Highlights of Version 7 Feature Pack 8
New features available with WebSphere Commerce Version 7 Feature Pack 8 include:
In
June 2015, the following documentation and features were added to Feature Pack 8:
After
the initial release of Feature Pack 8, the following features were added:
Aurora starter store enhancements for both B2B direct and consumer direct business models, business user enhancements, Data Load utility enhancements, and more.
In
June 2015, the following documentation and features were added to Feature Pack 8:- Enhanced WebSphere Commerce search capabilities for the managed configuration, Index Load, and search index lifecycle.
- Enhanced Data Load utility support for loading marketing data.
- Improved data extraction capabilities for the Data Extract utility.
- Documented a new method to provide robust failover protection and maintain high availability by deploying a dual cell environment.
After
the initial release of Feature Pack 8, the following features were added:- Improved flexibility to generate SEO friendly URLs
- Improved search configuration and deployment automation
- Standardized deployment option for Softlayer that uses the next generation Pure Application patterns
- Optimized prices based on IBM Omni-Channel Merchandising by using an automated price upload capability to WebSphere Commerce
- Supported integration with IBM Sterling Order Management Version 9.4
Single storefront for B2B direct and consumer direct sites
The Aurora starter store is enhanced with B2B capabilities that include requisition lists, multiple saved orders, product entitlement, contract pricing, organization, and buyer registration, and more. The Aurora storefront provides the following extra benefits:- A consistent and functionally rich customer experience for both
B2B direct and consumer direct stores that use:
- The Commerce Composer tool in Management Center, to give business users greater control over page creation and design tasks.
- WebSphere Commerce search for advanced search-based merchandising.
- Companion assets, including use cases, wireframes, and static HTML pages, to help expedite solution delivery at a lower cost.
- An enhanced user experience for administrators from buying organizations, who can now manage their buyers and organizations directly in the storefront. Buyer administrators can also perform specific tasks on behalf of buyers, including requisition list management and order submission.
- Access to validated prebuilt integrations to third-party services and solutions from a wide range of partners. Integrations include partner widgets that are designed for Commerce Composer and B2B-specific integrations.
Expanded REST API services
The WebSphere Commerce REST API is expanded in Feature Pack 8 to include the following enhancements:- Support for more consumer direct functions in the Aurora starter store, such as the use of alternative web UI technologies for storefront presentation.
- Introduce B2B-specific functions in the Aurora starter store.
- A consistent approach for partner widgets that are designed for Commerce Composer to interact with the WebSphere Commerce server.
- Support for JSON and XML response formats by default.
Learn more...A live version of
the WebSphere Commerce REST API is available by using the Swagger
UI. It is composed of a set of static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that
dynamically documents the available REST API on the WebSphere Commerce
test server. Learn more...
The ProductViewHandler
REST API is enhanced so that it can retrieve only the merchandising
associations for a catalog entry that match a specific merchandising
association type. Learn more...
WebSphere Commerce search
Feature Pack 8 enhances WebSphere Commerce search in the following areas:
Enhanced SEO parameters to specify how to substitute
strings in generated URLs. InvalidName specifies the strings that must be
changed, and fixedName specifies the substitution strings to use instead. Learn more...
Price indexing and facets:
- WebSphere Commerce search builds calculated prices into the search index, so that a B2B storefront can use the indexed price mode to support contract-based pricing based on calculated prices.
- The storefront displays facet values based on the selected contract. Asset stores can either share prices, or use different prices for Extended Sites based on the selected pricing model.
- You can index large catalog data into the search server with parallel preprocessing and distributed indexing by sharding and merging.
- Data can be split either horizontally or vertically into different threads, so that each thread can process smaller chunks of the data. This approach is useful when the catalog size is large, or when preprocessing and indexing times are not acceptable.
- Business users can create rule-based sales categories that use WebSphere Commerce search to find
catalog entries that match defined search conditions. The matching catalog entries are automatically
assigned to the categories. Rule-based sales categories can also be updated automatically.
For more information about rule-based sales categories, see Rule-based sales categories.
- Site Administrators can group products in search results.
- Grouping products in search results allows you to aggregate the search results, and display accurate price ranges and facet counts based on the matched entitled items.
- The auto-suggest menu uses the SiteContentHandler REST service to apply entitlement and catalog filter rules when offering search suggestions.
