A new level of user efficiency

In the Litium September release we’re releasing many powerful features enhancing the user experience of the platform making the everyday work for our users easier and more efficient. Together, they add up to a new level of user efficiency.

 

 

Highlights

Litium 8.18

• New translation UI
• Ability for administrators to save searches as views in Sales module
• Ability for administrators to tag orders
• Ability for administrators to export order summaries to Excel
• Ability to search for additional info on orders
• Ability for administrators to save and apply product export templates
• Ability to set search mode in the Admin Web API search model
• Improved consistency in primary buttons
• As a user I should see which to channel I publish selected variants

 

React accelerator 1.3

• Ability to show order history in My account
• Ability to see an order detail page in My account
• Ability to use a delivery widget on the checkout page of the React Accelerator

 

Storefront API

• Ability to use a delivery widget in the Storefront API
• Ability to fetch items by the global identifier

 

Shipments API 1.0

• Ability for a buyer to use a delivery checkout widget

 

Payments API 1.2

• Ability to support recurring payments

 

MVC accelerator

• Ability to use a delivery widget on the checkout page of the MVC Accelerator

 

Direct shipment app

• Ability to display a delivery checkout widget

 

App cloud

• Execute SQL scripts through CLI
• Automate Litium platform setup
• Entity Framework database migrations
• Continuous Releases

 

Litium

New and improved translation UI

Working with many languages can be a challenging task. Usually there is a lot of information in the screen, making it difficult to find and focus on the field to edit. Getting an overview of whether a value is translated or not can also be challenging for the same reason.

The purpose of the new translation UI is to improve the overall layout when working with multiple languages. It includes the ability to toggle on and off the translation mode. It aims at improving clarity with a new layout, presenting the information in a new way, hiding unnecessary information and reducing the number of clicks.

The new translation UI has been made together with several other UI improvements and all improvements takes effect in all views of the whole Litium backoffice.

 

Translation mode ON and OFF

From 8.18, when working with multiple languages, the user can use a toggle to turn translation mode ON or OFF. Turning to OFF mode simplifies the UI by only showing one language. The is the default mode if not more than one language is set up in the system.

New is also that you choose which language to work with per column. Gone are the many drop downs to select language per field.

 

The new translation UI with the translation bar in the top. Here in translation OFF mode.

 

The new translation UI with the translation bar in the top. Here in translation ON mode.

 

Editing two languages at a time

With the new translation UI it is possible to edit two languages at the same time. Previously you could only work with one language while viewing another language.

 

New forms layout

The field groups and fields have been rearranged to follow standards for forms editing. The field names are now shown on top of the input field resulting in a two columns layout instead of three columns. Having the field name on top and close to the input field is generally regarded as more user field friendly, as can be seen clearly when working with only one language. The focus of the user can follow the information in a straight vertical line. The spacing between field groups and fields has been adjusted to increase readability and clarity for the user.

Fields arranged vertically under the field names.

 

Field description, or tooltip, always visible

The descriptions of fields are meant as user help or tooltips to the user. They have been hidden behind an icon but are now always visible to the user as a gray text. We believe this makes the interface more intuitive and the user does not have to look for hidden messages, but can read the instructions directly.

Field descriptions are always visible as a gray text under the input field.

 

Improved side panel editing

The side panel has been improved in the latest Litium release to have a sticky header that stays when you scroll down to maintain the overview of the breadcrumbs and and the tabs in top of the page. The Cancel and Save buttons have been moved to a footer to diminish the information load and the size of the header. The footer is also sticky to make the buttons always visible.

The tabs in the top of the side panel are not dynamic, meaning the number of tabs shown varies with the size of the side panel.

The side panel with the new sticky header, save and cancel buttons in a sticky footer and dynamic tabs.

 

Improvement multi field editing

It has sometimes been difficult to distinguish between the instances of a multi field when working in the UI. To clarify this, the instances has been visually clearer.

 

 

Ability for administrators to save searches as views in Sales module

An administrator commonly have a need to repeat the same order search and/or filtering many times. You could for example want to filter orders from yesterday that still has the state "confirmed" to see why they have not moved to "processing" state. These repeated searches are commonly related to a recurring task that needs to be done, sometimes by multiple people. With this new ability an administrator can save an order search, including filters and column settings as a view. Saved views are available to all backoffice users in the Sales area.

Click Save view to save your search and access it later

 

Access your saved views in the dropdown above the order list

 

 

Ability for administrators to tag orders, payments and shipments

For a customer service person it is valuable to quickly find orders. One way of selecting a set of orders is to tag them, and then search for the tags.

In Litium it has, until now, been possible to add tags only through code. 

With this new feature the administrator has the ability to manually create, add and remove tags to orders, payments and shipments through the backoffice UI.

Order tags.

 

Payment tags.

 

Ability for administrators to export order summaries to Excel

A merchant needs to analyse their sales data. To be able to do this using other tools than Litium, a merchant needs the ability to easily export their sales orders from Litium.

