Email Validation Error Handling

What’s new?

We have updated the error handling with our email validation service to ensure better reliability and email delivery.

If our email validation service encounters system issues and cannot validate an email address, we will no longer hard bounce the email. Instead, the email will proceed to our email delivery provider, which also includes a validation service.

Why does it matter?

This update ensures that emails are still sent even if our primary validation service is unreachable. By preventing unnecessary hard bounces, we improve the chances of successful email delivery and maintain better communication with recipients. This enhancement is crucial for ensuring continuous and reliable email operations.

Postal Code Repository

What’s new?

We have updated our postal code repository to include additional zip codes that were previously missing.

With these new zip codes added, records entering the matching service with these zip codes will now be properly matched to other records in the surrounding area based on their location radius configuration.

Why does it matter?

This update enhances our matching service by ensuring comprehensive coverage and accurate matches for all records, leading to more reliable and effective results.

New Template Features

What’s new?

We have added several new tools to the email builder to enhance its functionality and provide more flexibility for customers when creating emails. These features are particularly valuable for marketing teams aiming to improve the layout of their email campaigns to prospective candidates.

New Features:

• Table Block:

• • • Create and customize tables within your emails for better organization and presentation of information.

• Dark Mode Preview:

• • • Preview how your emails appear in dark mode to ensure optimal display across different devices and settings.

• Reverse Stacking Order on Mobile:

• • • Control the order in which elements stack on mobile devices, allowing for a more tailored and engaging mobile viewing experience.

• Row Vertical Alignment:

• • Adjust the vertical alignment of content within rows to achieve a more polished and visually appealing layout.

Why does it matter?

These enhancements provide significant value by offering more design flexibility and control over email layouts. Marketing teams can now create more organized, visually appealing, and device-responsive email campaigns, leading to better engagement with prospective candidates.

Improved Match Candidates Automation

What’s new?

• The Match Candidates automation step has been enhanced to ensure that matches are provided only for candidates located within the configured radius.
  • Example Scenario: If you configure to find 5 excellent quality matches within 10 miles, but only 3 excellent quality matches exist within that radius, the system will now correctly return only those 3 matches.
• Matching Criteria Update: If a candidate’s record doesn’t include a zip code, the system will use city and state for matching. If the city and state are also unavailable, the candidate will not be matched.

Why does it matter?

• Enhanced Accuracy: This update ensures more precise and reliable candidate matching by strictly adhering to the configured radius, thereby improving the quality and relevance of the matches.
• Efficient Data Utilization: When zip codes are missing, the system matches using the city and state, maximizing the use of available data and enhancing the matching process.
• Improved User Experience: Removing the ‘beta’ label and tooltip from the Website Integrations settings signifies the feature’s readiness for production use, providing users a more seamless and professional experience.

AI Match: Zip Codes

When running AI Auto Match, Bullhorn Automation will now strip special characters and spaces from candidate and job zip code fields, without altering customer data. Previously these extra characters were preventing radius matches.

Automations: Update Step Field Updates

An issue was resolved where Update Steps did not update fields as expected. Previously fields would not update if the value list and display list did not match in the ATS.

Automation Settings: dateCreated NULL error on Automation 

An issue was resolved with opening Automation Settings. Previously on very rare occasions, an error would happen when opening the settings. It will now open with no issue. 

Lists: Tearsheets

An issue has been resolved that allows clients to see values from tearsheets when they select tearsheets for a list, search, or the update step. Previously the tearsheet values would not be available.

Notifications: False Positive “Candidate Opt-out Failed” notifications 

An issue was resolved that was causing emails to be sent out for “Candidate Opt-Out Failed” even when the opt-out update into the BHA record was successful. The notifications will now only be sent when the opt-out writeback has truly failed even after retry.

Lists & Automations

The automation infrastructure has been updated to improve performance during peak operation hours. This minimizes the risk of automation delays.

Add Task Automation Now Supported for Bullhorn for Salesforce

What’s new?

The Automation step Add Task is supported for all CRM customers. Prior to this release it was not supported for Bullhorn for Salesforce.

Why is it important?

This feature allows recruiters to automate task creation for things like following up with a candidate or contact after a placement.

How is it enabled?

Create a support ticket to have this feature enabled.

Auto Match Candidate Location Match Candidates within Location Parameters Set

What’s new?

When sending emails with job links using semantic matching the email can be configured to not send jobs that do not fall into the set job location radius even if it meets the minimum requirements.

