Spotlight

• CSV exports have moved away from tab/.txt file formats to general comma separated values (.csv)
  Some older reports and the Google product feed still use tab/.txt files however all the main exports now use CSV for opening easier in Excel.
   
• Facebook Pixel support
  We now have built in support for the Facebook Pixel tracking, including "add to cart" and purchases.
  Enable in Admin > Connect > Social > "Enable Facebook Pixel Tracking" & "Facebook Pixel ID"
  Process to follow to add the pixel in FB:
  Go to https://www.facebook.com/events_manager2 > Click the green + icon on left sidebar for "Connect data source" > Website > Enter a name for the pixel (e.g. company name or website) > enter url > Pixel only > Install code manually > ID is in the code provided (e.g. fbq('init', 'ID HERE');) > enable advanced matching > Continue.
   
• Users Making Purchases report now shows risk level for customers who might be going away.
  To help you track if customers who used to order frequently haven't ordered in a while, this report now shows a risk level next to each customer as well as an average for how frequently they normally buy. 
  Export this report, sort by the highest risk level and this gives you a good start point of customers to reach out to. 

CMS & Design

• Email Manager > Sending tests will now send through the same email proxy system. 
  This improvement will help you detect broken links easier as it means normal email program proxies for links won't hide broken links as the link is always forwarded on to us first like when you send it out.
   
• Better spam checks for blog comments
  Spam bots are on the rise and to help prevent them adding spam messages and links to your site we've beefed up the spam protections on blog comments to stop the majority of these. 
   
• Custom content blocks
  This allows designers to create custom blocks like the built in ones from https://design.reallyeasycart.co.uk/content-blocks.html
  As an example we've moved our quote type content block into this system so you can see how this works.
  Custom content blocks have a folder html/content_blocks/ where inside there are X.html.twig files and matching X.json files, where X is the reference name for your content block.
   
• New util twig functions for html_attr() and html_el()
  Useful for generating html elements with dynamic attributes:
  < button {{ html_attr({ class: "demo", disabled: true }) }}>< /button>
   
• Page slices - dev/alpha release
  Slices are a new way for letting admins build up page content easier, rather than as a single editor field or using a set template with specific content blocks. The slices are a series of mini templates each with content blocks inside,from which the admin can build up layouts. 
  With the abilitiy to create column layouts and blocks of content, images, videos, forms and much more the slices will help admins buildand manage pages easier. 
  For designers this also let's you build up common slices and blocks to re-use content more easily across pages and sites as all slices are editable via templates. 
  You can add slices to any layout template file like so:
  {{ rec_slices() }}
  Or pass classes like so to make full width slices with centered content like the header/middle/footer sections:
  {{ rec_slices(sliceOuterClass="layout-container", sliceInnerClass="layout-container-inner") }}
  Page manager > edit page will detect these like it does content blocks and will render a slice editor.
  This then lets you add slices which are from the html/slices folder.
  In this folder you'll find sub folders for slices, these sub folders help categorise them, you can add any new sub folders you like, or add to the existing ones to add new slices.
  You'll also find a slices.html.twig file in here which controls how the slices are actually loaded when the system finds a rec_slices() call.
  Inside slice files you can add as many rec_block() calls for content blocks as you need, and you can even nest rec_slices() calls inside slices to create columns / nestable templates. However, the only new part here is for slices files, both rec_block() and rec_slices() calls need to pass slice=slice, this tells the block or slices that they are inside another slice to make sure they are handled as auto unique and unique by the slice too, e.g. {{ rec_block('Youtube Video', type="youtube", slice=slice) }
  Slice html.twig files each can have their own .json conf files to control their name shown back in admin as well as add additional settings that are shown in admin when using that slice.
  Slices are also available to download/export via the Developer import/export in admin.

Ecom & Reporting

• Order Info Report > CSV Exports
  Core Order Info Reports are now available via CSV export with full data down to the day, month or year for you to build custom reports in excel or to view the raw data.
   
• Autoparts CSV changes
  If your site uses the autoparts CSVs to manage products, the file is now available as a CSV instead of Tab/.txt file and with the new settings you can have additional price fields for including VAT as well as hiding the older autoparts import mode that would append the make/mode/year to product names.
  Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Autoparts > new settings for "Use the Auto-parts default name mode only" and "Include inc. VAT prices in import/export"
   
• Top product report now available as a CSV export
  Admin > Reports > Top Products Report > New button to the top right for "CSV Export"
   
• Product live date
  Adding under the created at date, we now store a date for when a product was first marked as live. 
  This can be useful for reporting to see how long a product has been available especially if it was previously in draft for a long time.
   
• Product development cost
  Track the time it takes to design, prototype and build your products with this new field on add/edit product for Development Cost.
  Enable this with the new Site Settings > Prices > "Enable development cost tracking" setting. 
   
• Manual orders VAT improvements
  Adding an order manually will now auto select VAT rules based on the users group and region like it would on the front end checkout.
   
• Return reasons comment / further information field is now required.
  This ensures customers provide additional info before returning items.
   
• Tag group filters for reports
  We've added a Tag Group filter to Order Info Reports (& in turn Report Builder), as well as Top Products Report.
   
• Top level default category report
  New "Product count" columns to the categories, manufacturers & tag groups order info reports.
  New "Top level default category" order info report, also extends to report builder.
   
• Ecommerce revenue inc/ex vat modifier & new category, manufacturer & smart type filters
  Admin > Report Builder > Ecommerce Revenue report now supports filtering by category, manufacturer & smart type and it now supports the inc/ex vat modifier also used by all the order info reports.
   
• Email Manager copy and paste product tags
  To help you send to customers based on product tags they've bought before, you can now copy tags from any products edit product > filter tags page via the new "reveal currently selected tags list". Then back in Email Manager when selecting filter tags there's now a field for you to paste in those tags.
   
• Loyalty coupon tweaks
  We've added "user.can_use_loyalty_coupon" to invoice template as well as "user.smart_type" to both the invoice, purchase order email confirmation and thanks templates so you can add messages about your loyalty coupons everywhere.
  Loyalty coupons can also now be filtered to only apply to specific countries.
   
• Twig access to simple product listings with rec_products()
  {{ rec_products(limit=5, status="featured") }}
  {{ rec_products(limit=5, status="special_offer", sort="bestsellers") }}
  supported options: limit, status, sort, category, manufacturer
  As well as 2 additional functions:
  {{ rec_categories() }}
  {{ rec_manufacturers() }}
  supported options: both support limit, rec_categories also supports category for showing sub categories of a given parent category ID.

Integrations

• Google Shopping feed support for sale prices
  Previously in the Google product feed we would send the normal or sale price as the retail price to Google to keep this simpler. 
  We now support sending the 2 different prices so that Google can tell when a product is on sale, as well as the sale date range if set against a product.
   
• Our Google My Business integration has been updated to keep ahead of their upcoming deprecations.
  This is our integration to pull in reviews from your Google business profile onto your site.

Unleashed

• Bundles support for Unleashed. 
  We now support our Bundles/BOMs system with Unleashed, allowing you to build bundles on your site and have them be split out to each sub item when sending to Unleashed.
  Edit Product > BOM / Bundles tab > Sync option for Price now split into "Default Price" vs "Additional & Group Prices".
  Please note, only default price is currently supported with Unleashed here.
   
• Setting to control sending per delivery and charge line codes so you can relate delivery methods and charges to sales accounts on Unleashed.
  With this enabled, setup products on Unleashed with codes matching the name of the delivery method or code for the charge type.
  Admin > Connect > Utilities > Unleashed > Send Delivery & Charge Line "ProductCodes" (enabled by default)
   
• When copying products in batch product processor, these products are no longer sync'd to Unleashed by default.
  This allows you to change their codes and other details before syncing them with Unleashed.
   
• Unleashed stock updates now supports assembled items
  We will now count stock of items that are built up from other items.
   

 

Spotlight

• Loyalty coupon
  Loyalty coupons allow you to reward customers who have just made a purchase by giving them a time-limited discount applied to their next purchase to tempt them to buy again. This keeps repeating with every order they place. You can also select to which groupings of users it is available e.g. retail customers using Smart types.
  When enabled on your site this is available via Admin > Loyalty Coupon System.
  Read more about Loyalty Coupons
   
• Slider personalisation rules
  Want to run automated Easter or Christmas deals? Or change slides shown based on your user group between Retail vs Dealer. You can now use personalisation rules (which support per group or date ranges) to set which slides/images on a slider show and to whom. 
  Read more about personalisation
   
• Logo manager
  We've moved where you manage your site logo, instead of via Site Settings this is now managed in a Logo Manager area in admin. 
  This allows adding multiple logos for use in different areas around the site such as emails or invoices or the logo displayed on the front end of the site. 
  You can also utilise the personalisation rules here to set date range specific changes to your logos.
  Available in Admin > Logo Manager
  New template function available for designers and developers to access different logos by name:
  {{ rec_logo('NAME') }}
  Read more about Logo Manager with an example of setting a seasonal logo
   
• Order charge lines
  We've introduced a new line type to orders, similar to products or coupon lines but for adding custom service charges to orders manually or via extra features (like DDP contribution) that add their own surcharges.
  You can setup types of charges via Admin > Cart Charge Line Types
  Then add them to orders manually via Admin > Order Manager > Order Info > Add/edit lines > New "line type" option of "Charge" which lets you add arbitrary amounts to orders. These must map to a charge type set above for reporting but the name and amount can be anything you like.
  Read more about charge lines & DDP

Email

• Email manager follow-up filter
  You can now use Email Manager to send follow up emails based on subscribers who opened, clicked or didn't open a specific previous email.
  Useful for following up in case subscribers missed a previous email or for emailing customers who were previously interested. 
  Please use this with caution, repeat sending can often lead to increased spam ratings for your emails.
   
• Email country filter
  New "Country" filter when sending emails to help you optimise your emails based on the location of the customer, such as sending emails to users in their native language or offering region specific deals.  
  Available via the email by filters option on Email Manager

Reporting

• Order info reports filters
  These now support filters for Category, Manufacturer & User Smart Type (e.g Retail vs Dealer / Trade). 
   
• Order info reports exc. VAT switch
  Using this you can optionally toggle the Order Info Reports on Report Builder to remove VAT from their values.
   
• Conversion funnel report redesign
  We've re-built this report to visually display as a funnel allowing you to see where in the process users are dropping out as well as a new stage showing the cancelled/returns rate after a sale. 
  
  Contact us to engage in a Conversion Rate  Optimisation program to increase revenues & profits
   
• Variations export now contains additional info
  This now includes columns for each product description, link & images.
  Admin > Exports > Product Variations > new "Show extended columns" tickbox to add the new columns

Ecommerce

• Duties paid contributions
  Building off our new charge lines feature, using this new feature you can offer customers in selected countries to pay a contribution towards delivery and duties so you can ship as DDP (Deliveries Duties Paid) thereby eliminating the uncertainty of costs for the buyer. An example of this is to allow EU customers  a way to pay a set percentage increase on their order to help cover the cost of taxes/duties along with the rest being covered by your company to help secure the order.
  Read more about DDP in our Charge Lines article and contact us about enabling this feature on your site. 
  
  Admin > Duties Paid System
  Checkout > New duties paid area enabled in the new admin area above.
  New charge type: DUTIES_PAID (will be used for reporting later)
  Admin > Order Manager > Filter by duties paid (title comes from define title)
  Admin > Order Manager > Order Info > Shows selection on sidebar on orders that are applicable.
  Invoice template tag: {{ dump(invoice.duties_paid) }}
   
• Download deduplication
  Download files can often be duplicated where they've been added to multiple products which makes it difficult to manage when the download file is updated. 
  To help, the system will now automatically relate downloads with the same name to avoid duplicates on add/edit of downloads & products. 
  The system will warn you when this happens, and we've also introduced a new area in Admin > Download Manager > View Duplicate Downloads, which can help you fix existing duplicates.
   
• Coupon code check to avoid duplication
  When managing large numbers of coupon based deals, over time it's possible you may use a code twice. 
  The system now warns you when adding coupons and in coupon manager to help you ensure your codes are unique.This also improves reporting on coupons later as the code is used for this. 
   
• Manual order tracking improvements
  We've added a number of improvements to the manual order process in Order Manager including audits when a manual order is placed to record which admin placed the order for the customer.
   
• Price manager easier exports
  Price Manager now let's you quickly export all existing prices before running price updates, this acts as a backup but you can alternatively use the export to do the update using calculations directly in Excel/Libreoffice Calc and import it back in. This has the added benefit of letting you preview the price changes in the spreadsheet before making them.
   
• Show multiple manufacturers products on pages
  You can now select multiple manufacturers/brands on add/edit pages to group together similar/related brands.
   
• Product created date now more visible
  The system now displays the date when products were added at the top right of the edit product screen.

