate row before updating the status in the spreadsheet
• Proper spacing for H1 / Title formatting from Google Docs
• Fix determining the currently selected account when creating a campaign
• Global contact is updated automatically when you change contact status in the campaign

June 20

v1.10.0 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Prompt for media list source in Audience - use Google Spreadsheet or Ask us with an experimental options to use CSV or Intercom media lists.
• Improve settings page - split membership and sendout settings into separate tabs
• Show pending invites for company membership
• Show pending invites for account external membership

June 1

v1.9.0 App was updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Change in campaign reporting cards (removed unsupported anymore “Estimated coverage views” and “Est. monthly visits” and replaced them with Retweets, Likes, and Domain authority.
• Use Update metrics in a campaign report to fetch the latest tweets and likes. Additionally, tweets are reported correctly when you use it once a week, retaining older tweets
• Edit the campaign title or publication title by pressing the pen symbol, which is more clear that it is editable

Campaign report metrics

We are replacing some metrics which cannot be fetched automatically with others, which are read from Moz and Twitter, such as Retweets, Likes, and Domain authority.

May 10

v1.8.1 App and extension were updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Multiple media lists support for a single campaign
• All statuses available in the app are now also available in the extension.
• Incoming and outgoing emails should be properly marked.

💅 All improvements and updates

• Compact display of all saved searches in media monitoring
• Properly aggregate search results to include today in the graph
• More reliable daily search update
• Add top-level Update button for the audience
• Do not show Install extension card if already installed
• Remove Check response button from sendouts

Multiple media list

You can now use multiple media lists for pitching in a single campaign. This also includes multiple tabs from the same spreadsheet!

April 26

v1.7.0 Valosan app was updated

• Pitching kanban view: Improve pitching tab, show all statuses
• Select company segment during the onboarding and creating a new company
• Early preview: media monitoring
• Signup flow

Pitching kanban view

The pitching tab in the campaign view now shows all statues in separate lanes so it makes it easy to see all contacts and their statues.

Media monitoring

We are working on an early version of media monitoring to give you the ability to search, monitor and add as media hits news from around the world. Let us know if you are interested in trying out this feature.

March 31

v1.5.0 Valosan app was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Better metrics! Check for backlinks to your company/account in the article, read tweets and likes (last 7 days only).
• Google Shared drives support for media lists and Google Docs templates

March 29

v1.4.329 Gmail extension was updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• When you change the content in the app, the extension now reads updated content from Valosan every time you press a “Pitch template” button
• Do not change the subject line when sending a press release in the reply/thread.
• If you use Title formatting in Google Docs, it is treated as subject/title as H1...H6 does (First block which is formatted as Title or H1...H6 is recognized as title)

March 16

v.1.1.0 Both the Valosan app and Gmail extension were updated.

💅 All improvements and updates

• When Valosan cannot read the media list from Google Spreadsheet, you will receive an email message and automatically updating the media list will be paused.
• SKIPPED contact status is available to be set in the extension and the CommCenter
• Avoid duplicating incoming and outgoing messages in CommCenter
• Improve Valosan Gmail extension sidebar display in pre-Integrated view Valosan Gmail
• If your email message was open by the recipient more than once, show only single open event during the day in the activity tab
• Properly read TotalBackLinks from Majestic

March 7

v.1.0.0 Both the Valosan app and Gmail extension was updated.

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Scheduled send-outs is out of preview!
• Improved Google sign-in flow and permissions
• Yearly report page (preview)

💅 All improvements and updates

• Automatically fetch domain authority for every publication
• Send-outs are sent via To: by default, providing an Unsubscribe link for every recipient
• Custom e-mail signatures for send-outs
• Tokyo timezone in the app
• Drag-and-drop fixed in the Pitch tab of the campaign
• When inviting users to your team or the account, send individual emails to every invitee.

February 9

v.0.32.0 Valosan app has been updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Add offline publications
• Account logo in the campaign report
• Media list and content templates

💅 All improvements and updates

• Fix sendout open analytics
• Allow adding media hits without OKRs
• Root company not listed in accounts, but simply referred to as “No account” in campaign settings and selecting the account/campaign
• Rename display name for contact status from FOLLOWUP to FOLLOW UP
• Reset onboarding removes all onboarding events
• Show global CC addresses (defined on account or company level) in sendout

Add offline publications

Do you have the article, blog post or other resources in a file? Now you can attach it to the campaign as a media hit.

Account logo in the campaign report

Accounts now have support for adding a company or department logo which is used in the campaign report.

