Open2b Updates

This page summarizes the most recent updates to Open2b, the e-commerce software for managing online sales.

Version 7.7

Admin

Minimum payable amount: The merchant can now set a minimum payable amount for Payment Methods; they can decide the minimum threshold required for an order to accept a specific payment method (e.g. bank transfer, installment payment, etc.).

In addition, with the new update, the maximum payable amount set by the merchant is now included rather than excluded in the range (e.g. if you want to set €1000 as the maximum payable amount, you now correctly set 1000; with previous versions you had to enter 1001).

New status in the Returns management system: The Completed status is added to the existing statuses Awaiting Approval, Approved, Partially Approved, Canceled, and Rejected. The new status is handled both at the Return level and at the row level (a customer may want to return more than one product).

A Return automatically becomes "Completed" when row status is "Completed", or if it is "Rejected" or "Canceled" but at least one row is "Completed".

Icon customization: The new update significantly improves color selection for attribute value icons: there is no longer just a limited color list, but you can now select colors using a color picker, greatly expanding the available choices.

Pre-2017 fields no longer supported: Starting from version 7.7, support for 2016 fields is removed from Excel import and export of the product catalog.

Enhanced product image upload: You can now upload multiple images at once with a single action instead of selecting them one at a time. The image selection dialog now shows only JPEG files to make selection easier.

For bulk uploading image galleries across multiple products, a dedicated module is still available on request.

Site

Customer requests per order row: Orders now include a feature already present in Quotes: customers can add requests not only in the order Notes field, but also for each individual order row.

Chinese language: Support for Chinese has been added, so it can now be used for all available descriptions (product pages, departments, pages, etc.).

Developers

RequestsContent field: Added to the CartItem type, the RequestsContent string field represents the content of requests for the item.

New API version: With Open2b Commerce Ready 7.7, a new API version is released: v12

Version 7.6

Admin

New Dashboard: The new Open2b Commerce Ready dashboard provides an overview of what's happening in the store.

Sales in progress

This section provides a real-time overview of sales currently being processed. You can monitor the status of orders in progress, check return requests, quotes, and abandoned cart recovery.

News

Stay up to date on the latest e-commerce software features, system updates, and industry news. This section keeps you informed about what can improve your online sales experience.

Sales

In this area, you will find a summary of sales with a report that lets you analyze business performance. You can filter data by specific time periods and get valuable insights to optimize your sales strategy.

Promotions

A section that provides an overview of promotional campaigns, highlighting those close to expiration.

New customers

View and analyze data on new customers acquired. This section lets you track customer growth by filtering data for specific time periods.

Best-selling products

Access a dynamic list of the products generating the most sales in your online store, filtering data for specific time periods. With this information you can quickly identify which items to promote and restock to maximize profits.

New content editor: The content editor for pages, products, departments, etc. has been replaced with a completely new, modern one designed to simplify managing pages, products, and other elements of your website.

City field length extended: The city field for billing and shipping addresses can now contain up to 35 characters (it was 25 in previous versions).

Site

Abandoned cart recovery: The Abandoned Cart Recovery feature has been extended to all Open2b Commerce Ready editions, starting from the Standard Edition, so all customers can use abandoned cart recovery to increase conversion rates and maximize sales.

Developers

New API version: With Open2b Commerce Ready 7.6, a new API version is released: v11

Version 7.5

Admin

Promotions improvement: Promotions management has been enhanced by adding the ability to create promotions based on ordered quantities. In previous versions, promotions could be set with a minimum order to trigger. With 7.5 it is now possible to set a minimum quantity, involving different products as well, enabling many more combinations and new, interesting types. Promotions can now apply not only to a product, but also to specific quantities of a SKU, a product, or multiple different products.

Quantity-based promotions make it possible to apply offers such as percentage discount, fixed discount, or fixed price only when a certain quantity X is added to the cart. This enables, for example, offers like:

Buy X units and pay only Y
Buy X units and get a discount
Buy X units and get a discount on additional quantities
Buy X units and get a discount on the cheapest item

Cart and order updates in the admin: The cart and order views have been extended to support the new promotion type: quantities discounted by quantity-based promotions are always shown on separate but grouped rows, whether for a single SKU, multiple SKUs of the same product, or different products.

