April 2025 Summaries

Knock has introduced a new feature called "broadcasts," which allows users to send one-time messages across multiple channels, including in-product, email, Slack, and push notifications. This feature is designed for use cases such as announcing new features, alerting about system maintenance, or promoting feature adoption, fulfilling a popular customer request since Knock's inception. Unlike traditional workflows triggered by events, broadcasts are scheduled for a specific audience and can be managed through CSV uploads, reverse ETL, or API integrations, offering a streamlined way to target recipients. Additionally, Knock has introduced "commercial preferences" to comply with regulations like CAN-SPAM and CASL, allowing users to easily opt-out of future commercial messages with a one-click unsubscribe feature. The broadcasts also include observability and analytics capabilities, providing insights into message engagement and the ability to stream data into external analytics tools or data warehouses. This new capability is now available to all Knock customers, enhancing their ability to manage organized, multi-channel messaging while maintaining compliance and tracking engagement.

Knock workflows 3.0 introduces significant updates to enhance the speed, ease of use, and precision in designing cross-channel customer messaging, appealing to engineering, product, and marketing teams. The overhaul includes a redesigned template editor and workflow canvas, a panel-based UI for instant content previews, and keyboard navigation for power users. Writing emails in Knock now parallels the simplicity of using Notion, with features like block creation and reordering, liquid templating, and a typeahead experience for accessing data and functions. The update also enhances quality control with improved error handling, AI-powered auto-fix suggestions, and version control for managing workflows. This release marks a significant step towards providing precision tooling for crafting well-designed customer engagement experiences, with more updates anticipated in the future.

Knock Agent Toolkit is a comprehensive suite of tools designed to facilitate the creation of AI agents that communicate with users through various channels, such as in-app, email, push, SMS, and chat apps, while adhering to predefined messaging workflows and templates. The toolkit supports human-in-the-loop processes, allowing agents to seek human input and approvals before proceeding, thereby ensuring accuracy and compliance with brand guidelines. Knock also introduces an MCP server that integrates with major agent frameworks and SDKs, enabling function calls and resource management across environments. The toolkit emphasizes security and observability, allowing users to control access to resources and monitor cross-channel engagement data. With its ability to streamline communication and enhance agent capabilities, Knock aims to redefine how agents and humans collaborate effectively.

Real-time in-app notifications enhance user engagement and retention by delivering timely updates and fostering immediate user interaction. However, building these notifications from scratch involves complex challenges, including managing WebSocket infrastructure, handling user preferences, and developing comprehensive front-end features. Various real-time notification services, such as Pusher, PubNub, and Ably, offer scalable and reliable solutions with features like low latency, presence detection, and cross-platform compatibility, though they each come with unique benefits and limitations. While Pusher excels in reliability with a versatile SDK suite, PubNub supports integration across diverse environments but lacks WebSocket support, and Ably provides low latency and data consistency but can be costly. These services typically require additional development efforts for a complete in-app notification system, as they do not provide ready-to-use UI components or features like templated messaging and read receipts. Knock emerges as a comprehensive notification platform by offering pre-built components, a visual template editor, and cross-channel messaging orchestration, allowing developers to create sophisticated notification systems without extensive backend setup.

Slack users experiencing a channel_not_found error when sending messages via Incoming Webhooks to channels other than the default one often face issues related to channel visibility or permission constraints. This error commonly occurs if the webhook or associated bot user is not a member of the specified channel, especially if it's private. Solutions include ensuring the bot user is invited to the channel, verifying the channel name or ID, and checking bot permissions and scopes. Legacy webhooks might offer more flexibility, but newer Slack apps should consider using the chat.postMessage API for better control. Testing message delivery through Slack's API explorer can help diagnose issues by confirming the validity of authentication tokens and message formats. Knock's SlackKit offers a streamlined approach to managing Slack notifications, eliminating the need for manual token or bot membership management and providing tools for creating rich message templates and handling notifications across different channels efficiently.

Push notification providers are essential for delivering real-time alerts to users across various devices and platforms, and several options are available depending on the needs of a business. Key providers include Knock, Amazon SNS, Expo, Pusher Beams, PubNub, and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), each offering unique features, such as cross-platform support, scalability, and customization capabilities. Knock, for example, excels in orchestrating complex notification workflows across multiple channels, while Amazon SNS is integrated tightly within the AWS ecosystem, providing reliable message delivery. Expo caters to React Native developers with easy setup and unified APIs, whereas Pusher Beams focuses on delivering timely and relevant notifications with a developer-centric approach. PubNub offers comprehensive real-time messaging alongside push notifications, and FCM stands out for its free service and seamless integration with Google's infrastructure. Businesses must evaluate these providers based on reliability, scalability, content support, platform compatibility, customization, and cost to choose the best fit for their application.

In 2025, link tracking tools are crucial for modern software applications aiming for growth and engagement, allowing users to monitor the effectiveness of their campaigns across various channels such as email, push notifications, and SMS. Knock, a company specializing in cross-channel messaging, highlights the importance of pairing link tracking with comprehensive message analytics to enhance user engagement. The article reviews five top link tracking tools, each catering to different needs: Dub is open-source and developer-friendly, Bitly offers reliability with less focus on developers, Rebrandly emphasizes branded link management, UTM.io is ideal for UTM governance within marketing teams, and ClickMagick is tailored for affiliate marketers with advanced tracking features. These tools provide diverse functionalities like analytics, redirect logic, UTM tagging, and API integrations, empowering teams to create more effective and well-informed campaigns.