ChannelOnline 8.2.0 Release Notes

Released January 14, 2022

Release 8.2 focuses on backend improvements that will affect overall performance, supplier updates and file processing. Find out more about the latest features, changes, and fixes in ChannelOnline.

• Documents
• Administration
• Supplier Updates
• Integrations
• XML/Import/Export
• Additional Improvements
• Bug Fixes

View the release training video 8.2 Pre-Release Training

DOCUMENTS

• Notification Emails have been expanded to include the activation of system emails for document Follow-up, Expiration and Doc Renewal. When enabled, these system generated emails will send an email to the assigned personnel (Sales Rep) on the date from the corresponding field on the document.
  • Three separate email templates that can be customized for use with document date notifications. Activate these new templates by going to Admin > System Emails > Document section. Template names: Follow UP Notifications, Expiration Notifications, and Renewal Notifications.

• • • Follow Up emails work on all documents with follow up fields in the header

    • Expiration emails work with Quotes and Proposals

    • Renewal emails on Sales Orders only

• New shipping calculation button (green with lightning bolt) is displayed on submitted Sales Order documents when calculation based on the percent of the total order is used. See Delivery Methods update below for more details.

• Safe Send Emails: With 8.2 the use of noreply.channelonline.com domain to send all emails sent from ChannelOnline was implemented. This domain replaces the use of the domain from the personnel (user’s) email addresses. Using this will stop email services from blocking or seeing emails sent from ChannelOnline as spam. The “reply-to” of the email will remain that of the sender, allowing replies to be sent directly back to the sender.

From	Reply

ADMINISTRATION

Some UI and navigation updates have been made to the following sections.

• Account Favorites. Create a list of favorite accounts (like item favorites) that you can access through the left Control Panel or from the Account tab. Designate Favorite accounts in the Account Action widget on account view by selecting the “Add to Favorites” link.

• Delivery Methods section has been updated to be consistent with newer UI elements and styling. Four expandable/collapsible sections now make up the Delivery Method page: Estimated Shipping, Default Shipping, Global Rate Settings, and StoresSite Generic Shipping.

  • New Shipping calculation option based on the percent of the total order has been added to the Global Rate Settings section. When using this new option, ChannelOnline will ignore the weight based calculation and calculate shipping fee based on the order sub-total. To use this option, select “ Ignore estimated shipping & use this % of total order rate for all shipping at all times:“ and enter the percentage amount that will be used for calculation. When activated, a new shipping calculation button (green with lightning bolt) is displayed next to Shipping section on submitted Sales Order documents. Use this button to update shipping on older documents.

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  • Notice: Switching to this option will lock ALL existing sales orders and invoices. This will prevent the system from automatically applying the new rate to old documents for historical accuracy. You will still be able to edit shipping rates on old documents manually if needed. The newly selected rate method will apply to all new documents.
  • Improved shipping weight method when using the checkbox to “Use all suppliers in the ChannelOnline to determine shipping weight” for better accuracy. When applied the system uses all none-zero suppliers weights + weight from DataSource attributes (if existing and not zero). Then among those, it picks the most common, but If there is no common weight (example, each weight occurs one time) then it picks maximum weight among those.

• Payment Options section has been updated to be consistent with newer UI elements and styling. Three expandable/collapsible sections now make up the Payment Options page: General, Lease Settings, and Default Payment Settings. Editing options will now be performed in a lightbox.

  • Authorize.net has been updated to improve browser compatibility for both US and Canadian customers. Customers using Authorize.net will need to update their public keys for this release update. Failure to provide the public key can cause a disruption in service.

Customer Purchase Approval System (CPAS)

A handful of improvements were made to managing CPAS customers and approver workflow. The main improvement allows Admin users with account and CPAS access rights can now set up their customer’s employees, approvers, groups, hierarchies and edit email templates. Access links have been added (see images below):

• To edit CPAS for your customer, the link was added to the Account Actions widget on the account view.

• For contacts, the settings at the contact level and visible on the Contact view widget on the Account view.