Store (Customer side)

Abandoned cart recovery email update: The Abandoned Cart Recovery feature has been extended to leverage this new functionality. It is now possible to send recovery emails containing separate rows for quantity-based promotions. The names of applied promotions that determine the final sale price are also shown.

Cart and order updates on the e-commerce site: As in the Open2b Commerce Ready admin, carts and orders on the customer side have been updated to display multiple rows for a SKU, multiple SKUs of a product, or multiple products grouped in a promotion when one or more quantity-based promotions apply. In addition to splitting rows, the applied promotion names are now shown for greater clarity, which is especially important when multiple promotions apply to the same product.

Version 7.4

Admin

Abandoned cart recovery improvement: The abandoned cart recovery function has been extended. It is now possible to automatically send recovery emails not only to customers placing their first order but also to customers who have ordered before. It was already possible to send the email manually with one click for all registered customers.
A column has also been added to highlight the registered customer name for saved carts.

Promotions improvement: Promotions management has been enhanced by adding the ability to create promotions with hour-based activation, suspension, start, and end. In previous versions, promotions had a start day (with the default start time automatically set to 0:00) and an end day (with the default end time set to 24:00). You can now define a specific start and end time, and also set an intraday activation time window.
From a visual standpoint, the feature is integrated into the latest base templates, but it requires customization for existing graphic templates.

Blog tags: The Blog section has been modernized with a horizontal categorization. You can now create tags to associate with blog posts, providing classification and easier search.
From a visual standpoint, the feature is integrated into the latest base templates, but it requires customization for existing graphic templates.

Shipping by ZIP code: Some locations, even within the same province, are considered remote areas by carriers and therefore require different delivery times and shipping costs, usually longer and higher.
We have added the ability to create ZIP-code-based shipping to differentiate costs for remote areas, which automatically interacts with province-based shipping. If the customer selects a shipping method but then enters a ZIP code marked as remote in the next step, Open2b Commerce Ready will adjust the selected method and update shipping costs accordingly.

Default customer group for registered users: In previous versions, the Main customer group determined which features (public prices, promotions, tax area, prices with or without VAT, etc.) were available to all visitors, both anonymous users and users registering for the first time.
With the new version, the Main customer group defines only the features accessible to non-registered users (i.e. what is visible if the e-commerce site has a public version and is not only reserved to customers), while you can also choose which Customer Group to assign to a customer immediately after registration, granting access to more personalized features such as special prices and promotions.
The merchant can still assign customers to a different Customer Group according to their commercial policies.

Import / Export in XLSX: Both Excel formats for catalog import/export are now supported, XLS and XLSX, so you are free to prepare them in the desired format.

Store

Customer tax area in the cart: In a B2B (Business to Business) context, prices on the site are often shown excluding VAT, with VAT calculated and paid in later stages of the order.
In previous versions of Open2b Commerce Ready, when products were added to the cart, the Customer Group tax area was used, which in some cases differed from the customer's tax area, causing potential misunderstandings as amounts could appear different from one step to the next. Now the registered customer's tax area is applied from the first step of adding products to the cart so the final order total is clear right away.

Stripe and PayPal Checkout for quotes: Stripe payments and the new PayPal Checkout register the order AFTER payment, unlike traditional card payments and PayPal Legacy. In previous Open2b Commerce Ready versions this made it impossible to use these methods for Quotes, because accepting a quote automatically generated an order without intermediate steps.
The new version makes these two methods usable also for orders generated from customer quotes thanks to a dedicated payment section.
From a visual standpoint, the feature is integrated into the latest base templates, but it requires customization for existing graphic templates.

€ symbol: When the Euro currency and Italian language are set, the € symbol is now displayed after the price to match international standards.

API

With version 7.4 of Open2b Commerce Ready, a new API version is released: V9. You can consult the Developer site for technical details.