CMS / Design

• The blog editor toolbar now scrolls with you for long posts.
  When editing large blog posts it was inconvenient to scroll back to the top to change font styling or add images & links. Now the editor toolbar will scroll with you so it's always at the top of the visible screen ready for you to use. 
   
• Smart type template tag access
  There is now a template tag available to designers and developers of sites to allow access to the "smart type" of a user which lets the code know if the user is a Retail user or another type such as a Dealer. You could add these to the order/invoice or PO documents if you wish to identify the type of user (for example to send out coupons/flyers for promotions for retail customers).
  Here are some examples:
  Retail only: { % if not user.is_logged_in or user.smart_type == 'Retail' % } ... { % endif % }
  Dealer or trade only: { % if user.smart_type == 'Dealer' or user.smart_type == 'Trade' % } ... { % endif % }

Integrations

• Facebook product & blog post integration
  After working with Facebook we are re-approved to post from sites to your company Facebook accounts. 
  Please note the connections were reset at the start of this year due to this so if you haven't re-connected this year it's worth doing so to ensure your posts still send over correctly.
   
• Multi store improvements
  The switch to exclude from multi store has been re-worded to "Exclude from Multi Store & API Webhooks" to make it more clear it affects both areas.
  Batch product processor will now copy the status of that column as well to cloned products on copy.
  The Unleashed 3rd party integration can now be filtered to only send products added via Multi Store to Unleashed on updates rather than on initial add giving the replica site admins more control over what is then sent to Unleashed. 
   
• Unleashed retail order ID prefix
  As well as the default order ID prefix, you can now set a specific prefix to order IDs just for retail customer orders to help you identify the difference in Unleashed.
   
• Unleashed sync flag now available in the products export.
  On sites with Unleashed connected, when exporting products you now have 2 additional columns to help you identify and unsync products based on the new unleashed_guid column as well as setting if the product should or should not sync to Unleashed via the new unleashed_sync_product column (1 to sync and 0 to disable the sync).

Miscellaneous

• Cookies updated for Adwords
  The Google Adwords cookies have recently updated so to help keep your cookie policies up to date we've updated the cookie names they use.
   
• Accessibility improvements for pagination
  To help visitors using screenreaders we now ensure disabled pagination links (such as to the first page when you're already on the first page) are no longer announced to them by using the aria-disabled=true attribute. 
   
• Quick add user on add quote now auto selects the new user.
  When adding a user to a new quote in Prospect Manager we now ensure they are then auto selected as the quote customer.
   
• Google Analytics > We now ensure all sites on install have the IP anonymization feature enabled by default. 
  We've also forced this to be enabled on all existing sites, you can optionally disable this if you'd like via Admin > Connect however please first read more about this from Google
   
• Reviews rich snippet improvements to tell Google the author is a "Person". 
  Test your page rich snippets here
   
• Modules system is now compatible with multiple modules on sub pages of other modules.

 

From everyone at Wildfire Internet & REC+ we wish you a Merry Christmas and very successful New Year! 

Christmas is approaching quickly but we've still been hard at work on a range of new features to help you sell more and market your site in the new year, here's our regular roundup of latest developments:

CMS

Personalisation rules now support date ranges*
This allows you to schedule changes on the site such as for Christmas or other seasons.
Contact us to find out more about our personalisation system allowing for per group & date range based customisations to your site.

Personalisation custom CSS/style rules*
You can now use the personalisation rules and date ranges mentioned above to control custom style changes on your site, useful for adding seasonal changes to your site, or custom images only visible to specific groups of users.

*Personalisation licence upgrade required. 

Smart Share
A new JS function has been added to show the browsers built in share popup, or if the browser/OS doesn't support this yet it'll show a nice share popup we designed as a fallback.
To add this, a designer needs to add or hook up a share button to call `REC.SmartShare.trigger()` via the JS.

Edit slider now shows example desktop & mobile sizes (width x height) for your images based on the slider sizing set.
Admin > Content Slider Manager > Edit Slider

 

Ecommerce

Quick Re-Order System
This allows customers to re-order faster or optionally select popular items on the site.
Admin > Customize User Area -> Enable Quick Re-Order System?
Admin > Customize User Area -> Show Popular items on the Quick Re-Order System?
Admin > Definitions: QUICK_REORDER_*

Increased default max exports for products and autoparts to 15,000
Allowing for easier product uploads & mass updates on the sites. 
Please note very large uploads on sites using Cloudflare may see Cloudflare show a timeout during upload but the upload will continue in the background.

Variations import additions
Import > when "Product Variations" is selected, new options to trigger events & to truncate/empty the table before import appear.
This allows you to remove lines from the CSV and if you clear the products out with the new tickbox first then only the ones remaining in the CSV will be added.

Batch delete manufacturers
Admin > Manufacturer Manager > Tickboxes per manufacturer & "Batch delete selected Manufacturers" button.
We also added a "Matching Products" column to show a count of how many products relate to a given category.

Product Images can now be added to the Order Confirmation Email by a designer.
When looping through the products on the order, there's now a product.image variable available so you can show the product image as well.

Price columns export now shows all category columns.
Exports > Price Columns > export now shows the full 5 category columns to help you filter the file before price updates.

New text areas available for you to help cutomise the checkout screen.
A range of new pages available for you to customise listed below:
checkout_layout_continue_review_text: The "To continue please review the details..." text shown when checkout place order button is shown. (The checkout confirm screen live reloads for when the button is available, e.g. no delivery available hides the button and so also hides this text)
checkout_layout_confirm_text: Confirm screen text, the screen shown to logged in users
checkout_layout_register_text: Register screen text, text shown before logging in / registering.
checkout_layout_delivery_methods_info: Shown under the Delivery Methods title but before the delivery methods are listed out.

See the Ecommerce Process article for more visuals on this.

You can now quickly open a users's orders via their profile order tab.
Allowing for faster navigation between users and orders.

We now automatically trim spaces from the start & end of your product names, codes & GTINs.
It's easy for spaces to end up accidentally typed or copied into the name & code fields so we now auto remove those for you. This also helps with 3rd party integrations such as Unleashed.

Search autocompletes on the front end are now tracked in Google Analytics as searches.
Searches themselves were already tracked but selecting a product name or similar from the autocomplete would skip the search page and go to the product directly. This is still the case but we now send an event to Google Analytics before redirecting so they can track that the search was used during the transaction. 

Coupon expirations are now automatically re-evaluated in the cart/checkout.
Previously, once a coupon had been applied in the valid time we would leave it in the cart, however now if they finally complete purchase after the expirty time the coupon will be removed from their cart as it's no longer valid.

Products without tags reports
You can now find out which of your products have not been tagged yet using the new Missing Tags Product Issues Report.
Also we've added a new Product Tags Report in Admin > Reports for you to view a CSV of all products and their tags for review.

Manual orders > you can now set a user order number when adding manual orders. 
Previously this was only available via the view order screen but you can now fill this field out faster directly on the add order form.

 

Reporting

Geo Reporting
The new Geo Report allows international traders to report on groups of countries and to filter these to retail or group buyers (such as dealers or trade). This was driven by the need to report on purchases by EU consumers and how post-Brexit duties/taxes were affecting sales. Geo Reports lets you group and report on all EU member states' combined sales. Similarly, you could set other Geo categories up to cover other geographic areas (e.g. Americas, Asia, Australasia, North Europe, South Europe) or countries where you are running targeted campaigns (e.g.Middle East). Note: a country can only exist inone geo category.
Manage these new grouping categories in Admin > Geo Reporting.
New reports available for these over in Admin > Reports > Order Info Report (& Report Builder) > new Delivery Zones & Geo Reporting reports

Google MCF (Multi Channel Funnels) via Report Builder
Find out more about Multi Channel Funnels here to see how they can be used to help your site marketing: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1191180?hl=en#zippy=%2Cin-this-article

Top products report now has options for reverse sorts.
You can use this to help see not only your best sellers, but also your worse sellers. 
Similarly for products that do or don't get the most traffic.

 

Emails

Preview system emails
Available in Admin > Email Tasks > System Emails

Email Manager > Ecom Filters > Multi select order statuses when sending to users who've previously purchased.

Industry SIC codes support
You can now utilise industry standard codes to help categorise your customers to better send emails to them, contact us to find out more and get these enabled on your site. Part of the Premium Ecommerce licence upgrade.

Email block builder redesign v2
We've been working on a range of design and ux improvements to make designing emails in Email Manager easier such as redesigning the button controls for blocks on hover, making it easier to add multiple columns of blocks and improvements to the drag and drop functionality. 
Take a look in Admin > Email Manager to see the latest release.

Privacy

Google analytics consent mode
Added beta support for Google's new Consent Mode, which is part of the drive to less cookies and more privacy.

Cookie popup alternative designs
Admin > Cookie Manager > Design Mode dropdown with multiple new designs available.

Cookie popup accept/reject/not-set-yet tracking & graph
New graph of results in admin > cookie manager.

Cookie popup additional definitions
These can help you modify the design of the cookie popup shown to first time visitors.
Admin > Definitions > COOKIE_POPUP_*

Cookie popup can now hide the reject all button
We advise keeping this enabled but if you so choose you can disable it via:
Admin > Cookie Manager > Show reject button

Security

Newsletter Signup Spam Prevention
We've added additional spam prevention to the newsletter signup on the site to help keep your mailing lists clean.

CSRF protection
We now have a new security setting that can be enabled on your site to further protect forms.
Admin > Site Settings > Security > Enable CSRF Protection
New Twig function: {{ csrf_field() }}
This can also be enabled on Form Builder forms on a per form basis.
Before enabling you will want to quickly review if you have any custom html login forms added anywhere outside the default login.php page, same for custom newsletter signup forms as these may need to be adapted to work with this new system.

For front end JS apps, there's a new setting to enable token based authentication.
Built off our new CSRF security tokens, you can leverage them with our REC.API('resource') promise based JS function to make calls to the API from within the site.
Enable via Admin > API Accounts > Setting: Allow using CSRF Tokens as API Access Tokens

Unleashed

Our integration with Unleashed has had a number of small improvements such as support for decimal TAX rates.

As well as a new setting to control if we mark all customers as Taxable by default, vs working it out on a per customer basis based off their address.
Setting for this is available via Admin > Connect > Utilities > Unleashed > Taxable Customers

API

Product Addons support via the API & Multi Store

Product Bundles support via the API & Multi Store

New API endpoint for supported delivery countries added:
/api/v1/delivery-methods/country-supported?code=XXX

As well as a new endpoint to list the supported countries:
/delivery-methods/supported-countries

Power users

Admin Global Search now supports typing the area name before the search value to filter the results.
E.g. normally typing 123 into here would show results for orders, invoices, products, and more for the ID 123, but typing product 123 will show just that specific product. 
Useful for navigating admin quicker, available via the global search to the top right of the admin screen.

 

That's it for this year from the Wildfire REC+ team, see you in 2022!
 

Direct Support For Reseller Clients

We introduced direct support available to REC+ users who wish to transfer to us from their existing reseller.
Read about transferring to us here

Feature Spotlight

This covers features released in September and October. You can also read about features released in July & August here.

• The launch of our new updated & faster servers!
  We were pleased to migrate to our new server infrastructure in September after more than 12 months of meticulous planning and preparations. This included performing housekeeping on the data we stored, optimising the application for the newer programming and database versions to which we migrated,  increased processing power, adding extra capacity for continued growth, significantly faster data backups, and adding additional security protection against the increasing threats from botnets, DoS attacks and other bad actors. 
   
• Cookie policy - stricter default setting, only essential cookies enabled by default
  We updated our cookie compliance so that scripts that load non essential cookies, such as Google Analytics, no longer load until the user gives permission, improving GDPR compliance. 
  Read more about the impact of this here.
   
• Speed improvements for key admin areas
  The admin dashboard and user profiles are 2 areas we've focused for speed improvements to help ensure you can get to the information you need faster.
   
• Product page tabs
  You can now add additional blocks of content / tabs onto product pages using this new feature. Contact us about enabling this on your site.
  Setup new tabs in Admin > Product Tabs & when tabs are set up they list under product description as ckeditor fields.
  e.g. in product_info.html.twig see tab content with{{ dump(product.tabs) }}

Ecommerce

• Product review filters
  Through admin you now have filters available so you can find reviews that mention specific phrases or filter based on min or max scores. 
   
• Product associations screen rework
  This screen has been reworked, introducing paging and faster response times for checking which products have associations. 
   
• Variations system now highlights issues
  When options are removed we don't automatically remove the variations incase they are to be re-used by different options. When this happens, we'll now highlight issues with the variations in red and suggest additional variations in yellow.
   
• Order manager ctrl click support
  You can now hold ctrl and click an order to open in a new tab. 
   
• Order manager filter to only orders that used the new addons feature
  You can filter orders so only those with addons are shown so you can see how successful your saleshave been. This only applies to addons with qty sync enabled).
   