You can upload logo in the company or account settings.

Media list and content templates

It is easy to get started with creating a new campaign with templates provided by our team. Now, all these templates are available right from Valosan - in the audience and content sections of the campaign.

February 1

• sort media hits by Domain Authority
• properly show sendout stats on the dashboard
• improve receiving tweets for contacts on media lists

January 24

v0.30.124.2359 Extension has been updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Do not autoselect first contact if multiple contacts available on autofill during compose

January 13

💅 Visual update to Valosan app, improves the appearance and fixes outstanding issues

• Remove from campaign header buttons for pitch and audience tabs
• Always show edit campaign name
• Activity tab: Fix link to contact
• Watch changes: disable button for guest users
• Show OKR objective name without italic
• Remove To-Do from distribution tab
• Add sections and sort sendout configuration form
• Schedule send-outs available for all users
• Bring back GMail compose button for contact in CommCenter
• Media list watch when creating a campaign
• Set default OKR objective when creating a campaign
• Do not show post embargo date onboarding steps in the campaign list
• Use label "Status in campaign" instead of "Campaign status" for the contact status field
• Use only AWS SQS ARN, no need to pass URL
• Delete campaign contacts on campaign delete
• Load media list when creating a campaign
• Default company name in invite
• Cache avatar on the login
• Cache Google Docs export images
• Token not needed if e-mail specified for the invite
• Show "Install extension" or "Pitch in Gmail" button

January 12

💅 Visual update to Valosan app, improves the appearance and fixes outstanding issues

• Properly select tab in the campaign view
• Display current campaign on the sidebar
• Google Spreadsheet watch toggle in audience campaign tab
• Next stage buttons at the bottom of the campaign view
• Do not show shared campaigns in extension
• Pitch & PR in Google Docs - Extract title from H1..9 even if it is not the first element
• The gap between campaign name and user pics
• Move dot menu to the right of the title in campaigns and accounts
• Proper timezone when you add embargo date to the calendar
• Smaller print preview buttons and Export as CSV
• Spacing in audience event content
• Show first-time popup on the dashboard
• Onboarding steps for the campaign
• Properly set status for contact from extension
• Remove LogRocket
• Campaign report tab tooltips for metrics, rename to publications, fix sendout stats
• Require OKR to add media list, fix saving OKRs
• Translations, also IntlProvider in extension
• Set OKR objective

2021 ⇒ 2022

December 21

v.0.26.1221 Extension has been updated

💅 All improvements and updates

• Fix for updated Gmail layout (Valosan extension pane started blocking the Gmail window, instead of adjusting it’s width when visible)
• Support Suomi (FI) language in Gmail
• Fix setting status for contact, manually or when sending a pitch

December 8

v.0.25.0 Both extension and app have been updated

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Default CC for send-outs per team and per-account
• Improve speed and appearance of comm. center

💅 All improvements and updates

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Default CC for send-outs per team and per-account
• Improve speed and appearance of comm. center

💅 All improvements and updates

• prevent PeopleKit cards popping up in extension
• adjust borders in contact cards in the app and extension
• proper permissions for guest users

Default CC for send-outs

If you are sending a press release to the media, it is good to get a copy to your email address, without the need to add yourself to the send out media list.

By setting a list of email addresses in your company settings or in accounts, you will receive all send out automatically.

Improve communication center

Speed and functionality were significantly improved.

You can now also delete notes and emails.

November 19

v0.22.0

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Scheduled send-outs (preview)

💅 All improvements and updates

• Content formatting toolbar in send out message editing
• Better support for SMTP settings for send out
• Show contact email if no first or last name, don't use undefined
• Sort media hits by domain when adding
• Do not show connect to Slack and add external members on account create form
• Sort mail by latest first
• Do not show create campaign & augmented e-mail to guest users
• Do not show create campaign for agency style users

Scheduled send-outs (preview)

Schedule your send-outs to be sent automatically at embargo date or any date you choose.

To help you keep track of things, approx 1 hour before sending the press release it will notify you by email.

NOTE: This is a pre-release feature. If you want to try it out, reach out via Intercom or by email hello@valosan.com

November 10

v0.21.0

Both the Valosan app and Gmail extension are updated.

🎉 Big and noteworthy

• Improved onboarding flow for Valosan Gmail extension
• Show call to action for contacts in extension

💅 All improvements and updates

• Unsubscribe option in press release send-outs. Only used if you send personalized emails.
• Fix required status when adding media list with empty Status column
• Fix handling of copy-paste e-mail address in new version of Gmail
• Show create campaign if no campaigns for users account
• Always show company selector in campaigns (for sharing and demo account access)
• Show incremental auth prompt in campaign content tab

Improved onboarding flow in extension

No more token copy-pasting! Follow onboarding flow to automatically connect Valosan Gmail extension with the app.