Version 7.3

Store

PayPal Checkout: The old PayPal payment system, i.e. the button shown after payment, is now deprecated. In this new version, the new PayPal Checkout system is available as an additional module on request. As with Stripe, the customer pays before the order is completed and the order is created only if payment succeeds.

New Valentine template: Available in the Template Store with the update to version 7.3, this is a complete template with features designed to easily move from B2C to B2B, including filter management, slideshow, product sheets with or without SKU lists, etc.

SEO indexing improvement: Search engine indexing has been further improved, benefiting stores with a large number of pages, such as those that heavily use navigation filters.

Another advantage is that this feature avoids overloading the server and makes the site even faster.

Template

New variables: Added the shippings and payments variables; these let you customize payment and shipping method selection more effectively. For example, you can exclude certain payment or shipping methods directly from the template based on your criteria.

New functions: Added the sendMail and isMailAddress functions. In previous versions, sending an email from the site required an external app. With the new sendMail function, you can send emails with attachments without external apps. The isMailAddress function supports sendMail by verifying that an email address (e.g. provided by a customer) is valid.

New Scriggo version: The Scriggo template system has been updated to the latest version. Several new features useful for building templates were added.

Admin

Batch edit of all SKU prices for a product: If a product has multiple SKUs with the same prices, you can now change all prices at once from the product page instead of editing each SKU individually.

This makes it much easier to manage products with multiple SKUs and the same price.

Create returns from the customer page: On a customer's page in the admin, in addition to orders and other documents, you can now see the customer's returns and create a new return immediately.

More customer groups displayed: The customer group list now shows twice as many groups, making it easier to manage when you have many groups.

Version 7.2

March 2022

Stripe

The new integration allows accepting credit card payments through Stripe. Buyers can enter their credit card directly during checkout without leaving the store, in complete security. The order will be created only if the payment succeeds.

Additional module available in all editions.

Collections

Collections are a more sophisticated way to present products to selected customers (individuals or specific groups), for example to meet reserved or exclusive agreements or to reward loyal customers with special offers, preview catalogs, dedicated pages, and more.

You can create Catalog collections and Additional collections. Catalog collections determine the product catalog seen by customers, while Additional collections allow customers to access extra product collections only after registration, reserved for them.

Included in Advanced B2B and Enterprise editions.

Abandoned cart recovery

The new abandoned cart recovery system lets you automatically email customers when they have started an order but not completed it. The email allows them to resume checkout later and complete the order.

Emails can be sent to customers both automatically and manually from the admin. The email is sent both to unregistered customers who left their email address and to registered customers who have not yet completed the order.

Included in Advanced B2B and Enterprise editions.

Batch API

Batch is the new programming API that makes it easier to build procedures and applications that read the product catalog. It enables faster catalog exports, integrations with resellers, and publishing products to comparison sites and marketplaces.

Included in all editions.

SKU dimensions

For each SKU you can now specify dimensions such as width, height, and depth. They can be shown on the product page and are importable from Excel files.

B2B price preview

In B2B editions, the admin now shows a preview of prices on the site, as already happens for B2C editions.

2 additional languages

For Advanced and Advanced B2B editions you can now add two additional languages to the site. Therefore, the maximum number of languages increases from 6 to 8 for these editions.

Facebook login

The new Facebook login system lets customers log in and register for the store using their Facebook account.

Rejected returns no longer allowed

Customers are no longer allowed to return products that were previously rejected.

Unlimited products

Standard and Standard B2B editions no longer have limits on the number of products. Limits were 1,000 products for Standard and 5,000 for Standard B2B.

Filter navigation

The Standard B2B edition now also includes filter navigation, previously available only in Advanced editions.

Other updates

You can assign a code to tax areas and shipping methods to identify them.
Quotes in the admin can be sorted by due date.
The email sent to the merchant as order confirmation now includes the site name.
If you add a file to the template currently applied to the site, you can associate it to a page in the admin under "Website > Pages" without first reapplying the template to the site.
For payment methods, you can now specify the VAT class even when they have no payment fee.