• Orders flagged for manual review if values do not match cart total
  Orders are now flagged for manual review if values such as the total are different to the cart total, for example if a user makes modifications to the cart while paying in another open tab which therefore affects the order. Now supported by all our major payment processors.
   
• Multi store syncs replica sites to their own Unleashed accounts plus other improvements
  Multi store can now sync changes on replica sites up to their own Unleashed accounts along with a few improvements to help migrate sites to using variations listed below.
  Admin > Connect > Unleashed > Sync On API Updates
  Admin > Exports > Product Variations CSV > new combined_min_stock column
  Admin > Imports > Product Variations > new "Step 4. Optional settings" appears for this type

CMS

• Spammy email scanning and unsubscribe
  You can now run a simple scan to filter many spammy email addresses from your email lists to help keep them clean and up to date.
  Admin > Manage subscribers > Scan for spammy email addresses and unsubscribe them.
   
• Admin DNS Page
  To help site owners know what DNS records are needed on their site we've added a handy DNS page with information about the A records needed as well as an example SPF record. (Please note, changing to these may cause your site to become inaccessible, always check before making a change). 
  Available in Admin > DNS Records
   
• Admin SSL Page
  Available in Admin > HTTPS Information, this new screen gives information on your site's HTTPS/SSL status and advice if you need to enable further settings.
   
• Cookie Policy Events
  For designers & developers, you can now hook into js events when cookie policy changes happen and react as needed.
  e.g.
  REC.Events.subscribe('cookie-policy.accept', function () { console.log('Accept'); });
  REC.Events.subscribe('cookie-policy.reject', function () { console.log('Reject'); });

API / Integration

• Xero customer mapping
  We have a new tool available to relate users from your Xero account to customer email addresses on the site. This is especially useful when connecting to Xero via Tradebox.
  Admin > Tradebox Utils > Xero Customer Mapper
   
• Cloudflare cookie updates
  The __cfduid is no longer required however Cloudflare customers do have some other cookies used to help protect their sites, our managed Cloudflare customers sites have been automaticaly updated but if you use Cloudflare it's worth checking these are enabled in your cookie manager.
   
• Unleashed reset GUID
  New indicators for Unleashed connections have been added on user profiles and on edit product you can now easily disconnect the user or product from it's current Unleashed GUID.
   
• Unleashed now supports your site setting's weight unit rather than being fixed to kg such as for lb.
  Allowing for international use of Unleashed integration.
   
• Unleashed will no longer be sent orders flagged for admin review. 
  In these cases, a "Dismiss Review Warning" will appear to the top right of the order page for when the order has been manually checked.

Prospect Manager

• Commenting and email subject improvements
  Prospect manager improvements around email subjects and commenting including quickly updating the next action date while adding a comment or emailing the customer.
  This is part of our work to help improve the workflow for using our Prospect Manager CRM platform built into your site.
   
• Include previous comment trail in email
  New tickbox available when sending a comment on a prospect to include your previous replies. By also adding email piping via Mailgun's subscription service you will be able to show responses fromthe recipients as well.
   
• Prospect Manager new tab icons
  New "open in new window" icons now appear on hover next to Prospect Manager links to help you open multiple prospects while by default the links open in the same tab. 

 

We are pleased to offer direct support to REC+ users who have been using our resellers to date and prefer to have support directly with us going forward. 

To initiate a smooth transfer in your support services, please visit the Transfer page on our main site and complete the form. 

We will then be in touch with you shortly afterwards.

Following the cookie change on 8th September to maintain GDPR compliance in line with ICO guidelines (see this article), some sites have seen a noticeable drop in recorded visitor volumes in Google Analytics. This does not mean your site is receiving less traffic, it means some visitors are not being tracked until after they click to accept cookies. Previously we tracked every initial visit (unless Do Not Track was enabled on the user's device) but then stopped tracking if they didn't click to accept or turned off non-essential cookies.

So in practice, the drop in volumes is mostly going to be from visitors who would visit a single page and then bounce off straightaway and this traffic is of negligible value.

The upside from this is the conversion rate recorded in Google Analytics is likely to increase as the ratio of orders to tracked visitors will be higher. 

How Do I Record Most Visitors & Still Comply With GDPR?

Google is moving its analytics and ad tracking to a consent model and also using aggregated tracking for non-consenting visitors which is in beta mode for a limited number of advertisers. Read more about this on Google

There are other cookieless analytical tracking tools that can collect visitor data and still comply with GDPR,  which are typically chargeable such as fathom. They will also differ in how they classify genuine traffic, real people versus bots and crawlers, so their visitor numbers may not be a direct tally with the way Google works.

Could This Impact my Ad Tracking?

People who purposefully choose to Reject cookies will be excluded from ad tracking data and so there could be an increase in this as the cookie banner has a more visible 'Reject' button than before, again in line with ICO guidance (previously people had to navigate via cookie settings). It is still possible to place an order without clicking 'Accept' first and those orders would not be tracked in that case. The cookie banner has also been made slightly larger to encourage more people to choose their preferred consent.

Will This Affect My Order Levels?

No. Genuine visitors to the site will still continue to place orders, this is just a question of whether they are tracked in Google Analytics and Ads. What it does mean is that some order data is no longer tracked in their tools making order levels look lower if you use these tools for order revenue analysis. However, it has long been the case that Google has had discrepancies tracking this data even between its own tools, and neither does it exclude returns and cancellations. The correct and accurate place to get your order data is from REC+ > Reports > Order Information Report or Report Builder where you can build your own custom management reports.

In Summary

Changes were enacted to make sure we closely follow ICO the latest guidelines on cookie tracking. Do not be alarmed if your visitor numbers have reduced since 8th September 2021, your conversion rates will likely have increased as a counter-balance to this and it will not impact your ability to take orders. For accurate order revenue data use the tools available within REC+.

---

GDPR Compliance & Warranties

We recommend all website owners regularly check their GDPR compliance as it remains your responsibility to be compliant. This means ensuring you regularly scan your site for cookies, especially after adding or removing any 3rd party scripts, and provide a means for visitors to enact their preferences. Our cookie manager tool is provided free to help you record and display your cookies but is not in itself a warranty for GDPR compliance. You must also ensure your cookie and privacy policies reflect your current GDPR compliance practices. We can provide cookie scans and updates to cookie manager for a charge of £295+VAT.

 

WEBSITE INFRASTRUCTURE UPGRADE - NEXT TUESDAY

As described in previous bulletins, as part of our continuous investment in the technology that powers your website and provides security and data backups, we are upgrading our infrastructure next Tuesday, 14th September starting at 7am. This means your website will be offline until the upgrade is completed and a temporary notice will be displayed to visitors as shown below.

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?

The upgrade will take a number of hours to complete and so you should expect your site to become available again during the course of early afternoon onwards.

WHAT ACCESS IS THERE DURING THIS PERIOD? 

During this period visitors will not be able to access web pages nor place / view orders and site administrators will not be able to login.

HOW WILL I KNOW WHEN MY WEBSITE IS AVAILABLE AGAIN?

You can visit your normal website domain URL to see if it available online again and once it is then continue to login and administer your site as normal.

WILL I LOSE ANY DATA?

No. We are copying all existing data across to the new infrastructure and have already performed some test migrations to ensure data integrity.

WHERE CAN I VIEW UPDATES ON THE MIGRATION?

Go to our WildfireNet twitter account to view updates and remember to follow us: https://twitter.com/WildfireNet

HOW DO I CONTACT YOU IF I HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?

Raise a support ticket or send us an email to [email protected] and we will respond as soon as possible. 

Feature Spotlight

• Scheduled emails
  Through our built in Email Manager you can now schedule when to send your email campaigns ahead of time, contact us to enable this new feature.
  These scheduled emails are also now shown on the dashboard so you can see which emails are scheduled to be sent out soon.
  
   
• Lloyds Bank Cardnet payment processor now available
  Available in Admin > Payment Processors & enter connection details in Admin > Connect > Payment Processors > Lloyds Bank Cardnet Connect
  
   
• Product review images
  You can now let customers upload images with their reviews. Contact us for design changes, a small charge applies.
  New Site Setting: Ecommerce > Product Ratings > Show New/Pending Reviews
  New Site Setting: Ecommerce > Product Ratings > Allow users to upload image on Product Reviews
  New Template Tag: {{ review.images }}
  New System Page: review_image_upload_terms_and_conditions
  New Template: /0-base/css/modules/review-images.css
  New Template: /0-base/html/store/product_info/reviews_terms_of_use.html.twig
  New Template: /0-base/js/modules/review-images.js
  Modified Template: /responsive-base/html/store/product_info/reviews.html.twig
   
• Prospect Manager export
  In Quote / Prospect Manager you can now export a CSV of filtered results allowing you to work with these directly via Excel if needed.

Ecommerce

• Checkout personal or business account toggle switch
  When customers register or checkout on your site, you can let them pick between registering for a personal or business account.
  Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Checkout > Enable Account Type Switch
  New definitions: ACCOUNT_TYPE_PERSONAL, ACCOUNT_TYPE_BUSINESS & ACCOUNT_TYPE_LABEL
   
• New tags on Invoices for showing delivery options and per line statuses
  This allows further flexibility within your invoice templates. Small charge for design.
   
• Youtube thumbnails on product pages
  You can now pull in youtube thumbnails rather than just a play button on product pages with videos on them.
  A designer will need to add {{ youtube_thumbail('youtube video url') }} into the product_info.html.twig template file in the relevant place for the thumbnail image url. Small charge applies.
   
• Addon & bundle component audit improvements
  Changes to addons and bundles now add their related product codes to their automated audits to help you track changes on products easier.
   
• VAT switcher now shows Inc vs Ex VAT on checkout totals.
  Helping to clarify which price is being shown when switching between showing inc or ex vat prices on a site.

CMS

• Search tags & blacklist improvements
  We've been working to decrease spam searches on websites, these are where malicious bots make searches on your site to submit spam, fill up popular searches with irrelevant terms, attempt to find security issues and so on.
  As well as improvements to this we've redesigned our Admin > Tag Wall Manager which exposes popular searches as well as blacklist terms, where words in a soft blacklist are not recorded, and words in the hard blacklist are blocked entirely.
   
• Simpler add page screen
  To make managing new pages simpler on sites that use content blocks we've added a faster new page screen as well as a new way to import pages faster.
  
  Admin > Site Settings > General > Miscellaneous > "Use simpler add screens where available"
   
• Added a new section type content block
  Sections allow for greater control over large section/blocks of content on sites with support for showing images or video to the side of ckeditor content, e.g.
  {{ rec_block("Example section type", type="section", unique=true, repeatable=true) }}

API / Integration

• Unleashed dismiss error
  On the Unleashed Log area in admin, in the error filters we now have buttons to dismiss errors that have been manually resolved on Unleashed directly.
  Unleashed Log > view entry > Dismiss / Un-Dismiss button.
   
• Unleashed > new defines for sales groups
  3 new defines available for this: UNLEASHED_SALES_ORDER_GROUP__RETAIL/TRADE/DEALER
   
• Tradebox manufacturer and VAT class
  New tradebox csv columns: Item VAT Class, Item Manufacturer, Combined Manufacturer VAT Class
   
• API > added order verification info to the orders responses.
  Available in the API > Orders resource > "payment_data" object.

 

The Server Infrastructure Upgrade is being planned for 14th & 15th September and there will be scheduled downtime whilst it takes place. Further information will be provided in early September regarding timings and progress updates.

Feature Spotlight

• EU IOSS reporting
  Further to our EU IOSS compliance, we now help you report this data back to your accountants with the following reports:
  Admin > Reports > EU IOSS Reports > 2 new reports available for Country Summary or Order Line Details
  Details about EU IOSS data is also now shown on the orders CSV export directly on each order screen above the items. 
• EU IOSS reload data
  You can now reload the saved EU IOSS data on orders quickly against any order through a new option on the order screen sidebar.
  Read more about EU IOSS
• Partial Shipments
  On orders that contain multiple items where some are out of stock, you may want to let your customers decide between you sending the entire order, or sending them as and when items are available in partial shipments. You can offer this question to customers at checkout with the follow setting and wording which can be changed via these Site Definitions: 
  Site Settings > Delivery > Enable Delivery Options
  Definitions: DELIVERY_OPTIONS, DELIVERY_OPTIONS_EXPLAINER, DELIVERY_OPTIONS_PARTIAL, DELIVERY_OPTIONS_COMPLETE
• Backorder required
  When ordering items that require backorders you can now auto change those order lines to this status to help you identify them in order manager (also flagged in the order email). 
  You can also enable this order status onto order manager as a dedicated tab for quickly reviewing orders that are awaiting backorder items. 
  New backorder_required state & Backorder Required status, disabled by default.
  Enabling the status, enables the feature.

