Blog posts by David Bowen2017-08-01T12:23:36.0000000Z/blogs/David-Bowen/Optimizely WorldCommerce 11 release/blogs/David-Bowen/Dates/2017/7/commerce-11-release/2017-08-01T12:23:36.0000000Z<p>In <a title="Episerver update 174" href="/link/236e1847cb5041b39e84bdb28b2793b1.aspx">update 174</a> we shipped a version 11 release of Commerce. This is a semantic versioning major release as part of our continuous release process. The main focus is on improvements the platform, where these improvements require changes to our public API. It also includes new features for merchandisers based on the included changes we made in the Catalog system and API.</p>
<h3>Merchandising improvements</h3>
<p>In the Catalog Manager UI, a new "sort mode" feature lets you change the sort order (the ranking) of items in a category. After clicking the sort mode button, you select one or more items then drag and drop them to the new location. This position is independent for each category association.</p>
<p><img alt="" src="/link/4392b8d94a874031b8f17a12190b47d9.aspx" height="329" width="802" /></p>
<p>For each catalog entry, you can now assign one primary category and any number of additional categories. They appear on the product's "Categories" and "Belongs to" views.</p>
<p><img alt="" src="/link/86f05d3ee766407385a0e0dd4544788d.aspx" height="413" width="802" /></p>
<p>The primary category is the product's home location, which means that the product is located in this category. If a product's URL is based on the Name in URL property, the URL uses the primary category path. If you move a product, its primary category changes, and its URL changes accordingly.</p>
<h3>API Improvements</h3>
<ul>
<li>73 bug fixes (public bugs listed on the <a title="Commerce 11 release notes" href="/link/76974ad8d2a84c1b989ad0ac453ab663.aspx?versionFilter=11.0.0&packageFilter=EPiServer.Commerce&typeFilter=All">Commerce 11 release notes</a>).</li>
<li>Supporting return order form in new order system APIs.</li>
<li>Improved redirection support for payment providers.</li>
<li>Catalog import performance and testability.</li>
<li>The default implementation of IPriceService automatically optimizes prices, so the lowest unit price for same market, currency and minimum quantity is selected. This change allows a merchandiser to easily change the way in which selected prices are saved, without having to implement the IPriceService interface.</li>
<li>VNext activity flows are now default. Legacy ones can be enabled by feature switch.</li>
<li>Uplifted the minimum supported .NET version from 4.5 to 4.5.2 and MVC version to 5 and above.</li>
<li>Remove <a title="Commerce 11 breaking changes" href="/link/e2af3d1925564abeb40482c82819328a.aspx">legacy areas of our API including</a>:<br />- /nSoftware<br />- Legacy asset system<br />- Obsoleted APIs that are expired<br />- Removes ApplicationID to simplify APIs use</li>
</ul>
<h3>Related topics</h3>
<p>Previously published information about Commerce 11:</p>
<ul>
<li><a title="Planned breaking changes in Commerce" href="/link/97f214e7f280414fa4c1eceba0cbaaab.aspx">Planned breaking changes in Commerce</a></li>
<li><a title="Follow-up on planned breaking changes in Commerce" href="/link/c5d79f4e5e4e462eb2df4c8aa872df79.aspx">Follow-up on planned breaking changes in Commerce</a></li>
</ul>
<p>About the Episerver continuous release process:</p>
<ul>
<li><a title="Episerver continuous release process" href="/link/d0fb45fcfe7e4d2e875444b6ca2cce2b.aspx">Episerver continuous release process</a></li>
<li><a title="Episerver releases" href="/link/9a42064c97f54ad8a4b76b71afc5c4d9.aspx">Episerver releases</a></li>
</ul>Campaigns and Promotions out of beta/blogs/David-Bowen/Dates/20162/7/campaigns-and-promotions-out-of-beta/2016-07-06T16:34:05.0000000Z<p lang="en-US">Our new Campaigns and Promotions features have been developed with customer involvement to ensure we are enabling them to reach their business goals of increasing revenues. In the latest release on our feed we have removed the beta stamp across this areas, allowing all current and new customers to start benefiting from the new capabilities. </p>
<p lang="en-US">Targeted campaigns and promotions are a great way to increase sales by increasing average order value and units sold, as well as increasing customer loyalty and lifetime value. Marketers and merchandisers can work on campaigns in a collaborative way with other marketers throughout the business; creating, previewing and approving the related customer experience, landing pages and other assets for campaigns.</p>
<p lang="en-US">We have a number of goals with these new features.</p>
<p lang="en-US"> </p>
<p lang="en-US"><strong>Simple User Experience</strong></p>
<p lang="en-US">Our number one objective has been to simplify the job of creating campaigns and promotions. Making it easy for marketers or merchandiser to quickly create the exact discounts they want to offer to a targeted customer base across all regions or targeted to a specific market. Moving away from the common complex rule based configuration, to an easy to understand drag and drop approach that matches a user’s thought process.</p>
<p lang="en-US"><img alt="" src="/link/184c44d43a0749d0be40c5e9da49b6fe.aspx" height="321" width="451" /></p>