Templates

The following are all the updates introduced in templates:

Added the collections variable with the list of the customer's additional collections and the new collection.html system page for a single collection.
Added the buttonOrder variable to checkout-methods.html to complete the order immediately without an extra step.
Added the cart variable to checkout-addresses.html and checkout-methods.html to show the cart summary.
Added the Width, Height, and Depth fields to the Item type.
Added the departmentByID variable to access department information by ID.
Added the form variable to read parameters sent to the page via POST and query string.
Added the Time type and related functions to measure and display dates and time.
Added the Pay field to the PaymentMethod type to allow payment on the checkout-methods.html page.
Updated the languages variable to access fields for each site language.
Updated the currencies variable to access fields for each site currency.
Added the URL field to the Department type with the department canonical URL.
Added the Parent method to the Department type to access a department's parent.
Added the parent variable to department.html representing the parent department.
Added the resources variable with the list of resources for the current page.
Added the buttonPrint variable to return-confirmation.html to print the return request.
Supported Scriggo default expressions.
Supported the Scriggo using statement.
Added the order shipping address via the JavaScript variable Open2b.order.shippingAddress on the checkout-confirmation.html page.
Removed the HTML type from templates. You can use the html type instead.

API v8

In addition to the new Batch API, the following updates were introduced in the new v8 API:

Added the new Storefront method storefront.login-with to let customers log in via Facebook.
Added the products field to commerce.attribute-values.update to assign an attribute value to products and added products to commerce.attribute-values.get to read products with a specific attribute value.
Added the code field to tax areas.
Added the code field to shipping methods.
Added methods commerce.collections.find, commerce.collections.get, commerce.collections.count, commerce.collections.create, commerce.collections.update and commerce.collections.delete to manage collections.
Added the collection field to customer groups to assign the product collection a group can see.
Added the collection field to customers to assign the collection a customer should see if different from their group's.
Added the collections field to customers to assign additional collections to a customer.

Version 7.1

March 2021

Highlights

Order confirmation and quote request emails for the merchant are now sent in HTML format.
Added a setting (enabled from the database) to sort products, as a secondary sort, from most recently created to least recently created.
If captcha is enabled, it is now always added to the registration page.
The first page a user sees in the store, whether the home page or not, is now served faster by using cache when available. This also makes site speed tests more accurate, because pages were previously never served from cache in those tests.
TLS is now supported for sending emails. You can use SMTP servers that require TLS. Open2b can now automatically detect whether the SMTP server supports TLS and use it accordingly.

Template

Added the new cookie consent system, which makes collecting consent for cookies easier.
- Added the JavaScript function Open2b.cookieConsent to track consent to tracking.
- Added a new system to pre-block code such as scripts and images, with asynchronous reactivation when the user gives consent.
The personalCode variable now always shows the tax code field even when it is not required.
Added the lang variable to templates for the current language. Previously it was available only when the ParanoidSEO option was enabled.
Menu.Title and items in Menu.Items now have type MenuItem instead of html. This makes it easy to read the text and URL of a menu item.
Added the new variables merchantReviews and merchantReviewsCount, available on all pages, to show store reviews.
Added the ID field to the Breadcrumb type for the department, manufacturer, or attribute value identifier.
Added the global functions splitAfter and splitAfterN.
Added the global function regexp with the new Regexp type to run searches on strings with regular expressions.
Added support for JavaScript modules. Now <script type="module">{{ v }}</script> displays v accounting for its JavaScript context.
The render operator can now be used wherever an expression is allowed.
Added a new form of the render operator that does not return an error if the file to render does not exist in the template.

Admin SDK

Added the version field to the value returned by Admin.getInfo with the Open2b version.

Apps

Updated the Cookie Policy, Google Analytics, Shinystat, Skype, SmartSupp, and Facebook Plugins apps to use the new cookie-consent tracking system.

Things to know before updating

Templates in the old 2013 and 2015 formats are no longer supported. New templates built in Scriggo are supported.
Site page URLs can no longer have the ".html" extension.
Snippets no longer have the landingPage field. This means if an app used that field to render HTML only when it was the first page viewed by the user, the code will now always be shown. Use the new cookie consent system instead.
If the "tax code" field is not required for individuals or companies, it is now still shown on the site.