Ecommerce

• "Is Addon" enabled products are now auto removed from more areas of the site. 
  You can prevent visitors landing directly on the addon product URL instead redirecting the user away with the following setting:
  Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Products > Prevent direct URL access to addons (Shows a 404 screen for the product instead)
• Addons options support
  Addons now also support displaying the addon's product options onto the product page, this allows you to pull in any product as an addon without issue. if they have  options present.
  Note: This may require a chargeable template change to fully apply. 
• Cart bundle components reload data
  When an order that contains bundles is placed it saves which items made this up and the totals for each item, which it then uses to send to 3rd party services such as Tradebox. 
  You can now reload the saved bundle components data quickly against any order through a new option on the order screen sidebar.

Designer

• Large file & drag and drop uploads
  There is now a new Form Builder field type that allows large file uploads from customers with drag and drop support from their desktop (up to 100mb total between multiple files).
  New field type in form builder > UI - Large File Uploader
  Note: This requires a Premium Commerce licence upgrade and bespoke pricing for storage and server capacity.
• Blog posts array access for easier templating
  You can now access all blog posts in the category shell file (used to pull posts onto pages and blog category pages) 
  The new blog.blog_items_raw tag allows quick access to this.

API

• API Accounts can now have data access filtered to specific group based pricing. 
  This is useful for offering public API access to specific user groups (e.g. dealers) so their developers can pull in new products and updates to pricing while making sure they only get their specific group prices shown as well as retail prices. 
  Admin > API Accounts > Edit > Extras > Group prices filter
• Webhook account owners
  You can now set webhooks to be owned/controlled by a separate API account.
  This allows setting the group/pricing permissions of an API Account and having webhooks respect this data based on their owner.
  Admin > API Webhooks > Add/Edit > Owner API Account.
• API HTTP response status filtering
  Allowing you to filter logs to error statuses for faster debugging.
  API Accounts & Webhooks > Logs > Filter status (new dropdown)

Development &  Servers

• Server Updates
  We've been working on changes to move to new more powerful and modern servers, more updates to follow on this. 

 

Feature Spotlight

• EU IOSS compliance
  We fully support the optional EU IOSS framework as part of our Premium Ecommerce licence upgrade.
  Read more.
• Shared product reviews
  If you have very similar products (such as different products for each size available, or a products that's part of a bundle) you can now share reviews across products to fill out your review tabs on the related product pages. 
  Edit Product > Reviews > Shared Reviews
• Option level stock alerts
  Customers can now subscribe to stock level alerts for the exact option combinations of size, colour etc. 
  (Note:This may require a chargeable template change to enable on your site)

Ecommerce

• Exclude from price list
  If you're using the daily or weekly price list update emails to send to your user groups (e.g. dealers), you can now prevent sending specific products with this new switch: 
  Edit Product > Main Details > Exclude from price list update emails
• Blocklist improvements
  We've completely reworked our blocklist system to better block the increase in search spam bots using offensive search terms that can make their way onto tag walls but also flood the site and slow down requests for real customers. The changes either fully block requests for the worst offenders, while for potential false positive we allow them to search but don't record the search so that it won't appear on tag walls. 
• Email tasks that send order items can now be filtered to only send when those items are still in stock
  This allows you to send re-fill or re-purcahse emails knowing that the items are still in stock.
  Email Tasks > Criteria > Only send if the products are In Stock
• Currency rates can now be saved on an hourly basis
  Normally we save currency rates daily if they are used, however with this new setting you can save each hour on the hour, especially useful for EU IOSS compliance and capturing currency rates. 
  Settings > Prices & VAT > Displaying Prices > Currency > "Re-download currency rates every hour. (If not enabled, we'll use the regular cache time to download which is daily)."

CMS

• Sitemaps
  We've disabled the ability to cache sitemaps, this was originally added to help speed up the generation for these on large sites however we've optimised this over the last few years so it generates in seconds live and there's no longer any reason to have to keep generating this manually. 

Development &  Servers

• JUNE/JULY - Server Updates
  We've been working on changes to move to new more powerful and modern servers, more updates to follow on this. 
• JUNE - Twitter API updates
  Updated to keep our Twiter auto posting integration up to date. 

Feature Spotlight

• Product Addons
  Product Addons allows you to prominently display additional products / services on the product page which the buyer can choose to add to their order if they want them. For example, addons could be useful additional parts, warranties or other services like gift wrapping.
  There is a new Add-ons tab on Edit product to add the required products.
  These addons show through on product info pages, quick shop, manual orders and customer re-order screens.  
  Note: May require template changes which are chargeable.
  Read more about addons
• Smart Types
  Smart Types allow a way to define a user's primary group classification on a site primarily for reporting purposes currently, but this might be extended. 
  Read more about Smart Types

Ecommerce

• Export counts
  Exports of products now have counts showing on them so you can quickly work out if you need to increase the export limits. Applies to some other exports too.
• Batch product processor update by product ID list
  Batch product processor now let's you search for products to update based on lists of product IDs, e.g. if you have a spreadsheet of products to update, you can copy the ID column values and paste them into this new search field.
• Product filter now offers a quick reset button
  Especially useful for when you have many filters on a page and you want to let your users reset everything at once.
  Admin > Product Filter App Manager > Show a reset button
• Delivery manager warnings
  Delivery manager now warns you if you have regions setup that are in countries where you don't have a default entry for the country setup, or when you don't have the required ISO code data added on the regions (needed for 3rd party integrations such as delivery systems and some payment processors)
• Price list change email updates
  Price list update emails now only log a single primary reason against them, e.g. price changes and discontinued items will prioritse the reason for the change as being discontinued. 
• Expert answers > All tab
  There is a new tab in Admin > Expert Answers > 'All" which offers a quick way to lookup recently asked/answered questions without needing to go through all products once the question leaves the 'New' tab. 
• Per user group setting around allowing backorders. 
  This feature allows certain groups to still order your out of stock items, e.g. your dealers. 
  Admin > User Groups > Edit > Stock > Allow Back Orders?
• Switch added to allow delivery price bands to include coupons in the total or not.
  By default, coupons aren't included when calculating delivery price bands to make sure the user gets the same price before and after discounts. This new setting allows you to calculate delivery price bands including or excluding the coupon amounts.
  Admin > Site Settings > Delivery > Calculate delivery price bands based on item total less discounts/coupons.

CMS

• Page delete audits now log names
  The audits now keep track of the name & slug of deleted pages.
• Email Manager > Send to users using pasted in email addresses 
  This new feature allows you to paste in multiple email addresses to send emails to, while maintaining GDPR compliance by checking if each has a record in the system and if they allow us to send emails to them.
  Read more about how this could be used. 

Designer

• Product description layouts
  This feature allows designers to create more interesting templates for products and allows admins to choose between multiple product description designs. 
  The product description layouts is a new dropdown on edit product screen that only shows when there's more than just the default file in the html/store/product_info/descriptions/ folder.
  The default is default.html.twig which literally only contains the description tag, this allows quickly copying the file to a new name to work with.

API

• Options sync key
  This can be used as a common code (other than ID) to keep options in sync such as with Multi Store.

Integrations

• Unleashed integration updates
  Our Unleashed integration is now fully out of beta and supports a range of additional options such as:
  Setting prefixes for order & customer IDs to allow sending orders from multiple sites to a single Unleashed account
  Filtering to only send retail customers orders over
  Send all products en mass to Unleashed, especially useful for after imports, batch updates,  price updates etc. 

Development & Servers

• Google cookie updates
  google.com, google.co.uk and (the older) doubleclick.net domains are now included with the Google Adwords Cookies as well as other updates to their cookies used to keep your cookie complience in check. 
  Please remember to review your site cookies from time to time to make sure your site remains compliant. 

 

Email Manager export feature
Export user emails based on who did or didn't open an email or click links, eitheras email addresses or Google Ads Customer Match data.
This could be useful for either cleaning out your email lists, or to re-send modified emails to those who didn't open them before, or to send emails to people who have shown an interest by opening an email but not clicked a link. You can then use these email addresses for targeting in a new campaign.
Read more

Prospect Manager improvements
A range of user experience improvements including:
- search for users based on postcode
- quick add users allows setting postcodes as well
- improvements to opening links in same or new tabs via new icons

Price list additional column data
We now show your customers/dealers additional product info in the price lists such as weight, image, descriptions and more. 

Integrations

Google My Business Widgets
Adding to the Google my business reviews collection we now have, these widgets allow marking reviews as featured, as well as displaying widgets easily:
Admin > Google Reviews > Featured
Twig templates > google_reviews('slider', max="10", minScore="0", featured=false)

Multi Store Replica Differences Report
These improvements allow you to more easily see the differences between a product on the master and replica site (which is important because you can set what data is synchronised or able to be overwritten or not).
On a per product basis go to Edit Product > Multi Store tab on the replica site.
Reports > "Multi Store > Replica Diffs" report

Google shopping feed flag for auto marking items as custom if they don't have GTINs given
Adds new ?gtin_or_custom=1 for /product_feed.csv

Admin

You can no longer delete your own user
Previously if you were an admin you could delete other admins which included yourself which is now resolved.

 

Feature Spotlight

• Unleashed & Xero Integration
  REC+ now integrates with Unleashed's inventory management software designed to help businesses manage their stock and manufacturing processes with integration into Xero accounts. The integration allows products to be populated into Unleashed from the website, the creation of new customers and orders and stock control, plus matching product categories, manufacturers and user group price lists.
  You can view each order has been sent to Unleashed on the order information screen, as well as new export/reports to help you relate your categories, manufacturers and user groups between the website and Unleashed.
  As well as the connection to Unleashed, we offer logs of all activity back and forth, a way to simulate events, ability to sync specific products and settings to control whic data is synchronised. 
  Read more about how Unleashed integrates with REC+ on freshdesk and what to do next.
  
  
  

• PayPal Commerce
  Paypal have launched their new Commerce Platform with the potential fotr better rates and the ability to show the form collecting card details embeded directly into the checkout process. All data continues to be stored and handled by Paypal who remain responsible for PCI compliance.
  Read our freshdesk article on how to set this up on your REC+ site, alternatively we can implement this for you for a small charge, contact us via a support ticket. 
  
  

• Product Bundles improvements:
  A range of improvements have been made to the product bundle system allowing the bundle order lines to be split into their components for integration; syncing the prices, costs and weights and discounts of the component lines so that these are added up onto the overall product bundle for you. 
  This also supports bundles made from components with different VAT rates ahead of new legislation that is under consultation. 
  Here's a preview of some of the new options available, contact us to find out how bundles can work for your site:
  
  

• User VAT & EORI Numbers
  Collect customer VAT and EORI numbers at checkout to help when shipping to business customers in the EU
  Enable this via: Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Checkout > Request Customer VAT & EORI Numbers
  New definitions are available in case you want to rename these: VAT_NUMBER, EORI_NUMBER, VAT_NUMBER_HELPER_TEXT, EORI_NUMBER_HELPER_TEXT
  This changes some existing template tags: Invoice - user.vat_number => order_tax_ref and user.vat_label => order_tax_ref_label
  As well as adding in some new ones: Invoice & Purchase Order - user.vat_number, user.vat_number_label, user.eori_number and user.eori_number_label 
  Read the full article here (scroll just over halfway down). There is a charge of £395+VAT to help set this up for you.

• Google My Business (GMB) Reviews Integration
  This new integration allows you to pull GMB reviews of your business from Google and store them in your website. 
  These reviews can currently be displayed on a page via the template system, or via the reviewsonmywebsite service, however we plan to add a page app soon so you can easily show off your reviews on any page. 
  Connect via: Admin > Connect > SEO/Analytics > Google My Business
  View your GMB reviews in Admin via the new Google Reviews link in the program sidebar.
  You can read in full about how we handle reviews and complaints on our freshdesk article

• Google Customer Reviews (ecommerce orders)
  Google Customer Reviews are collected from your customers after they place an order on your ecommerce site. When customers reach your thanks page at the end of the checkout process, a popup will appear from Google asking if they can contact them later about their purchase.
  If the customer clicks YES they are emailed by Google approximately 8 days later to ask how the order went and about each item in the order.  These can earn review stars which Google can then display on Ads. Here's a preview of the Google popup:
  
   
  
  Connect this up in Admin > Connect > SEO > Google Analytics > Merchant ID & Enable Google Customer Reviews popup on the thanks page.

• Email Manager Export Including Google / Facebook Ads Customer Match
  Export email addresses from campaigns in Email Manager > Sent Email as either email addresses only, or in a format ready to use with Google and Facebook's Ads Customer Match systems (email addresses, names, country and postcode).
  
  

Report Builder

A range of new reports and features have been added to Report builder including:

• Form scores
  You can now report on your CES or NPS ratings collected by your forms over time. 
• Custom titles
  Add your own custom titles for each report to make them more meaningful for your business, rather than using the default titles. 
• Actions & comments
  Add and keep track of actions in the new Actions & Comments field which is available at the footer of the report you are building and can be included on the report when it is produced. 
• Line chart totals
  Line charts now show a total/summary line above them to with the differences between the current and comparison date ranges.