Many BI tools have support for fetching data automatically, for example from an HTTP URL. However, there are many merchants that have not invested in such tools, or have not invested in the development cost to connect the BI tool that they do have to the ecom platform. For those merchants, Excel is a standard tool to use, both for doing the actual analysis if no BI tool exists but also as a intermediate format to get information from the ecom system into the BI tool. 

With this new ability it is possible to export orders to Excel.

 

Ability to filter for additional info on orders

A merchant has a strong need to find Litium orders using many different search terms. Sometimes data that the administrator needs to search for is saved as additional info on the order, eg a id-number from an external system.

With this new ability it is possible to search for the additional order data in orders.

 

Ability for administrators to save and apply product export templates

Exporting and importing products to and from Excel to Litium PIM is a common user process that facilitates the everyday work for product administrators. It is especially useful when editing larger sets of products. Products can have large amounts of fields and the ability to select which fields to work with in the export is heavily used. With this new ability, the set of chosen fields for an export can be saved and reused later. This is useful since similar exports are commonly carried out. It is also possible to use a field template as selection for the fields to export.

Use existing field templates to select which fields to export.

 

Save the settings for fields and languages and reuse them in your next export

 

 

Ability to set search mode in the Admin Web API search model

When searching for entities in the Admin Web API it is now possible to set how the search should behave. For example, when searching for variants you can set the search mode to also match fields on the base product.

 

Improved consistency in primary buttons

When working in the backoffice, consistency is valuable to increase the predictability of the user interface for users. Some buttons has been changed to match the default colors and style of the Litium backoffice.

 

 

As a user I should see to which channel I publish selected variants

It can be challenging to work with many channels and variants. To clarify to the user, the system now shows the channel name in the dialog header for managing the publishing of variants.

 

React accelerator

The React accelerator is only available to customers running Litium Commerce Cloud and note that you can run it locally and in Litium serverless cloud.

The headless React accelerator is built on React and Next.JS and has all the tools and frameworks you would expect from a modern single page application. It is designed mobile first for a better and updated user experience.

The new react accelerator has its own description and release notes, but here are some of the new things delivered in this release.

React accelerator roadmap

 

Ability to show order history in My account

It is valuable for merchants to allow self service in a My account section where a customer can login and manage their own information. With this page, merchants can allow customers to access their order history to see previously placed orders. It includes a detailed order view as well as a re-order functionality.

 

Ability to see an order detail page in My account

This new page type shown the details of an order as a sub page to the order history page.

 

Ability to use a delivery widget on the checkout page of the React Accelerator

With this new ability the checkout page of the React accelerator can show a delivery checkout widget. If the widget can not be displayed, any inline shipping options configured on the channel will be displayed as fallback.

 

Litium Storefront API

Ability to use a delivery widget in the Storefront API

To be able to use a delivery checkout in the React accelerator, the Storefront API needs to be able to get the delivery widget for the checkout, as well as receive information about the selected delivery option.

 

Ability to fetch items by the global identifier

With this new ability a developer can request an item based on the global identification. This ability covers all entities in the Storefront API like for example orders, pages, customers, products, categories, channels, markets and websites.

Read more in the documentation for global identification, https://graphql.org/learn/global-object-identification/

 

Learn more:

Storefront API introduction

Storefront API roadmap

 

Shipments API

Ability for a buyer to use a delivery checkout widget

Some TMS systems provide a widget that merchants can display on their checkout page to enable buyers to select their preferred delivery method. The displayed delivery methods can be filtered based on the cart, delivery adress etc. To be able to use such a widget on the checkout page in Litium, Litium now supports this for the Connect Shipments API similar to what we have for payments in the Connect Payments API.

 

MVC accelerator

Ability to use a delivery widget on the checkout page of the MVC Accelerator

With this ability the MVC accelerator checkout is modified to be able to use a delivery widget for the Connect Shipments API.

 

Direct shipment app

Ability to display a delivery checkout widget

With this update the Direct Shipments app is able to return a delivery widget that will be displayed on the checkout page in the checkout of Litium. The has basic functionality to select a shipping option and complete the session for the whole checkout flow.

 

App cloud

Execute SQL scripts through CLI

A new action is now available for both Litium Platform and private MS SQL apps, allowing you to execute SQL scripts on demand.

Learn more

 

Automate Litium platform setup

Beyond installing apps and environments, configuring the Litium platform often involves setting up domains, configuring payment apps, rebuilding the search index, and more. Now, a variety of new actions in the Litium app make it possible to automate the entire setup process.

Read more on the Litium platform app page.

 

Entity framework database migrations

For private MS SQL apps, we’ve introduced the ability to run EF Core database migrations.

Discover more.

 

Continuous releases

We’ve rolled out several new features and fixes in September — stay updated on the Release notes (litium.com).

 

 

Bug fixes and improvements

All bug fixes and smaller improvements are found in the release notes.

See the release notes here