January 2022
Aphix WebShop and Management Interface
New features
Meet Shipping Services, our new name for Shipping Tiers
We've renamed Shipping Tiers, the feature that allows you to configure your shipping and delivery charges, to Shipping Services. We've simplified how to use this feature and we've added extra functionality.
Our shipping services feature offers you more control and flexibility over how you configure and manage shipping rules and charges.
New definitions
A shipping service is a shipping method comprising of a set of service rules and service charges.
A service charge consists of four elements:
a product code, which is set to a product type of shipping. It is active and visible in the product catalogue.
a charge type, which is the method used to calculate the shipping amount due for the cart contents. Supported charge types are:
- Flat fee
- Cart net percentage (%)
- ERP pricing
- No charge
an amount, which defines the shipping cost.
a priority which allows you to define the order in which charges are applied when calculating shipping fees.
A charge rule consists of three elements:
a metric, which the item that shipping calculations are performed on. Supported metrics are:
- Cart net total
- Cart gross total
- Delivery country
- Shipping zone - a defined group of countries
- Customer code
- Customer group - a defined group of customers
- Delivery postcode
- Cart contents based on product code
- Pricing properties that have been imported from your ERP and mapped to the pricing table on our platform
a rule type or operator, which is used to compare the base item against the amount. Each metric has a set of allowable operands. The operands displayed are based on the metric type; strings will typically operands like "one of" while numbers will typically have operands like "greater than or equal to".
a value, which is the metric used to compare against.
When used in the context of configuring shipping services, a pricing property is a metric that has been imported from your ERP, mapped to the pricing table in our platform and available for use to configure a charge rule.
Shipping services are set up in Aphix Management Interface. Each shipping service has one or more service charges. Each service charge can have one or more charge rules.
We've extended Shipping Services so you can now configure charge rules at two levels:
- Shipping service - these rules apply in all scenarios. For example, apply a specific delivery charge to all customers from a specific postcode regardless of the quantity or cost of the order they place.
- Service charge - these rules apply when all the rules within a service charge apply. For example, apply a specific delivery charge to customer who spend a certain amount and belong to a specific customer group.
Additionally, we've added more flexibility in how you can configure delivery charges so that they meet your business needs. Perhaps you wish to configure delivery charge by weight, or by selling band. To support this, in addition to the existing metrics available when creating charge rules, we also list all pricing properties that have been imported and mapped to the pricing table on our platform from your ERP.
Also remember that once you've configured Shipping Services in Aphix Management Interface, they apply to orders submitted in both WebShop and PocketShop.
Read our updated feature guides on Shipping Services in Aphix WebShop and Shipping Services in Aphix PocketShop.
Integrating IceCat with Aphix WebShop
Icecat is a product information management (PIM) system. It creates and manages product data-sheets from multiple manufacturers which are then distributed through various sales and marketing channels. Aphix WebShop integrates with Icecat to provide you with the facility to use product data-sheets provided by Icecat directly in your Aphix WebShop.
Key points
- A snapshot of product data for the specified product is retrieved and stored in your Aphix product catalogue.
- Currently, there is no mechanism to automatically check and update product data in your product catalogue if changes have been made to that product in the Icecat catalogue.
How it works
Once this feature is switched on, use it to import product data from Icecat into your Aphix product catalogue. At a high level, you create a product (either import it from your ERP or create it manually in Aphix Management Interface). Within the Product Content Editor, you can search for and retrieve data directly from the Icecat product catalogue for a specific brand and product. Once the data has been imported, you can modify it, and include extra information if you wish to. Once you save the product, it is visible in your Aphix WebShop.
In the background, Aphix uses API requests to send and receive data from Icecat. The data that is retrieved from Icecat is mapped to standard product fields in the Aphix product catalogue, and behave as if they were imported from your ERP or created manually.
In Aphix WebShop, the (Icecat-imported) product data is combined with stock and pricing data from your ERP to provide your customer with full product, pricing and stock information.
Our feature guide on Using IceCat in Aphix WebShop explains this feature in more detail.
Additional validation on payment gateways
We've added extra validation on phone numbers and addresses so we align with the stricter security validation rules implemented on some of our payment gateways.
Extra virus-scanning on file uploads
In order to keep Aphix Digital Platform safe and secure from malicious code, we now scan all uploaded files for the latest virus'. By including this extra file scanning measure, we are mitigating the risk of our platform (and your data) from potential attacks by bad actors.
We also recommend that you have a security strategy in place.
More content for you in Aphix Assist
We're moving content from Zendesk
We're in the process of moving articles from our Zendesk knowledge base to Aphix Assist.
This month we've moved articles on Data Protection overview, Data Protection Addendum, Cookie Policy and our list of Sub-processors over to Aphix Assist - you'll find them under Privacyin the Getting Started section.
Bug fixes
Customer Group permissions
We've added extra validation and checks in to how customer group permissions are applied after discovering that they were not being We discovered that there was a problem with how customer group permissions were implemented. In particular, customer group permissions did not apply to all blocks and blocks. We've implemented the following additional checks in order to ensure that Customer Group permissions are applied correctly:
- Once you have configured Customer Group permissions, child pages and blocks are only displayed if the logged-in user belongs to a Customer Group that has permission to view that page or block.
- As an Administrator, you always have access to all pages and blocks, regardless of how Customer Groups are configured. A message, "Locked page you can view as an admin" is displayed on any page you may not have access to. Log in as Admin and you can see the restricted page.
Our guide on How do I restrict WebShop pages to particular customer groups? has been updated to reflect these changes.
Messages displayed on Cart spreadsheet imports
This feature allows you to add products and quantities to your cart using a spreadsheet import. While this feature works as expected, the messages returned were ambiguous and possibly misleading. In particular,
- a message was displayed "No quantity for this product" even though the information contained in the spreadsheet was imported correctly,
- the number of products displayed as added to the cart displayed the total number of items in the cart, rather than the number of items added successfully from the spreadsheet.
We did some trouble-shooting and found a bug in this feature's code, which we fixed.
Now, the messages returned are accurate and correct and the number of products displayed reflects the number of items that have been added successfully from the spreadsheet.
Read more about this feature here.
Update made to latest version of SAP Business One web services
One of you let us know that the latest version of our SAP Business One web services was not returning expected stock information where that information was obtained from multiple stock locations. We've reviewed the code, and made some changes so that stock information is returned correctly.