Spotlight

Using Modules With Page Slices
Our modules system, for use when adding data records in a structured way, is now even more flexible. You can bring in module items directly to pages built with page slices. This gives you the best of both worlds, allowing you to build pages with the flexibility of page slices while keeping your content structured for easy reuse, mass management, importing, and uniformity. 
PR 2984

Expert Answers Sales Report
Our Expert Answers system has a new report available that helps you identify sales resulting from answered questions, thereby gaining insight into the impact answering questions has on your revenue generation to help motivate sales and support teams. 
To access the Expert Answers Sales Report, go to Admin > Reports > Expert Answers Sales Report.
PR 2943

CMS & Design

We've added a quick link to Content Search from Page manager.
Content Search, our useful admin program for finding content on your site, can now be accessed right from the page manager screen where you'd find most site pages set up.  
PR 2945

Timeline reminders
In the admin area, we have a website timeline available for you to track when key changes on the website and it's marketing have been made. 
Now when saving Site Settings, the Connect area or making a new template live, we prompt to ask if this is something worth adding to the timeline to help encourage the use of this. The info is then useful when tracking changes in visitors & conversions on your site to see what made the improvements. 
PR 2971

Ecommerce & Reporting

Product filter tags cleanup.
While managing large volumes of tags against all your products, over time there will inevitably be old tags no longer in use. This new report helps you track these down and keep the tag list on your site clean, as this is used by customers when filtering products. 
Available in Admin > Product Filter Tags > Report: Tags not in use
PR 2981

Users Making Purchases report includes additional fields. 
This is a useful report showing each customer and their sales as well as other key data about them. the new fields include their business names, VIP club & level if you use this on the site, their saved vehicle (again if in use), smart type including if they are a Retail, Trade or Dealer account, as well as if they have been granted access to the Dealer/Shopify exports. 
PR 2969

Shopify export for Dealers now offers additional non standard Shopify fields. 
These currently include the packaging sizes but we'll expand on this in the future. This is primarily for use with other platforms and is not supported by Shopify.
PR 2987

The categories export now also contains a "shopify_category" column.
This allows you to set the related category for the Shopify export for it's sub products. 
PR 2987

Price List > Exclude specific categories
If you're using some categories only for promotional purposes, you may want to exclude that category from Price Lists shown on the site and their export. 
Available via Add/Edit Category > Exclude this category (and all sub-categories) from the Price List App.
PR 2961

Price List > Indicate discontinued products on the front end
The Excel version of the export already marked discontinued products in red but this now extends to the front end of the website.
PR 2956

User Manager > Revenue Range setting
To the bottom right of the user manager screen you'll now find a new drop-down for "Show Revenue over the last:" where you can select the range you want to use for the revenue totals shown against each user in the above users table.
PR 2952

User Manager > VIP override filter
If you're using the VIP club, from time to time you may want to set several specific customers to be in specific levels. Using this new filter in User Manager you can find all the customers with these custom levels set.
PR 2951

Purchase Order Coupons
The purchase_order.html.twig can now also show coupons/discounts applied to orders for dispatch teams that need to take actions when these are on the order .
PR 2957

Purchase Order VIP Club Tags
Your Purchase Orders can be customised based on the VIP club and level the customer is part of via the purchase_order.html.twig file.
PR 2950

Picking lists can now show more details about orders with new template tags.
New template tags inside each order object in the picking_list.html.twig file for user details, order dates and item prices.
PR 2963

Integrations

Alto properties feed
For Estate Agent sites, we have a new integration to bring in your properties to display as items on the website directly from the Alto feed using their Zoopla format. 
Contact us to find out more about this.
PR 2964

Further security improvements on the platform and servers to keep everything secure and up to date.
PR 2967 PR 2977
 

Spotlight

Redesigned Page Slices Interface
We have updated the page slices interface to make it more straightforward and intuitive. The new design includes new features that allow you to name different blocks/slices on the page for quicker reference and collapsible sections for easier drag and drop positioning.

Twitter API Version 2 Update
To keep pace with Twitter's latest updates, we have upgraded to the new API version. In order to keep posting your new products and posts to Twitter, you may need to reconnect with Twitter via the Admin > Connect screen. 

Ecommerce & Reporting

Top products report conversion rates are now 2 decimal.
This allows you to view this metric at a more granular level.

The Partial Shipment option can now be restricted by smart type.
There's an existing site setting that can be enabled which allows customers to select if they are happy for their order to be sent in partial shipments or wait for the entire shipment at once. This new setting allows you to restrict this to a specific smart type, e.g. only your dealers.
PR 2912

Product Launch alerts are now fired at point of change rather than on an hourly schedule.
Customers subscribed to product launch alerts will now receive these whenever the status changes, especially useful when it is changed by an import rather.
PR 2850

Vehicle search > further customisation for text
We've added customisable definitions so you can modify all the content shown to users around the Vehicle search, find these over in Admin > Site Definitions. 
PR 2937

VIP Club

VIP Club Rewards & Requirements can now be dragged into the order you'd like them to display on the front end to users in their VIP club page.
VIP Clubs > Levels > Add/Edit > Rewards & Requirements
PR 2924

VIP Club requirements for reviews can be marked as optional.
There's often a delay between an order being placed and it then being dispatched, received and used, meaning there can be a longer time to collect reviews. To cater for this we have made reviews an optional requirement so that customers can still move between bands without reviews. Set this in VIP Clubs > Levels > Add/Edit > Product Reviews Requirement > Do not make this a compulsory requirement to achieve this level
PR 2918