Things to do after updating

If you use the Cookie Policy, Google Analytics, Shinystat, Skype, SmartSupp, and Facebook Plugins apps, open each of these apps and click "Save".

Version 7.0

October 2020

Powerful new engine

Over the last two years we have completely rewritten the engine that powers your e-commerce site to give customers a smooth browsing and purchasing experience. Site pages load up to 3 times faster, resulting in a fast and enjoyable experience.

Today, browsing speed is more important than ever, both for customers who appreciate fast navigation and for search engines like Google that favor higher-performing sites in SEO.

The codebase has been rewritten from Perl to Go. Designed and developed by Google, Go has established itself in recent years as one of the most appreciated new programming languages and has quickly become the de facto standard for cloud systems.

Scriggo: New template system

The new version 7.0 introduces a powerful new template system called Scriggo, developed internally by Open2b and based on Google's Go programming language. Scriggo brings a real programming language into templates, enabling impressive customization and flexibility combined with ease of use that is unprecedented.

support for macros that can be called from different points in the template
support for arithmetic and logical operators and string operators
definition of variables and constants
definition of functions
if, else, switch, and for constructs
error checking before applying the template to the site
new built-in functions to simplify template creation
new dynamic snippets that call external applications to render code

Brand-new order section on the site

Customers can access their order history through a fully redesigned section of the site that offers easy-to-use, real-time details for orders, shipments, and returns.

From the new section, customers can not only view orders, but also track shipments and initiate returns for products if they wish, according to the rules you set.

They can also quickly reorder individual products or repeat a previous order with a single action.

Shipping management

The new shipping management system lets you associate one or more shipments with an order and assign each one shipment and delivery dates, plus a tracking number and address.

Returns and return request management

The new returns management system, available in Advanced and Advanced B2B editions, lets you define rules under which customers can request returns for one or more ordered items. Depending on the rule settings, return acceptance can be automatic or require merchant approval.

Automatic updates

The new Open2b automatic update system keeps your platform up to date automatically. All minor fixes are applied automatically with no manual intervention and no interruption to the site or your work. More significant updates, such as the addition of new features, are applied automatically after your confirmation directly in the admin.

Storefront API

Storefront API is a new API that greatly simplifies building apps and templates that need to access information and procedures to improve, automate, and reproduce the customer's shopping experience on the site.

Storefront API can be used directly in a template for advanced customization, called from JavaScript in the customer's browser, or used remotely to build catalog publishing apps or mobile applications.

Purchase in multiples

In the Advanced B2B edition, you can now set a SKU so it can be ordered only in multiples of a specific quantity. When the customer adds the SKU to the cart, the quantity is automatically adjusted if needed so it becomes a multiple of the specified value.

Codes increased from 32 to 40 characters

Product and SKU codes have been increased from 32 to 40 characters, improving integrations with external systems such as Amazon.

Customer notification when access is granted

In B2B scenarios, when a customer registers, access to the store to view prices or place orders is often granted later after the merchant's verification. With version 7.0, when access is granted, you no longer need to manually send an email to the customer: a prefilled email opens directly in the admin ready to send.

Prices on the site both VAT included and excluded

You can now show prices on the site both with VAT included and excluded, even when promotions are applied to VAT-included prices.

Things to know before updating

If you have a different domain for the mobile version of the store, in the form "m.mionegozio.it", it will no longer be available with the new version. You should use a responsive template that adapts to mobile, tablet, and desktop.
If you use the "keywords" field in products, departments, pages, etc., switching to a template in the new Scriggo format will make it unavailable: it will no longer be editable and will no longer be displayed on the site. Consider that this field has not been used by search engines for many years, and the only consequence of filling it out is informing competitors which keywords you are investing in for indexing.
Access to the site and admin via HTTP (for example "http://www.mionegozio.it") is no longer available. You can now access only securely via HTTPS (that is, "https://www.mionegozio.it").