Ecommerce

• SMS & Postal marketing opt in on guest checkout registration
  Gain GDPR consent for SMS or direct mail marketing campaigns during the checkout process or by editing the user profile data in User Manager. These new opt-in fields are also included in the Users export. You can change the wording that displays during registration in Site Definitions > CHECKOUT_POSTAL_OPT_IN_TEXT & CHECKOUT_SMS_OPT_IN_TEXT
  Turn this on via Admin > Site Settings > General > Registration > Newsletter > Enable Opt-In SMS Signup / Direct Mail Signup.
• Detailed order report now includes cost & profit margin data per order line
  This report now includes Cost & Profit Margin columns as it gives you order line detail, as opposed to the Order Profitability Report which only reports this information at the overall order level. This report can also now be downloaded for you to use in Excel. 
• Product Issues Report includes variations
  Checks added for Duplicate Variation Codes, Product Options Without Variations and Variations Without Product Options to help you track down common issues when you need to use unique variation codes for integration.
• "Possible missing variation combinations" on products
  On the product options tab under variations, there are suggested additional variation combinations of options to prompt you to set up all possible combinations. 
  Edit product > options tab > under variations table it'll now show "Possible missing variation combinations" if any are found.
• Tradebox order transmission indicator
  When using Sage / Tradebox integration, in Order Manager > order screen there is an indicator to show the order was sent to Tradebox plus a link to the full log entry for additional details of other orders included in the batch. This is useful if there is an issue on an order within a batch that then stops Tradebox processing the whole batch.
  
  
   
• Stop back orders being taken only on specific products
  If your site is set to take backorders (i.e. you take the order even if there is no stock available) you can now stop certain products from being sold by entering a "0" into the  "Stop Selling When Stock Qty Reaches This Amount" on the product record in the Stock tab. This allows more control on what you wish to sell. 
  Enable this via Site Settings > Stock > "Stop Back Orders Via Stop Selling Qty Field"
• PayPal Order ID Prefix - For use on multiple sites using the same Paypal account
  If you use the same PayPal account for taking payments on multiple sites,  use this new setting to prefix your order IDs so that they remain unique across 2 or more sites (otherwise a previously used order ID will cause a conflict with Paypal).
  Available in Admin > Connect > Payment Processors > PayPal Order ID Prefix
• Improved product ajax audits
  With this behind the scenes feature we've been working to improve our reports around related product data such as options, attributes, images, variations and more.

User Management

• Receive Notifications When New Businesses Register
  Receive an email notification when new businesses register on your site so you can follow up with them accordingly. These are identified as a new business by virtue of them entering their company name in the Business Name field during registration.  
  Set this up in Email Notifications > New Business User Registration emails. 
  
  
   
• Filter for 'Businesses only' in User Manager & Email Manager
  Filter to list businesses only instead of including all retail customers in User Manager and Email Manager for better targeting. 

CMS

• Improved Content Block Tag Filtering
  New filters have been added in Admin > Content Blocks to help manage larger number of content blocks. 
• Module item meta tags
  Available on add/edit module item pages in a new meta tags area at the bottom of the form to help set those tags for improved SEO.

Developer

• New email templates for: Double Opt In Email, Quote Email, User Registration Email.
  With these now in place, all system generated event-based emails should now have moved from Page Manager to templates
  Available in the /html/email/templates/ template folders.
• Additional product template tags in product_info.html.twig.
  New arrays available for: {{ dump(product.categories) }}, {{ dump(product.options_array) }} and {{ dump(product.filter_tags_array) }}
• Customer home template
  A new template around the text content shown on the customer logged in homepage is available here: /html/customer_home/content.html.twig allowing you to add more custom content or list products via the templates here. 

API

• Google my business reviews available via /api/v1/google-reviews
  Business reviews can now be pulled in here and this can be used via the template system with easy ways to access lists of reviews or averages for creating badges showing star ratings etc. 
• User controller post multi users now shows email & mem code in responses
  To help 3rd party devs with debugging we now output additional data in batch responses to help track down issue data. 
• Product API: Improvements to variation code error handling
  Variation code errors would previously halt the update of a product but now these allow the main product (and batches of products) to update, while reporting back that the request was only a partial success if there were errors involved during the variation updates.
• Products list by tags, can be useful especially when calling the api via template system to list out a specific tag of products.
  If you're building something more custom around product tags and you want to pull in specific filtered products without use of the product filter system you can now do so via the api. 

 

In this newsletter we are going to cover a number of important subjects including legislative changes affecting VAT, Google's latest algorithm change, an upcoming upgrade to your website server infrastructure plus the newest ecommerce features in REC+.

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VAT Legislative & Customs Changes 

1. EORI Numbers & Country of Origin

Brexit has meant that you are required to provide your EORI Number and Country of Origin information on product lines, which we have described in previous bulletins. You can now also store individual customers' EORI and VAT numbers on their user record should you need to refer to them. Go to freshdesk article

2. EU VAT Changes 1st July 2021

New rules come into effect for the calculation and collection of VAT when selling to the EU as outlined on the EU website and also described on the Sage website. We will be issuing a software update for this before the changes come into effect.

3. UK VAT on Product Bundles

A consultation is underway until end March 2021 to clarify the law on how VAT is calculated for product bundles where there are products with differing VAT rates. We will be pre-emptively issuing a software update to handle this in the coming weeks.

Note: Product Bundles was offered free of charge to use until 31st January 2021 and that offer has now expired. Please contact us for pricing.

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Google Page Experience

Google is changing its algorithm to include a new signal for page experience. Here's what it means to you...

1. Mobile Friendly

Most sites are now mobile friendly. If yours isn't then this is a great time to get in touch to discuss moving to a refreshed site design that looks great on mobile devices too.

2. HTTPS

Your site should be running under HTTPS. If yours isn't then we can help you to migrate and provide you with a free SSL certificate.

3. ALT Text

We already automatically produce ALT text on your product images, however make sure you have ALT text set on any images you add to pages and blog content.

4. Pop-ups

Also known as interstitials, when these are intrusive then that's a no-no. Having to close 3 pop-ups when you load up a website is not what a good user experience is about.

5. Page Load

Pages should load quickly without content jumping around as it does so, like you might've seen on some large news websites where you click on the wrong thing as the content is still rendering. It's important to note that having a lot of plugins on pages can also slow down load times.

We can perform a technical analysis on the home, product and category pages to identify issues or improvements you may wish to proceed with. The cost is £595+VAT. 

6. Safe Browsing

Since 2007, Google has steered visitors away from search results where the website looks like it has been compromised. This has never concerned us as we deploy multiple layers of overlapping security and application scanning to keep your site protected.

CLOUDFLARE
Faster Page Load + Extra Security + Reduced Bandwidth

Cloudflare is a free service that serves page content faster and increases security further. In January alone, Cloudflare stopped over 280,000 potentially malicious events on the sites we have it deployed across. In addition it reduces bandwidth usage which enables us to keep your service charges lower, especially as sites grow in size which then increases your charges.

Contact us to schedule moving to Cloudflare.

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Website Infrastructure Upgrade

As part of our continuous investment in the technology that powers your website, provides security and data backups, we are planning to upgrade our infrastructure in the coming months. We are currently planning this with our data centre specialists and will advise of more details in due course including secheduled downtime slots for data migrations. 

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Newest Ecommerce Features

These are some of the latest / most useful recent ecommerce features.

1. Report Builder

Build custom ecommerce performance reports to analyse your success across a range of metrics including revenues, delivery, payment, returns, ease-of-use ratuings and more. 

Available in beta preview till 30th April 2021. Access via Reports > Report Builder.

2. Sage Integration

Integrate your web orders and stock levels with Sage via Tradebox, which also integrates with Amazon and ebay. Contact us to discuss your requirements.

3. Unleashed & Xero Integration

Integrate your website with Unleashed's best practice inventory management software and Xero for accounts. Used by manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors.

Contact Unleashed directly to discuss your requirements first.

4. Google Customer Reviews

Collect reviews via Google and have your star-ratings appear in Google Ads. Combine this with REC+ Expert Answers to provide buying assistance at the point of interest.

5. SMS & Direct Mail Opt-in

Collect consent for SMS marketing and direct mail campaigns via the checkout process, in compliance with GDPR. use this data with your preferred 3rd party services to send SMS and direct mail.

6. Offer Paypal Credit On High Value Products

Make it easier to pay on high value products by offering Paypal Credit on select product pages. Another popular alternative is Klarna. 

Feature Spotlight

• Global Search
  This fantastic new feature is available to the top right of the admin screen you'll now find a search icon that lets you quickly search key areas of your site admin. 
  
  
  
  Key areas this covers: Orders & Invoices (by ID), Customers (by ID, Name or Business Name), Products (by ID, Code or Name), Product Variations (by Code), Categories (by ID or Name), Manufacturers (by ID or Name), Pages (by ID, Name or Slug). 
  The autocomplete will start to show after 3 characters entered, but you can also press enter to force showing the autocomplete, e.g. if you're looking for product 42. 
   
• Report Builder BETA PREVIEW
  This is a powerful new reporting tool to help you better understand your ecommerce business. Based on the order info reports, Report Builder allows you to build a print/pdf-able report with selected combinations of data including ecommerce, google analytics & adwords data and form scores.
  There is support for date ranges as well as comparison dates, and you can also build re-usable report templates to generate them more quickly next time. 
  Available in: Admin > Reports > Report Builder
  
  
   
• Email Task Criteria
  Filter your email tasks to send when customers buy from specific categories, manufacturers & product tags.
  When add/editing an email task you'll now find a new criteria area where you can add these rules. 
   
• Top level GTIN fields on products & variations
  We now have fields directly on products & their variations for GTINs to use instead of having to add these via product attributes. 
  Available in: Add Product > Barcode / GTIN, as well as on Edit Product > Main details > Barcode / GTIN and Edit Product > Options > Variations > GTIN against each variation.

Ecommerce

• CurrencyLayer enhanced / international currencies support.
  We offer a default currency integration with the ECB (European Central Bank) but CurrencyLayer is a paid service where you can gain additional currency rates such as TWD (Taiwanese Dollar)
  Available to set up in Admin > Connect > CurrencyLayer > Currency Adapter,
  once set up, you can enable in Admin > Settings > Prices & VAT > Currency Adapter
  Contact us about setting up a currency converter onto your site such as in your header for easy customer access. A small charge applies.
   
• Make/Model/Year filtering in Admin of your auto parts site 
  In product manager & the auto parts export you can now filter based on your make, model & year options just like customers can on the front end of your site. 
  The MMY export has also been optimised and enhanced to make sure exporting multiple chunks of data keeps the variable option & attribute columns the same. 
   
• Order Info Report Speed Improvements.
  We've improved speed so you can view reports and  analyse your performance.
   
• Added postcode helper icons next to all postcode input fields around the site.
  These link over to worldpostalcode.com to help international customers find out about their postcode or if they are in a country that doesn't have postcodes then they recommend entering 00000 where needed. 
   
• Google product feed can now auto send category name as a custom label.
  Speeding up Google Ads campaign management.
  Enable in: Site Settings > Ecommerce > Show Categories as Custom Labels in the Google Product Feed
   
• Google product feed now auto removes any enquiry-only products from the feed
  Products without the price showing and ability to buy online are not allowed in the Google Products as per Google's terms of use.
  To make complying with this easier we now auto remove those enquiry only products from the feed for you the same as draft or discontinued products. 
   
• Edit Product "return to products manager" link has been replaced by a breadcrumb instead. 
  This helps you navigate back and forward in Product Manager faster from the edit product screen. 
   
• Delivery Band Export
  Make changes to your delivery rates faster with this new export.
  Available in Export Manager > Delivery Bands, and import back in through Import System > Step 2 > Delivery Bands
   
• Multiple coupon use improvements. 
  When a customer applies multiple lump sum coupons, e.g. a £10 off deal and a gift voucher, these now both take each other into consideration when applying the min spend limits and when reaching zero to avoid any calculation issues. 
   
• Coupon invalid message improvements
  Applying an expired coupon or a coupon that is not available to a customer will now give the customer more details as to why the coupon cannot be applied to their order such as not meeting the criteria of items in cart etc. 
   
• Gift Voucher emails are now fully templatable
  Previously editable as a page they now have full template functionality available, find them in /html/email/templates/voucher/
   
• Manual orders > customer selector improvements
  You can now more easily search for users to attach to an order and this supports finding users by business name and membership code.
   
• Tradebox support for our new Bundles system
  The new product bundles feature was released recently and now integrates with Tradebox / Sage integration sending each component product on its own order line.

Enhancements

• Gallery albums tidy up
  We've simplified the process of entering album names on the built in gallery app.  
   