Call to action for campaign contacts

Show next steps for all contacts in your campaign in the Gmail extension. Do not miss an opportunity to pitch or send a follow-up message to your contacts.

November 4

v0.20.0

Both Valosan app and Gmail extension are updated.

🎉 Big and noteworthy

Organize campaigns by stage

Your ongoing campaigns are now organized by stage - content, pitching, distribution etc with a dedicated tab for campaigns launching today and this week.

💅 All improvements and updates

• Improvements to app responsiveness across all pages except comm. center
• follow Google Workspace enhancements to how To, Cc and Bcc work
• most of the strings are now in POEditor
• fix campaign report screenshot optimization
• more validations and check for media list contacts

October 19

🎉 Big and noteworthy

New dashboard

Today we are presenting an improved dashboard view that gives you a high-level overview of the status and progress of your current campaign, additionally providing you with guidance on what to do next. Follow the dashboard recommendations for an effective campaign!

💅 All improvements and updates

• Consistent global variables and styles for fonts across app, components and extension
• Font anti-aliasing, providing better appearance on MacOS X
• Show only not archived campaigns on the dashboard
• Standard font size has been slightly increased
• Added Danish and Norwegian to content languages

October 13

💅 Valosan App v.0.18

• Open analytics for send out
• Improved invite and system emails, utilizing native fonts and better appearance
• Search for conversation thread from contact profile (in comm. centre)

October 12

💅 Valosan Gmail extension v.0.17.1012

• Search for conversation thread from contact profile in Gmail
• Support content template custom title
• Disable compose related buttons if no compose window is open
• Show spinner when loading content
• Better UX when you to new version of the extension (replaces extension element properly)
• Proper status colors for contacts in the campaign

Now you can open the conversation thread from the contact profile with a single click.

Use it to find a message to write follow up to, without the need to search all mail by contact email or subject line.

October 6

💅 All fixes and improvements

• Add send out recipient and messages sent stats to reporting tab counters
• Fix archive account permission
• Show country in activity view for messages opened (only latest open analytics)

October 1

💅 All fixes and improvements

• Fix editing the campaign so content, title, OKRs and other information can be edited without conflicts by the different persons at the same time
• Edit title of content template
• Validate and check the media list link before saving it to the campaign
• LogRocket integration

September 29

🎉 Big and noteworthy

Connect campaigns to Slack

Connect your company in Valosan to Slack to automatically share publications when you add them to Valosan

Also available per-account to share news with your customer or team.

💅 All fixes and improvements

• Connect your company or accounts with slack channel to automatically receive publications as you add them to Valosan
• Google search link in contact profile (applies to both extension and app)
• Extension: Keep currently selected contact when pressing compose
• Use {{mediaName}} merge tag instead of {{companyName}}
• Custom error page with Intercom chat and Sign out button
• Normalize styles for content previews
• Add content buttons on top, instead of at the bottom, sort content by last added date
• Validate content is a valid link to Google Docs, or folder
• Validate media list for required columns when defining audience

September 23

Extension

A new version of the Gmail extension was published which contains following fixes

• Disable adding BCC if the recipient were found in the current campaign. Just display the contact details in the extension pane. Fixes issue with sudden adding BCC to unrelated pitches/threads. It will only add BCC if you reply in a thread that has had BCC or tracking pixel in it.
• Fix Gmail popup windows going underneath the extension pane
• “Open app” menu item goes to the contact in the Valosan app if contact is displayed in the extension pane.
• "< Back" button properly goes back to "View thread" from contact view if it was opened from there.

App

• Check reply only shown to the owner of press release send out

September 20

Extension

A new version of Gmail extension published with fixes to forwarding a message, improved back button flow, Google authorization prompt and displaying of update status error message

App

• Check for replies and bounces for press release send-outs
• Generate calendar ICS link for campaign embargo date - add embargo date to the calendar
• Improved smart export formatting for Google Docs and implemented 3 fallback raw export methods
• Press release send out fixes - use a correct user name, if missing from GMail send as list
• Press release send-outs are configurable to be sent to addresses to whom you have not sent press releases or to ones who have had not replied

Check replies and bounces

You can check (manually for now) for replies to your sent messages. Replies and bounces collected and displayed for a press release send out.

