News Digest - 31 October 2022

[OlegoO]

Welcome to Our October 2022 News Digest

This post introduces updates for our new documentation portal, Virto Storefront and B2B theme updates, Page Builder anouncement for partners, Contract module updates with dynamic properties and search, XAPI for quotes, default dimensions precision for measurement units, and more.

Today’s Highlights Are

1. New Documentation Portal (Beta Version)
2. Virto Storefront and B2B Theme Updates
3. Page Builder Integration with Virto Storefront
4. Quote Management (Preview)
5. Contract Module Improvements
6. Quote XAPI
7. New Mutations for Profile XAPI

New Documentation Portal (Preview)

We are revamping our documentation portal! Check out its beta version here. Any comments or feedback are welcome.

Virto Storefront and B2B Theme Updates

Virto Team released new versions of Virto Storefront v6.6.0 and B2B Theme 1.12.0.

Note: Public storefront demo is available at this new link https://vcst-demo-storefront.paas.govirto.com/

The release contains new features, improvements, and bug fixes.

Improved My Organisation Management

We improved new scenarios for My Organisation Management. Here is what we added:

The Role filed in the Invite Member form:

The Block/Unblock feature:

Store admin and store manager roles

Company name in the header on desktop:

and Mobile.

UX/UI Improvements

The theme can now show who is logged in as who (supports login on behalf):

The deleted products in the cart, order history, and wish lists are now highlighted:

Other improvements include:

1. Adding the mobile cart icon
2. Better Catalog hierarchy for desktop and mobile
3. A new option to display vendor name on the Product Details page
4. Hover for Language/Currency dropdowns
5. Fixed bugs: Checkout defaults, addresses, images for products, categories in A-Z order in the catalog dropdown, etc.

Page Builder Integration with Virto Storefront

We are proud to present the first release for Page Builder that has native integration with Virto Storefront and Vue B2B Theme.

Page Builder enables creating ecommerce landing pages from blocks and editing them using a visual editor:

At this moment, Page Builder is a private module that is not included in the open source license. You can request early access here.

The release includes:

1. Native Integration with Virto Commerce and Vue B2B Theme
2. Core list of the blocks for landing pages

4 Steps to Create a Landing Page

Here is an example of how landing pages that can help you optimize your ecommerce website.

First, landing pages help capture customer’s specific intent based on what they are actually searching for. These searches can capture any sort of intent, e.g. searches for products, services, information, and more. The relevant landing pages are able to provide specific information that answers the consumer’s question in search.

Second, in digital marketing, a landing page is a standalone web page, created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign.

In this quickstart, you’ll see how to create an ecommerce landing page for Black Friday 2022:

Step 1. Create Design Page in Back Office:

Step 2. Add Content Blocks

Step 3. Add Products Block

Step 4. Publish Page

Quote Management (Preview)

We extended the Vue B2B Theme with Quote Management (Preview). By default, the Quote feature is optional and you can use the Vue B2B Theme without the Quote module.

To activate Quote Management, you need to do the following:

• Install B2B Theme 1.12.0+
• Install Quote Module 3.207+
• Activate Quote feature. Set quotes_enabled: true in theme settings. vc-theme-b2b-vue/settings_data.json at dev · VirtoCommerce/vc-theme-b2b-vue (github.com)

At this moment, Quote Management implements two scenarios:

1. Add cart items to the quote.
2. Quote history page (with search).

Adding Cart Items to Quote

Adding cart items to quote allows you to create a quote request from the cart. You can request quotes for any product, any quantity, and in any state. To do so:

1. Select any products and add them to the cart.
2. Select cart.
3. You should be able to see a new block on the cart page - QUOTE REQUEST
   
4. Click Add Cart Items to Quote to add all items from the cart and create a quote.

Quote History Page

Quote History Page allows reviewing list of your submitted quotes and check quote status.

1. Sign-in and select My Accounts.
2. Select Quotes Request.

Roadmap

In next release we are planning to implement:

1. Theme editor - to support fast branding and theme configuration without developers.
2. More default presets.
3. Ecommerce page editor
4. Layout editor

Contract Module Improvements

Based on partner and customer requests, we continuously add new features to Contract modules. In the 3.203 release, we implemented the following:

Contract Inheritance

You can assign a contract to companies and sub companies, and the departments and employees will inherit contracts and personalized prices from the parent company.

Restore Base Price

You can now restore or revert the personalized price to the base price:

Search

Search helps you find any contract by code, name, and store:

Dynamic Properties

You can enrich any contract entity with custom properties and keep all information in one place. You can also use API to build integration and load a custom contract attribute from third party systems:

Quotes XAPI

Quotes release v3.209.0 brings list of XAPI quierie and mutations:

• quotes quierie: get list of queries.
• quote quierie: get access to query by id.
• createQuoteFromCart mutation.

New mutations for Profile XAPI

We added new mutations for Profile XAPI:

• Add changeOrganizationContactRole mutation
• Add removeMemberFromOrganization mutation
• Add mutations: lockOrganizationContact, unlockOrganizationContact

and improved error message:

XAPI Module Templates

We updated dotnet Virto Commerce module template with the following:

1. New XAPI module template v-module-xapi which are simplify creatation of XAPI (business) modules.
2. Sync references and nuget packages with latest stable release.

To install or update templates, please run the following command:

dotnet new --install VirtoCommerce.Module.Template

To create a new module, run this one:

dotnet new vc-module --ModuleName YourModuleName --Author "YourName" --CompanyName YourCompanyName

To create a new XAPI module, run this:

dotnet new vc-module-xapi --ModuleName YourModuleName --Author "YourName" --CompanyName CompanyName 

You can find more details on GitHub.

Change dimensions precision for Unit Of Measure

We reviewed the Platform, Order, Catalog, Cart, and Core modules and changed the default dimension precision for measurement units to (18,4).

[Dmitriy-Blokhin]

@OlegoO

New Documentation Portal (Preview)

I like it. Everything I need at one place. As I found, there are a lot of updated content in DEV and User sections which look nice and well structured.