3.3.1 Released

SoftSlate Commerce 3.3.1 Released

SoftSlate is pleased to announce the release of the latest version of SoftSlate Commerce, version 3.3.1. This release includes a number of significant improvements and new features. For a complete list of changes between 3.3.0 and 3.3.1 visit the Change Log. The most significant new features include:

Marketing Automation Features (Enterprise Edition)

Make it easy to increase sales by setting up new scheduled jobs to automate your marketing efforts. The following features automatically send emails to customers under certain conditions. The text and content of the emails are completely configurable via templates accessible in the Administrator.

• Abandoned cart emails: Administrators can easily the configure the system to send emails to customers who go part-way through the ordering process but then abandon their cart. These emails are great for capturing lost sales and getting feedback from the customers on any problems they might have encountered.
  
• 'Your order has shipped' emails: Automatically send customers an email with their tracking number as their order's status is changed to Shipped.
  
• Follow-up emails: This automated job sends a follow-up email to customers a certain number of days after they place an order, to check in and make sure they are happy with their experience, or to encourage them to visit the store again.
  
• In addition, Administrators may maintain a list of customers who have opted out of the above emails.

Administrator Security (Enterprise Edition)

If you're concerned about the security of your Administrator logins, you'll want to check out the following new features that help lock down each of your Admin user's accounts. These new settings help ensure that none of your sensitive logins are compromised. The new settings allow you to:

• Lock an Administrator out after a certain number of failed login attempts.
• Force Administrators to change their password every x days.
• Enforce password rules: minimum password length, and that each password contains both a letter and number.
• Enforce that new Administrator passwords do not repeat any one of that admin's previous x passwords.
• Restrict each Administrator's logins by IP address.
• These settings are configurable in the Enterprise Edition in this location of the Adminstrator:
  

Email Management (Enterprise Edition)

Version 3.3.1 establishes a new infrastructure for managing emails that SoftSlate Commerce sends out, and provides several new ways to generate, record, and track the emails you send to customers.

• Record emails in the database: You now have to option to store emails sent by the application in the database, allowing you to view and resend them at any time. To enable this option set the 'Record Sent Emails' option to yes:
  
• Send emails from with the Administrator: Under each customer and order record in the Softslate Commerce Administrator, you'll find a new "Emails" tab. You can use this tab to view and resend previous emails, and also to create new emails to send the customer.
• Create new emails based on templates: As an Administrator you can create any number of email templates for your customers, and you can choose the templates when sending a new email to a customer. (Emails -> Templates).
• Maintain an 'opt out' list for customers: As an Administrator you can maintain a list of email addresses that have opted out from receiving certain types of emails, if your customers contact you to remove themselves from receiving them. (Emails -> Email Opt Outs).
• SendGrid integration: Now you can choose to send all outgoing emails through the SendGrid email service. SendGrid provides a few of advantages, including the ability to track which customers actually opened their emails. To enable this feature, enter your SendGrid account details on the Outgoing Email Settings screen:
  

Quartz Integration (Enterprise Edition)

Developers now have the option to create scheduled jobs with the Quartz API, which now comes included with SoftSlate Commerce. Quarts provides a way to develop scheduled tasks that are triggered within the running SoftSlate Commerce application. An XML configuration file and Quartz properties file allow the developer to add new jobs to the system and schedule them. SoftSlate's integration with Quartz allows the job to share the same database connection properties as the main application (including the same Hibernate SessionFactory).

Events Improvements

Version 3.3.1 includes improvements to the integration with Google Guava's EventBus for publishing and subscribing to application events. Developers now need only annotate any method that accepts an Event object as its sole argument with the @Subscribe annotation, and it will be automatically subscribed to the event. This makes it extremely easy to create your own modules and attach them to application events.

In addition, a number of new Events have been added to the application. Below is the current list of Events that may be subscribed to in 3.3.1:

• ChangingOrderEvent (posted as any order is changed, before it is committed)
• ChangedOrderEvent (posted after the order's change is committed)
• ChangingOrderDeliveryEvent
• ChangingProductEvent
• ChangingRequestLogEvent
• ChangingSettingEvent
• ChangingSKUEvent
• InventoryEvent (posted as inventory changes)
• NewOrderEvent (posted as an order is first placed)

API Access (Enterprise Edition, Beta)

New in version 3.3.1 is a beta version of SoftSlate's API. The API allows developers to program external applications that access and modify the SoftSlate Commerce entities. The supported methods will continue to grow. For now viewing and updating Products, SKUs, and Orders is supported. For full details including everything you need to know to use the API, please visit: http://www.softslate.com/category/api-documentation.

Downloading the Upgrade:

To download the Enterprise Edition upgrade, log in to your SoftSlate Store account at this URL: http://www.softslate.com/Account.do. If you do not have an account, you may place an order for the Enterprise Edition starting here: http://www.softslate.com/product/enterprise. To download the Community Edition upgrade visit the Community Edition Download page: http://www.softslate.com/category/community.

Upgrading From 3.3.0 to 3.3.1:

The upgrade process from 3.3.0 to 3.3.1 is the same as for any other minor upgrade, with the exception of a couple of extra steps you need to take. In particular, there is a necessary change to web.xml you need to make, and you must completely clean the application of all compiled classes and JSP templates because of a key interface change. Please read over the details we've outlined in the Release Notes for 3.3.1: http://www.softslate.com/documentation/html/threedotthreeone.html. For complete instructions on how to perform an upgrade, please refer to the upgrade guide here: http://www.softslate.com/documentation/html/upgrading.html