Integrations

ShippyPro Click & Collect
When using our ShippyPro delivery adapter, you can now offer an alternative click & collect delivery option at checkout. 
Connect > Delivery > ShippyPro
PR 2908

Discontinued products now indicated in Shopify export.
The 'Published' field will now be set to False when the item is discontinued, also Status will be set to archived instead of active. 
Contact us to find out more about our export options for Distributors.
PR 2903

Server security
We wish to highlight that several new server security improvements have been implemented to keep your websites up to date and secure. 
PR 2906

Unleashed weights support against products can now be disabled.
Sometimes you may want to use "each" as your measurement rather than an exact weight.
This lets you switch all products away from using weight measures when sending them to Unleashed.
PR 2923

 

Spotlight

OpenAI Generated Content
Say goodbye to writer's block and hello to AI-powered content creation. With our OpenAI helper, you can now effortlessly generate content ideas and improve your existing copy. Use it to write blog posts, product descriptions, and more. Plus, we've added a feature that enables the creation of engaging email campaign subjects. You have control over the tone and style of your content by setting a constant prefix.
Available in REC Advanced Edition. Contact us for pricing. 

OpenAI Reports
New AI-powered reports are now available that analyse your customers' form replies and questions to help you understand their overall perspective. This simple but powerful feature lets you grasp your customers' views on your site quickly and efficiently. 

Google Cloud Translate Integration
With our new Google Translate integration in CKEditor, you can now easily translate your content directly from the page editor. This means that you can offer your products and services to an international audience without having to master multiple languages. 
There is also added support for translating questions submitted by non-English speaking customers, along with the ability to translate responses directly within the admin area. 
Available in REC Advanced Edition. Contact us for pricing.

And yes, we used AI to help us generate the above descriptions!

CMS & Design

Expert answers > spam detection improvements & the reason we marked them as spam are now recorded.
There are several improvements to our spam detection for the question/answer system including recording the reason we marked something as spam against the question itself.

Personal email template
There is a new email template available which can help you send emails that look more personal and hand written but can be sent en masse. 
This feature also brings in better support for preview emails and the From name/email selection has autocomplete to pick any admins set up on the site. 
Available via Admin > Email Manager > new "Personal Email" layout.

User manager > Add User lets you select from existing business names in the business name field.
This helps when adding new users who are from an existing business already registered on the site and ensures spelling of business names is consistent.

Page slice width & alignment settings now available
These allow you additional customisation options when building slices in page manager.
Found in slice settings > Width & Alignment against all slices. 

Image carousel slice speed setting
You can now set the speed at which carousels rotate.

Page slice gradients
The new background gradients section on the slice style popup allows you to make your backgrounds more interesting. This also brings the ability to set alpha transparency for all background colours, the 2 combined allow you to add semi transparent colour tints over background images.

Admin Content Search
Introducing a useful new program to search the site to find specific words or phrases quickly including pages, product descriptions, blog posts and more.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Trade/Distributor Sales Targets
Do your trade customers have targets they need to meet each month or over a year? Track they are meeting these targets with this new feature. Targets can be set and viewed per customer and reported en masse via the new report in Admin > Reports > Sales Targets. 
This can also be displayed on a revamped distributor hub using the template system.
Contact us for pricing. 

Edit Product > Lifecycle Graph
The orders tab on the Edit product screen has had a refresh and offers a whole new product life-cycle report, which is well worth a review on your top products. 

Top products report now shows products that have not been purchased.
Using the qty sold sort in reverse order you can now see products that have not been bought at all between a date range. 

Forms tab on the Edit Product screen
This new tab reveals enquiries made about the product. Also if the product is set to upcoming with a launch date, this tab will list the subscribers signed up to be alerted when it goes live. 

Spotlight

Order Tracker App
Allow your customers track their orders with our new Order Tracker app. 
It provides a full timeline of their order from when it's placed to when each item is dispatched along with the relevant shipping codes (if supplied in admin).
This can be shown as an app on any page via: Edit Page > Main Body Apps > Track Orders
As well it can be linked to via order emails such as order confirmation and status update emails so the user can always find where their order is at easier.
Contact us for pricing. 

Product Lifecycle & Forecast Report
Our new report available in Admin > Reports Product Lifecycle & Forecast, offers you a snapshot of how products are added, how often they are purchased and if you track stock on the site we can even predict when an item is likely to run out of stock. 
Contact us for pricing.

Vehicle Search (for automotive parts sellers)
A new feature which shows a floating vehicle finder for users to quickly find related parts and items for their car (works when using product tagging to identify vehicles). 
The vehicle selection saves against user records allowing for extra email targeting in Email Manager. Vehicle can be selected when running the Users Making Purchases report (UMP). 
Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Vehicle Search.
Saved vehicles show against users & on their orders.
When enabled, product filter shows a way to save if a tag used in search, and to display your current or previous saved tag. Searching will also auto save the vehicle as well.
When floating search is enabled, it should display on all pages to the bottom left (except process pages: login, checkout & register).
Using "?vehicleSearch=open" url param will auto open & focus the search.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Previous orders summary display mode and tidy up
The previous orders screen has been improved to make it easier to navigate and we have a new display mode that switches from showing each item to a single table of orders complete with tracking codes. Dealer groups are automatically shown this version by default as it's easier to track large numbers of orders at once. 