September 14

• Optimize the size of images for campaign report, resulting in smaller PDF generated
• Improvements to Google Docs export so e-mails and previews in Valosan have a consistent formatting

Better campaign reporting

Campaign reports have been improved to look better when saved as PDF. Also, the screenshot picture has been optimized so resulting PDF can be up to 5x less in size.

September 8

Bug fix release

• Refactor permissions for company users
• Automatically update title of publication when metadata are fetched
• Properly queue send out task
• When sending press releases, filter recipients from media list by status (excluding ones marked with PRESS RELEASE SENT, SKIPPED and DECLINED) and language. Allow to specify multiple languages for contact, i.e. "English; Finnish; German". Also remove duplicate e-mail addresses.
• Improve how screenshots shown in campaign reporting
• Fix preview in app of Google Docs press release and pitch

August 31

• Press release send out
• Edit title and screenshot address for publication in campaign

Press release send out

Send press release to a bigger list of journalists and outlets via the app. Works neatly in your GMail account so you see all outgoing and incoming messages.

Limited access - we are currently releasing this feature only to limited set of users.

August 26

Bug fix release, to solve issues recently discovered during demo.

• Fix updating media list in Valosan on Google Drive Spreadsheet changes
• Fix redirect on logout - should return to valosan.com
• Do not trigger popup blocker on link "I don't have a Google account" in login dialog
• Add loader progress bar on root page of the app to visualize that app still loading and not stuck
• FOLLOW UP status fixes, for proper integration with GMail extension
• Fix Heading N content block formatting
• Automatically update media hits after adding new publications so once screenshot are fetched it will be shown correctly.

August 19

Chrome and Firefox v0.11.818.1454 extension released with new UI

• Privacy consent dialog on first use
• UI overhaul
• Better update & error notifications
• Performance fixes in View thread
• Deprecated contact picture in favor of status icon.

UI overhaul

New release features better colors, improved task list and performance enhancements.

Privacy consent

To inform our users how extension works and for better compliance with Firefox and Chrome extension policies we added this consent dialog to extension.

It is displayed first time you run the extension. Extension will work only if you accept data policies of the extension and the app.

‣

0.10.* ... 0.12.0

August 16

• Invite user to your company
• Fix displaying "Add publications" popup on smaller screens with lots of links added at the same time
• Fix a problem when you need to relogin after onboarding for the first time

Invite user to your company

You can now invite new members of your team to your company in Valosan. Go to Settings page and enter e-mail of new user.

This user will automatically receive invite email.

August 12

🎉 Huge update with performance enhancements, UI overhaul, bug fixes and new features.

• Follow-up content template type
• After creating account, select this account for new campaigns
• After creating campaign, go directly into campaign settings
• Content editor now features toolbar
• Archive accounts
• Edit your company name and business unit in settings
• Mobile responsive view initial support (hides sidebar)
• Add links to multiple publications (media hits) at once

Campaign UI overhaul

We have worked hard (and had a vacation!) to improve your experience when working with campaigns in Valosan. New UI helps you work faster and also allows us to grow in the future adding new features.

Improved content editor

Content editor have been improved to include traditional toolbar for most common Markdown formatting features.

Also includes follow-up block support which helps you write messages faster to the journalists who have not responded.

June 24

• Export mediahits as CSV
• When adding PDF files from Google Drive as publications automatically use Google PDF viewer

June 21

• Extension: Disable if used on different GMail account
• Extension: Message thread view
• Extension: Update contact status
• Add link to help if user have no Google account on login screen
• Enable adding press release as a content, in addition to be able to add press release as a Google Document

Message thread view

Shows all contacts from thread in GMail and looks for them in recent campaigns. Also allows updating status for contact so you can see the reply and set status to POSITIVE RESPONSE or DECLINED, based on the response!

Disable Valosan extension

You can disable Valosan extension for a particular account. It also disabled when you open your personal GMail account.

June 16

• Extension: Update contact status properly after sending a pitch or press release
• Add SEO metrics to campaign report
• Better open analytics in Activity view - more accurate data if your recipients use GMail too
• Lock users from accessing app
• Guest users does not need GDrive access after logout / login to the app (when not using the invite link)
• Small usability fixes

Campaign report

All metrics (if available) for individual media hits are accumulated to show overall success of the campaign.

June 10

• Invite emails
• Campaign report export
• Tooltip support: Support for having help tooltips in boxes.

Campaign report

Get a report for all publications in a campaign. You can now print or save as a PDF file of all media hits in Valosan. See the example below.

Campaign report.pdf202.2KB

Invite emails

You can invite external members to your accounts to see progress of your campaign, see pitching status and all publications in the campaign.