Why is it Important?

The ability to limit job results based on the set location radius will provide a more personalized experience for the Candidates.

How is it enabled? 

The email will respect the settings found here: Settings > Website Tracking> Semantic Job Match.

New Automation Step: Add Credential Requirements to Specific Jobs

What’s new?

A new Automation Step has been added that will add credential requirements to jobs that meet a specific criteria. This step can be used to:

• Add a Credential Requirement
• Replace a Credential Requirement
• Clear Specific Credential Requirements
• Clear All Credential Requirements

Why is it important?

Using this Automation step will reduce the number of manual steps needed to manage credential requirements on jobs in the Bullhorn ATS.

How is it enabled?

This feature is added as part of the Credentialing enablement. To have Credentialing enabled create a support ticket.

Where is this available?

This is only available in NA & UKI.

Email: NO-BREAK SPACE Character in Drag and Drop Emails Showing as Question Mark with a Diamond Around It

We have resolved an issue that was causing special characters to show up for a “no-break space” in drag and drop emails. 

Sync with ATS: Records Removed From Tearsheets not Updating in BH Automation

We resolved an issue that was not removing records from tearsheets in BH Automations when they were removed in the ATS.

Reports To Field on Users

What’s new?

The Reports To field can now be utilized for Send Notification and Send Email steps in automations.

Why does it matter?

This unlocks the ability to route notifications to managers, for example, notifying the recruiting manager if a candidate submits a low NPS rating regarding their recruitment experience.

How do I enable this?

Enabled by default.

Update Jobs Match Settings to Include Quality Criteria

What’s new?

A minimum score requirement for semantic match can be set to ensure that only jobs that meet your quality configuration are sent to candidates. Although job matching previously prioritized high-quality matches, subpar matches would be sent if higher-quality matches were not available. Now, if there are no job matches that meet the required quality, the system will not send the email to the candidate, only matches meeting your criteria are being sent on your behalf.

Logic added:

• If a Job is under the criteria setting, then don’t create the match and or include in the email

Why does it matter?

This will ensure that candidates are only receiving jobs that meet specific criteria and are not being sent bad matches.

How do I enable this?

The minimum score has been set to null for all customers currently using semantic match. This can be changed in Settings > Website Integration.

Released to Production: The following resolved issues were released to production in March 2024.

Sync: Missing Merge Activity Coming from BH ATS

The sync service has been updated to ensure the consumption of secondary events that happen from the ATS when records are merged. This means that when two records are merged in the ATS, the associated records like submissions, appointments, etc. are updated to reflect the new primary record association in Bullhorn Automation.

Confidential Surveys Merge Tag Exclusion

What’s new?

The ability to exclude surveys that have the survey setting “Hide survey responses from ATS activity feed” enabled from being pulled when the merge tag %LATESTSURVEYRESPONSE% is used in email communications has been added.

Why does it matter?

This will prevent sharing confidential survey responses with ATS users who should not have access to this information.

Released to Production: March 28, 2024

WCAG Enhancements for Chat Engagements

What’s new?

Chat Engagements have been enhanced based on compliance best practices. For example, chats can now be completed by users who need screen readers or require keyboard navigation. This allows our customer base to better accommodate chat recipients with certain disabilities and avoid any regulatory fines applied to a specific geographic region.

Bullhorn Automation engagement questions are supported with the most commonly used screen readers. Two suggested screen readers: JAWS and VoiceOver. For the best survey and chat experience, we recommend using one of our supported browsers; Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Edge.

Why does it matter?

This update ensures accessible use of these functions by a broader range of survey recipients.

Released to Production: March 2024

Authorization and Authentication on Survey Links

What’s new?

All survey links now have hashing authentication and URL expiration to improve security.

Why does it matter?

You now have heightened security to protect your surveys from potential vulnerabilities from bad actors. This prevents them from being able to imitate surveys and their recipients based on sequential ID enumeration.

How do I enable this?

This enhancement is enabled by default.

Universal Date/Time Conversions

What’s new?

You can now configure Merge Tokens to utilize Universal Date/Time for Emails, Texts, and Engagements (Surveys/Chats).

Why does it matter?

The ability to configure your communications with different standardized date and time formats allows you to engage your recipients in international markets in multiple regions.

How do I enable this?