Collapsible Price List
Price lists on the site can now be collapsed by category making it easier for users to drill through and find the specific pricing data they need. 
However users can also hold Ctrl and click to open all sub categories of a top level one at once, and press ctrl+f to find on page.

Automatic cleanup of group prices on delete of groups
When deleting a user group, all related group prices will be removed with it.

Product feed > additional images
For Google & Facebook product feeds we now support sending up to the first 10 product images instead of just the default, giving these platforms more image choices and helping users choose your products over others.

RRP display on products for Dealers
Dealers can now see the retail price a product sells at next to their dealer specific price. This is enabled in the template, contact us for a quote to change this. 

Upcoming Products report
This new report lets you see how many people are waiting for new products awaiting launch.
Admin > Reports > Upcoming Products Report

The "People who bought this bought that" listing on products now filters to just retail customers
This overcomes distorting the products being displayed due to dealer sales.

Stripe 2020 API auto select
For new sites using Stripe, we now automatically set Stripe to use the correct API versions behind the scenes.

Now check out last month's enhancements to be fully up to date
 

This bulletin applies to REC+ users who use Google Analytics to track their website metrics. If you do not use Google Analytics then you do not need to take any action.

On July 1, 2023, Google's standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits and you will be moved to Google Analytics 4, their next-generation measurement solution to record your website metrics. We have put together an in-depth article to guide you through making the changes or asking us to make the changes.

If you use Google Analytics for tracking visits, ecommerce conversions, form / download events or are running Ads then you will need to take immediate action to set up GA4 in the next 2 weeks.

Read about migrating to GA4

 

A new year brings new REC+ features, here's our spotlight for this month:

Spotlight

Customer & Distributor hubs
This is a major update to the customer account area where logged-in users manage their details, quick re-order etc.
This area is now fully templatable so that you can add links to extra services you offer or workflow processes. You can also have separate templates for different user groups, for example a general retail customer hub, another for distributors with different services available as you can see in the example below. 

 

Available to enable via Admin > Customise user area > Show Customer Hub as Dashboard? and edit the template: html/customer_home/customer_hub.html.twig
For design assistance please contact your sales account manager. 

Google Analytics 4
The latest version of Google Analytics is now supported in REC+ and it is important you take action if you use this for your website reporting.
Read more in this article

Page Slices
A whole new raft of features have been added to Page Slices to make content more dynamic on the page to increase interest and engagement. Read about these below.

CMS & Design

Page slice entrance effects
You can now set animation effects on slices which activate when the user scrolls the slice into view, such as fade or slide, to make your web page gain more attention.

Page slice hover effects
Also found in Animations is a new Hover selection, allowing you to zoom in or out of an image, change it's colour, lighten, darken or give it a slight tilt when loading.

Slice button alignment & opening in a new tab
You can now set the alignment of button slices, as well as optionally have them open their link in a new tab.

Slice single column containers
Similar to multi column layouts, you can now add a single column container to group together multiple sub slices when you want them all to have the same outer padding or background image spanning between them.

New slice background size properties
Increase backgrounds up to 125%, 150% and 200% on slices to zoom in on smaller images or images where their aspect ratios don't match how you want them displayed on the site.

Horizontal line slices
These can now have a custom colour set.

Button slices
Styles now come with simple hover effects

Image content block alignment in slices
New Advanced Options > Image Align setting allowing to change the alignment of images inside their slices

Page slice editor > fixed name, slug & update button area 
To make editing large pages easier, the save button and name/slug fix to the top of the screen. 

Customize User Area Rework
Settings in this area are now better organised to help you set which content is shown to logged in users on their home screen.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Product Reporting Types now renamed to Product Groups
Naming change only. Use Product Groups for extra classifications of your products rather than categories. Used in admin and for reporting.

Page product filters for tags & product groups
Via Page Manager store settings and Slices select which products are shown based on product tags and product groups. 
https://github.com/WildfireInternet/rec/pull/2725

New product sorting options available when listing via page manager
On add/edit page there are new product sort options for "Price (High to Low)", "Price (Low to High)", "Name (A-Z)" allowing more customisation for showing products on pages.

Dashboard products show drafts & product manager status summaries
This improvement helps you see how your products are split across different statuses on the site.

New import available for delivery addresses
This allows for easier imports when migrating sites.

Expert Answers > send answers from the admin user by default instead of the company. 
Send answers from the signed-in admin which then allows replies to go direct to them for an easier followup flow.

Expert Answers > product display/link improvements
The product columns are split out to make it easier to see which product a question is for with a link back to the edit screen to let you lookup product details faster when answering questions.

Expert Answers > full text editor available for answers
You can now send full rich formatted replies to questions asked on your site using ckeditor e.g. links and screenshot/images to help with the answer. 

Preview Expert Answers email
Designers can now preview the Expert Answers email while designing it. 

Expert Answers additional product details available in the template
Designers can now render the product and basic details about it into the answer reply emails to help smarten these up.

Download Search Partial Codes
The download search now allows users to find instructions on products more easily using partial matches. This is good when they don't know the whole code or a variation of a code is no longer sold. The search result indicates it's only a partial match so they can decide for themselves if it's correct for them. 