June 2

• Slack integration (tech preview)
• Cleanup Google Document export - remove formatting from Google Docs before using it as a pitch message in GMail
• Better support for open email analytics (remove false positives)
• Full screen compose mode GMail support

Slack integration

When you add media hit (publication) to Valosan, a screenshot will be generated automatically, and title, description and date of publication will be fetched from the article and posted to the Slack channel.

Full screen compose

We support Valosan extension and GMail full mode compose now. You can write your email and use pitch templates from Valosan much easier now.

May 21

• Extension: Current campaign dashboard - see progress, responses and next actions to do!
• Extension: Finnish format for embargo date
• Extension: Link to support chat in app
• Bug fixes

Current campaign dashboard

You can see progress of current campaign and next actions needed right from GMail.

If you have any questions about Valosan, you can reach out to us with the Intercom chat

Older changes (one-liners)

May 11

• Improved activity view in app

May 6

• Insert content at cursor point
• First-time popup dialog in extension

May 4

• Color, buttons and spacing overhaul
• Dashboard view in the app (shows last campaign view)
• Bug fixes

April 29

• Valosan.com launch 🎉

Valosan.com launch

We launched our website where you can see Valosan, reach out to us and signup for our newsletter.

April 27

• Go straight to campaign after adding one
• Pitch - ability to add pitch as Google Docs document
• Intercom chat
• Sidebar revamp (toggle sidebar by clicking on empty space)

April 13

• Tabs instead of stages in the campaign view
• Activity tab in campaign view

March 25

• You can now update the status for contact when writing and sending a message (status will be updated immediately, even if you schedule a message sent)
• For that to work, you need to use “Add to new message” button in the extension
• Pressing PITCH, PRESS-RELEASE buttons in extension also set the appropriate status for contact, for FOLLOWUP you need to set yourself however
• Added badge to hide and open Valosan on the right side of the GMail window'
• Margin calculation improved so when you open Valosan there should be no extra padding or empty space between Valosan and mail content
• Improved compatibility with other extensions and settings and Google Add-ons pane. NOTE: Sidebar extension still can be only one at a time, but badge makes it easy to hide Valosan

March 24

• Update status in app (Pitch stage) by drag and dropping the contact in lists
• Add media hit on the distribution stage - enter link, select the journalist who published it and automatically update journalist status in the Medialist on the Google Drive
• See all media hits on the Report stage - including screenshots and stats on publication

March 18

• All contacts view (i.e. masterdata of contacts)  Initial version so not much bells and whistles - looking for feedback though!
• Fixed medialist parsing - now all contact information are updated from gdrive properly (before that, empty fields was ignored). Contacts without email are treated differently though.
• Onboarding / invitation flow (ability to add person directly to the account + T&C agreement)

March 4

• Archive button in app (hides campaign from GMail extension)
• Copy content buttons in extension

(if you have them defined in campaign, btw PR should be as a text block, not a link)

• When adding publication to OKR on Launch stage - you can see journalist, company and status when selecting

March 2

Extension

• Embargo Date format changed to 17 February 2021 at 8:30 AM UTC+2
• Write pitch to the body automatically, without the need to copy/paste
• Fixed unpredictable campaign list (“Wrong data”) - caching issue
• Fixed padding issue with main list of messages when extension is visible
• Fixed "Fetch error” messages - failure to fetch posts (articles and tweets for person)

App

• You can add mediahits on the launch stage (remember to define OKRs first for the campaign)
• Display proper error when saving a campaign
• All members of account can change campaigns belonging to the account

February 25

• 4 stages - campaign, pitching, launching and reporting
• You can add mediahits into the app (limited functionality for now)
• You can add embargo date as google calendar event - 📅

February 23

• Embargo date in format of “25 February 2021 at 9 AM Helsinki time (GMT+2)” both in Extension and on dashboard
• Medialist spreedsheet tab as a dropdown not a freeform input field
• Pitch template preview as a you type in campaign editor

February 15

• Added pitch template support - f you define title and body of the pitch in the Campaign, you can use it in the extension.
• Also supports replacements for text, see here.

January 27

• Valosan FAQ Notion pages created

January 19

• Extension fully integrates contact profile view with articles and latest conversations

January 11

• Communication center (see contacts and information about them from one campaign)

2020 ⇒ 2021

December 28

• Storybook created storybook.valosan.com

December 17

• First version of extension published to the Chrome WebStore
• First alpha of app with full flow implemented

November 17

• First alpha of GMail extension