1. Navigate to Settings > Company Settings.
2. Click the Edit button on the General Setting modal.
3. Under Date Format, choose one of the two different Universal Date/Time options:
   • YYYY/MM/DD 24hr
   • YYYY/MM/DD 12hr AM/PM

List Matching Update

Bullhorn has achieved faster list updates by improving the way data changes from the ATS are processed through list criteria in Automation.

To minimize delays with list updates and better match our customers’ configured time zones, date-based calculations have also been improved.

These changes allow records to process through automations sooner, leading to quicker end-to-end automation times.

1-Click Unsubscribe to Available in Emails sent on Behalf of Customers

Bullhorn has added support for new Google and Yahoo regulations to ensure that emails sent on behalf of customers by Bullhorn Automation are not limited, blocked, or marked as spam by these email providers. This enhancement ensures that emails from Bullhorn Automation are less likely to be flagged as spam while allowing recipients an easier way to unsubscribe. Providing recipients with a straightforward way to unsubscribe can improve open rates, click-through rates, and sending efficiency.

Candidates receiving an email from Bullhorn Automation can now use the Unsubscribe link in the header beside the From email address. After they click this link, they will be unsubscribed from further emails through Bullhorn Automation.

Note: This change applies to candidates using a Gmail or Yahoo client. For candidates using iOS, the Unsubscribe link will not appear in the header since these URLs are not supported by iOS. Those candidates can still unsubscribe through the link in the footer.

ATS Integration – List Matching Criteria

An issue was resolved with list criteria mapped to ATS fields that had different display list and value list configurations. Bullhorn Automation was not properly catching records that matched certain list criteria because they were matching the display value and not the actual database value for those records. These fields are now matching the records correctly to use the criteria for the Bullhorn ATS fields in this configuration.

Merge Tokens

We have extended the support for Lead Merge Tokens to the Lead Owner association. This includes the ability to select specific fields associated to the owner of the lead record like Owner First and Last Name as well as Owner Email Address and Phone Number. This allows you the ability to more accurately target your internal employees through notification emails as well as extending their contact information for more personalized Lead Engagement campaigns.

Enabled by Default.

Add Task Step

We have updated the Add Task Step for erecruit customers to apply additional parameters to the Add Task action where those tasks added by BHA will now appear in the users News & Calendar sidebar in erecruit. This sidebar is used to quickly view important activities for a user so unlocking the access for Tasks added by BHA to this part of the application is crucial for the integration with erecruit.

Enabled by Default.

Recipient Validation 

Our logic has been updated with a third party email validator to improve our accuracy on which recipients get flagged as “not mailable.” Historically when we received a status from the email validator as a recipient with a high potential for opting out, we would flag the record as “not mailable” to help sustain the integrity of the customer domain. After further partnership with these third party email validators, we have updated our logic to not flag these records as “not mailable” since the recipient hasn’t actually opted out themselves. Now when we receive a status update from the email validation that points to a high potential for them opting out, we will still process that email to the recipient in which they can opt out themselves. 

Enabled by Default.

Leads

We have released support for the Bullhorn ATS Lead entity. This allows customers to easily cultivate lead engagement through automation that is crucial for business development. With the ability to build and deploy Lead engagement campaigns as well as data hygiene projects through automations, clients are able to qualify leads faster while maintaining an effective database and gain more confidence in their sales and recruitment efforts.

Early Access: This is currently only available for our early access Bullhorn ATS customers. We are targeting a general availability release in Q1 of 2024.

Our initial import service has been enhanced with additional self-heal functionality to improve our historical data syncing process. If errors occur, the system will automatically resume the sync process in a more efficient manner, reducing sync delays for our Salesforce and Erecruit customers.

Support has been added for Salesforce, Invenias and Erecruit customers to be able to open records in their ATS from Automation notifications. Historically the “View In ATS” button on email notifications to recruiters would not open the associated record in their ATS. Now recruiters will be able to view the record from an Automation notification in their ATS without having to manually look the record up.

An issue has been resolved where invalid data being passed into Automation was causing syncs to fail. Now, an error will display when bad data is being parsed into Automation instead of failing the entire sync.

The supported list criteria for erecruit clients has been updated to include Note Type conditions in Candidate & Contact based lists. Now when an erecruit client is creating a list based on recent activity, they can utilize the Note Type criteria in order to more accurately return records that have specific note types or have had certain notes added within a particular time frame.

An issue has been resolved regarding the Update step that is configured to update a multi-value field back in the ATS. Previously, the configuration was causing records to not flow through this step. Now, when the Update step is configured to update a multi-value field back in the ATS, all data types that are translating back into the supported data type in the destination field are properly accounted for.

