R183 System Update - Scheduled to go live January 22nd, 2013

[Jackson_Palmer]

We are announcing a new Business Catalyst release, scheduled to go live on January 22nd, 2013.

Please refer to our official blog post for feature highlights and other major improvements slated for this release.

Minor enhancements and cosmetic improvements

• Grid state persistence - with this release, most of the item lists displayed in the new admin user interface will remember the page and the sorting applied on a list when returning from a detail page
• Edit page properties in the new file manager - when editing a page in the new File Manager, users can now edit the page properties like SEO metadata, workflows, or page visibility
• Updated Email Marketing wizard - we have simplified the email campaign wizard and merged the Type and Details step into a single one, updated the controls for setting up one-off and loyalty campaigns and moved the Email Campaign subject into the content tab
• Secure domain redirects - starting with this release, all sites will have this feature turned on; if you redirect users to external websites, you should add those into the Secure Domain Redirect list
• SPAM improvements - comment workflow emails are no longer sent when a comment is marked as SPAM
• Limit the comment size - Starting with this release we will be limiting the number of characters per comment to 4000
• URL Redirects have been moved from Page Details into Site Settings menu
• Display how many subscribers are into a Secure zone in the secure zone list view
• Renamed Advanced View tab from pages screen into List View and made it default for new sites
• After sending a Campaign, don't show an error when redirected to the Stats tab
• Site Manager > Pages - Advanced view buttons don't have the same height. Might be reproducible in other screens as well.
• Updated styling for Find a Customer link found in some CRM screens
• Updated styling for date picker in filters
• Fixed icons alignment in the left menu + redesign some icons to be more relevant to the menu entry
• Fixed footer spacing in some screens (it's not always the same)
• Page status (draft/live) was sometimes shown in grey
• Table list headers font-size is not the size in specs (all over the UI)
• Consistency improvements for links color (we had 5 different tones of blue, now we have just one as in specs)
• Site Manager > Page Details - Breadcrumb has the correct caption Pages instead of Web Pages
• Web Forms field categories wrap on the second line when the window is resized although the screen is optimized for low resolutions screens.
• Wizard tabs have different colors depending on the screen.

Issues fixed by January release

Issue #	Description
3157574	Updated catalog import to fix an issue causing the import to generate incorrect URLs when more than one sub catalogs were created
3164429	Enforced shipping tax validation to prevent site customers from bypassing the shipping tax payment
3343967	Updated the Site Setting > File Manager to prevent users from creating folders that contain  # in their name
3365127	Fixed an issue on list views that was causing an incorrect datetime sort (was sorting alphabetically by date instead of actual date)
3373342	Fixed an issue that intermittently generated an error when when accessing the BC Toolbox panel, via the   admin console
3377475	Updated secure zone login to prevent an "Secure Zone Access Expired" error being displayed  when trying to log in a secure zone in some cases
3430574	Fixed an issue causing muCommander to corrupt files on upload using SFTP
3430529	Fixed a file system issue that was not preventing SFTP clients from retrieving missing or corrupt files on the remote storage and overwrite the client local files
3428565	Fixed an issue preventing users from connecting to sites on SFTP, using FireFTP
3430571	Fixed some issues causing CuteFTP and muCommander for Mac to corrupt files on   upload
2908470	Updated {tag_recipientfirstname} so that it will render an empty string instead of "Recipient" if first name is empty
2567870	Updated the Dynamic Menu sorting functionality to fix an issue that was causing menu items to intermittently skip a few places
2567955	Fixed an issue causing state tax to not be covered by the gift voucher payments on some   occasions
2567515	Fixed an issue causing the Web App Edit Layout to not populate checkboxes that have   the ampersand & in the name
2753571	Creating a new Free Shipping Type Option hides all other   pre-configured shipping options in front-end for all the sub-domains of a   website
3227500	Fixed "Add RSS channels to a WebPage" and "Get RSS   HTML code" links from the "Actions" dropdown list  in the new admin user interface
3344567	Fixed an issue preventing the get RSS HTML code link from working on the new admin user interface
3220522	Returning URL for DIBS payment gateway blank
3217223	Fixed an issue causing incorrect data to be displayed when using affiliate program tags: {tag_referralslastmonth} and   {tag_referralslastweek}
3343296	Fixed a an issue causing the line item descriptions displayed on a packaing slip layout to be mis-aligned
2801224	Updated tag_productlist sorting. The sortBy parameter can now accept "releasedate" and "expirydate" parameters.  We also added the ability to sort ascending or descending for any sort type. Example: in order to sort by release date ascending, use "releasedate asc". In order to order by expiry date descending use "expirydate desc" or simply "expirydate" which will work as before (dates are descending by default).