- Updated to Apache Solr 4.7.0.
Feature
Pack 8 further enhances WebSphere Commerce search:- Setting up WebSphere Commerce search in a clustered production environment reduces complexity of
the following tasks:
- Initially setting up the search index in a clustered environment, including configuring replication.
- Adding more languages or new master catalog index cores in a clustered environment.
- Setting custom Solr properties, such as caching values, and preserving them after you apply fixes.
- Adding more search node members into a search cluster.
- The managed configuration is introduced as a new search deployment mode. It is a variation of
the advanced configuration, but contains streamlined configuration tasks, where all managed
production Solr cluster members are federated and managed by a deployment manager.The managed configuration contains the following characteristics:
- The search index setup utility includes an extra action and accepts an input property file. Using the new action and property file helps set up more managed search templates for each server type. For example, master, repeater, or subordinate.
- WebSphere Application Server tools are used to deploy the managed search templates into the deployment manager.
- The managed templates are synchronized to all Solr cluster members, so that search configuration changes are streamlined when updates are promoted to production.
- Only the production cluster's primary node needs to be updated with search changes; then, the changes can be replicated to all nodes. For example, you can set up the search index in the master node, and then replicate the index structure to all the subordinate cluster nodes. This task is beneficial when there are many subordinate nodes or many language indexes to be set up.
- The managed repeater and subordinates can perform index check
validation to ensure data integrity of the search index.
- Index Load improves indexing performance when indexing data such as contract prices into an extension index. It is an indexing service that uses the Data Load framework to load data in parallel into one or more search extension indexes. For more information, see Index Load.
- The index lifecycle flow is enhanced to perform specific operations after verifying the integrity of the search index. For more information, see Search index verification.
- The search index can be set up to optionally apply features provided by interim fixes. For more information, see Additional steps for WebSphere Commerce search interim fixes: Setting up the search index.
- The search index can be preprocessed without dropping the temporary tables. Instead, the temporary tables can be truncated. For more information, see Preprocessing the WebSphere Commerce search index data.
Business user tool enhancements
In the Catalogs tool,
a Category Manager
or Product Manager can...
- Create rule-based sales categories that use WebSphere Commerce
search to find catalog entries that match defined search conditions.
The matching catalog entries are automatically assigned to the categories.
Rule-based sales categories can also be updated automatically. Learn more...
- Find catalog entries to assign to a single sales category quickly
by defining search conditions. Learn more...
- Create sales categories quickly by adding catalog entries to multiple
sales categories simultaneously. Learn more...
- View the catalog entries that are assigned a specific attribute
dictionary attribute by reviewing the References tab for the attribute
dictionary attribute. Learn more...
In the Marketing tool, a Marketing Manager or Marketing
Director can...
- Export and download customer segment information, such as the
email addresses of all customers in a segment. Learn more...
- Configure marketing activities to target customers who are viewing
catalog entries that have specific attributes. Learn more...
- Override the maximum file size limit for
marketing content associated assets. A file size limit can exist to
prevent users from associating large assets with content that displays
on frequently viewed pages. Learn more...
Administrators can configure the file size limit in the marketing component configuration file for the different MIME (file) types that can be used as a marketing content associated asset.
Learn more...
In the Promotions tool, a Marketing Manager can...
- Prevent promotions from displaying in the main promotions list
by moving the promotions into promotion folders. Learn more...
- Archive inactive promotions to remove the promotions from displaying
in the main promotions list and promotion folders. Learn more...
- Find promotions by using the Advanced Search feature in the Promotions
tool. Learn more...
In the Workspace Management tool, a Workspace Manager
or Task Group Approver can view the change history for a task group
after the task group is approved or canceled. Learn more...
Utilities enhancements
Site administrators can...- Configure the Data Extract utility to
complete the following tasks:
- Extract data for promotions. Learn more...
- Extract data for Commerce Composer widgets,
layouts, layout templates, and pages. Learn more...
- Extract data for marketing activities,
campaigns, content, attachments, customer segments, and e-Marketing
Spots. Learn more...
- Extract data with an SQL-based
data extract for improved performance. The Data Extract utility is
also enhanced to extract data into CSV or XML files for any object
type. Learn more...
- Extract data for promotions.
- Hide passwords from the command line when you are running the
config_ant utility. A password properties file that contains encrypted
passwords can be passed as a parameter when you are running the config_ant
utility. Learn more...