Prospect Manager

User Account Managers
Assign account managers to customers and enter summary notes per customer.
Site Settings > General > Enable User Account Managers

Integrations

CKEditor browser spell check
The WYSIWYG editor we use for pages etc. has it's own spell check you can enable but it doesn't show by default. 
We now enable the browser's built in spell checker so that you can see the spelling issues live as you type. Then to fix you can either enable the editors spell check, or hold ctrl while right clicking the error to see suggested fixes.

Shopify export now supports "cost per item"
This new column indicates to your dealers the price they pay in additional to the existing RRP price column. 

Unleashed > smarter error log messages
We've improved the error logs to help indicate the best resolution for an issue.
 

CMS & Design

Categories Page Slices
We've added 2 new Page Slices for adding categories to pages easier:
"Categories - System" - List all categories on the site, or ones from a sub category. 
"Categories - Curated" - Select each category manually and drag and drop the sort order they are displayed in. 

Embed responsive iframes in Page Slices
When using page slices to embed 3rd party code into your site, if they utilise iframes for embeding the content (as many do), you can now tick to automatically make the iframe responsive for better display on mobile and tablets.

Further enhancements for Page Slices will be coming out soon.
 

Prospect Manager

Bulk delete quotes
You can now delete quotes entered in mistake or as duplicates of others. 
This can be done via Admin > Prospect Manager > tick the quotes you want to remove and at the bottom of the screen click the "Delete Selected Records" button.
Contact us to find out more about our Prospect/Quote management tool. 
 

Ecommerce & Reporting

VIP club dropout emails
To help make sure users don't suddenly drop out of the VIP club without warning, we've added 3 new email notifications you can send via Email Tasks:
1 month, 2 weeks, 1 days 
Create persuasive messaging within these emails in the /html/email/templates/vip_club_warnings.html.twig template 

Cart indicators for items excluded from in cart deals. 
"Excluded from offer" will appear next to cart items when a deal message shows and the item isn't part of it. This currently supports category exclusions but we plan to expand this to other coupon settings as well. 

New Product Issue report for products with encoding issues
When importing data we require the files in UTF-8 encoding and our exports are in this format as well. 
However, if you convert from UTF-8 to another encoding, and then back again, it may cause encoding issues in your data. This new check highlights any issues on a list of products. 

After product imports we now run Product Issue checks
Important product data quality checks are now run directly after an import with an option for you to easily view them. You'll see these after your next product data import on the site. 

Improved VAT reporting when changing settings
We now record VAT settings against orders so that if they are updated in the future then we have a record of the settings at the time. 
 

Integrations

PDF product catalogue
Our auto generated PDF catalogue listings of your products now gives even better control over the category chapters of the PDF. 
We show the existing category description that displays on the website, but there is a new field on the edit category screen which allows you to enter different category text to appear in the PDF. 
Additionally, there is another field to show content directly after the categories products, better allowing use of the available space of that page for adverts or information 

Distributor product data exports
We can now enable a feature on your site to send a common format export file (in this case we used the Shopify export format) to allow distributors to import your products easier (especially if they use Shopify, however the file's columns with a few changes should in theory work well with many other systems).
Contact us to find out more about this paid feature for Premium licence manufacturers only. 

Following on from the above feature, we also now have a way for Distributors to request access to the file.
This allows you to control who can have access and monitor if they are frequently downloading the file to keep their stores up to date. 
Once this feature is purchased, you can then enable it in Admin > Customize User Area > Enable Shopify Export Area?
Customer home > Shopify export (only shows if smart type not equal to 1/retail and it's enabled).
Admin > Dealer Export Access Manager
Admin > Email tasks > new event available for Dealer Export Access Approved
Admin > Email Notifications > new notification for Dealer Export request
New defines for DEALER_EXPORT_ACCESS_AREA & DEALER_EXPORT_ACCESS_AREA_INFO for customer area.
 

Spotlight

'Early Bird' access and 'Exclusive products'
For selected customers, allow the purchase of specified products on an 'early bird' basis (allowing the purchase of upcoming products before the offficial launch date), or on an exclusive basis for products set as 'Enquire Only' (selected customers can purchase whereas everyone else can only send an enquiry).
Both new features are enabled on each product record and each customer that has access either manually or used in VIP Clubs as rewards within specified levels where the customer assignment is then handled automatically.
Read more about this and also the VIP Club feature.

Order exports for delivery companies
Delivery companies are working towards increased automation and some now ask for uploads of order items. The first file format is available for DHL.
In Order Manager you go into the order items section and in the export section select one of the available courier formats . You can then upload it to the courier company.
Additional formats will be quoted for other delivery companies upon request.
Contact us to enable this for you on your site and to find out about our other delivery integrations. Charges apply.

Set Special Offer pricing more easily using the Product prices columns export/import
The Product prices columns import/export now also handles changes to product statuses and special offer dates ranges.
This means you can change prices and put products on offer in the same import/export file without needing to use Batch Products Processor.
This also provides a good alternative to using Price Manager.

CMS & Design

Personalise site content using VIP club rules 
You can now personalise sliders and content displayed to visitors based on their VIP club and level via the Personalisation system and in templates. 
Admin > Personalisation Rules > Add/Edit Personalisation Rule > Smart Type, VIP Club & Level
New template tags available inside the "user.vip_club" object.
VIP club is now shown on the customer homepage for logged-in users displaying their current level and the ability to scroll through and view other levels.

Page Slices by default for building pages 
We've been working on improvements to our page slices system and now all new sites will have this newer page builder available to them by default. 
We've also made it easier to get it enabled on all existing sites, contact us to find out more about this new method of building pages. 