• New "country_to_alpha_2" twig function that will convert a country name to the ISO Alpha 2 format for country names. 
  In addition the invoice template has a specific variable for using this as well {{ line.country_of_origin_alpha_2 }}
   
• Deleting a template now auto clears your session preview. 

 

2020 was a little bit of an unusual year, but at least here on REC+ we worked on a range of new features to help your site sell.

Here's our highlights, in no particular order, top features you may have missed in 2020 that we think are worth checking out:

• Site Update Banners
  The site updates offer a simple way to show a top banner to your visitors. 
  We've been using this to show customers info on latest deals or let them know about new COVID guidance being followed. 
  Here's an example of this live in use:
  
  Read more in our December post
   
• Multi Store
  The new Multi Store feature creates new opportunities to sell your products and save you time by replicating products from your master store to other REC+ stores you operate
  Read more in our May post
   
• Product Variations
  Variations is our solution to handling stock between Products and multiple Options. 
  Each variation can have a unique code, stock level and cost that can relate to the different size, colour and other variations of your products. 
  We aim to move more option details to variations in the future such as pricing to allow even more fine grained control. 
  Read more in our July post
   
• Bundles and BOMs
  Sell bundle deals of products together with a special bundle price, or make a product up from multiple other component/material products and keep track of stock. 
  This new feature allows you to create a wide range of offers, including gift sets, multiples, by the case.  
  Read more in our freshdesk article
   
• Tradebox Sage Integration
  
  Tradebox allows us to integrate with Sage50 and SageOne, this year we added worked on improvements to this as well as a new stock sync to keep your stock on the website up to date with stock changes back in Sage. Tradebox also allows integration with Xero so contact us if you wish to discuss integration. 
  Read more about Tradebox Sage integration in our freshdesk article
   
• Facebook & Instagram Products
  Advertise your products to new audiences on Facebook & Instagram easily.
  This utilises our existing Google Shopping feed to easily integrate with Facebook & Instagram shop tabs and their advertising platform.
  See this live here: https://www.facebook.com/ForgeMotorsport/shop
  Read more in our August post

• Klarna
  
  Klarna is a fast growing and popular way to spread payments into regular installments.
  
  Read more in our August post

• Stripe Checkout
  Stripe offers a modern & simple checkout experience offering the latest payment methods such as most cards, Google Pay & Apple Pay.
  
  Read more in our February post
   
• ShippyPro
  
  ShippyPro offer a wide range of delivery services for live rates at checkout. 
  Read more in our October post
   
• Product commodity codes & country of origin
  Working with new international shipping rules, we now offer commodity codes & country of origin settings per product with ways to pull this data onto invoices and product pages. You can set these against each product or against multiple products at the same time via the batch product processor or our product exports. 
  Read more in our December post
   
• Delivery VAT numbers
  Further helping comply with international shipping rules, some regions may require you collect a VAT number or similar for delivery such as a "CPF Number" in Brazil.
  Read more in our November post
   
• 3D Models & Augmented Reality
  Render fantastic 3D models of your items directly on product pages and pages throughout your site with AR support.
  Read more in our October post
   
• Order Info Reports
  A fantastic new set of reporting to analyse a range of order metrics including Return Reasons, Order Statuses, Payment & Delivery methods, UK vs International, Retail vs Trade and more.
  Read more in our August post
   
• Timelines
  It's important to keep track of major site changes and changes you've made to your marketing plan to see how these impact your visitors and sales. 
  To do this we have a new Timelines area in admin that let's you easily keep track of your important dates.  
  Read more in our August post
   
• Content Personalisation Rules
  Personalisation rules let you determine how content is displayed on your site for different user groups. For example, setting parts of your homepage content to display different messaging for different types of customers. This is achieved by detecting the user, identifying which group they are in and switching content blocks to show one created for their user group.
  Read more in our May post
   
• Quickshop
  Especially on B2B sites, your customers may want to quickly lookup product codes or even a CSV of codes and how many of each they want to add to cart without hunting round the site to find each. 
  This works with our previously mentioned Product Variations codes to allow you to quickly adding a specific option combination of a product to cart too.
  Read more in our February post
   
• Expert Answers
  Allow users to submit questions on any page or product and easily reply & publish the question and answer on your site.
  Helps you to seal more conversions and to improve your content and gain additional natural keyword phrases for extra indexing by search engines.
  Read more in our January post.

Please note: Charges can apply to some features and their implementation.

Our full 2020 REC+ update posts:

• December
• November
• October
• August
• July
• May
• February
• January

 

Feature Spotlight

• Site Update Banners
  You can now easily display a banner at the top of your site such as for temporary holiday closures, upcoming deals or new COVID guidance. 
  Set it up in Admin > Site Updates > enter your message and preferred colours.
  (If you want it customised even more please contact us. A small design charge will apply)
   
• Product commodity codes and country of origin
  To help you comply with international delivery services, you can now set the country of origin & commodity codes of your products to display on invoices. 
  Invoice Template Tags (Table Row Template) - line.commodity_code & line.country_of_origin
  Enable in Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Show Commodity Code and Country of Origin fields on product record.
  This data is also available in product exports as well as through Batch product processor. 
  Read more about using this in our Brexit article
   
• Bundles & BOMs - Available to preview
  Available via a new BOM (Bill of materials) tab on the edit product screen. 
  These BOM's allow you to make up a product from other products. 
  With this you can offer bundles of products on your site, or use it to manage stock of products made up of multiple sub component products. 
  New template tags are also available for use to display components of a product, or bundles a product is in. 
  
  Picking lists
  In addition to the new Bundles & BOMs feature, you can now print pricking lists directly from the order manager and order info screens. 
  This will list each item in the order along with it's warehouse bin (if set via Edit Product) as well as any assembly instructions and components for a product that need to be picked. 
  New html/invoice/picking_list.html.twig template
  New button to print picking list on an order info screen
  New button to export csv order lines (for delivery/export purposes) on an order info screen
  New button to batch print picking lists on order manager
   
• Cloudflare cache refresh when adding new images and content.
  If your site sits behind Cloudflare, we now show an indicator to the bottom left of the admin screen. 
  Clicking this will reveal a Cloudflare area which allows you to refresh your cache with them such as after updating a number of images with the same filename and you want to see results sooner than their cache would normally allow. 

Ecommerce

• New Product Price export available with columns for each group price. 
  This new export makes it much easier to set up / manage products with groups prices. The data is exported in an easier way to calculate in Excel or Open/Libre Office Calc and re-import it.
  Admin > Exports > Product Prices (New / columns mode)
  Admin > Imports > Step 2. > Product Prices (New / columns)
  Note: whenever using an export for the first time, always try just a few lines of data first and check that it is working correctly when re-imported. 
   
• Product variations export now allows inclusion of group prices. 
  This allows you to take this export and use it with 3rd party stock/warehouse management systems (such as our upcoming Unleashed Software integration).
  Admin > Exports > Product Variations > Optionally add group price columns
   
• Product Manager search by category & brand
  You can now filter products in Product Manager's search by category & brand making it easier to track down products that need updating. 
   
• Make/Model/Year setting
  To help remove confusion between product and auto part exports, only sites using the auto parts export should now be shown the export.
  This new setting is available in Settings > Ecommerce > Products > Use Make/Model/Year System
   
• Manual Orders / custom items 
  By allowing draft and enquire-only products to be added to manual orders, you can now add custom items that you wouldn't otherwise offer directly on the website (i.e. you would copy a standard product to a new draft product which you then amend with the custom requirements and a custom product code).
   
• Weekly price list differences email
  The price differences email can now be scheduled to run weekly instead of daily, which may be more suitable for your customers / dealers. 
  The day this runs can now be set in Site Settings > Prices & VAT > Price List App
   
• Copy filter tags to a new product
  If you're setting up new products and want them to have a set of tags copied in from another product, you can now do so with this new feature.
  Available in Admin > Edit Product > Filter Tags > New "Copy tags from existing product" input & new buttons to copy in tags from entered product as well as clear all selected tags
   
• Order Manager screen layout improvement
  We've improved the display of the order payment & delivery info to make this clearer and display additional info such as payment IDs from 3rd part payment providers which can be used in reference to the payment. 

Enhancements

• User deletion auditing
  For improved auditing we now record the user name in the audit data so you can see who was deleted and when. 
  If you're using Quote Manager, you'll also see a new Unassigned tab appear which contains any quotes for users that have been deleted. 
   
• API Accounts & Webhooks now show status on table view.
  For developers this makes it easier to see which integrations are actively running on the site.  
   
• Packaging Types now sent through the API
  Making them available for 3rd party integrations as well as sync'd for Multi Store integrations. 
   
• Multi Store / API setting to treat status updates as more of a boolean indicator. 
  This sounds complex but actually is just a way to have any product status such as live, featured or special offer coming in from the API or multi store to then mark a product as live on the replica site instead of the original status. 
  For example, this can avoid setting a product to special offer on the replica site when no special pricing has yet been set, instead leaving it as a live status.
  Available in API Account > Edit > Extras > Boolean statuses 
   
• Major speed improvements to the Auto Parts export
  We've made several key optimisations to make this faster, with a new limit of 2500 products at a time. 
   

At the end of the year our trading arrangements will be different with the EU. 

Read what you need to do in full on our freshdesk article: Brexit Affect On Your REC+ Site & What To Do

We have added new features recently which will be useful:

1. Site Update Banner
   Display a banner message on every page with important news and, optionally, a link to a Brexit readiness page you can set up. Access in Admin > Site Update Banner
    
2. Commercial Invoices
   Help your orders clear customs without delay by adding 'country of origin' and 'commodity codes' to your order shipment document. Read more in the Brexit article under "Commercial Invoices For International Sales".
    
3. Product Price Updates
   There is a new improved product price export / import program that shows products and their options underneath each other plus group prices in columns to make it quicker to change prices or add new group prices. Go to Export > Product Prices (New / column mode) and to Import > Product Prices (New / Column) in step 2.
   
   Note: Not for autoparts sites. Does not support quantity break price changes.
    
4. Delivery Tax Zones
   You will need to remove EU countries from your 'tax zone'. To save time you can export the data in advance and make changes, then import it on 1st January 2021. Read about this in the Brexit article under 'VAT Regions'. 
   
   This is an existing feature.
   ​​​​​​​

Feature Spotlight

• Tradebox integration - stock updates
  We can now accept stock updates directly from Tradebox / Sage to keep stock on the site in sync with the accounts system.
  Available in Admin > Connect > Utilities > Tradebox
  Additional improvements made to the existing Tradebox integration including a new Tradebox Log area in admin and a way to run the updates faster. 
   
• Collecting Delivery VAT Numbers / Identification Numbers
  Some regions may require collection of a VAT number or ID number for delivery (e.g. a "CPF Number" in Brazil). 
  Using this new setting you can collect this info against each order from the buyer during checkout. 
  New Definitions for default text: VAT_NUMBER & VAT_NUMBER_INFO_LINE
  Available in Admin > Add/Edit Region -> "Require Customer VAT Number at Checkout?" & "Display VAT Number as:"
   
• Variations Export
  You can now quickly manage your product & variation codes, stock and costs via this new export.
  Admin > Exports > Product Variations as well as in Imports > Product Variations (step 2).

Ecommerce

• Report on out of stock products
  You can now easily track down stock to replenish with our new report, available in:
  Admin > Reports > Product Stock Report > new "Only show out of stock items" tickbox.
   
• Order Info Reports improved charts for comparison data
  We have improved graphs available here (a pie chart and bar chart) to show reported data and comparisons on the same graph. 
   
• Batch set discontinued & enquiry only
  You can now easily discontinue or mark products as enquiry only via batch product processor.
  Admin > Batch Products Processor > "Mark as Discontinued?" & "Mark as Enquiry Only?"
   
• Email users who haven't bought before
  Email Manager's filters for sending now let you select to send only when a user has signed up but not purchased, allowing you to send them introductory offers. Also useful if you import a new set of cleansed email data from a prospect list or other trusted source.
  Available in Email Manager > Write Email > 5. Who do you want to send to > User filters > New "Only send to users who haven't purchased before?" tickbox available, supports the preview csv download too
   
• Invoice Definition
  We now allow more control over the term "Invoice" on your site, you may choose to rename this to "Paid Order" or "Payment" or "Receipt" to avoid confusion or legal issues with the term "Invoice" (especially if you issue an invoice from your accounting system)
  Definitions -> ORDER_INVOICE (Defaults to Invoice)
   
• New email templates available for order_confirmation.html.twig & order_update.html.twig
  Available in Templates > html/email/templates/order
   
• Coupon Manager now shows the remaining value on each Gift Voucher (GV)
  In Coupon Manager > Gift Vouchers tab, you can now see a total value of all unredeemed GVs plus against each purchased GV line under the Value column the amount that is left to spend.  
  Reminder: you can see all purchases of a specific GV in Product Manager > select GV product > Orders 
   
• Deleting a category now auto deletes all sub categories and sub products of those sub categories 
  This makes the flow for deleting large nested categories of products easier to manage without risk of products still being live but not in visible categories. 
   