- Configure the Data Load utility to
complete the following tasks:
- Load data for creating marketing
objects, such as activities, campaigns, content, attachments, and
e-Marketing Spots. Learn more...
- Configure the Data Load utility to
run as a scheduled job. Administrators can configure this job with
the WebSphere Commerce Administration Console. Learn more...
- Compare files by the values in each column instead of by full
records when the utility is completing a file difference preprocess.
Administrators can also configure the file difference preprocessor
to ignore specific columns when the process is comparing files. Learn more...
- Load promotions. Learn more...
- Create promotion folders, and sort promotions into the promotion
folders. Learn more...
- Create customer segments by loading a list of customer email addresses. Learn more...
- Use an update mode for loading changes to catalog entry information.
This update mode compares catalog entry data in an input file with
the corresponding catalog entry data in the database. The utility
then replaces or adds data for only the columns that are specified
in the input file. All other columns remain unchanged. Learn more...
- Mark categories for delete instead of explicitly deleting the
categories. Learn more...
- Reuse assigned values when the same value is needed for multiple
catalog entries. By sharing attribute assigned values across catalog
entries, you can reduce the number of duplicate values that are created
in the database. Learn more...
Enterprise Marketing Management enhancements
Store and site developers can integrate WebSphere Commerce with IBM Digital Data Exchange (DDX) to simplify collecting customer
shopping behavior data. With this integration, customer behavior data can be collected once with
existing WebSphere Commerce analytics tags and then sent to DDX. DDX can then relay the data to IBM Digital Analytics, and other IBM
and third-party analytics providers. To integrate with DDX, enable the integration for
WebSphere Commerce. Then, configure DDX. You do not need to add any
new analytics tags to store pages. Learn
more...
The integration between IBM Digital Analytics and WebSphere Commerce is
enhanced so that site administrators can...
- Configure default values for an analytics provider that apply
to all stores that are associated with the analytics provider. By
setting site-level default values, you can quickly configure multiple
stores to use the same analytics provider settings. Learn more....
- Reload the analytics integration configuration file for testing
configuration changes. By creating a reload file, you can quickly
test changes to the analytics provider configuration for store or
site. Learn more...
Enhanced IBM Sterling Configurator integration
Feature Pack 8 simplifies and accelerates the configuration of complex products by using predefined configurations. Predefined configurations:- Enable business users to set up multiple predefined configurations and give entitlement to specific customers.
- Are indexed for faceted search and navigation.
- Enable configuration-based pricing and price integration.
- Support localization.
Additionally, Feature Pack 8 supports integration between WebSphere Commerce, Sterling Order Management, and Sterling Configurator. This integration enables end-to-end processing of dynamic kits. Learn more...
WebSphere Commerce Patterns
Use WebSphere Commerce Patterns 2.1 with IBM PureApplication System V2.1, IBM PureApplication Software V2.1, or the IBM PureApplication Service V2.1 to deploy a virtual machine with WebSphere Commerce Enterprise Version 7, Feature Pack 8, and Fix Pack 9 installed.
Leverage
WebSphere Commerce Patterns to quickly deploy a virtual environment,
and simplify and optimize ongoing WebSphere Commerce administration
or maintenance activities. WebSphere Commerce Patterns can provide
the following advantages:
- Fast and easy deployment of WebSphere Commerce
- Simplified deployment topologies
- You can manage multitier environments (application servers, database servers, and web servers) as a single entity.
- Fine-grained control over initial deployment and lifecycle management
- Ability to monitor resource allocation
- You can also adjust workload capacities during peak usage to ensure that you are using your resources at optimum levels.
- Ability to apply maintenance or roll out new features with minimal downtime
- Extensibility to accommodate changes to requirements or for IBM Business Partners to add new functionality
- Reduction in total cost of operations
Learn more...Integration with IBM Sterling Order Management Version 9.4
Take advantage of the latest order and inventory management capabilities that are offered by Sterling Order Management Version 9.4. In the Aurora starter store, the integration with Sterling Order Management Version 9.4 gives shoppers the ability to cancel orders directly in the storefront. Shoppers no longer require support from a customer service representative.
Learn more...For more information about the capabilities of Sterling Order Management Version 9.4, see IBM Sterling Order Management Version 9.4 Knowledge Center.