News Digest - May 2023

[Maria-Volkova-Tula]

This post introduces Virto Storefront and Platform enhancements as of May 2023.

Today’s highlights are:

• Adding digital products to cart.
• Creating and editing headers and footers via XApi.
• UI kit color pallette.
• Serilog integration.
• YAML support for OpenAPI 3 and Swagger UI.
• Task application.
• Personal coupons.

Virto Storefront

The following improvements have been introduced:

• Autosuggest has been added to all country search fields, which is useful for global projects.
  

  

• Adding all the items from wishlists to cart with just one button is now possible.
  

  

  If your wishlist contains out-of-stock items, you will be notified that they have not been added to cart.
  

  

• Digital products can now be added to cart and paid for just like physical products.
  

  

  Choosing digital product’s variations is also possible now.
  

  

  If the cart contains only digital products, the shipping step is skipped automatically during checkout.
  If both digital and physical products have been added to cart, the shipping step appears automatically.

• Headers, footers, and main menu can now be created and edited via XApi.
  

  

• Color pallette for UI kit has been introduced.
  

  
  
  See the kit.

View the enhancements on public demo site

Read more and install Storefront

Platform

• Integration with Serilog logger has been implemented. This is useful to track and debug events that occur within an e-commerce store. By logging information such as user actions, errors, and performance metrics, developers can gain insights into how the system is performing and identify areas for improvement.

  Read more and install platform integrated with Serilog - version 3.304.0 and higher.

  Previously pre-installed AppInsights used for logging and telemetry is now a separate module.
  Read more and install Azure Application Insights module.

  After installation, you must update XApi module to the latest version.

• Health checkpoint is now available at https://vcst-demo-storefront.paas.govirto.com/storefrontapi/health to check platform availability and connection.

  {
      "Platform connection health": {
          "Data": {}
          "Description": "Connection to the Platform is OK",
          "Duration": "00:00:00.0000313",
          "Exception": null,
          "Status": "Healthy",
          "Tags": [
              "PlatformConnection"
          ]
      }
  }
  

• Login page has been updated.

  

  It supports mobile-first approach and includes customizable single sign-on buttons.

  

  Install platform with the redesigned login page.

• YAML support for OpenAPI 3 and Swagger UI has been added to easily define and manage API documentation in a human-readable format. The platform now supports both JSON and YAML formats simultaneously.
  Install platform with YAML support.

• Tasks application for employees has been released. Task management is a productivity feature for creating task lists for stores and tracking status by store or worker.

  

Read more and download Tasks application.

Orders

• Order line items statuses have been added. Statuses are set in the Settings section.
  

  

• Refund documents processing function has been added.
  

  

Read more and install the Orders module.

Catalog

Toggle switches have been edited to process the remaining stock.

• Visible shows if the product is sold out.
• Can be purchased shows if the product is out of stock.
• If the Track inventory switch is on, the inventory is tracked by the Inventory module. If the Track inventory switch is off, the product is considered available. For digital products, the track inventory switch is off by default.

The Availability field has been added to the Index document. It can now be used to filter items in stock.

Read more and install the Inventory module.

Read more and install the Search module.

Read more and install the Catalog module.

Marketing

An option to work with personal coupons has been added. In the picture below you can see that a coupon can now be assigned to a specific organization. This feature enables issuing gift cards as well.

Read more and install the Marketing module.

Documents

New instructions have been added:

• DB Agnostic.
• How to debug the platform and modules without source code.
• Maintenance task for SQL.
• Creating a New Refund document.
• Handling concurrency conflicts.
• Simplified Integration via CSV file

New article Virto Commerce Architecture Guidline has been written.