New Features Available — Important Attribute Stock Qty Changes

1) Attribute Inventory Update (**IMPORTANT**)

Items with attributes will now have their main quantity automatically updated based on the quantity total of the attributes and/or attribute intersections.  For example if you have a t-shirt with both colors and sizes and you are keeping track of the colors and/or sizes we will automatically update the total number of t-shirts based on the attribute quantity.

Attribute Example

Main Item T-Shirt

Colors: Red (3), Blue (4)

Size: Small (2), Medium (2), Large (3)

T-Shirt quantity would be updated to 7, the minimum sum of the attribute color or size

Attribute Intersection Example

Main Item T-Shirt

Size/Color: Red Small (2), Red Large (3) Blue Medium (2), Blue Large(4)

T-Shirt quantity would be updated to 11 (the sum of all attribute intersections)

When the quantity of any attribute or attribute intersection is updated the main item quantity will be automatically recalculated.  If the attribute quantity is empty, ie not tracked, the main item quantity will remain unchanged.

Generally the sum of each of the attribute classes, attribute intersections should always add up to the same value.  In the case of the quantities not matching we will automatically use the minimum quantity.

Previously the main item quantity had to be manually updated when the attribute quantity was changed.  This new functionality is enabled for all stores automatically.

2) Attribute Selection Required

Optional functionality has now been added to require the user to make a choice in all attribute drop downs and radio buttons if no default choice is selected.  To enforce this new requirement visit General–>Item Settings.  Under Attribute Selection choose Require user to pick an attribute option if no default.

This option will add a select choice to all attribute drop downs and will ensure that no radio button is chosen by default.  If the user does not make a selection for all attributes before adding to the cart they will receive an error and will need to go back and make the selection to continue.

In the case of attribute classes with a default choice selected the behavior will remain the same with the default selection chosen automatically.

This functionality is optional and must be turned on to activate.  The default behavior has not changed.

3) Invoice Customization

Added the ability to add/remove columns from the printable detailed, invoice and packing slip order displays on the admin end.   To customize the information and columns displayed please visit Design–>Customize Invoice and scroll to the bottom of the page.

All invoices will be displayed according to the old formats by default.  To make any changes to your defaults visit Design–>Customize Invoice.

4) Save one-step checkout and custom fields for abandoned orders

Functionality was added to save information entered into the custom fields of a one-step checkout even if the user has not hit continue.  If using one-step checkout with custom fields this feature is automatically enabled.

5) Canonical URL (coming later this week)

Support added for a new variable which will create the canonical url for each page to help with search engine duplicate page errors.  The variable name is OBJ_CANONICAL_URL_OBJ

For further information about canonical urls and how they are used please visit http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

This new variable will be automatically added to all merchants templates in the head section this week.