An issue has been resolved where Australian and New Zealand phone numbers were trimmed when Automation was inserting those values back into the ATS. This was mainly impacting Australian and New Zealand candidates or contacts filling out surveys that had phone number information, as those regions have 10 or 11 digits. Now, when people from those regions are updating or adding their information through surveys, the correct amount of phone number digits flow into the ATS.

The Candidate Status header column on the survey response CSV exports has been updated to better reflect that the status relates to the automation engagement. Going forward, the column will show either “Candidate Survey Status” or “Candidate Chat Status” respectively. This update allows for differentiation from the “Candidate Status” column which reflects their status in the ATS.

Location logic has been updated for semantic matching to improve country and zip code analysis, leading to better quality job matching in the dynamic job matching and match candidate features.

A gap has been identified in our opt out service that handles errors when Automation tries to update a record that has opted out of mailings back into the ATS. Now when a record opts out of a Bullhorn Automation generated mailing and Automation is unable to update that record back in the ATS, we will generate an email to the record owner to signify that the record chose to opt out but we were unable to process their request and to update that record manually in the ATS.

The Bullhorn Automation page has been updated to reflect our new branding. This helps create a more seamless experience with the application as well as the entire Bullhorn Product Portfolio.

The category in the conditions drop down has been updated to be labeled “Activity” instead of “Herefish Activity”. This more closely aligns with the values under that drop down category and also provides a more unified experience with the Bullhorn Automation application.

The standard content that is displayed within the Email Templates has been updated to reflect the new branding of Bullhorn Automation instead of Herefish.

An issue has been resolved that caused incorrect skills to be removed from candidate and contact records when using the Update Automation step to clear skills. With this fix, candidate and contact skill data will now be accurately updated via automation steps, ensuring that essential skills information remains intact.

An issue has been resolved regarding the Bullhorn Automation iFrame in the ATS allowing users to opt records back into being mailable. This was a potential issue if applicants had not approved of being opted back into mailings. Now recruiters are only able to manually opt records out of mailings from within the Automation iFrame in the Bullhorn ATS.

An issue has been resolved where HTML code was getting inserted into text based components on Surveys whenever they were added or modified. Now, whenever adding a survey or editing an existing survey with text components, the formatting of the text that has been entered is displayed back to the applicant properly.

An issue has been resolved that was causing the OTE Step Workflow settings to not display when the step existed within a branch. Now, whenever you add the OTE Step to an automation branch and choose to initiate a workflow, the workflow settings are properly displayed within the step configuration.

An issue has been resolved where records were failing to be processed through the OTE Step from a Submission or Placement Based Automation. Now whenever an OTE Step is enabled on a Placement or Submission based automation, we are properly referencing the right applicant ATS ID on our requests to insert into OTE.

An issue has been resolved where the edit function of the Semantic Match settings tool wasn’t clickable. Now whenever a client is enabled for Semantic Match, they can access their Semantic Match settings to change things like Maximum Distance to match records on, Job Posting URL, etc.

The Automation Metrics page now includes an option to export the report results as a CSV. Previously, you could only export to PDF which only offers an image output of the report results that does not allow the ability to manipulate and format the results for broader reporting purposes. This now more closely aligns with the overall Automation Metrics page which does offer the ability to Export as CSV.

A new feature is available that allows you to hover over a value in a drop down picker in order to display the full value text. The drop down pickers in Bullhorn Automation do not have dynamic sizing to fix the width of values that can return in the picker, so any value that exceeded the width of the picker was not visible in its entirety. Now when a value in a picker exceeds the picker list, you can see the full text value by hovering your cursor over it.

Previously, when updating or removing an existing value on a record, the record was not properly updated back in Bullhorn Automation for Invenias, Erecruit & Salesforce customers. Now, when a record is updated to remove an existing value, that record is properly updating back in Automation.

Survey Settings has a new feature that allows you to hide the survey responses from the Activity Feed in the record view within the ATS. This is beneficial for clients utilizing Bullhorn Automation Surveys to collect EEOC or other confidential data but don’t want their recruiters to have access to those responses within the Automation tab in the Bullhorn ATS.

The individual Automation Metrics now include a date criteria picker that allows customers the ability to return metrics for their automation based on the date of the automation event. This aligns more closely with the functionality of the overall automation metrics page and improves the performance of the report by returning smaller sets of data. By default this will now return the metrics for the past seven days worth of activity on the automation and offers the standard date ranges of the last 7, 30, 60 and 90 days. Customers can also select a custom date range that can be configured to return data as far back as needed.