Deprecated functionality

• {tag_tellafriend} and {tag_tellafriendurl} will no longer be available for use in email campaigns. Existing campaigns will continue to work as designed.

[Daryl Barnes]

Hi Jackson,

Thanks for the details but you listed it as "May".

Regarding #2801224 and the new parameters for product list sorting, will this be documented and the Dreamweaver BC panel updated?  In general, whenever new tags, modules, and paramenters are available they should be documented in the applicable Quick Reference KnowledgeBase and the Dreamweaver and Admin panels updated to reflect it.  This hasn't always been the case and there is nothing more frustrating than turning down BC clients or providing reduced or hacked functionality when what you need BC to do is actually already doable but just not documented.

Great release though and keep it up!

[Liam Dilley]

Fixed, Easy to run off one of the old posts to do these so that can happen.

In terms of documentaiton - I would hope so but really do not expect it to be up to scratch any time soon if at all, lol. They say they working on it, and let them know when you find issues with it all, but they have a lot on plate to first "get it" (understand what to put down and why and processes to ensure they are implemented) and then apply it to documentation

[Daryl Barnes]

One of the main reasons jQuery became so popular early on is not that it was so much better than rival frameworks, but because it's documentation was so much better.  Organized, easy to understand, great code examples, continuously updated, etc. 

If Business Catalyst wants new people to adopt this platform, much better documentation would go a long way towards that.  The panels in Dreamweaver and the Admin in particular always need to be updated.  It doesn't make sense to offer something like that but it not actually reflect what is possible or have you using functionality that is deprecated. 

Documentation is extremely important.

[Liam Dilley]

I would disagree with that, For a long time even using jQuery the mootools documentation was a lot better.

jQUery did not have the animations but it had everything else very well. Then they improved the animations and more, the people involved also increased its popularity and those and the improvements they still do today and the weight of it (moreover the lack of) has lead it to be the one to use.

But you are also not wrong in the thoughts of the bc docs. That is why I am building my own KB (free to use) for everyone.

[Fubals]

"{tag_tellafriend} and {tag_tellafriendurl} will no longer be available for use in email campaigns."

Can we still use it though, if you hand code it?

[Tarik :: Creativaholic]

Great stuff Jackson,

Is there a particular reason why the Tell a Friend Tag is getting removed from Email Campaigns? is it due to Spam Laws?

The reason I'm asking as there are some clients that provide offerings or discounts to people refering their friends and it is quiet effective "Marketing Wise".

[Liam Dilley]

Issues:

1. The ecommerce Stock attribute beta is live with the bugs reported in beta. Including the main one where if you have products with stock attributes, despite them rendering in the export file you can never import products back into the system because of stock sku features. Deleting all products allows you to upload with all sku information as a work around but on some uploads stocks are reset to 0.

2. Intermintant permission issues creating folders that have same name as web apps.

3. Can not make folders in BC editor (under develop) that are existing web apps

4. If you move a pre existing page via FTP into a new created web app folder and rename it to index.html It will not work. In the admin it has no file extension so you have to add it there.

5. Just had it confirmed by live chat support who replicated it on a demo site. Securezone update details form with custom CRM fields.

CRM fields will render current data but will not update the custom CRM fields in the crm on submission of the form.

[Tarik :: Creativaholic]

Has anyone noticed that some fixes from the last release have been broken again after this release? i.e the Title on Customer Details started showing the Value Number of the Field rather than the Title itself again, with that, I'm sure there are other fixes that have been broken too. Maybe a revision to the last release should be performed again.

[cristinel@adobe]

This bug correction has been indeed reverted soon after the R182 release because some sites were using the IDs that were outputted by the module as input source for JavaScript scripts.

We will release a different implementation of the fix that will imply:

• Addin an output parameter to the module
• Adding two values for this new parameter: id or value
• Default to ID to not break existing websites
• Have partners that need value update their pages so that the module will consider the value {mdodule_title, value}

Best regards,

Cristinel

[Tarik :: Creativaholic]

Thanks Cristinel,

But some kind of notification to let us know about this would've been nice. I think it's fair that you respond to enquiries regarding an issue faster than expected, but it is also fair to let the rest of us know about it. So far we're living with favoring requests over others, but I don't think many of us would live with even ignoring everyone else.

I know this is a slight issue, but can cause a bit of trouble if you have many sites to manage during very busy times to stop everything else and go back to fix all sites again, and also how many of similar situations happened that we don't know of?

Anyway, I don't expect you to respond to this, but a better communication will be appreciated - specially now that you guys are entering a phase with major updates and changes.

Thanks.

[cristinel@adobe]

Hello,

We usually include this type of change in a known issues document that is issued (when the case) right after a release. Sadly, it seems that this item in particular has not been included in the R182 known issues document and we'll fix that.

Kind regards,

Cristinel