• Basic CPAS overview remains on the account edit page as it was previously.

Other changes affecting CPAS include:

• New access right setting to separate out the ability to access an account from the ability to edit CPAS settings. To activate this, select the checkbox in the appropriate access right at the end of the row next to “Modify Company Purchase Approval System“.

• CPAS employee user can now submit orders for approval with Credit Card Electronic selected. This new functionality only works with credit card processors set with the “Authorization Only” credit card global payment processing setting for validation but not capture.

New Edit CPAS Action	New CPAS Edit Pages
New Contact View Link	New CPAS Contact Edit Page

Support

Updated the ability to submit support tickets and feature requests from within the application.  Just go to the Control Panel, scroll to the bottom and click on Support.  Then on the support page click on the “New Support Request” button to launch the request form.  The request form has two case type options: Help Ticket, or Feature Request.

SUPPLIER UPDATES

Enhancements, additions and updates have been made for suppliers.

• PNH Technologies (NEW) – flat file catalog and pricing support

PNH Technology is a leading distributor of server, storage, networking, and laptops. We currently have over $10 million in inventory. With our quick response time and deep savings, we can help you win more opportunities. We sell new retail, refurbished and EOL product.  For most orders we offer free configuration and ground shipping. We want to partner with you. For more information on PNH Technology, visit www.pnhtech.com or call 949-438-3925.

• ScanSource – Upgraded to electronic ordering. Now you can create purchase orders and submit them directly to ScanSource from within ChannelOnline. Just update your credentials in Admin > Supported Suppliers > ScanSource to include your ScanSource API Key, Client ID and Secret, enable supplier and save.

• BlueStar – migration to SFTP file support. BlueStar made file formatting changes for this effort, to avoid any disruption in pricing please contact your BlueStar representative to make sure your account has the correct file set up in place.

• D&H – Manual purchase orders with PO numbers that match in the D&H system now have automatic updates for shipping and tracking. Also resolved an Autofill error on PO submission. Code was updated to manage failure responses which resulted in no status change to submitted and no confirmation number was populated.

• Tech Data – Made some updates to the handling of single purchase orders getting split into multiple orders within Tech Data. This change will help the accuracy of PO updates from Tech Data.

INTEGRATIONS

• ConnectWise updates to help with data management.

  • Address Code linked to Site Name when sending billing and shipping addresses from ChannelOnline documents to ConnectWise opportunities. Created new synchronization job to send account billing and shipping addresses to ConnectWise that can be scheduled and run automatically.

  • Quote to Opportunity mapping for customer PO number, item notes, and expiration date to close date in ConnectWise.  Additionally, shipping amount will be sent as an item into the opportunity.

  • Include tax from ChannelOnline quote to ConnectWise opportunity with ChannelOnline tax code.  Or, set a static tax code for all items sent to ConnectWise that will ignore the COL tax codes and send the static code to CW in their place.

  • Providing support for newer three tier categorization into ConnectWise.

XML/IMPORT/EXPORT

Updated XML schema is available after release and can be reached at: https://xml.channelonline.com/schema/8.2/schema.zip

(During beta the new schema can be reached at: https://ccs.usmb.channelonline.com/schema/8.2/schema.zip)

• XML Tool has been updated and now contains three tabs in the XML section: customers, sales orders, purchase orders.

• Resolved issue that allows the transferring of all documents to the new group when we reassigning the group on the sales rep.