Page search improvements
Site search for pages has been improved to use a better scoring system and now also includes content blocks as well as the default page content. 
This returns better search result matching especially when multiple pages talk about the same topic.

New page slice blocks available
We've added a range of new slices in including buttons, horizontal lines, lists of links & page menus. 
These all help building up new landing pages using the page slice builder and building more custom experiences without the need for designers, while still letting designers customise the slices themselves where needed.
We've also added further settings to some of the existing slices, for example setting the aspect ratio of a map easily.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Discontinued products can now longer be purchased 
Products marked as discontinued can no longer be bought from the site. 
If this change affects you, please reach out to us and we can help improve the flow going forward.

New delivery report for 'county/state'
US sites can use this  to see sales performance across each state. UK sites can see performance across counties.

Prospect Manager 'Funnel by status' filters
Easily filter your sales funnel status to distinguish between open, won and lost quotes over time. 

New product slices and content blocks
You can now easily list your products onto pages by status/category/etc using the system products slice, or pick specific products and drag and drop into order with the curated products slice.

Price List "You Save" Column
Show a column of how much your dealers/distributors save per item vs the retail price in the Price List feature.
Enable via Site Settings > Prices & VAT > "Show difference between "Your Price" & "Retail Price" as a percentage"

Product import column checks
Both the product and user imports now have improved checks to recognise if required fields are missing, and the file format is correct.

Coupon improvements
We've reworked how coupons are checked to ensure they still qualify while in the cart, as well as soime small design improvements for the display of coupons in the cart. This includes showing the before and after discount price more clearly, crossing out the before price, plus cleaning up the line showing total discount & which code was used.

Integrations

Google Site Name & Website Schema Support
Adds Google Site Name support.
By default we use the Company (Site) name, but this introduces a new setting to "Override site name" and "Enable website schema markup (includes site search action)"
Admin > Site Settings > SEO > Site Name

Faster Google Analytics load after cookie popup
We've optimised how Google Analytics runs on the site after a user accepts the cookies to run immediately if permission is granted, ensuring any visitors who bounce quickly between pages are fully tracked. 

'Connect' and 'Edit user' areas new modal prompt for confirming & describe the changes being made
A confirmation modal pops up when changing and saving data for better audits. You can also set a note here at the same time to remind you or other admins why a change was made.  

 

Spotlight

Option special pricing
You can now set special prices on products right down to the option level, with additional template functionality for styling.
Edit product > options tab > next to option price & the group icon is a new discount tag icon which when clicked reveals a special offer price field.
This field is also available when editing group based option level prices. 
Requires a licence upgrade.

Top Categories Drilldown
Top Categories report now lets you drilldown through to sub-categories to explore which are bringing in the most sales for your site.

3D secure v2
We've reviewed and made relevant changes to all the payment processors we support to ensure they support the new 3D secure version 2 so your customers payments are kept secure, including PayPal, Stripe, SagePay, Barclaycard EPDQ and more. 

CMS & Design

Page access control using user smart type
You can now set access control rules by user smart types (which can contain multiple user groups e.g. retail, trade, dealer) meaning pages to only be viewed by users within that smart type. This lifts the previous limit of only setting up to 3 user groups for page access control.
Available via Admin > Page Manager on the edit page screen under the existing user group dropdowns.

Content Blocks > Links New Tab option
Content blocks that have links inside such as images can now be set to open in a new tab for additional flexibility when building up pages. 

Ecommerce & Reporting

Coupon Assignment design improvements & multiple selections
We've redesigned the way you can add coupon assignments to simplify the process and make it easier to select multiple products, categories and brands / manufacturers.

Report Builder percentage revenue change between comparison date ranges
Running Report Builder order info reports with a comparison date range set now shows you the percentage revenue change between the two date ranges.

Report Builder new advanced filter for excluding manual orders
Compare year on year sales without manual orders included to separate out online web v telesales orders. 

Refer a friend email task links
When sending email tasks e.g. order reminders, you can now include the template tag {{ user.refer_a_friend_link }} to remind customers about the refer a friend deal that's available.

Spotlight

Product Reporting Types
This offers a way to categorise products for different ways to report on product revenues, for example rather than just reporting category revenues, you could report on product usage where products could sit across different categories. Reports including Top Products & Order Info reports in Report Builder can filter their data based on specific reporting types. Read in full.
Admin > Reporting Types
Admin > Product Manager > new filter for reporting types
Admin > Reports > Top products > new filter for reporting types
Admin > Reports > Order Info Reports & Report Builder > new filter for reporting types & new report for product sales by reporting types

Qualify for coupons when products need to exist in different categories &/or manufacturers on coupons. 
Multi-select allows you to give a discount for each of the products in the basket which match to each of the multi-selections made.
For example, if you multi-selected category A and category B, you would need to have a product in the basket in category A and another product which is in category B to trigger the discount. If you added another product in the basket which was not in either category A or B then that product would not receive the discount whereas the first two would.
Use case example:
If you buy a jacket from the Coats category and a hat from the Headgear category then you receive a 10% discount off each product. If you also bought some wool gloves from the Glove category then they would not receive a discount.
Available via the existing product, category and manufacturer filters in Admin > Assign Coupons 

CMS & Design

For sites using the beta version of page slices for building pages, we've added 4 new slice types:
1. Main body app (lets you pick and pull in any main body app in place of a slice)
2. Sidebar app (as above but for sidebar apps)
3. Image grid (a repeatable image list but in a defined grid either going down as columns or across as rows)
4 Embed code (a raw html field where you could add any html such as a script or iframe)

Quickly find pinned comments round the system via Admin Comments.
Admin > All Site Comments & Audits > new filters to hide audits & only show pinned comments

Country personalisation filters can now be used to show content when a country does or doesn't match. 
This reverse logic enables easier setup, for example you can set a rule for the rest of the world by setting that it's not your country.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Per group delivery adapters to zones
Allowing you to use different delivery systems between different areas of the world, such as using our built in system for international orders but a 3rd party such as Postmen or ShipyPro for UK deliveries.
Via edit user group > new "Delivery Zone Adapters" section with dropdowns of adapters per zone.