• Barclaycard IPN improvements
  We now auto mark orders as payment received if they come from Barclaycard before the IPN response comes in, this allows for faster order processing. 
  The order status will still change to order received once the IPN comes through, and if it doesn't you can check the order inside Barclaycard EPDQ to make sure everything has been paid correctly.  

Enhancements

• We've increased our image upload limit around the system from 256kb to 512kb, allowing you to upload higher quality images. 
  On the front end of your site the thumbnailer should take care of optimising the image size for performance. 
   
• Email Manager improved stats
  The Sent Emails tab in Email Manager now shows additional stats to help you quickly see which emails are performing best.  
  Admin > Email Manager > View Sent Emails > New stats inc % added.
   
• Prospect Manager batch update customer & next actions.
  You can now batch update Next Action Date and Reminder messages in Prospect Manager allowing for sales team to more quickly organise work for the next work session.
  Available in Quote/Prospect Manager > scroll to the foot of the table.
   
• Register page now only shows it's introduction text on the first step. 
  This cleans up the register process for users, making sure that intro text isn't shown again to them on each step of the registration process. 

Security & Maintenance

• Blocking Bad Actors
  Improvements have been made to our blocking of known bad bots crawling the sites and slowing down the site.
   
• New rate limits are now in force on the sites in key areas hit by bots
  This mostly affects product filter, no real customers should be affected by this and those that are will be shown a message explaining they made an unusually large number of requests in a short time. 
  This is another security measure we've added to help protect the speed and stability of the sites by limiting the impact bots can have on these key areas. 
   
• More sites migrating to Cloudflare. 
  Cloudflare offers improvements to the speed, performance and security of your site. It also helps us in the ongoing battle against new bots hitting the server and slowing down your site. 
  
  > Contact us to find out if your site could benefit from Cloudflare - it's free!
  There are no charges for us moving your site to Cloudflare, the improved speed and security are free and the site will continue to work exactly as it does currently.  
   
• Mini Sites are being retired. 
  Mini sites were a feature we offered as a solution to advertising your products on multiple domains and have them feed back to the central site. Google no longer gives much value to this type of advertising and we now offer a smarter alternative with Multi Store where you can have unique sites in different locations such as UK to US sites with your products kept in sync.

 

Send and receive website orders and stock updates for Sage 50 Accounts using our latest Tradebox integration.

We are now able to offer enhanced Tradebox integration so that you can send website sales orders into Sage 50 Accounts and receive stock updates back from Sage which keep your website product stock levels in sync.

This requires separate monthly subscriptions for Tradebox and integration support from us, plus an implementation charge to assist you in product preparation, setup and testing. 

Please contact us for pricing information on 0330 311 2810 and ask for Neil.

 

Feature Spotlight

• 3D Models & Augmented Reality.
  Render fantastic 3D models of your items directly on product pages and pages throughout your site.
  These models are also available on AR supported phones so users can view the item in front of them through their camera!  
  Available on products: Admin > Product Manager > Edit Product > Images & Video > 3D / AR Model Upload (may require template change).
  As well as in template files via content blocks: {{ rec_block('3d model 1', type="model") }}
  Charge applies to implement this change.
   
• ShippyPro
  ShippyPro offer a wide range of delivery services for live rates at checkout.
  New Delivery Adapter in Site Settings for ShippyPro.
  New ShippyPro area in Connect > Delivery for setting ShippyPro API Key & tickbox to send items as insured or not.
  Setup charge applies.
   
• Order Info Report improvements
  We've expanded our range of new reports available in Order Info Reports (currently in beta while we work on speed improvements).
  We have new ways to switch visualizations per row on the report from graph to table views plus iie chart improvements, year on year comparisons and better visulaisation.

Ecommerce

• Price list email task
  Let your customers (or a specific dealer group) know when your price list is updated.
  Email Tasks -> Add/Edit -> Event -> Update Price List
  Templates -> html/email/templates/price_list_changes.html.twig
  Set up charge applies.
   
• Per group hide delivery
  New define: CHECKOUT_REMOVED_DELIVERY_METHODS_TEXT
  If set, this shows in place of the delivery methods when they are turned off by the site setting or per group.
  Admin > Groups > Edit Group > new checkbox for "Remove delivery methods?"
   
• Alphabetical sort for product filter tags (inc. tag groups)
  Improvement for sorting alphabetically for product filter tags.
  Admin > Product Filter Tags > Reset Sort
   
• Discontinued products are now auto removed from the Google & Facebook product feeds.
  You no longer need to manually exclude these, this is now taken care of for you.
   
• Header search autocomplete improvements for searching on product codes.
  Faster requests for users searching as well as improvements in how we find products to pull through.
  We can also now offer custom designed autocompleted, complete with product images 
   
• We now check from any subdomain of facebook.com (e.g. shop.facebook.com) as a Facebook referral for orders.
  This improves our reporting for social visits.
   
• Currency Converter & Delivery Estimator Auto Height.
  The modal windows now dynamically adapt swithiching from the cart for a smoother experience. 
   
• Email task unsubscribing
  Automated emails sent through Email Tasks now have a facility to manually unsubscribe users who request not to receive automated emails plus a link can be added into the emails to allow the user to unsubscribe themselves.
  Admin Area: Email Tasks > Edit > Unsubscribe Users
  Template Tag: {{ task.unsubscribe_link }}
   
• Copying a product now results in a unique code
  When using batch product processor for copying products, since product codes should be unique, we now auto generate a new code based on the one it's copied from to avoid the possibility of duplicate codes.
   
• Shop page layout files
  New ability to create shop layout files such as html/layouts/shop/search_results.html.twig, html/layouts/shop/product_filter.html.twig, html/layouts/shop/product.html.twig etc.
   
• You can now multi select categories for delivery uplift.
  Add/edit delivery methods > Adding an uplift to a category now supports multiple categories
   
• Product filter improvements
  Manufacturers now supported in sidebar product filter app for pages set to already show them.
  Fixed settings placement for "Remove Blocks where No Items are Found" & "Use Infinite Scroll"
   
• You can now get a report of items in need of stock.
  Reports > Product Stock Report > new "Only show out of stock items" tickbox.

CMS & Design

• On user registration > you can now disable auto generating membership codes
  This is especially useful for Sage & other accounting integration, including where you may wish to add the ID from the accounting system into this field. 
  Site Settings > Ecommerce > Checkout > Auto-generate Membership Codes (defaults to enabled)
   
• Content block admin style improvements
  New improved design for repeatable content blocks to make it easier to work with lists of services
   
• You can now set custom subjects on form builder emails
  You can use template tags to pull form field data into the subject line
  Admin > Form builder > edit form > Email subject
  e.g. "{{ input_field_102 }} selected".
   
• SCSS Support Upgraded
  Latest SCSS support now available including modern CSS Grid grid-row syntax e.g. 1 / 2;

 

Ecommerce

• Facebook Products
  Facebook recently launched it's new shop feature for promoting products on pages & in Instagram. 
  Our existing Google Shopping feed integrates directly with this.
  Note: A subscription is required to use the feed and set up charges apply. Contact us for details.
• Klarna Checkout
  Klarna is a fast growing and popular way to spread payments and is now available to use.
  To set this up:

  Register with Klarna for Klarna Checkout. 
  Admin > Payment Processors, enable the new Klarna Checkout.
  Settings available in: Admin > Connect > Payment Processors > Klarna.

  Klarna also offers banners via their "On-site messaging" section, you'll find inside Klarna on the sidebar.
  Add the main script into REC > Admin > Connect > Custom Scripts.
  Then add the banner custom html element / placement code where you want it to display.
  Note: Contact us to set this up for a small charge.

• Return Slips
  Buyers can now print return slips when logged into their account and include this when making a return. 
  These list the items being returned and the reason.
  New html/invoice/return_slip.html.twig template file available.
  Read setup instructions on freshdesk
• Making Returns via Order Manager
  Admins can now follow the same returns process as buyers e.g. selecting a return reason. 
  Available against all orders in Order Manager > Order Info, new Return Requests sidebar block.
• Batch add download files to products
  Batch product processor now enables you to bulk add download files (e.g. tech spec) to entire categories of products at once. 
  Available in Batch Products Processor > Add Downloads (bottom of the edit panel)
• Batch add YouTube videos to products
  Also available in Batch Products Processor > YouTube Video URL 
• Enquiry Only and Upcoming products tabs added in Product Manager
  New tabs added to Product Manager to allow you to easily find Enquiry Only and Upcoming products.
• Price lists colour coded for new and discontinued products 
  Price lists are now available in Excel spreadsheet format to allow colour coding for new vs discontinued products.
  This is especially useful when selling via dealers and distributors who can quickly see these changes in your product catalogue.
  Available via the Price List main body app on pages.
• Email tasks can now be paused
  Allowing better control over the email tasks running on your site, such as abandoned cart emails or price list updates.
  Available in Email Tasks > Enable/Disable
• Coupon assignments can now be sorted via drag and drop.
  This helps you more easily organise the sequence of coupon for deals being offered on your sites, especially when using In-cart deals.
• Improved handling of order states for hiding items on invoices
  Previously items marked as on_hold would be hidden on invoices however we've changed this so that a new more specific "invoice_ignore" order state is needed to hide items from the invoice. 
• Purchase Orders can now show the status against each order line
  In the purchase order template, the {{ order.items }} items now contain a status property.
• Product variations now supported in all the major search areas
  This includes site search, product download search, product manager in admin and more.
• The product issues report can now show you duplicate product codes.
  This is especially useful for the new Multi Store system, see the Product Issues Report > Duplicate Product Codes.
• Enforce unique product codes on product entry.
  This is a new setting useful for ensuring each product has a unique code, especially useful for Multi Store where product code is used as a unique identifier.
  Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Sage > Enforce unique product codes. 

Multi Store

Recap: Learn all about Multi Store on freshdesk

• Compare Screens
  You can now compare products, categories, manufacturers and user groups between your multi store master and replica sites to identify any data inaccuracies.
  Available in Admin > Multi Store > Compare
• Product codes can now be updated through Multi Store.
  Previously, as product codes are used as the unique key between the sites, you couldn't update the code without spawning a new product on the replica site. This has been resolved so you can update every field on products including the code. 
• Products now sync as excluding VAT
  This enables Multi Store sites to work better for world wide stores such as versions of sites outside of your tax jurisdiction.
• Multi Store now sync's deleted products
  This ensures everything is 100% in sync between master and replica stores.

Reports & Timeline

• Order Information Report
  A fantastic new set of reporting to analyse a range of order metrics including Return Reasons, Order Statuses, Payment & Delivery methods, UK vs International, Retail vs Trade and more. 
  Now available in Admin > Reports > Order Information Report [beta] (also available via link in Marketing Console)
• Timeline & Projects
  Track key website, marketing & business changes using the new Timeline program. 
  This is an invaulable reminder of actions that have been taken for when you are analysing cause-and-effect. 
  Available in Admin > Timeline
• Form Scores report now shows totals/summaries
  You can modify the maximum for each score in: Site Settings > Leads & Alerts > Form Scores
  Average scores are also now shown in the Form Scores Report.

GDPR

• Find all cases of user details used around your site.
  Useful to speed up any subject access requests you might receive. 
  Admin > GDPR User Search
• User Manager filter for "Active Users"
  Active users have login access to customer areas of the site i.e. an approved status, current passwords (not expired due to being too old), approved and not suspended. 
  Available in Admin > User Manager > Filter users > new "Only Active Accounts" checkbox

API

• API Webhooks can now be sent with Auth Bearer tokens
  This serves as an alternative authentication method to the existing HTTP Basic Auth provided, with the new bearer tokens working better in JWT based authentication flows. 
  Api Webhooks > Add/Edit > "HTTP Bearer Authorization (e.g. for JWT)"
• Orders API resource now exposes VAT Percentage per line.
  This aids our new integration with Sage, contact us to find out more about this. 
• API responses now contain additional debug information
  Especially useful for Multi Store where we can now see full logs of every product as it's sent between sites.
• New API endpoint for stock updates
  /stock, available to send both product & variation codes to with the new stock qty in large numbers.  
• Webhooks can now choose between receiving products directly, or variations of products if the store has these set up.
  API Webhooks > Add/Edit > Products & Variations > "Prefer Variations?"
• Batch lookup requests limited to 1,000 at a time.
  This impacts products & order lookups e.g. requesting more than 1,000 results will be capped at 1,000

Designer

• We now expose alternative & associated products into the product template in an array form
  This allows new features such as dropdown selection of alternative products, similar to how variations work on sites such as Amazon.
  Available in the product_info.html.twig template, new array variables available for product.more.alternatives_array and product.more.associations_array
• Search auto complete improvements
  We now allow custom auto complete extensions for the header, here's a live example of this: https://www.trigienedental.co.uk/
• Price break details can now be pulled into the per product views e.g. on category or search pages
  Enable in Admin > Template Data Preloads > Price breaks, new tags available to access these: {{ product.prices_table }} and {{ product.prices_array }}

Behind the scenes

• PHP 7.4 Upgrade
  As ever we're always working to upgrade our technology stack for performance and staying with supported versions. 
• Better issue flagging for orders
  If we detect anything unusual about the order, we're now flagging it better in Order Manager.
• Further improvements to blocking of Bad Bots crawling the sites and slowing things down.
  We're also reaching out to sites to offer Cloudflare's free plan to speed up sites & further help block bad bots hitting the server. 
  Being on Cloudflare will become a requirement for large sites in 2021.

