NEXT Classic - Release Notes April 16, 2026
The April R1 release brings new app integrations, expanded AI Employee capabilities, improved call routing, and a refreshed admin experience — along with reliability improvements across voice and shared inbox workflows.
New Features
Xbert AI App Marketplace
What It Does The Xbert AI App Marketplace is now available, giving customers a centralized place to discover, configure, and manage integrations that enhance their AI Employee capabilities. Supported integrations are clearly labeled as "Xbert AI compatible."
Why It Matters Extending your AI Employee with connected tools is now a self-serve experience, making it easier to unlock automation and workflow capabilities without engineering support.
Where to Access Sidebar → Marketplace
Zoho CRM Integration — Xbert AI Marketplace
What It Does Customers can now connect their Zoho CRM account to sync contacts and deals with Nextiva, unlocking AI Employee capabilities such as contact lookup and activity tracking.
Why It Matters AI Employees can now surface relevant CRM context during interactions, reducing the need to manually look up customer records in a separate system.
Outlook Calendar Integration — Xbert AI Marketplace
What It Does Microsoft 365 users can connect their Outlook Calendar to Nextiva, enabling AI Employee scheduling capabilities including meeting creation, availability checks, and event updates.
Why It Matters Scheduling tasks that previously required manual coordination can now be handled by your AI Employee directly within the platform.
Google Calendar Integration — Xbert AI Marketplace
What It Does Users can connect their Google Calendar to Nextiva, enabling AI Employee capabilities such as event creation, updates, cancellations, and automated meeting scheduling.
Why It Matters Your AI Employee can now manage calendar interactions on your behalf, keeping your schedule updated without requiring manual input.
Calendly Integration — Xbert AI Marketplace
What It Does Users can connect their Calendly account to sync scheduled meetings with Nextiva, with AI Employee support for booking meetings, checking availability, and managing event confirmations.
Why It Matters Calendly users can now let their AI Employee handle scheduling conversations end-to-end, removing friction from the booking process.
24/7 Receptionist Templates
What It Does A new 24/7 Receptionist template is now available in NEXT Studio, supporting dial-by-name so callers can search for an agent by name through the IVR and connect directly to them. Templates can be selected during onboarding or from the Calling page.
Why It Matters Customers can self-route to the right person without agent assistance, improving first-contact resolution and reducing transfer volume.
Copilot Chat — Full Chat History View
What It Does Agents can now view their complete chat history within Copilot Chat, giving them access to all past interactions in a single view.
Why It Matters Agents no longer need to scroll through individual conversations to find past context — everything is accessible in one place.
Enhancements
AI Employee — Lead Generation as Default Skill
What's Improved When setting up a new AI Employee, Lead Generation is now the default skill added alongside the always-present Receptionist skill.
How It Helps You Out of the box, your AI Employee is ready to capture new opportunities, ask discovery questions, collect contact details, and create leads — without any additional configuration.
Note: The Support (FAQ) skill is still available and can be added at any time. It is simply no longer added automatically during onboarding.
Skill Management UI Redesign
What's Improved The Skills page in the admin area has been redesigned to align with the broader admin interface. Administrators can now assign skills directly to users from the Skills page, without navigating to a separate screen.
How It Helps You Skill assignment workflows are now faster and more intuitive — manage skills and assign them to users all in one place.
Where You'll See It Admin → Skills
Shared Inbox — Offer Timeout Setting
What's Improved Administrators can now configure an offer timeout duration directly in the Shared Inbox general settings, controlling how long an offer is presented to an agent before expiring.
How It Helps You Greater control over how long work items wait for acceptance, helping teams better manage response times and queue flow.
Where You'll See It Admin → Shared Inbox → General Settings
Campaign Management — Simplified Setup
What's Improved The General Configuration tab has been removed from campaign setup. Transcription, call recording, and AI summaries are now automatically enabled for all campaigns.
How It Helps You Campaign setup is faster and less error-prone — essential recording and AI features are on by default, so teams can focus on running campaigns rather than configuring them.
Fixes
Desktop Continues Ringing After Call is Answered by Another Agent
What Was Happening When a queued call was answered by another agent, the original user's desktop continued ringing even though the call was no longer available.
What's Resolved The call notification now clears correctly once another agent answers, ensuring the call state accurately reflects active handling.
SIP Device Continues Ringing After Transfer to Voicemail
What Was Happening SIP devices kept ringing after an incoming call was transferred to voicemail, even though the call had already been handled.
What's Resolved Devices now stop ringing as soon as the voicemail transfer is completed, correctly reflecting the true call state.
Multiple Inbound Calls Could Not Be Answered
What Was Happening When multiple inbound calls arrived simultaneously, the web application was unable to surface or allow agents to answer them properly, risking missed calls.
What's Resolved Agents can now view and manage multiple simultaneous inbound calls as expected, improving overall call handling reliability.
For assistance, visit the NEXT Help Center or contact Nextiva Support.