Multiple youtube videos on products.
You can now set up to 3 youtube videos against a product to help advertise the product and show a mix of promotional and instructional videos directly via the product page. 
Add/edit product > new field under the existing youtube video for 2nd and 3rd URLs.
Same on batch product processor, csv exports and available via the front end template tags using the new product.youtube_url_2, product.youtube_iframe_2, product.youtube_url_3 and product.youtube_iframe_3 tags, see responsive-base's product_info.html.twig for example usage.

Discontinued product sorting changes
You can set discontinued products to be shown at the end of product lists so live/available products are shown to customers first without you needing to rearrange them in product manager manually.
Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Products > Sorting discontinued products to the end of product listings

Picking lists now show option details
Option names & values are now also added to products listed on picking lists to help ensure the correct version/colour is picked for an order.

Product PDF improvements for chapter handling.
We've improved how multiple pages of products inside chapters generate such as keeping table headings and repeating titles to show which chapter you're viewing.
Contact us to find out more about our PDF product listings feature.

Additional Product PDF improvements have been made to allow you to set the sort method, and further template improvements to improve style and flexibility while listing chapters. 

Buying rules can now be filtered by User Smart Type
This lets you can you setup buying rules that only apply to retail or dealer groups on your site.

Order Manager unpaid order improvements
You can now manually set if an order is unpaid or not via the order screen, this was previously only available via a payment processor marking it as paid or unpaid when processing the order but this resolves that flow for telephone orders where the customer had an order at checkout previously. 

Custom API templates can now be cached. 
This is especially useful for custom apps for filtering products on a single page, you can cache the data for a few minutes or hours if it doesn't change frequently, saving users time on reloads or on high traffic pages.
In the templates api() calls designers can now add "cache=true, cacheSeconds=10" and modify as needed.

Reports for order csv lines now shows category
Useful for checking the performance of specific categories via a spreadsheet.

Product export/imports assembly details
We've added the assembly bin location and assembly instructions product fields the products export and import to help you se these on mass.

Integrations

Multi store > You can now restrict how to sync categories on products
By default we send all 5 category relations on products through multi store, however with this setting we'll only send the first/default category, ignoring the 2-5 category relationships. Allowing multi store sites to have different categories while maintaining the same default category.
Admin > Multi Store > add/edit > Only send default category?

 

Spotlight

Backorder improvements
Adds new "backorder" state and a top level Order Manager tab for viewing backorders along with a way for admins to set up and mark where an order is in the backorder process/status.
New "backorder" state in Admin > Order Statuses > Add/edit statuses
Admin > Order Backorder Statuses
In Order Manager, there is a new tab for backorders and when viewed it will also show as a new column for the backorder status.
On the order info screen you'll see the backorder status and comment field with colour coding.

Order Manager tab layout changes
We've cleaned up the tabs at the top of Order Manager & split the custom tabs you add onto their own line so you are no longer restricted by the space to the side of the system tabs.
Additional tidying up has been done to the filters as some will now be found under the new Additional search filters area inside Order Manager quick search.
You can also now set the sort order of these custom status tabs by dragging and dropping them in the Admin > Order statuses area.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Abandoned cart follow-ups now show recent related orders
When admins look at the abandoned cart follow-up popup for an order you can see other recent orders that user has made, helping you spot if they later went on to purchase but as a new order.

Dashboard now has a quick-link to Report Builder.
This helps you get to the fantastic range of reports available in report builder directly from your admin dashboard.

Customers subscribed to stock alerts for products now get alerts when back in stock date changes
This automatically ensures customers are kept updated if subscribed to receive stock updates.

Back in stock dates can be set at the product variation level
Allows you to set back in stock dates down to option combination/variation level. 
You can now set this via product variations with the new calendar icon next to variation stock fields.

Coupon Assignment Improvements
The coupon assignment area has been smartened up and now loads much faster even with hundreds of active coupons on the go.

Backorders > wipe stock button
Adds a new button via Edit product > Stock > Wipe product stock to clear not just the top stock level on the product but all stock against options and variations as well.
We also now indicate how many variations a product has from the stock tab to help you see its stock numbers based on the sum of variations. 

Image Placeholders
We now have a placeholder image system built into the sites rather than having to rely on 3rd party sites which can be unrelaible at times. 
This lets us put in default placeholders which you can then replace images easily, for example in email templates.

Back in stock email previews
Via email tasks you can preview back in stock emails for when either stock or the back in stock date is changed to test your email design faster.

Order confirmation, update and order email tasks can now all access User Smart types
This lets us customise the experience in the email based on whether the customer is a Retail or Trade customer.

