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Update on your ECi Web storefront

Details About More Flexibility with Approvals in Version 10.1

February 4, 2011 — ECi will load the maintenance release Version 10.1 live on ECinteractive® and is.D-Force® 2 Web servers this weekend.

This software update is scheduled between 9 PM CST Saturday, Feb. 5, and 6 AM CST Sunday, Feb 6.

Since this falls within ECi's Standard Weekly Data Center Maintenance timeframe, no changes are required to Site Maintenance schedules.

Version 10.1 gives your customers the freedom to delegate authority for approving orders, gives shoppers a chance at checkout to change orders that exceed budgetary and approval limits, and makes it simpler than ever to track the status of orders.

Delegate Authority With Order Approval Forwarding (3417)

What if the manager at the top of the approval chain goes on vacation? Or leaves the organization? Now approval users — or admin users — can delegate approval authority for a set or indefinite time!

Customer View has a new option to enable and set up approval forwarding. Shoppers have a similar option with the same three-step process: enable, set dates, and pick a responsible party.

Customer View has a new option to enable and set up approval forwarding. Shoppers have a similar option with the same three-step process: enable, set dates, and pick a responsible party. When an order requires an approval that would normally go to the original approver, the system will automatically notify the temporary approver at login that an order awaits approval.

The selected party temporarily inherits all the rights and limits granted by the original approving party. So a mid- or lower-level link in the chain can temporarily be granted the same shopping privileges as the top-level approver.

To give your shoppers detailed instructions, see End User Shopper Site: Order Approval Forwarding (pdf) and your site's online help.

For detailed instructions on forwarding approvals from the Admin Control Panel, see Administrative Site: Order Approval Forwarding (pdf) and online help in the control panel.

Transfer Order Approval Among Users (7373)

Now you can help more when your customers need it on order approvals! In Order Management, transfer an approval order to a higher-level approval user in the current chain. Unlock orders and view logs, too!

The Order Management List shows various icons.

If the blue person icon appears, you can transfer the order awaiting approval to another user, and they will be notified as soon as they log in to the site that an order awaits their approval.

If the golden lock icon appears, the approval user has viewed the order without taking action on it and moved on to another page. You can unlock the order, and its status will return to Awaiting Approval.

For detailed instructions on transferring orders from the Admin Control Panel, see the Order Manangement topic in Administrative Site: Order Approval Forwarding (pdf) and online help in the control panel.

Prompt Budget/Approval Limits at Checkout (8860)

The checkout page now indicates to what extent the order meets or exceeds budgetary and approval limits. Shoppers can change their order as needed!

Checkout warns the shopper if the order exceeds their budget or approval limits.

Toggle Approval Chain Quick/Detail View (12556)

In Approval Chains, now you can toggle between the original Quick View and the new Detail View released in Version 10.0, and still expand/collapse as needed!

It also includes Approval Group name links for quick and easy access to edit group details.

Approval Chains how lets you toggle between the original Quick View and the new Detail View.

For detailed instructions, see online help in your Admin Control Panel.

New Order Detail Lists Changes, Items (12538)

You and your customers can now see the entire history of an order, including reasons why it was held up (such as for approval), and details of changes (such as approvers and their changes to quantities or items)!

In the Order History and Approval History pages, the user can now click the blue "i" icon to display the detail page, shown below.

The order detail page

  1. Order Status: shows the current status of the order as well as its basic “header” information such as the Order Date, Account, Department and Attention. If “Awaiting Approval”, an information icon appears whose tooltip lists the name of each member in the current approval group.
  2. Details: shows the remaining order “header” information including PO numbers and the Billing and Shipping addresses. The labels for Long PO and Short PO (shown as “PO #” and “Alt. PO #”, respectively, in the image) use the customizable text assigned to the logged-in customer.
  3. Order History: lists any changes made to the “header” section of the order including PO number and approval changes. The “Condensed” view removes any “Locked for Approval Edit” log entry from the display.it is updated on the back-end and front-end Attention field as well.
  4. Order Items: lists individual items on the order.
  5. Order Item History: Similar to the Order History section, this section lists all changes made to the item under which it is displayed.

Also, the order and approval confirmation email message now links to the new Order Detail page rather than Order History.

For detailed instructions, see your shopping site's online help.

Consistency Rules #1 Best Seller Rank (7197)

We enhanced the Preferred Items Admin page when using the Rank Items feature so that the #1 Best Sellers item is now first, instead of #9999. This rank order is automatically adjusted for all dealers, so all merchandising ranks are consistent.

When an end user does a keyword search in advanced or quick search it lists 5 “Best Sellers” on the right side of the Search Results, that is the Preferred Items list for what ever keyword they entered.

Normally the dealer has access to two of the bestelisted. You can add an item in the Admin Control Panel by clicking Marketing Tools, then clicking Preferred Items. Then you can attach items to what ever keyword you chose and set a ranking. The higher the ranking the higher the item will display in the 5 “Best Sellers” list.

In Preferred Items Management, you'll use #1 as the highest rank.

The wholesaler merchandising settings have control over the other three items; however, if they are not using those three slots, then the dealer will be able to rank up to five items.

One of the biggest misconceptions we have seen is concerning the keyword. The keyword assigned by the dealer must either be the keyword or be in the item description for the item you are attaching.

In other words if I add FEL00001 to my preferred items list under the keyword “ File Folder” and file folder is not part of FEL00001 keyword or description in econtent it will not display as a preferred item when an end user enters “File Folder” in a keyword search.

For detailed instructions on using these rankings, see your Admin Control Panel's online help.

Other Changes in this release:

This release includes four additional improvements to your site's usability and flow:

  1. 12471 — Enhanced by adding the ability to select a "blank" attention. This option was added to both the Admin and Front-End Web sites.
  2. 8860 Corrected Checkout to prompt shopper to select attention when user is set to "Must Select Attention."
  3. 12490 — Corrected Admin Customer Account Management so that moving a shopper to a new account no longer results in an unexpected error.
  4. 12607 — Corrected Customer Attentions so that when a customer name is changed on the account in Admin Customer Maintenance, it is updated on the back-end and front-end Attention field as well.

 

For More Info

 

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