<p lang="en-US">We’ve made it easy to create and manage multiple Campaigns across targeted trading markets or other customer groups. Making it easy to manage complex discount priorities and exclusion using a visual drag and drop approach.</p>
<p lang="en-US"> </p>
<p lang="en-US"><strong>Custom Discounts</strong></p>
<p lang="en-US">A number of our customers have unique business models and differentiated offers to their customer base. We have strived to make it super easy to build custom discount and processing approaches to plug into the promotion engine. Allowing you to help businesses maintain their unique marketing campaigns for their customers.</p>
<p lang="en-US">The development of custom discounts is very straightforward using source components as detailed in <a href="/link/2727da202e3943e49d4bde22dc9c0346.aspx">this blog</a>.</p>
<p lang="en-US"> </p>
<p lang="en-US"><strong>Campaign Features</strong></p>
<p>There are a number of new capabilities and the most common discount types are included out of the box including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Create and manage Campaigns</li>
<li>Target Campaigns to specific Visitor Groups</li>
<li>Link promotional content to discounts</li>
<li>Automatically evaluate customer eligible discounts</li>
<li>Percentage or multiple value amount discounts</li>
<li>Category, Product, SKU, Bundles or Product selections</li>
<li>Order value</li>
<li>Shipping costs</li>
<li>Free gift selections</li>
<li>Buy multiple get free items (cheapest or most expensive)</li>
<li>Fixed price selections</li>
<li>Multi-buy</li>
<li>Promo code eligibility </li>
</ul>
<p>More features will be added through our continuous release process. Please get in touch with feedback.</p>Commerce Reference Architecture/blogs/David-Bowen/Dates/2015/8/commerce-reference-architecture/2015-08-21T11:27:09.8730000Z<p>We have created a new reference architecture to help guide new solution development with best-practice approaches for digital commerce solutions built on our Commerce platform. This includes sample approaches for handling catalog items when marketers drag them into content areas and create editorial experiences.<br /><br />Called Quicksilver, this is a great starting point to kick start new projects, the solution includes the following features:</p>
<ul>
<li>Streamlined solution allowing you to easily extend and develop on a strong, clean base for EPiServer Commerce</li>
<li>Latest MVC architectural approaches and sample unit tests</li>
<li>Easy deployment into the EPiServer Digital Experience Cloud environments</li>
<li>Modular feature structure allowing features to be picked out of the solution</li>
<li>Multi-market implementation with appropriate languages and currencies</li>
<li>Sample fashion catalog to demonstrate structure and templates</li>
<li>Simple one page checkout process</li>
</ul>
<p>Download the solution from here - <a href="https://github.com/episerver/Quicksilver">https://github.com/episerver/Quicksilver</a></p>
<p>Please provide feedback on the GitHub solution for any issues or ideas for enhancements.</p>Updated EPiServer Commerce Modules/blogs/David-Bowen/Dates/2012/5/Updated-EPiServer-Commerce-Modules/2012-05-04T13:35:16.0000000Z<p>We have just released updated EPiServer Commerce modules. These modules provide source code for key areas allowing you to quickly integrate to payment providers and customize the business logic of your solution.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Workflow Samples</strong> </p> <p>This package contains the source code for out of the box workflows and the activity library, including:</p> <ul style="width: 366px; height: 457px"> <li><strong>OrderSystemWorkflow</strong> – Windows Workflow Sequential Workflows that are used in the website checkout process and the order admin section, including: <ul style="width: 486px; height: 117px"> <li>Cart Prepare </li> <li>Cart Validate </li> <li>Cart Checkout </li> <li>Purchase Order Recalculate </li> <li>Return Form Complete </li> <li>Return Form Recalculate </li> </ul> </li> <li><strong>ActivityLibrary</strong> – Windows Workflow Activities that are used in the order workflows including:  <ul> <li>Cart Activities – Adjust Inventory, Process Handling, Process Payment, Record Promotion Usage and Shipment Split </li> <li>Order Group – Calculate Discounts, Calculate Tax, Calculate Totals, Capture Payment, Check Inventory, Process Shipment, Remove Discounts and Validate Line Items </li> <li>Purchase Order – Calculate Purchase Order Status </li> <li>Return Form – Calculate Exchange Order Status, Calculate Return Form Status, Calculate Return Form Tax, Calculate Return Form Totals and Create Exchange Payment </li> </ul> </li> </ul> <p><strong>Catalogue Indexer</strong> </p> <p>This is used when catalog data has been added to the database directly rather through the API or EPiServer. This tool indexes the catalog data into a serialised meta-information column to increase the performance when loading data for display on the web site.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Payment Service Providers</strong></p> <p>We have developed integration to leading PSPs and have made available the source code of these integrations:</p> <ul> <li>DIBS </li> <li>Klarna </li> <li>DataCash </li> <li>PayPal </li> </ul> <p><strong></strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Solr Search Provider</strong></p> <p>This sample module includes the source code for the Solr search provider. This can be used to replace the out of the box Lucene search to take advantage of the features and scalability of Solr in your solution.