Purchase orders can now show the customer order number.
New template tag {{ order.customers_order_id }} available in the purchase_order.html.twig file

Developers can now use a "product.combination.change" on product pages to get price, stock and back in stock dates down to the variation level for live updates on product pages. 

Integrations

Spam log and whitelist
Adds a a new spam log area letting you see all blocked IP and emails via stopforumspam on a site.
In future we may extend this to all the other spam checks.

 

Spotlight

PDF Product Listing Catalogue
You can now generate PDFs (300dpi / print quality) of your product catalogue to distribute to customers or resellers easily. Read in full.
The templates are flexible and we can build fairly custom layouts for your products split out by category chapters inside the PDF while letting you add custom pages and cover/back images.
Admin > PDF Product Listings
Admin > Product Manager > Edit Category > Exclude category from PDF product listings
Also requires a cron to be set up.

User Manager mass search
Adds a way to mass search on a list of pasted in emails, as well as a column for their order total in the last 3 months and a simplified newsletter subscribed indicator.
Admin > User manager > Filter users > Mass search on emails

Ecommerce & Reporting

Order Manager filter for User Smart Type
Adds a way in Order Manager to filter the User Smart Type and show the smart type against orders in the main table and on the dashboard.
Admin > Site Settings > Display > Show Smart Types on Order Manager
Admin > Order Manager > Quick Search > Smart Type

Top Products report now shows conversion rate
Adds conversion rate to current and comparisons colums.
Available via Admin > Reports > Top Products report.

Top Products report filter for User Smart Type
Adds a smart type filter to the top products report

Top Products report category field select
The top products report now lets you select which of the 5 category fields it should use when selecting a category.

Back in stock admin alerts now email two reminders
We now email 2 business days before stock hits the back in stock date, as well as on the day to help remind you to check the stock positionahead of time.

Integrations

Unleashed retail customer code prefix
We can now add a prefix to retail customer codes we send to Unleashed to help you see which accounts are retail  more easily.
Admin > Connect > Utilities > Unleashed > Retail Customer Code Prefix

SMTP auth mode support when sending emails via SMTP
This helps improve compatibility with 3rd party email providers when using SMTP such as Office 365
Admin > SMTP & Email Settings > SMTP config > Auth Mode, Send Source IP & Ignore SSL verification/errors

 

Spotlight

Refer a friend
Encourage customers to share your site with friends with a discount and when friends order the sharer gets a discount too. Read in full.
Licence upgrade required, contact us to enable this, then manage via Admin > Refer a friend system
Customers can find their sharing link in Customer home > Refer A Friend 
Reports updated to show 'R' for refer a friend as the source including Order Traffic Analyzer and the Order Info report
Email tasks > new event for "Refer a friend complete order" > page contains "coupon_code" and "coupon_end_date" template tags.

Coupon User Smart Type & country restrictions
Adds support for setting User Smart type and delivery country restrictions directly on a coupon.
Admin > Add/edit coupon > "Make this only available for a specific user smart type" & "Filter this coupon to specific countries only?"

Single use coupons
You can now make coupons only apply once and then remove their assignment rule after use, this is auto set for the order anniversary and refer a friend coupons.
Admin > Assign Coupons > new tickbox for "Single Use"

Ecommerce & Reporting

Order anniversary restriction improvements
The order anniversary coupons can now be restricted to specific user smart types and countries.

Back in stock alerts to admin
We now check product back in stock dates every day so if the day comes and no stock is set on the product yet it will email you to remind you to get stock or update the date it's back in stock.

Product tag counts
In the admin management area for product tags we now show counts of tag groups and tags.

Users

Viewing user form responses now links to the full form response info.
We've added a " View Response" link to form entries on edit customer > forms to help you track customer contact more easily.

Spotlight

Address & postcode lookup with Google Places Autocomplete
You can now offer faster address/postcode lookup during checkout using the Google Places Autocomplete.
Admin > Connect > Delivery > Google Maps API
Site Settings > Delivery > Address Finder / Postcode Lookup > Adapter > Google Maps Javascript API
New Definition: GOOGLE_MAPS_LOOKUP_LABEL
Important: This feature requires that API Accounts > Allow using CSRF Tokens as API Access Tokens is enabled so that it can lookup up the ISO2 Code that Google returns to us

Country Personalisation Rules For Content
This lets you customise certain site content based on a visitor's country using Personalisation Rules.
Requires your site to be on Cloudflare due to use of their IP Country feature.
Available in Admin > Personalisation Rules > add/edit > country dropdown.
Also exposed to the page JS via jsMaster.visitorCountry

Highlighting orders requiring payment
You can now more visibly see which orders remain unpaid in Order Manager, for example if you accept payment on delivery or bank transfers rather than taking a credit card payment. The orders will display in red on the order screen and ask admins to mark as paid.
Set this on the payment methods that apply in Admin > Payment Methods > Edit > "Mark orders that use this payment method as unpaid?

Product images in the cart & checkout now show the image related to a selected option.
For example if a customer buys a specific colour option which has had an image uploaded for it, then that specific image will be displayed. 

Faster Manual order entry - add or update user details 
When manually adding an order, there is a new line under the user select field which allows you to add a user, or if you select a user it'll let you edit their details. You'll then be able to view, update or create the user for the order.

Reminder: A small set up charge applies if you request we set up any new features for you or need training.

