New Enterprise Release Packed with Features You Don’t Want to Miss!

Our recent release of Magento Enterprise 1.10, Magento Professional 1.10 and Community edition 1.5 introduced some great new features. Here, we provide a closer look at some of these new features and enhancements including:

Major enhancements to the call center functionalitySupport for newly hosted and secure payment methods with PayPal and Authorize.NetEnhancements to Authorize.Net payment functionalityGift Options

Order Management - Major enhancements to call center functionality and order status

New functionality introduced in the call center module provides transparent control for administrators and frontend enhancements for customers during the shopping process. Changing product configurations, for all types of products, can be done by the call center sale representative on the admin side as well as by the customer throughout the shopping process. Custom product choices and configurations can be changed directly during order creation, in the wish list and the shopping cart. Composite products can be moved from the wish list to the shopping cart and vice versa preserving the specific product configuration. Even once the customized product has been stored customers and administrators can make edits/changes directly from the wish list or shopping cart without having to go back through the shopping process.

In addition, we have expanded the administrator capabilities so that order statuses and states can be created or customized. In the order processing workflow the order state is the high-level status of an order. Magento provides a list of predefined order states such as New, Pending Payment, Processing, Cancelled and Complete. An order status is assigned in a stage of the order processing workflow - as a sub-category of the order state. Magento also provides predefined order statuses including: Cancelled, Complete, Decline, Suspected Fraud, Waiting and Pending. Administrators can now manage and customize the available status of orders within each order state according to their unique business flows.

Payment Methods - Support for hosted and secure payment methods with PayPal and Authorize.Net

PayPal and Authorize.Net have introduced new payment gateways to allow merchants to quickly get their business online with customizable and secure payment methods. PayPal offers Payflow Link for US and Canada and Website Payments Pro Hosted Solution for Europe, Asia and the Pacific region. The Authorize.Net hosted payment gateway solution is Direct Post and employs digital fingerprints and multiple layers of authentication to enhance security.

Both solutions work generally the same - customers shop on the merchant's site and then complete the transaction process securely on merchant customized pages on the PayPal or Authorize.net website or from an integrated iFrame page. The customer is returned to the merchant's store at the end of the transaction. Throughout the checkout process, the consumer always feels as if he is on the merchant's site

Both PayPal and Authorize.net utilize 128-bit SSL encryption for secure processing of payments, which allows merchants to deploy their checkout process without the need of a dedicated SSL certificate or secure communication. Magento is pre-integrated with these payment gateways and merchants can configure their API credentials to interact with them using the previously acquired credentials and keys from PayPal and Authorize.Net. All orders can be managed from the Magento admin panel as well as tracked in their respective merchant account. Both systems enable merchants to customize the payment form and/or receipt page. And both support most major credit cards, debit cards, pre-paid and gift cards. The figure below (from Authorize.net) illustrates the hosted checkout process. It is important to note, that these solutions do not eliminate or replace the need for an SSL certificate. Merchants should always have an SSL setup for overall management of their site, for example, managing access rights for administrators and protecting consumer profile data such as name and addresses. In addition, at this point the solutions do not support partial authorization or multi-shipping checkout.

For more information on these hosted payment solutions please see the PayPal and Authorize.net websites.

PayPal Payflow

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_payflow-link-overview-outside

PayPal Payments Pro Hosted Solution

http://www.paypal-marketing.com.hk/en/business/website-payment-pro.php

Authorize.net

http://developer.authorize.net/api/dpm/

Enhancements to Authorize.Net payment functionality

With Enterprise 1.10 we introduced three different features related to compliance with Authorize.Net payment functionality of debit, pre-paid and gift cards. The new functionality includes balance response transactions, partial authorization and authorization reversal.

Balance response. Merchants are now required to print prepaid card balances on the customer receipt or display it on a Web page. With this new functionality, the card balance information is available to the customer and administrator, during order confirmation on the invoice, shipping and credit memos.

Partial authorization. This feature allows the consumer to make a payment using up to five debit, pre-paid or gift cards within one order. If the transaction did not complete, applicable funds are released back to the customer immediately. Within one order ID, the customer and administrator can view multiple transaction authorizations. The inclusion of this feature is configurable by admin. Flexibility to use multiple cards for payment extends to any order no matter where in the merchant's workflow the order is placed and processed (ex. orders placed from the call center).

Authorization reversal. This feature allows the release of funds put on hold for unsettled orders. This feature is useful when a customer decides to cancel an order and contacts the administrator. In this case, the administrator will be able to release the amounts on hold without the required waiting period. (This feature is not available for American Express cards.)

Gift Options

Customers and merchants can use gift options to apply dedicated messages and gift wrapping to their orders. Configuring gift options can be applied at the system level as well as product level for all product types. Administrators have the freedom to add multiple gift wrapping designs and charge customers based on their selection. Applicable taxes for gift wrapping options can be configured as well. During checkout, customers may apply gift options, such as wrapping and greeting messages, for the entire order or for individual items. Gift wrapping information is incorporated in orders, invoices, shipments and credit memos.

Site Management - Support for Content Delivery Network and Database

In Enterprise 1.10 we introduced support for alternative media storage other than the file system web server. We now support the ability to store media files in a database on a database server or in a Content Delivery Network (CDN). This alleviates the need for additional synchronization in the case where multiple Magento instances of the system are deployed on different servers that require access to the same images, CSS files, compiled JavaScript files or any other media. In the case of databases, automatic synchronization takes place between the web server file system and the database and vice versa. All the new configuration, synchronization and rewrite operations can be easily managed through the system configuration and general tabs at the admin panel.

Site Management - Enhancement to Import and Export Functionality

We considerably enhanced the import and export functionality. Customer and product data can be imported and exported to/from .csv files quickly and easily through the system admin panel with complete control over appending, replacing and deleting complex data features using attribute filters. The system validates the imported file and reports on issues with invalid entries. Administrators can append or update product and customer info and synchronize front end store data with backend databases. With this enhanced functionality, products can be imported at a rate of 70 products/sec for simple products and 40 products/sec for a mixed product catalog.

(Product bundles, gift card and downloadable products are not supported with this import/export functionality.)

Community 1.5

Additional information and complete feature lists and changes for community edition 1.5 can be found in the release notes