</p> <p> </p> <p>All of these modules are available for download on World <a href="http://world.episerver.com/Download/Categories/Products/EPiServer-Commerce/">here</a>.</p> <p> </p> <p>Get in touch with me if you have any feedback.</p>EPiServer Commerce Service Pack/blogs/David-Bowen/Dates/2012/3/EPiServer-Commerce-Service-Pack/2012-03-30T15:06:16.0000000Z<p>We have released Service Pack 2 for Commerce 1 R2, it is now available on World. This release contains a large number of bug fixes for the Commerce product, the installation process and the Enoteca sample site. It also includes five new discount types that e-commerce businesses can start to use for promotions:</p> <ol> <li>Charge Discount For Order Volume by Shipping Type</li> <li>Charge Discount For Order Volume for Any Shipping Type</li> <li>Buy SKU from Category X Get Discount Off Shipment</li> <li>Buy X Get Discount Off Shipment</li> <li>Fixed Shipping Charge For A Particular Method and Order</li> <li>Volume</li> </ol> <p>You can read more about the release and the issues that have been fixed here: <br /><a href="http://world.episerver.com/Documentation/Items/Release-Notes/EPiServer-Commerce/Release-Notes---EPiServer-Commerce-1-R2-SP2/">http://world.episerver.com/Documentation/Items/Release-Notes/EPiServer-Commerce/Release-Notes---EPiServer-Commerce-1-R2-SP2/</a></p>EPiServer Acquires Business of e-Commerce Solution Provider, Mediachase/blogs/David-Bowen/Dates/2012/3/EPiServer-Acquires-Business-of-e-Commerce-Solution-Provider-Mediachase/2012-03-05T09:27:11.0000000Z<h3><font style="font-weight: normal"></font></h3> <p>You may have already seen the news about our recent acquisition. This is great news for both EPiServer and Mediachase. It will allow us to advance the EPiServer Commerce product at a faster pace and quickly meet market demands.</p> <p> </p> <p>EPiServer Commerce will become more aligned with the developer and user experiences of the CMS product. The user interface will become consistent with the CMS product, improving the usability. The developer API for Commerce will adopt approaches consistent with the CMS product, making development more straightforward.</p> <p> </p> <p>As well as improving the product experience, more features will be added to meet the demands of a changing market. EPiServer Commerce will be an even more compelling offer for businesses around the world selling through digital channels.</p> <p> </p> <p>Read what Bob (our VP of Product Management and Global Marketing) has to say about the acquisition here:</p> <p><a href="http://www.episerver.com/About-Us/Our-blogs/E-commerce/Welcome-aboard-Mediachase-team-/" target="_blank">http://www.episerver.com/About-Us/Our-blogs/E-commerce/Welcome-aboard-Mediachase-team-/</a></p> <p> </p> <p>Read more about the acquisition here:</p> <p><a href="http://www.episerver.com/About-Us/Press-Room/Press-Releases/EPiServer-Acquires-Business-of-e-Commerce-Solution-Provider-Mediachase-/" target="_blank">http://www.episerver.com/About-Us/Press-Room/Press-Releases/EPiServer-Acquires-Business-of-e-Commerce-Solution-Provider-Mediachase-/</a></p>EPiServer Commerce Source Packages/blogs/David-Bowen/Dates/2011/1/EPiServer-Commerce-Source-Packages/2011-01-12T12:59:51.0000000Z<p>If you are developing a site based on EPiServer Commerce then you should know about these code sample packages that can be downloaded from world.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Commerce Code Samples</strong></p> <p>This package contains the source code for the areas of EPiServer Commerce that can be customised. The solution package contains the following projects:</p> <ul> <li><strong>ActivityLibrary</strong> – Windows Workflow Activities that are used in the order workflows. </li> <li><strong>OrderWorkflow</strong> – Windows Workflow Sequential Workflows that are used in the website checkout process and the order admin section. </li> <li><strong>PaymentGateways</strong> – Payment provider source code for the default providers. </li> <li><strong>ShippingGateways</strong> – Shipping provider source code for the default providers. </li> <li><strong>WebUtility</strong> – Helper classes that can be customised. These include common operations performed against the Commerce sub-systems. </li> </ul> <p>This package can be downloaded <strong><a title="Commerce Code Samples" href="http://world.episerver.com/Download/Items/EPiServer-Commerce/EPiServer-Commerce-10-SP1/EPiServer-Commerce-Workflow-and-Provider-Integration-Samples/" target="_blank">here</a></strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Catalogue Indexer</strong></p> <p>This is used when catalog data has been added to the database directly rather through the API or the Commerce Manager. This tool indexes the catalog data into a serialised meta-information column to increase the performance when extracting data for display on the web.</p> <p>This package can be downloaded <strong><a title="Catalogue Indexer" href="http://world.episerver.com/Download/Items/EPiServer-Commerce/EPiServer-Commerce-10-SP1/EPiServer-Commerce-Catalog-Indexer" target="_blank">here</a></strong></p> <p> </p> <p>Get in touch with me if you have any feedback.</p>