Announcing Version 7.4.7
Of ECinteractive and is.D-Force2

This message covers the following timely topics:

What’s New In This Release?
How Do I Set Up My "Down For Maintenance" Page?
Find Out What's Coming Soon And More

What’s New In This Release?

Thursday, September 4, 2008 — ECi is loading Version 7.4.7 of ECinteractive® and is.D-Force® 2 onto your live Web servers Saturday, September 6, 2008 — between 9 PM and 6 AM Central Daylight Time.

Catalog Combination Indexing

You want your site to display any set of items you want to sell, as many sets as you want, while making it as easy and snappy as possible for your customers.

Your ECinteractive Product Management team wants the same thing. But historically, catalog content in the office supply industry has its share of complexities. From the multitudes of manufacturers, to the use of multiple wholesaler catalogs, to individual dealers selling unique items in their own catalogs, to individual customers searching according to their own contracts and laundry lists, it is a challenge to filter out duplicate search results. The system has had to process individual parameters and limits on what catalog a user is allowed to shop, for each user, every time they visit.The dynamic nature of serving item information to hundreds of sites and thousands of users can take its toll on performance.

That's the beauty of ECinteractive's new Catalog Combination Indexing function (CCI).

The CCI generates a list of items with unique SKUs for each distinct combination of Global Catalog Group and Custom Catalog Group. When displaying items to your customers, ECinteractive directly accesses this pre-generated CCI list.

The results:

• Since the search engine only has to work with a smaller subset of the catalog specific to the dealer or customer user, it speeds up search results.
• In Search Results, there are no more duplicate items displayed, even when the same item occurs in different wholesaler catalogs that your site uses.
• Since we've fully implemented CCI, no search timeouts have occurred.
• The system is faster at displaying personalized content and product detail.
• It sets the stage for ECinteractive to let you limit shoppers to their contracts and laundry lists. (Coming in Version 8.0.0)
• Vendors offering Enhanced Content will use CCIs to synchronize subsets of dealer-specific Enhanced content, so their Enhanced search results will also limit to dealer-specific catalogs and shopper-specific contracts or laundry lists. (Coming in Version 8.0.0)
• When the same item occurs in multiple catalogs, you control which images and details to display in search results and product detail pages. In your Admin Control Panel under the Site Customization menu, the Provider Priority Management page lets you prioritize your site's catalog providers.

How does it work? The CCI works behind the scenes to give you granular control over what your customer can shop and buy. It dynamically displays the right catalog content for every customer who hits your Web site.

By default, this drives which content is displayed in Browse categories, Search results, or product detail, MyFavorites, Contracts, Laundry Lists, Web Specials, Preferred Items, and Product Showcases.

Every night outside normal business hours, the system checks to see if any pending catalog combination subset exists in the index, and generates new CCIs as needed for all sites according to the following triggers:

• When you add or remove items from a custom catalog in the Catalog Management page.
• When you add or remove catalogs in a catalog group from the Global Catalog Group Management page or the Custom Catalog Group Management page.
• When you specify a Global Catalog Group and Custom Catalog Group while adding/editing a customer in the Customer Management page.
• When you specify a selected customers' or customer group's Global Catalog Group and Custom Catalog Group in the Parameter Maintenance page.
• Whenever you adjust rankings on the Provider Priority Management page.

Let's say ABC1234 is in your custom catalog, as well as S.P. Richards and United Stationers catalogs, the three catalogs assigned to Customer A. In this example, your site name is ranked highest on the Provider Priority Management page, and you've ranked S.P. Richards higher than United. When Customer A logs in to your site, the system will check for that customer's CCI, and quickly display the appropriate subset of Browse categories, Web Specials, Preferred Items, and so on. When Customer A searches for ABC1234, the system looks first for the categories, product details, and image(s) you entered for that item to display. If you haven't entered content for that item, your site will look next to the S.P. Richards content to display, and then to the United content.

