July 2026: A refreshed Admin Portal, smarter AI replies & a more helpful Chat Centre
Across July we gave the Admin Portal a full visual refresh with dark mode and guided onboarding, made the VIVA AI Assistant sharper and more resilient, gave support teams richer context in the Chat Centre, and made search on the Mini Program more complete for students.
A round-up of everything we shipped across July 2026 — a refreshed and more capable Admin Portal, a sharper and more resilient VIVA AI Assistant, a more helpful Chat Centre for support teams, and more complete search for students on the Mini Program.
Smarter Search
Complete results across every city and university. When a student searches on the Mini Program, the cities and universities from all of a provider’s properties now appear together, so filters and results show the full picture instead of a partial list.
City-aware results. Students asking about a specific city now get results tuned to that location, making it easier to find the right home in the right place.
AI Assistant
Smarter, more context-aware replies. The VIVA AI Assistant now selects the most relevant information more accurately and remembers more of the conversation, so students get sharper answers that follow the thread of what they asked.
Property and room links show as tappable cards. When the assistant shares a property or room, it now appears as a rich card students can tap to open in the Mini Program — including in Chinese-language replies — instead of occasionally showing up as raw text.
Understands the enquiry straight away. After a student submits a Contact-Us form, the assistant already has that context — including the student’s city of interest — from its very first reply, so students don’t have to repeat themselves.
More resilient during busy periods. The assistant now automatically falls back to a backup when its main service is under strain, so it keeps responding reliably when demand is high, alongside further behind-the-scenes stability work.
A set of behind-the-scenes fixes was also shipped across the assistant this month. No action needed.
Chat Centre
Support agents set up automatically. New support agents are now added to the Chat Centre reliably the first time they’re needed, so teams can start handling conversations without manual setup.
Richer context on every conversation. Agents now see more about who they’re helping — conversation details are filled in automatically and the student’s city of interest is shown — so they can respond faster and more personally.
Shared property cards now come through. When a student shares a property or room card from WeChat, agents now receive it with a thumbnail and a clear label instead of a blank message.
Easier navigation in enquiries. A navigation bar now appears within the contacts tab’s enquiry pages, so moving between enquiry details takes fewer clicks.
Faster contact search. Searching for contacts now returns more relevant results more quickly, so you can find the right person sooner.
Tidier greetings. Each conversation now opens with a single welcome or out-of-office message, so students aren’t greeted more than once.
New Chat Centre FAQ. We’ve published a Chat Centre FAQ covering the most common questions from demos, setup, and training — including access and permissions, the WeChat 48-hour and 5-message rules, AI bot handoff, lead forms, and translating messages for international students.
A few fixes were also shipped across the Chat Centre’s connector settings this month, including fields now loading correctly the first time you open them. No action needed.
Admin Portal
A fresh new look. The Admin Portal has a refreshed design — new colours, logo, and typography, redesigned navigation, clearer tables, buttons and forms, improved spacing, and full dark mode support across all pages.
Guided onboarding. A new onboarding page walks you through getting set up, with a day-by-day view, progress reminders, and built-in tasks and guides.
A revamped Projects area. Project management has been redesigned to make it easier to find, organise, and work through your projects.
Publish video articles. A new Video Article page lets you create and publish video content with its own dedicated upload flow, separate from text articles.
Booking status at a glance. The enquiries table now shows booking status as a default column, pulled straight from your connected systems, with the column layout tidied up so you can see where each enquiry stands without extra clicks.
Quicker enquiry browsing. Enquiry cards and the overall counter now have arrow-based paging, making it faster to move through your enquiries.
Safer campaign setup. When creating a campaign, you now only see the pages and enquiry types that actually exist for the chosen Mini Program, so a campaign can’t point to something that isn’t there.
A refreshed invite popup. The popup that invites website visitors to scan and open your Mini Program has a new on-brand design and now displays correctly on any website.
Audit logs at your fingertips. Audit logs are now available directly in the detail panels, so you can see what changed without leaving the page.
Cleaner user settings. The “Reset MFA” button is now hidden when multi-factor authentication isn’t switched on, so the settings screen only shows the options that actually apply.
Several fixes were also shipped across the Admin Portal this month — including corrected handling when removing sub-accounts, smoother tab navigation, reliable active toggles on surveys, working settings pagination, refreshed import samples, and a fix where enquiry notification emails could still be sent after the notification had been switched off — along with improved error traceability and ongoing security and reliability hardening verified in production. No action needed.