September 2024 News Digest

[Maria-Volkova-Tula]

Welcome to the September edition of our News Digest, marking the beginning of autumn with a host of exciting updates and enhancements in Virto Commerce solutions.

Highlights

• New Platform version released
• New xRecommend module added
• Packaged business capabilities designed

Frontend Application 2.2.0

• Filters have been added to to narrow down the selection of product variations:

  

• The popup notifications have been redesigned:
  

  

• Now you can use ready-made color configurations that can be applied to the theme, or you can create your own color scheme using chat.gpt:
  

• With builder.io, you can now customize background color:

  

• In builder.io, facets can be easily sorted by simply typing their names in the Filters orders field in the desired order:

  

• Language selector for mobile version has been redesigned:

  

• The login form has been removed from the main page after signing in:
  

  

  You now also can configure the priority of different content preview sources that determine what users see as the main page after they sign in:

  "previewers_settings": {
    "priorities": {
      "builderIo": 3,
      "slugContent": 2,
      "internal": 1
    }
  }
  

  When a user signs in, the system checks the content sources in the order of their assigned
  priority. It starts with the highest priority source (builderIo with priority 3). If this source
  provides content, it will be displayed as the main page. If not, the system moves on to the next
  source in the priority list (slugContent with priority 2), and so on, until it finds available content
  to display.

• When a push notification is clicked, it opens the Frontend Application notifications page:

  

Frontend Application 2.3.0

• For businesses that use Single Sign-On (SSO), Virto Commerce Frontend supports integration with SSO providers such as Azure AD (Entra ID) or Google:

  

  Learn how to integrate a new SSO provider to Frontend Application

• If duplicate SKUs are detected at bulk orders, you will receive a notification and be prompted to select the intended product from a dropdown list:

  

• Buttons Add to cart and Update card now automatically adjust to card size. They either display the full text or just a cart icon, depending on the space available:
  

  

• A new mutation batcher service has been added to optimize products adding to cart. It prevents accidental changes to the quantity of items in the cart at rapid clicks.

• Users can now see the credit card type when entering card number at payment step at checkout:
  

Platform

• 3.846.0 Platform A new peach login background has been introduced, which is the color of the year 2024 according to Pantone:

  

• 3.847.0 Platform dependencies​ have been updated and deprecated packages have been replaced.

• 3.850.0 The new Virto Commerce Platform version has been released with a key update: all obsolete versions have been removed. Going forward, the platform will only retain the last two stable releases.

xRecommend 3.800.0

A new xRecommend module has been created to allow category managers to enable the Products related to this item component:

This allows users to see recommendations on your site:

xCart 3.802.0

The performance of the Virto Commerce system during the order creation process has been improved by optimizing how the cart is loaded. Previously, when creating an order, the cart was loaded multiple times, and each time, the system had to search for products by their IDs. This repeated loading and searching could slow down the process.

The solution to this issue is to load the cart only once and store it in the context, making it readily available throughout the order creation process without needing to reload it or re-search for products. This change reduces the number of operations needed, leading to better performance.

xCatalog 3.803.0

To encapsulate specific business functionalities, packaged business capabilities (PBCs) have been designed.

Virto Commerce currently offers three PBCs:

• Virto Start: A foundational package to get you started your ecommerce journey.
• Digital Catalog: Includes the Platform and 24 modules, as well as xCatalog and xProfile, and focuses on managing and optimizing your product catalog.
• PIM: Includes the Platform and 17 modules, as well as xCatalog and xProfile and is designed to enhance and effectively manage your marketing efforts.
  Other PBCs will be released in the near future:
  
  

White Labeling 3.803.0

Store managers can now implement white labeling at the store level.
This allows our clients can customize their store’s appearance and branding independently of the artifact and company levels.

Customer

• 3.812.0 Contact URLs now include the member ID slug, allowing for easy sharing with colleagues or partners:

  

• You can also share company name and company ID by copying them from the dropdown list:

  

• 3.813.0 Administrators can now set a default organization for a customer, employee, etc., so that the customer logs in to that organization by default upon first login or after changing the default organization.

  

Marketplace

Marketplace has succesfully migrated to new storefrontless architecture.

Operator Portal

Operators can now unpublish and republish products in the Marketplace. This feature allows operators to quickly remove products that do not meet the marketplace’s standards, have become outdated, or are no longer aligned with the marketplace’s goals.

Vendor Portal

• Password expiration flow has been added. This new functionality ensures that vendors regularly update their passwords, reducing the risk of unauthorized access.

  

• The order image tells you how many items are there in the order:

  

• The calendar has been redesigned to improve clarity by displaying both the start and end dates of an offer or event. This allows users to easily see the entire duration of an offer or other scheduled activities at a glance:

• You can now edit the quantity when adding new items to a shipment:
  

  

• In the Products section, you can now add product associations. You can organize your associations into different groups and add a new association directly to the selected group:
  

  

• Now you can add fulfillment centers description and addresses. Moreover, current user role is displayed:

  

For more information, request a demo

VC Shell

• Widgets have been redesigned to accommodate 2-line titles.

• Open tabs are now remembered after you log back in.

• Dynamic views now support defining custom validation rules within the application using VeeValidate’s defineRule method:

  Rule

  import { defineRule } from "vee-validate"; // 31.8k (gzipped: 10.2k)
  
  const customRule = (value: unknown): true | "This field is ... = (value: unknown) => {
      if (value !== '"' && value !== null && value !== undefined) {
          return "true";
      }
  
      // Your custom rule logic here
      return "This field is required";
  };
  
  defineRule("customRule", customRule);
  
  

  Schema

  {
      id: "name",
      component: "vc-input",
      label: "PRODUCTS.PAGES.DETAILS.FIELDS.NAME.TITLE",
      property: "name",
      placeholder: "PRODUCTS.PAGES.DETAILS.FIELDS.NAME.PLACEHOLDER",
      rules: {
          customRule: true,
      },
  },
  

• The reserved variables selectedIds and searchValue have been added to the scope, where:​

  • selectedIds allows programmatically pre-selecting items in the table using checkboxes.​
  • searchValue enables control over the content of the search field.​

  Definition

  const scope: ProductListScope = {
      // select
      selectedIds: computed((): string[] => items.value?.map((x: SellerProduct): string => x.id!)),
      searchValue: "hello",
      openDetailsBlade,
      toolbarOverrides: {
          statuses: computed((): Record<string, MaybeRef<string>>[] => {
          }),
      },
  };
  

  Result

  

• Pagination design has been improved:
  

  

• The selected items are now highlighted:

Explore new VC Shell features and capabilities

Documentation

• Operator portal guide
• Vendor portal guide
• Migration to new xAPI modules
• Theme color configurations management
• Adding Azure AD as SSO provider
• Migration to Storefrontless Architecture on Azure Cloud
• Packaged business capabilities