Exception: If your site uses the S.P. Richards Enhanced Search feature, your ranking will not affect Browse categories, Search results, or product detail, since a third-party content repository provides that information. (See the 7.4.5 announcement
www.DDMS.com/support/release/whatsnew/ec745.htm)

Other Changes

This software release includes the following additional changes:

• Enhanced the Order Manager Service (OMS). Originally designed merely for background queueing of Web orders for optimized transfer to your back-end system, OMS has been restructured with a standardized, modular programming interface to handle more diverse processes simultaneously but also to provide more flexibility in addressing system load. It has been expanded to additional non-order tasks such as Invoice Polling, Department Synchronization and Catalog Combination Indexing (CCI). (8198)
• Enhanced the Catalog Comb Index Mgmt (on the Admin Site menu). This page lets you view the status of current, pending, and previous catalog combination indexes for your selected site. Now you can click the Update Now button to request immediate processing of pending catalog combination indexes. Since the catalog combination indexing process is resource-intensive and can affect server performance, by default this indexing is scheduled to run after business hours. (8057)
• Corrected so when the end user creates a Favorites List and adds items, the system properly adds the list to the drop down Global Favorites listing. Previously after logging out and logging back into the system, the end user didn't see the new Favorites List in the drop down Global Favorites listing even after adding items to it. (8271)
• Corrected the Checkout page so that when a user belongs to an account with multiple Attentions with different Ship-To addresses, and is assigned to or selects a different Attention for the order or individual line items, the correct Ship To address is displayed at Checkout and in subsequent order data. In 7.4.5, the Ship-To address was not always correct. (8169)
• Corrected the messaging process at Checkout so that when a customer order must be placed on hold because it exceeds their budget or credit limit, or for past due account, the dealer is properly notified and the confirmation page displays the proper message. (8156)

For information about all changes in version 7.4.7, see Program Updates
(www.DDMS.com/updates/searchresult2.asp?swversion=258&search=Search).

For more details about your Web storefront, see also ECinteractive FAQs
(www.DDMS.com/support/doc/ecInteractive.htm).

How do I Set Up My "Down For Maintenance" Page?

Your Web storefront will be unavailable during these maintenance periods. You can schedule your site to be Offline for Maintenance by following these simple steps:

1. Log into your ecInteractive or is.D-Force2 site’s Administrative Control Panel.
2. (Optional) Click Site News, and then click Page Editor. Create or edit a Scheduled Maintenance page to include some text that will encourage your customers to log off before your scheduled maintenance period begins, so their work will be cached properly.
3. Click Global Settings, and then click Site Maintenance.
4. In the Time Settings box, check your Time Zone and Daylight Savings settings.
5. In the Automatic Scheduled Maintenance box, enter the appropriate times in the Time Off and Time On boxes, in the format HH:MM AM or PM, for JUST Weekend. (Leave the Weekday time fields blank unless you have set them up for your DDMS system maintenance such as backup and day-end.)
6. (Optional) Select your Scheduled Maintenance page, for JUST Weekend. (Leave the Weekday page field blank unless you have set them up for your DDMS system maintenance such as backup and day-end.)
7. Click the Auto Maintenance Mode On button. At the Are You Sure message, check your time settings. If they are correct, click OK.
8. Click the Update button. The changes are implemented within one minute.

After the software update is complete, you may wish to return to these settings, and simply adjust the time off and on settings, so that the system does not unnecessarily notify users that your site is down for maintenance.

See also your online help (http://images.eci2.com/ecInteractive_adminhelp/Site_Maintenance.htm).

Find Out What's Coming Soon And More

In the next few months, the ECinteractive team has an aggressive schedule to release more hot priority features to make your Web presence more competitive and efficient. We have made significant strides in implementing advancements vendors make in content. We continue working with our trading partners, our mutual goal being a better experience in searching and shopping for your customers. Log into your Admin Control Panel for more details on the Home page.

To find out more about the ECinteractive family of products, see our ECinteractive Product Information (www.ecisolutions.com/products/ecinteractive/), where you can access a demo site, marketing tools, and color themes. You can compare Dealer Station® and ECinteractive features for both your Administrative control panel and your end-user Web storefront.

We hope this information is helpful!

Sincerely,

ECi Product Management & Technical Support
http://support.ECiSolutions.com