ADDITIONAL IMPROVEMENTS

• Expanded Service item performance terms to include two and three year terms, and billing frequency (Cycle) selections to include Biennially and Triennially . Now you can select qty 1 for a two or three year service instead of multiplying a single one year term.
• Set Accounts to “Inactive”, not delete. Select ‘Deactivate’ checkbox in the upper right on the account edit page to mark an account inactive. The deactivate switch is for Customers and Prospects account types. When selected, quotes cannot be converted to orders on these accounts and contacts will not be able to login to the store site. An Account Active column was added to Reports > Accounts as a column to display a Yes or No value to display on running reports.
• Mass import of pictures and marketing descriptions through Product Attribute Import file (Admin > Import / Export > Import / Export Wizard). To import images using the file, just put the image location URL into the correct column, Standard Image URL or Thumbnail Image URL, then ChannelOnline will download and store the file in the Image Drawer for its use on items. Similarly, you can add detailed marketing descriptions to your items (not the main two line search description) by placing rich or HTML formatted text into the Details Description column.
• Added a Full Category column on products.txt file produced on the daily Full Catalog Export to support three tier categories on custom item import. Requires the Shopping Engine Export service.
• French Language updates for Canadian storesites. Improved coverage for French language on storesites and document templates, including accents) for all components controlled by ChannelOnline. Custom HTML, titles and components will still need be created in the proper language by the store Admin user.
• Document Template language selection updates for both US and Canada. When editing a document templates in Admin > Document Templates, you now have the option to set the language for the template from English (the default) to either Spanish (for US), or French (for Canada) in Template Settings section of the edit page.
• HP item flagging for Restricted SKUs. Starting with HP Inc. items, ChannelOnline has a new “Restricted” label that applies to SKUS that cannot be displayed publicly. For HP, this will include C-SKUs (contract SKUs) which are for internal use only. This Restricted flag can be used as a global catalog filter, to remove these items from a custom catalog. On internal display, the flag will be visible on product edit and the product view page.
• Inserted a warning message to the top of documents when electronic waste fees are present for a ship to address that does not require it. This warning will be shown on the confirmation page on the shopping cart.

BUG FIXES

• Corrected an issue where blank signatures were being captured on electronic signature document PDFs. During the process updated the signature font options available for selection (eight in total).
• Selectable Items on Configuration did not allow more items to be added after the fifteenth item was added. This has been updated to have no limitation.
• Problem where inventory displayed in the list (search results) page showed one amount, like zero, but was different on the product page. Example: inventory showed 0 on the store search results list page but the inventory on the product page shows 123.
• Update search engine inventory when custom item inventory is changed. Improved search engine availability of inventory when changes to inventory are made to custom, service, and labor items. Please note that the index updates only when editing inventory on an existing supplier. If you add/remove supplier items, they take longer to update.
• Remedied a category count result when selecting a single manufacturer to include only the categories covered by that manufacturer. For example: if you filter a catalog by a manufacturer name, the number of categories displayed will accurately reflect the categories that the selected manufacturer has products in.
• Addressed an issue where setting the font size on the document template component was not being reflected on the generated PDF. The selected size on the component is now consistently being applied.
• Condition where Quote Revision display was not showing the proper number of total revisions. Example: Rev 2 of 1, instead of Rev 2 of 2. This has been rectified.
• System display issue where it appeared you could add manual line items to the database on Custom Suppliers has been resolved. It was falsely allowing the Add to Database checkbox to be selected on the line item suppliers edit page, thus causing an error on save. This option is now properly not selectable.
• Repaired a count discrepancy that appeared when viewing contacts assigned to a catalog. If a user viewed the same page twice, it was showing different contacts because the page would reset to the original results.
• Synnex live cost passwords in ChannelOnline will now allow an asterisk character to be used within them.
• Resolved an issue when deleting delegated tasks that are made on the Quote/Order document that would result in an error.
• Modified implementation causing scrolling issues with the banner carousel on mobile storesite view.
• Fixed an error that would sometimes occur when copying a purchase order line item on the same document.
• Added a fax number field to the personal user contact information (accessed through My Account profile).
• Put in controls to make sure that the set carrier order from the delivery methods page is reflected in the same order in the Account delivery method in account settings.
• Removed the product selector from the footer when using it in a column with the Contemporary storesite layout.
• Do to the growth of ChanelOnline options there were instances were the Edit Price access right was not accurately applied. This was solved to correctly reflect in all field locations on a document when a user cannot change price.

In loving memory of Alan “Big Al” Kerze.
Alan Kerze passed away on August 31st, 2021. He was valued member of the ChannelOnline family since 2002. We miss you.