Ecommerce & Reporting

'Back in stock' date added to products
Enter this via Edit product > Stock > Back in stock date, & display it on the product page via the product_info.html.twig template with {{ dump(product.back_in_stock_date) }}

Order Info reports filters added for special offer & discounts
You can filter the reports to see orders where items were on special offer, where coupons were used, or for a specific tag group and tag.
Available via Admin > Reports > Order Info Reports & these reports in Report Builder.

Top Products report filters added for special offer & discounts
You can now filter the top products report to only show orders where items were purchased on special offer or where discounts/coupons were used.
New filters in Admin > Reports > Top Products Report for: "Special offer sales only" & "Coupon/discount % sales only".

Quickshop autocomplete for product codes & names
To make quickshop easier, rather than having to enter the exact product code you can now quickly search based on the product name or code.

Product filter tag pages can now have custom text/content shown on their results page.
This can be used for SEO, similar to setting category page content.
Admin > Product Filter Content (if Product Filters are enabled).

Order confirmation and update emails now have access to the same {{ order.* }} tags
Order update emails now share the same {{ order.* }} tags the order confirm email uses in order to make them more consistent.
This includes item lists, addresses, etc. allowing you to list order items on the update emails.

Disable the grouping of same products on pages
By default, we group different variations of same products when they are saved as unique products (based on the google variation id) however you can disable this on pages via Admin > Edit Page > + Store Content > Group products with the same group/variation ID

Loyalty coupons removed if the order they were added from is cancelled or refunded.
If you're using the Loyalty coupons system it will give out coupons to customers to encourage repeat buying. This change closes a loophole where customers cancel the initial order then re-order to receive the loyalty discount.

Warning for successful but not paid/processed orders.
When changing order statuses, if you change the status to a successful state when it was previously pending but don't then process the order it will warn that it still needs to be manually processed. 

Product each views can now access array of categories
Using product.categories the product.html.twig templates can now make changes based on the product's categories.

Integrations

Unleashed > Users are now marked as not taxable by default if they are in a non taxable group
This helps set the correct customers' taxable status in Unleashed.

 

Spotlight

New: Product tickboxes
Add optional or required tickboxes to products which customers can tick when buying them. For example, getting customers to confirm they have accepted terms of use for a specific product or that it cannot be returned. 
Contact us to enable & then manage via Admin > Product Tickboxes

New: Order anniversary email
Automatically email customers on each anniversary of their first order, for example to give customers a deal and incentivise them to consider buying again.
Contact us to enable this feature and then follow the set up instructions.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Display Recently viewed products to visitors
Display recently viewed products  on page layouts and product pages allowing customers to navigate back to items of interest. 
Enable via Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Show Recently Viewed Products
& then arrange for a  designer to update your site templates using the tag: {{ recently_viewed_products() }} and on the product info page with the tag {{ product.more.recently_viewed }}

Order thanks page can include more order and upsell information
Enrich the checkout thanks page summary to include order items, billing & delivery details and other information to encourage upsell opportunities. 
Designers: via the thanks.html.twig file you can {{ dump(order) }} to see everything available.

New: Departments Report
A new order info report is now available for departments you may have set up to group categories together.

Users making purchases report now has columns for SMS & Postal marketing opt-in
Available via Admin > Reports > Users making purchases > new "opt_in_sms_marketing" & "opt_in_postal_marketing" columns

Order Manager allows filtering of orders via payment method
We've added a quick way to find all orders using a specific payment method via Order Manager
Admin > Order Manager > Quick Search > Payment Method

Abandoned followup usability improvements in Order Manager
The Abandoned followup status search column is now always shown rather being limited to the Abandoned orders tab.
The Abandoned followup summary is now also shown on the order screen in the right sidebar making it easier to view/set the success status.

Product page special offer product list
Similar to Featured products or 'People who bought this bought that' lists available on product pages, you can now also show special offer products here too.
Enable via Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Show Special Offer Products

Report builder report history
You can now view a history of all recent reports run via report builder and click to re-run them again easily.
This also simplifies the URLs for reports making them easier to copy and share.
Available via Admin > Reports > Report Builder.

Top Products report now splits product name & code columns
Also we've added a category column to help you identify the product and category range it's in.
This is available in our Admin > Reports > Top products report.

Order timezone improvements
For US and other non UK sites, timezone support has been improved to consistently show the correct order time for your timezone in admin across the dashboard, Order Manager and other order screens. 

PayPal Express buttons update
The PayPal buttons have been upgraded to the new more rectangular versions to keep up to date with PayPal's branding.

Delivery estimator now lets developers pass a product_id
This lets us add delivery estimator links to pages more easily where clicking it emulates having that product in the cart before quoting for delivery.

Customer smart type now accessible via JS
Useful for developers to build in custom templates using jsMaster.userSmartType

Email Manager

New: Create Draft folder categories in Email Manager
When creating new emails you can now set a folder name to categorise them in the drafts tab for easier administration.
Admin > Email Manager > Write Email > Select or create a template > Folder name (under name field & favourite tickbox)

Scheduled emails now record the email name as well as the folder
This can help you check which scheduled emails are going out soon. 

Email tasks > filter to orders from specific countries.
You can now filter which email tasks send to users based on their order delivery countries
Admin > Email Tasks > Add/Edit > Delivery country filter (only shows for order events)

Integrations

Improvements for sending SMS to US & international mobile/cell numbers.
We've added a new setting that does additional cleanup and checks before sending sms to US & international mobile numbers.
Enable via Admin > Site Settings > Leads & Alerts > SMS details > Use advanced mobile number detection

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.