Continuing our work on the recently added "Multi Store" system, we now support more workflows, including new 'product variations', which can be used in conjunction with Sage & other accounting integrations.

Here's a rundown of the prominent features rolled out over the last few weeks:

CMS

• File Manager Upgrade
  This brings a few minor fixes as well as to a more recent issue where non "optimised for web" images would not upload correctly. 
• Support articles dotted around admin.
  Following the recent addition of the help icon to the top right of the navbar in admin, we've added links to Freshdesk help articles in key programs to make them easier to access. 
  For additional support, click the help icon and you can both search existing solution articles as well as contact us for assistance. 

Ecommerce

• Product Variations
  You can now set up combinations of options with their own product codes stock & costs.
  For example, if you already have product options for colours and sizes you could set up variations for each individual combination to record code/stock/cost e.g. red size 10, red size 12 etc
  This is also useful for integrations with accounting systems when each product combination has its own unique code. In addition, a previous code can be held in the Past Codes field for mapping against previous codes in an accounting system for continuity of reporting.
  Enable this in Site Settings > Ecommerce > Variations & Sage > Enable Product Variations
  Then set variations up in Edit Product > Options > Product Variations: 
  (Note price & weight are calculated from each product option that forms the combination)
  
• Manual Order > Quick add products
  It's now faster to add manual / phone orders in Admin using our recently added quickshop functionality which is now built directly into the manual orders screen. 
  Available in: Manually Add Order > Products section
  Also available on each order's information screen under the existing items > Quick Add Products
• Product download search
  Products often have instructions, sepcifications, warranties etc available as downloads and on large orders it can take time for a buyer to find them all  on each product page. To help speed this up, our new Product Download Search is a page app you can add to a central download page, allowing visitors to go to one place to enter a product code and find the downloads for the product.
  You can also copy a link to a result pages to forward to a customer. 
  Page Manager > Add a new doownload search page > Main Body Apps > Product Download Search
  Also consider using the Email Tasks new.order event to email the instructions directly after a product has been purchased.
• Sage field requirements
  If your site is integrating with the Sage 3rd party accounts package, you can set limits to match what Sage allows, such as  the product code limit being 30 characters. Contact us to find out more about accounts integration. 
  Site Settings > Ecommerce > Variations & Sage > Enable "Sage field requirements"

• Enforcing Unique Product Code Entry On Product Records
  When entering products you can now force unique product codes to be entered that are not in use on other product records.
  This must be set when using Multi Store and Sage integration which both require unique product codes on all product records.
  Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Sage > Enforce unique product codes

• Delayed product events
  The Delayed Product Events system delays triggering the new.product event until you click that it's ready to send over. 
  This is useful when integrating with integrated systems like Sage or Multi Store, so you can work on setting up your product, options and variations and then send it when the product is fully set up.
  Site Settings > Ecommerce > Variations & Sage > Delay sending product events in the system until a "Save & Send Events" button is clicked, allowing you to finish products before sending them to 3rd party systems and Multi Store.
• PayPal Express Card Icons Switch
  Further customise the PayPal express button by turning on/off the card icons they show.
  Connect > Payment Processors > Show Payment Icons on In-Context Checkout button
• Additional audit tracking
  This increases the visibility for events such as when a user goes to payment processor & when they view the thanks page
• Gmail new order email schema
  When you buy through Amazon or similar large sites, Gmail adds additional email context to the email to help customers. We now provide the information needed for this to work for the emails we send.
  
  You will first need to register with Google to use this, read more here: https://moz.com/blog/markup-for-emails

Multi Store & Product Issues Report

• Exclusions - These allow restricting access to different fields for API Accounts / Multi store sites.
  Admin > API Accounts > Edit Account > Extras (Exclude fields, etc.) > fields to setup excluded fields on create/update of the products resource.
• Replica Diffs - Keep track of differences made on the replica sites as well as options to undo these changes or prevent undoing these changes with changes form the master site.
  Connect > Utils > Track Replica product changes
  Edit product (on replica) > New "Differences" table
• Force Push - Easily resync your different stores with a single forced push. This is especially useful when initially setting up the sites, or after imports. 
  Multi Store > "Force Push" against each replica site. Note that images and other files will need to be FTP'd across manually due to volume/speed.
• Product Issues Report - Unique product codes are required for Multi Store to replicate data correctly.  This could also be run for other stores where codes need to have been entered and should be unique.
  Go to  Reports > Product Issues report > tick 'duplicate codes'  and then edit the products that need attention. 
  
  Read full Multi Store setup notes on Freshdesk

Designer

• New "time_diff" twig filter - for better future and past date support in your templates
  e.g. Product launches in {{ "2020-04-19" | time_diff }}!!
  Will return:  Product launches in 5 days!!

API

• Order timestamp since filter - allows filtering of orders that have come in since a tracked timestamp.
  e.g. ?since_timestamp=1591970309 or ?since_timestamp=2020-06-11T07:45:02 (both accepted)
• The "update.order" event now triggers for line changes
  Allowing integrations to check for delivery cost updates and more.

If you have any questions about the new features or want to reach out about using one such as Multi Store or an accounting integration please contact us through the support desk, thanks.

We've been focusing on building the groundwork for some major new features around personalisation, which will continue to grow, and multi store management, as well as a range of other useful enhancements. 

CMS

• Personalisation rules
  Personalisation rules let you determine how content is displayed on your site for different user groups. For example, setting parts of your homepage content to display different messaging for different types of customers. This is achieved by detecting the user, identifying which group they are in and switching content blocks to show one created for their user group.
  Setup the rules in Admin > Personalisation Rules
  In Page manager or directly on a content block you will have a new dropdown to select the rule and set the content to display for each rule. 
  This can also be used inside templates for example: { % if rec_rule('VIP group only') % } Welcome VIP! { % else % } You're not VIP { % endif % }
  Contact us to subscribe for personalisation.
• New Ckeditor templates for columns.
  This improves on the default column template by introducing gaps between columns for easier styling.
• Form scores report
  Visually see how form scores change over time. 
  For example monitoring a 1-7 CES rating on your thanks page form to measure the ease-of-use of your website. 
  You can then check how this is affected when making any major site changes ( respondants can leave other useful feedback in the comments section as well). 
  Available in Admin & Reports > Reports > Form Scores

Ecommerce

• Multi Store - Create multiple REC+ stores to sell your products (beta release)
  The new Multi Store feature creates new opportunities to sell your products and save you time by replicating products from your master store to other REC+ stores you operate. For example:
  - Create a US or Australian version of your store with localised branding and pricing;
  - Manufacturer? Sell direct to consumers on a separate store with different branding;
  - Target specific audience segments with particular categories (which can be renamed) and different branding.
  Check out our short video demo
  Contact us to discuss your requirements and for pricing.
• Upcoming products now have release dates and email alerts
  Schedule your product launches by setting the product status to upcoming and entering the launch date and time.
  You can also set the product status at launch to be live, featured or special offer. 
  Customers visiting the product page can subscribe to be emailed on the date it is launched. 
• High value abandoned cart notifications for admins
  Receive an email alert when there is a high value cart that has been abandoned so you can contact the buyer to try to close the sale. 
  To enable this go to: Site Settings > Ecommerce > Abandoned Carts > "Alert Admins when Abandoned Cart Value is over" [enter value]
• Display store prices inc/ex vat with the new price switcher
  Users can select if they want to see prices inclusive or exclusive of tax on your site.
  Contact us to amend your templates to add this feature for a small charge.
• Discontinued products
  Mark products as discontinued via Edit Product > Main Details > Discontinued.
  This can be displayed to customers viewing the product via a template tag change. 
• Price lists can now export with product tag hierarchy
  Display product tag hierarchies in your price list export for greater clarity e.g. Tag1 > Tag2 > Tag3 > Category > Product Name > Price. 
  An example would be using product tagging for automotive parts and then displaying your price list as Make > Model > Submodel > Category > Product Name > Price.
  Enable this in Site Settings > Prices & VAT > Show Product Filter Tags on Price List CSV
• Price Lists now export as CSV for ease of use by customers rather than the previous TSV/TXT format.
• Quickshop now allows product CSV uploads
  Customers can now upload a CSV of the product codes and quantities they want to make the buying process even quicker, especially for B2B customers.
  There's more information on how users can do this via the info buble on the quick shop app.
  Quickshop is part of the Premium Ecommerce subscription.
• "Verified Purchase" marker on reviews.
  Your product reviews will now show a marker verifying that a purchase was made before leaving the review. This helps increase confidence for future customers reading reviews left on REC+.
• Order line comments now available
  Admins can now also leave comments against each order line, whereas previously comments were only held at order levels. There is a new notes icon to the right of each order line allowing you to see a count of current notes as well as a quick way to read and add to these notes. For example, this could be used to record custom changes against a product. The comment field is also available when manually adding an order line to an order.
• Store locator now shows up to 25 stores at a time
  Up to 25 stores can now be displayed on the map which is an increase from 10 previously. Additionally,  the pop-up for each store can show their own individual website address if they have been entered at the store level.
• Price manager confirmation before running price changes
  Price manager will now confirm the changes you have entered before it runs for you to double check your price changes are correct before proceeding. There is also better logging of price changes so we can debug potential issues more precisely.
• Delivery method preview
  Delivery Manager has had a design refresh including a new way to preview your delivery methods before making them live.
  In Admin > Delivery Manager > Add or Edit a delivery method > Mode selection. 
  Defaults to 'live' but can now be set to 'test' for admin users only allowing you to view / test it.

Email

• Improved support for older email clients such as Outlook
  A common issue when creating emails occurs when adding images that are larger in size than the area they occupy in your email design. When these are sent, most modern email clients such as Gmail will adapt and display these perfectly well, however older clients such as Outlook may show the image at it's full size therefore breaking the design.  
  To prevent this we now automatically detect the real and visual sizes of your images when you add them, alert you and automatically adjust their size downwards so that they display properly on Outlook.
• Scheduled email notification 
  In EMail Manager when you send a scheduled email for the coming days it will now ask you to confirm the date and time. Note that Mailgun only allows scheduling up to a few days in advance.

Site Admin & Services

• Admin message bar
  Alert your own site admins with important news / updates.
  You can now set a banner to show at the top of your internal admin area in Admin > Site Settings > Display > Admin Message Bar.
  For front end messages for website visitors use the free new app  Our Site Updates.
• Our Site Updates NEW APP  
  This free new app allows you to quickly publish important information via a banner that appears on the top of every page of your website.
  This was initially to allow you to display COVID-19 related notices, though we're also exploring it's uses for showing deals and other messages around your site quickly and easily. Extra features will be added soon such as date range support which would be useful for promotions such as Black Friday or Daily Deals. Sign up directly at Our Site Updates.

Designer

• Script Manager
  Script Manager is a simpler way to add custom 3rd party scripts to your site, such as tracking codes or our new banner app.
  Go to: Admin > Connect > Custom Scripts and add your script. Give it a memorable name to remember its purpose and provider, paste in the script and it'll be live right away on your site. You can also temporarily disable the script at any time or edit/remove it later.
• Twig v3 Upgrade
  We're now on the latest v3 release of the Twig template language. 
  Find out more about the tags, filters and functions now available to you in the latest release of Twig. These are on top of the functions we already have available for you. 
• Module imports and exports are now CSV rather than TSV/TXT files to make them easier to work with.

API

• The API Accounts & Webhooks (previously called push urls) have had a major refresh. 
  These areas have been improved with much more advanced logging, editing and manipulation options available.
• Products API resource updated
  This now contains every possible field on products and sub product resources such as options. 
  The multi store release introduces fully automated testing to make sure the data is fully synchronised.
• Users can now be filtered by status in the API request.
  By default the API does not show deleted users in the recycle bin, but you can now pass status=deleted to reveal deleted users or even status=* to see all users including those set as deleted.
• Speed and stability improvements
  In addition to the changes above, we have also updated to the API to make it faster and further increase stability.

As always we hope you're continuing to stay safe during these difficult times.