Announcing ECinteractive, is.D-force2 Version 9.0.5
This message covers the following timely topics:
What’s New In This Release?
Find Out What's Coming Soon And More
What’s New In This Release?
Wednesday, June 24, 2009 — ECi is loading Version 9.0.5 on your live ECinteractive® and is.D-Force® 2 Web servers this weekend. The software update for this major release will take place between 9 PM CST Saturday, June 27, and 6 AM CST Sunday, June 28.
Since this falls within ECi's Standard Weekly Data Center Maintenance timeframe
(www.DDMS.com/support/massfax/dcMtceWindow.htm), it does not require any changes to your Site Maintenance schedule.
Version 9.0.5 includes several enhancements to help you compete with big box stores for Web orders and fulfill your customers' needs more efficiently:
Let Shoppers Add Coupons At Checkout, Approval
Now that we've released the Coupons & Promotions enhancements, here are just a few Web promotion combinations you could offer:
- $10 Off First Web Order Total, with minimum $75 order (Use promo code 10off1st75), or $20 Off First Web Order Total with minimum $150 order (Use promo code 20off1w150). Newly registered accounts only. Not valid with any other offer.
- Buy three boxes of these whiteboard markers, get one box free (Shoppers may reuse this promotion code as often as they like across their entire account).
- Buy this printer, get this ink 25% off (any quantity, one use per department).
- Buy this combination of back-to-school-spirit items portfolio A, backpack B, and pencils C, and get 10% off the highest unit-priced item in the cart (any quantity, one use per shopper).
- Order $250 now (pre-tax, pre-volume discounts, but after your account's standard discounts), get $25 off your current order total.
- Order three reams of this paper now, get 15% off your next order.
- For every order over $150, pick from three free gifts (and reuse as often as you like before expiration date).
System Requirements. The Coupons & Promotions feature integrates both the back-end and front-end software. As a result, you may require a software update.
If you use DDMS as your back-end server, you must load DDMS version 8.19 or higher — set for release this week — in order to take advantage of Promotions features.
If you are running DDMS 8.17.x or lower, do not enable Coupons and Promotions in ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2. In testing with DDMS servers running 8.17.x or earlier versions, enabling Coupons and Promotions in the ECinteractive and is.D-Force 2 Admin Control Panel will result in Unexpected Errors for shoppers.
In addition, an issue with orders of 60 or more items and two or more promo codes was discovered with DDMS 8.18.x, but has been corrected in DDMS 8.19 and higher.
When you are ready to download DDMS 8.19 or higher, log in to the ECi Support Portal and click Software Downloads. see Using Promotions and Coupon Codes in DDMS
(www.DDMS.com/Resources/Support/faq/orderentry/ddPromotions.pdf).
Enable Promo Code Entry At Web Checkout. Once you have set up promotions on your backend system, you'll need to:
- Enable Promotions and Coupons in your customers' Marketing Settings.
- Communicate your promos to your customers. You might use Site Text, Custom HTML confirmation messages, and/or other marketing tools and campaigns.
To take advantage of your promotions, shoppers must enter the promo code at Checkout (as shown here) — or on Approval in a similar fashion.
Your ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2 site will prompt for department if required, will check the code's validity, and if needed, prompt the shopper to select free item(s) from a list based on the promotional benefit you set up.
For detailed instructions on how to enable the Promotions and Coupons feature in ECinteractive, what shoppers see when using promo codes, and how to view Promotion/Coupon detail in Order Management, see Letting Shoppers Use Coupons and Promo Codes in ECinteractive
(www.DDMS.com/Resources/Support/faq/ecommerce/ecCoupons.pdf)
Note: DDMS Commercial Order Entry does not currently accept Promo codes set up in the Promotions Window. Enhancements to commercial Order Entry are required to allow coupons, and are in queue for a future release of DDMS. We will notify DDMS customers via email when it is available.
Approvals Redesigned: Separate Tabs for Pending, History
To make it easier to find the orders that require attention, we've redesigned the Approvals page. The MyAccount box indicates how many orders are pending approval, and require action on their part. That Pending Approval link that takes the approver to their Order Approval page, where (instead of the Your Orders tab now exclusive to bottom-tier submitters), the Approver now sees two tabs: Pending Approval and Approval History, as shown below.
On the Pending Approval tab, the user sees a new row that displays the reason why an order requires their attention. Approval users can use the All checkbox to select all orders and approve or deny them in mass, or can select individual orders to approve or deny.
 They can display or hide a Legend of the icons shown in the Status column. They can click column headers to change sort order, and even edit Order Approval Settings to set up the default sort order and scope of history up to 90 days.
 This release also adds the ability to edit a previously denied order and re-submit it through the approval process. If you deny an order by mistake, you can go to Approval History to Edit the denied order.
 When Editing an order, approvers can change quantities, add comments, delete lines, and submit the order to go to Checkout.
The Approver's Checkout page provides new options to override the payment method to enter a credit card, specify a P/O, and add delivery memos, line items or coupon codes.
The approval confirmation summary page includes new information including the ordered date, processed date, and purchase order number, if any.
For additional details, your customers can consult online help.
Filter by Email and Phone on User Usage Report
In the User Usage Reports page in the Administrative Control panel, we have added columns to display the customer's phone number and email address. This information is filterable so you can filter by area code or email domain name, for example. (6773)
Column Filters Added To Contracts, Other Admin Panel Lists
 We have added the ability to filter long lists by specific data in each column on several pages of the Admin Control Panel:
- Contracts and Laundry Lists in Customer Management (9645)
- Custom and Global Catalog Group Management (9887)
- Web Specials (9688)
- Favorites Lists and Favorites Assignments (9685)
For more details, see your online help.
Find Catalogs By SKU
 In your Admin Control Panel, you'll find that the SiteInfo menu has a new option: Find Catalogs By SKU.
This page helps you determine what catalogs a product exists in. You can enter the Item Company and Item Number. (If you have multiple ECinteractive or is.D-Force sites, you also select a site.)
By default, the resulting list of catalogs are displayed in the order based on the your site's Provider priority. You may also sort the list by clicking the Catalog Name and Provider column headings.
Allow Special Characters in Printer ID field
We've corrected the logic when setting up Locations in the Admin Control Panel, so that you can enter special characters for printers (P%, P$, P&, and so forth). Previously when using special characters, the Only Alphanumeric Value Is Allowed for Printer ID message appeared. (8993)
Integrate with DDMS Advanced Manifest Routing Xtension
If you are running DDMS's Advanced Manifest Xtension to manage more than one location or warehouse where your items are stored, you will find that we've enhanced ECinteractive packets to work with your locations. (5826)
The Advanced Manifest feature can save on shipping costs and delivery times. The shopper's location or delivery route determines from which warehouse the ordered items ship. For this feature to be properly implemented, you use the Advanced Manifest fields in the back office business system.
Two fields from the back office business system are used with the Advanced Manifest feature: Secondary Inventory Location, and Furniture Location. If set up for a shopper, the system uses the G/L and Inventory locations during the Checkout process. To obtain correct pricing and on-hand quantities (both determined by location), these fields are also used.
For additional details, see your online help topic, About Advanced Manifests. For more information about the Advanced Manifest Extension, contact ECi Sales at sales@eci2.com.
Additional High-Priority Solutions
This list is not exhaustive, and this release has resolved several defect reports that were prioritized due to development scope and/or customer demand.
For the complete list, see Program Updates
(www.DDMS.com/updates/searchresult2.asp?swversion=280&search=Search).
For more details about your Web storefront, see also ECinteractive FAQs
(www.DDMS.com/support/doc/ecInteractive.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/ecomm/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 |