Previously,  the data writeback functionality of field update steps & engagement questions were not properly setting the semicolon as the delimiter if multiple values were selected. Now when Salesforce, Invenias, or Erecruit clients have a semicolon as their multi-value delimiter, we are properly respecting that when writing back multiple value answers to their ATS.

The functionality behind the Add Task automation step has been updated to allow erecruit clients the ability to configure the values for some of the standard parameters that get passed back when Automation adds a Task to erecruit. Clients can specify what values they want to pass in with Tasks on the following parameters:

• Task Action Dropdown
• Note Action Id
• Priority Id
• Scheduled Item Type Id
• Status Id

We have built out support for the Add Task automation step for erecruit clients. Previously, erecruit clients weren’t able to utilize this automation step but now we have incorporated a new erecruit add task api end point into our automation service. Clients are now able to create add task steps in their automation to better support their follow on actions from prior automation steps.

With this release, we have resolved an issue with our Engagement service that was writing back multiple answers to a field in the ATS. Historically this was overwriting the prior selected answer so that we were only actually writing back 1 response to the ATS when the engagement recipient had selected multiple answers. Now when an engagment has a question set to allow multiple answers and write back to a field in the ATS, we are correctly writing back all of the selected answers to the ATS.

Syncs will now process all records captured in the hourly sync within the expected timeline.

The Dashboard page in Automation has been updated to help prevent timeouts when returning larger data sets.

With this release we have resolved an issue where individual Placement, Submission or Job based automation metrics were timing out if either there were a large amount of records that have processed through the selected automation or there is a significant amount of Placement, Submission or Job based data within the client instance. Now whenever opening one of these automation types, we are ensuring that the metrics behind the automation won’t stop the automation from opening as well as returning the associated metrics in a more performant manner.

With this release we have addressed a scenario where the Bullhorn ATS is only returning a set of 5 one-to-many associations on a record if no specific returned count on the association is specified. Now whenever we sync records from the ATS, we are going to automatically pull in up to 50 of each one-to-many associations for that record that include Business Sectors, Categories, Skills and Specialties.

We have built a new multi-function automation step that enables our Bullhorn Onboarding Talent Edition (BOTE) customers automate their workflows to add records into BOTE and then also generate workflows to those applicants. When the step is enabled, clients have the ability to auto add applicants to BOTE via the ATS from Placement, Submission and Candidate based automations. They can also choose to generate workflows via BOTE as a quick follow on action within the same step. This unlocks a lot of value for those clients who are bogged down by the manual efforts of adding applicants to BOTE and then manually sending individual workflows that are standardized for the majority of their placements. When this step is enabled on a Placement based automation, we are also going to associate that workflow with the associated Placement within BOTE. This helps ensure that all workflows for Applicants align with their Placements.

With this release we have added support for the ‘View In ATS’ hyperlink in email notifications for eRecruit customers. Now whenever eRecruit clients have configured their email notifications to include a ‘View in ATS’ hyperlink we will allow recruiters to open the associated record in their eRecruit instance.

With this release we have updated our logic that processes records via the Re-Entry model to catch an edge case where records that don’t meet the criteria to be passed through an automation multiple times were being re-processed.

With this release we have updated our functionality with eRecruit clients to support the ‘Add Note’ step in our Candidate & Contact entity based automations. Now eRecruit clients will be able to better track any of the record activity in their automations by adding follow-on notes back into eRecruit. 

With this release we have added support for our Salesforce, eRecruit and Invenias clients that use a semicolon as their multi-value deliminator instead of a comma. Now when implementing a Salesforce client on Bullhorn Automation, you are able to differentiate between those Salesforce clients that use a comma or semicolon as their multi-value deliminator so that when we sync & update data to and from Salesforce, we are properly accounting for those fields that have multiple values separated by different deliminators.

With this release we have resolved an issue where the association of records to Private Tearsheets were not syncing into Bullhorn Automation when the Tearsheet was then moved to Public in the ATS. Now whenever those Private Tearsheets get moved to Public, Automation will properly reflect those Tearsheets on the associated records.

With this release, we have updated the stale automation service to ignore automations that have records actively processing through the step assignments, no matter how long the records have been in progress through the automation. Now the automation service will disable those automations that have not been added or modified within the past 60 days and don’t currently have any records actively processing through the step assignments.